"Take Over" Film showing in Detroit, Feb 15, 5:30pm

You are invited to a FREE showing of the independent film "Take Over" -- documenting the 1990 nationwide takeover of federal housing organized by the National Union of the Homeless and the National Welfare Rights Union. It will be shown Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 5:30pm sharp. (Discussion to follow.)  MWRO office, 23. E. Adams at Woodward, 4th floor (at Central United Methodist Church). For more info, contact MWRO at 313-964-0618.

Help stop destruction of Blair Mountain

From our friends at Keeper of the Mountains:

 

Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying the mountains and threatening the health and lives of communities across Appalachia. But people in Appalachia are standing up and today they need your support.

As I often say, "This is a reminder for everyone to stand as 99%, until we really start standing as 99%, we have yet to stand as the full 99%."  Let us take action and stand together.

 

Residents of Blair, West Virginia have noticed increased activity from mining company Arch Coal around Blair Mountain -- site of the largest labor uprising in American history. Residents are becoming increasingly concerned about Arch’s activities and fear they will move forward with plans to mine the historic location.

 

Take action today - Tell Arch Coal To Save Blair Mountain

 

Arch Coal has four planned operations on Blair Mountain, some of which intrude onto the battlefield. Tomorrow, this multi-billion dollar company will announce its profits from the fourth quarter of last year. Whatever those earnings are, the company has a responsibility to the community in which it operates.

 

Folks in Appalachia won’t stand for Arch Coal’s plan to destroy their community and our nation’s history just so they can increase their profit margin, and we shouldn’t either.

 

Call Arch CEO, Steven Leer today, on Friday, February 10 and tell him that Appalachian communities should not fall victim to pad his profit margin.

 

Call Arch’s St. Louis headquarters: (314) 994-2700

Call Arch’s Charleston, WV headquarters: (304) 760-2400

 

To allow Arch Coal to destroy Blair Mountain would be to tear out a crucial page of American labor history and burn it. But even more important than the history are the lives of the people living at the foot of this mountain today.

 

CALL SCRIPT:

Hello, my name is ____ and I am calling to ask you to abandon your plans to mine the historic Blair Mountain. The whole world is watching, and I am calling on your corporation to do the right thing and stop the destruction of Blair Mountain, along with all other mountains and communities in Appalachia. Mountaintop removal mining is wrong and harmful to the people and communities below it. Please cease and desist from your Blair Mountain plans.

 

Thank you!

Welfare Warriors Respond to Smiley and West

For the past few weeks, rebroadcasts of Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West's national television discussion, "Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity," has been shown on PBS stations. Conversations from this series include a range of professionals with their solutions to poverty. They include personal-finance expert Suze Orman, filmmaker Michael Moore, poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs, urban-revitalization strategist Majora Carter, and others.

In response, Pat Gowens, Director Welfare Warriors, had this to say:

Dear Tavis Smiley,

Instead of inviting wealthy guests to explain poverty, please include the
experts on your show: people living in poverty and the people organizing to
end the war on the poor.

You asked, "Why do the poor stay poor?" For the same reasons the rich stay
rich. Intergenerational class mobility is US folklore. You asked "Are poor
people superfluous?"

Poor people keep this country (and all others) functioning, generation after
generation. Without poor people we would have no food and few children. Poor
farmworkers provide all of our food. Poor mothers reproduce and produce the
majority of children and poor women care for the children of all classes
whether in daycares or as nannies. Without poor people we would have no
restaurants, malls, fast-food industry, service industry, temporary worker
agencies, hotels, tanneries, and foundries.

Poor people work the sub-poverty wage jobs, the jobs with the most growth in
the US, the least benefits and the most danger.

Without poor people we would have no prison industrial complex, no massive
job creation for professional poverty pimps, few social service careers, and
far fewer wars.

