KWRU addresses celebration of Women's Day at the United Nations

[March 8, 2000] Members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union traveled to the United Nations in New York to participate a meeting titled "Women Uniting for Peace" in commemoration of International Women's Day. The panel including Kofi Annan (UN Secretary General) and Mary Robinson (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and discussion was moderated by New York news anchor and talk show host Carol Jenkins and Daljit Dhaliwal, TV anchor at ITN in London. KWRU's Joy Butts stood and posed the following questions to the panel and an audience of 500:

"My name is Joy Butts and I am a member of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. I am a poor mother from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I would like to draw attention to the reality of economic violence suffered by women throughout the world - right here in the United States as well as in all countries. "Women Uniting for Peace" also includes poor women and families who fight daily against the violence of homelessness, hunger, underemployment and unemployment. There can be no peace when people are hungry and homeless!

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is petitioning the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights charging the United States Government with economic human rights violations - violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to health, the right to affordable housing, the right to a job at a living wage, the right to food. As the petition points out, there can not be peace without economic justice!"

Joy was received with thunderous applause.