July/August 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Abolishing Poverty: A Declaration of Economic Human Rights

Jesse Leah Vear co-coordinates POWER (Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights). She delivered this speech, edited slightly below, at the Make Space for Peace conference on April 24, 2004, in Portland, ME. Contact POWER by calling 207.681.0035, emailing power@riseup.net, or by writing to PO Box 4281, Portland, Maine 04101.

I once saw a poster that said, "What's the difference between a PRISONER OF WAR and a HOMELESS PERSON?" The answer? "According to the Geneva Convention, a Prisoner of War is entitled to food, shelter, and medical care." Indeed, many of us feel more like prisoners of war than American citizens. In a country where the average age of a homeless person is nine years old, we must ask ourselves, "What America is this?"

I am currently a co-coordinator for POWER, which stands for Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights. POWER is a low-income, low-to-no-budget grassroots community group fighting for economic justice here in Maine, and we're also a member of what's called the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (www.economichumanrights.org) - a national network of groups across the country working to build a broad-based, multiracial movement to unite poor people as the leadership base to abolish poverty.

In resisting empire, I share with all of you a common cause and a common urgency, yet having seen and experienced conditions of poverty lends my voice a special urgency today. For I may not know a whole lot about the US Space program and the role of weapons in space, but I do know first hand about the immense human misery and suffering that plagues the surface of the earth down here below. And I know that it would take a pittance of what is spent on this nation's militaristic endeavors to end this human suffering and ensure a decent standard of living for every man, woman, and child. And I also know that while our nation contemplates sending missions to Mars to probe for any signs of life, the leaders of this same nation couldn't care less about the lives right here on this planet - indeed the lives right here in our nation's own Capitol, in the shadow of the Washington Monument and the halls of Congress, lives shuddering with hunger and sickness and desperation. These are things I know all too well.

I've heard about the "need" for an advanced missile defense system. I hear this kind of talk and I think to myself, yes, if only we could have some sort of defense system! Millions and millions of Americans cry out for security! For every war our nation wages across the globe, there is a war raging right here in our own society - a seemingly endless, silent war being waged against us - the most vulnerable, defenseless members of society. People like me. Yet no missile defense system will prevent our enemy from striking. Our enemy is neither deterred by the world's largest army, with its overstuffed arsenal of missiles and bombs and tanks and warships, nor is it kept at bay by the legions of armed sentries patrolling our borders. Our enemy does not come in the form of foreign terrorists or so-called rogue nations. Armed with the mere stroke of a pen, our enemy comes in the form of years and years of national policies that would rather see us starve than invest even a portion of our nation's wealth in our welfare. Locked in the cross-hairs of domestic and foreign policies which intentionally put our bodies in harm's way, our terror is the terror of poverty - a terror boldly and callously proliferated by our own government.

Surely one doesn't need the surveillance powers of high-definition weapons-grade satellites to see the faces of the some 80 million poor people struggling just to survive in America; to see the worried faces of homeless mothers waiting to be added to the waiting list for non-existent public housing; to find the unemployment lines filled with parents who aren't eligible to see a doctor and who can't afford to get sick; to see the children stricken with preventable diseases in the midst of the world's best-equipped hospitals; to hear the rumble in the bellies of millions of hungry Americans whose only security is a bread line once a week; or to detect the crumbling of our nation's under-funded, under-staffed schools. Meanwhile, billions are spent waging wars and occupying countries that our school children can't even find on a map. Surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to detect the moral bankruptcy of a nation - by far the world's richest and most powerful - which disregards the basic human needs of its own despairing people in favor of misguided military adventures that protect no one, whether in nations half-way across the globe, or in the outer reaches of our atmosphere. To see these things one needs neither a high-powered satellite nor a specialized degree. One needs only to open one's eyes and dare to see the reality before them.

Yet even as you look you still might not see the millions of poor people in America. My face is only one of 80 million Americans who never get asked for in-depth television interviews or for our expert commentary regarding the state of the economy or the impact of our nation's policies. In addition to all the indignities suffered by poor people in America, we must suffer the further indignation of being disappeared - kept discretely hidden away from the eyes, ears, and conscience of the rest of society and the world.

The existence of poverty in the richest country on earth cannot remain a secret for long. Americans, like the majority of the world's peoples, are compassionate, fair-minded people. When exposed, the moral hypocrisy of poverty in America cannot withstand the light of day any more than the moral hypocrisy of slavery or race or sex discrimination could. That's where the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign comes in.

With this campaign, we are reaching out to the international community as well as the rest of US society to help us secure what are our most basic human rights, as outlined in International Law. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an International Treaty signed in 1948 by all UN member nations, including the United States, all nations have a moral and legal obligation to ensure the basic needs and well-being of all their citizens. Among the rights outlined in the Declaration are the rights to food, housing, health care, jobs at living wages, and education. Over half a century after signing this document, despite huge economic gains and a vast productive capacity, the United States has sorely neglected its promise. In a land whose founding documents proclaim life, liberty, and justice for all, we must hold this nation to its promises.

And so, armed only with the force of International law and the force of our convictions, thousands of homeless, working poor, and unemployed families and individuals from all across this great nation are coming together to take part in this campaign and form what Dr. Martin Luther King called "a multi-racial nonviolent army of poor people." For as Dr. King once said: "The curse of poverty has no justification in our age… The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty."

Together we are building this new movement to abolish poverty. On behalf the campaign, I invite you to join us in this movement.

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