But poverty is not just about bad wages.  Poverty is also a result of the
majority of work generating no wages: unwaged motherworkers; unwaged
caregivers of the sick, the injured, the elders, the dying; and unwaged
caretakers of animals, crops, and communities. Doing the unwaged work leaves
few hours in a day to generate income. Unlike Europe, the US provides no
economic support to motherworkers and children. Nor does the US provide paid
sick leave or paid maternity leave to most workers.

Just as there are more sub-poverty jobs each decade, there are also more
people with disabilities who can not generate income. Disability also causes
poverty.

Your wealthy panel of "experts" did not include even one token sub-poverty
worker, one unwaged worker, one disabled person, one anti-poverty activist.
And there was no mention of the violent war on the poor.  Poverty after all
is violence.

Ignoring the "elephant in the studio"-- the motherworkers, farmworkers,
injured workers, children, disabled people, elders, and the sub-poverty wage
workers--smacks of prejudice against the poor. Excluding the activists
working to stop the war on the poor is incomprehensible.

Please consider becoming the vanguard, a leader in giving a voice to victims
of poverty and those who are fighting the war on the poor. Whether
harvesting food in the US or mining coltan in the Congo or doing the unwaged
caregiving for dependent people, victims of poverty are at the mercy of a
violent worldwide economic system that elevates its status and wealth by
standing on the backs of the poor. This must be changed.

Pat Gowens, Director Welfare Warriors
Editor, Mother Warriors Voice, a 25-year-old international
mothers-in-poverty publication

A FEW POVERTY EXPERTS:
Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Diana Spatz (LIFETIME), Pat Albright, Margaret
Prescott (Every Mother Is A Working Mother), Dotty Stevens (Survival News),
Marian Kramer (Michigan Welfare Rights), Charles King (Housing Now), Arturo
Rodriguez (United Farm Workers), Pat Gowens

Ruth Williams Joins Freedom Fighters in the Heavens

It is with great sorrow that we share the news that our own Ruth Williams, was carried away by the angels last night. 

Ruth has been the consummate organizer and housing champion for decades, learning HUD policies and making certain that these policies were applied to help low income families.  She never tired of this task.  I can remember calling her for client advice even while she was in the hospital waiting for this or that procedure, me insisting that she address the issue at hand. She always would, telling the medical team - you have to wait because I have this NUT on the phone.  

There will not be another like her, and we are all so blessed to have had her in our lives for some 70 plus years.  Ruth has been the membership chair of MI Welfare Rights, and a member of LRNA and will be sorely missed. 

She left during the night at home with family, and her extended family close by. We loved her dearly, and she always knew it!   Sleep well, sweet Ruth - you did good! 

 Maureen D. Taylor, State Chairperson - MWRO.

Stop the Attacks on the Poor! -- December 10

MWRO Calls its Members and the Metropolitan Community!

A Day of Deliberations and Decisions

Stop the Attack on the Poor!

Saturday, December 10

Central United Methodist Church • 23 E. Adams • Detroit

Morning • 10 am - 12 pm

Stop the Cuts!

Lawyers, judges, social workers, paralegals, and activists will gather to devise strategies that attack this form of genocide — the welfare cuts to mothers and children.

(See article below For Whom The Bell Tolls.)

Lunch • 12 pm — 1 pm for morning and afternoon sessions

Afternoon • 1 pm - 4 pm

Put Homeless Children and Veterans into Homes!

Community leaders and activists will gather to create a committee to put people back in their homes. (See article below Put Homeless Children and Veterans into Homes.)

For more information: 

Please call the MWRO Office at 313-964-0618.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

 

By Maureen Taylor

Chairperson, Michigan WRO

For months, MI Welfare Rights has warned the residents of MI that the Governor was prepared to start programs that targeted children. No one ever imagined the horror that is about to be placed around the necks of low income children.

Effective immediately, mothers and children who depend on meager welfare benefits to pay for rent, mortgages and utilities have been cut off with no plan. Mothers with disabled children, disabled mothers, mothers in domestic violence circumstances, all who were supposed to be exempted, have received written notices informing them that their cash assistance cases have ended.

