Get on the Bus to Lansing to Deliver Our Petitions

Join us for

the victory lap!!!

We have the signatures needed to stop the Emergency Manager, Public Act #4 law passed by Governor Snyder that takes away our right to vote.

We are escorting those signatures to
the Capitol in Lansing on
Wednesday, Feb. 29^th, 2012.

Bus leaves Detroit at 10:30am.

 
The “leap-year” bus will leave from Central United Methodist Church,

23 E. Adams and Woodward (near Comerica Park)

 We rally in Lansing at noon and will re-board buses between 2-3pm back to Detroit.

Each seat is: $8.00/round-trip,

Fees due by Friday, Feb. 24^th, 2012.

Reserve your seat today:

(313) 964-0618 – MI Welfare Rights Org.

Creative Commons image from momphard.net

"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