Galen Tyler

Philadelphia, PA
Kensington Welfare Rights Union

I've been working with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union for two and a half years now. It's made up of poor, and homeless, and formerly homeless people that's working trying to end poverty, homelessness and hunger, not just in Kensington but throughout the United States and globally. Our objectives are to build leadership among the poor, and at the same time help them meet their basic necessities, give them some basic political education about the things that are going around as far as the root cause of their current situation.

We have this slogan: " you only get what you're organized to take," meaning that there's strength in numbers. And instead of on a daily basis trying to talk about our differences, we talk about some of the same common issues that we all have. And from that we're able to work on how we're going to educate each other an all of our differences, from different upbringings to religion to culture.

I'm currently on the War Council of the KWRU, and that's the governing body of the organization. I also stay in one of the Human Rights houses that's set up by the KWRU. When I became homeless about 2 years ago, a family member told me about the KWRU, and I went to a couple of food distributions and a couple of membership meetings. And at that time me and my family were living with my sister, and with that, after seeing some of the education that the KWRU was educating the people around, I decided to dedicate myself to fighting to end poverty.