We are facing the most draconian series of events seen in the State, in the County, and most tragically in the City of Detroit. Some 40,000 welfare families living in Wayne County are the first to be killed-off, with some 15,000 of these living in Detroit.

The criteria for eligibility, is that families must have at least one minor child. With 40,000 families, we are looking at some 40,000, or 80,000, or 120,000 children who are being harmed.

Information you need to know.

1) If you receive a cut-off notice, you must file an in-person hearing within ten days of the date on that notice to maintain your benefits. You have a right to challenge a cut-off of benefits if the following has happened to you and your family:

You have a disabled child;

You are disabled;

You have been in a domestic violence situation;

File an IN-PERSON HEARING as soon as possible if you are or have been in any of these situations while receiving cash assistance. If you are outside the ten day date, file knowing that you will not be able to keep your assistance, but you will have your case heard in front of an Administrative Law Judge. FILE!! FILE!! FILE!!

    

Welfare Rights is proposing legal action to address these budget cuts aimed at making poor children homeless. To suggest that the State is “broke” and that Michigan can save $77 million each year by cutting off funds to the poorest and the littlest signifies that one has crossed over to the “dark side” already.

This “CALL TO ACTION” is to alert and to gather lawyers, judges, Social Workers, paralegals, and activists to devise strategies that attack this pattern of genocide.

This “CALL TO ACTION” is for all who read this article including welfare recipients who have received 48 month notices that claim their benefits have maxed out.

Call MWRO at (313) 964-0618 to be included in the first session, being planned before the end of December.

REMEMBER!! We march every Thursday, noon to 1pm, at the State Building – 3044 W. Grand Blvd – against these cuts.

We will meet at the MI Welfare Rights office, 23 E. Adams, near Comerica Park, Saturday, December 10, at 10 am. Call in your rsvp!

 

Put Homeless Children and Veterans into Homes!

The time has come to put homeless children and veterans into homes. Since the economic crisis began, people around Detroit have been talking about putting people into empty homes.

Now is the time to move from talking about it to seriously planning it and executing the plan.

No one organization or one community has been able to do this work to date.

In our vision, the committee is initially composed of community leaders, organizations and/or their representatives who can:

1. Reach out to bring families cut from welfare and homeless veterans into the struggle.

2. Marshal all the resources necessary to successfully put people in and keep them in homes.

These include legal teams to fight for justice in the courts, committees to supply food, furniture, clothing; education and training in the political struggle involved; skilled 

trades to repair homes and maintain utilities and many others.

 3. Strategize and develop the best plans to successfully put people in to homes.

At the meeting, many aspects of this struggle may be debated or explored but the goal is expressly clear — the creation of a community-supported committee to plan such actions. 

(From page 6 of the Winter 2011 MWRO Newsletter)

Low-income people are the majority of the 99%

A new, more accurate measure of poverty shows the low income group is 47% of the society or nearly 150 million people.
Also, under this new measure, the rate of poverty for people older than 65 nearly doubles, from 9% to 16%.
Poverty means an income of less than $24,000 a year or four people ($11,000 for an individual). 49 million people, 16%, are poor.
Low income is defined as between $24,000 - $48,000 (100- 200% of poverty) for a family of four. This group is now 98 million people, or 32%.
Adding the poor and low-income groups together -- all families with incomes below $48,000 -- is 48% of the country.
The low-income section of the population is increasing not because people are being lifted up out of poverty because more and more people are falling in to poverty.
Finally, the well-off group falls from 35% of the society to 17%; families of four with incomes of $97,000 or greater. The drop is due to including medical costs and taxes which erode what appeared to be gains in income.
The new measurement shows a sharper and clearer picture of the United States -- much poorer, with a much smaller middle class.
All to benefit the 1% and the 0.1%. They are hoarding the wealth of the society at the expense of everyone else.
For Michigan Welfare Rights these numbers are closer to the truth. They show that we, and other welfare rights unions across the country have 150 million potential members and allies.

We are the majority of the 99%! (See NY Times, Sunday November 20 page 10)