Help Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign & Asian Americans United to raise $5,000 to support our organizing efforts for the Third US Social Forum.
We need HELP ($$$$) for our work to make the US Social Forum in Philadelphia in 2015!!! Here is the info from our indiegogo page:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ppehrc-aau-us-social-forum-launch-fundraiser
Who We Are
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty everywhere and forever. We share a common interest in uniting against the prevailing conditions and around our vision of a society where we all have the right to health care, housing, living wage jobs, and access to quality primary, secondary, and higher education. We are mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents; we are the unemployed, the working poor, the downsized, the homeless, the victims of welfare reform and NAFTA, the cast-asides of the new economy; we are social workers, religious leaders, labor leaders, artists, lawyers, and other people of conscience; we are young and old; we live in rural areas and in urban centers.
Asian Americans United
Asian Americans United was founded in 1985 by a small group of activists seeking to create an organized response to rising issues of anti-Asian violence, substandard housing and inadequate education for non-English speaking Asians in Philadelphia. In AAU’s view, the way to change these conditions is to develop political power, to mobilize collectively, to push institutions to address community needs, and to create our own community-based organizations, practices and institutions. This can only happen by nurturing and training new generations of Asian Americans committed to working for social justice.
Our Campaign
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and Asian Americans United have partnered together to be one of several polycentric sites for the Third US Social Forum (USSF) to be held in 2015. We are two low-income, multiracial organizations that are organized around our commitment to a vision of transformation and a new world. We are resourceful, and we require the people’s support to take this vision to the next level. The vision includes housing for all, cooperative economics, healthy culture for and by the community and vision of a world of abundance and economic democracy. With your leadership and contributions, we can gain access to the necessary tools and resources to facilitate one of the most impactful Social Forum’s to date!!
What is the US Social Forum?
The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history. We must declare what we want our world to look like and we must start planning the path to get there. The USSF provides spaces to learn from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.
Why Philadelphia?
Philadelphia is a city that sharply manifests many aspects of the crisis of capitalism, the end of the industrial era, and the urgency of the moment that calls us to convene a US Social Forum. Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate (28.4%) of any of the ten largest cities in the US and the highest rate of deep poverty (12.9% of Philadelphians or 200,000 people have incomes below half of the poverty line). Our 1st Congressional District has the second highest rate of food insecurity of all congressional districts in the US, with over 36% of its households reporting that they lack the money to buy enough food. Neo-liberal policies–systematic disinvestment from poor areas side by side with gentrification and the dismantling of public services, assets, and resources–accelerate the desperate conditions of the poor beyond even the long-term structural unemployment and forced poverty imposed by our broken system. Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia’s watershed, has also become the new Ground Zero of fracking and natural gas drilling and the take over of public lands and irreplaceable natural resources by private energy interests.
What We Need
In order to kickstart our planning process of organizing a successful USSF, we need to raise $5,000. The money will specifically go towards stipends to secure several low-income staff members, transportation, supplies, and technological support.
The Impact
Through the Third US Social Forum, large numbers of Philadelphians will have a chance to see what others across the country are doing. We believe the possibilities of transformative change, of working across sectors, creating positive alternatives, and rejecting the desperate politics of division will spark creativity and hopefulness in local work throughout the city. In times of crisis, it is often difficult to take the time for this critical aspect of movement building. However, we believe the USSF process will encourage and perhaps force local groups to work in a concerted way to study, to think strategically and to imagine new ways of moving our work forward collectively.
This is a crucial time in history. Our children are being denied a basic right to education, homelessness continues to soar in our country, and we have more people in prison than any place in the world. The USSF in Philadelphia offers us an opportunity to figure out a way to get out of these inhumane conditions that we live in. We believe another world is possible and another US is necessary.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please help get the word out for our campaign by sharing it with your family, friends, and through various social media outlets! There are share tools located at the top of this page. Any sort of contribution goes a long way and we appreciate any support we can get!
If you are interested in supporting the movement beyond a donation and have skills in either technology and communication, fundraising, grant writing, or media please email us at [email protected] to get involved.