WASHINGTON,
D.C. – Following the second leg of the "Economic Human Rights Bus Tour,"
U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) wrote in The
Nation that “(t)he challenge to Democrats is to recognize the limits
of the current economic boom and act boldly to assist those left behind.”
Representative
John Conyers (D-MI) and Actor Danny Glover joined Schakowsky on the tour.
On this leg of the tour, the delegation visited a homeless shelter in Columbus,
Ohio; a rural Women’s organization in Beaver, Ohio and a Community Health
Center in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus to highlight the dire need
for national policy initiatives that could make a real difference in the
lives of families left out of the “economic boom.”
Below
is Schakowsky’s letter to The Nation.
The
Other America
On
the eve of the Democratic convention, the challenge to Democrats is to
recognize the limits of the current economic boom and act boldly to assist
those left behind. In late July those of us on the Ohio leg of the ongoing
Economic Human Rights Tour heard Donna Schoolcroft tell how ten days after
giving birth to her son, she walked seventeen miles a day to and from work
as a janitor to qualify for welfare benefits. When she told officials after
three months that she was willing to work "but I just couldn't do that
anymore," she was thrown out of the program. Now, she said through her
tears, "I get nothing for me or my kids."
Representative
John Conyers and I, both of us members of the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, joined the Progressive Challenge project of the Institute for Policy
Studies in hosting the Ohio tour. The message was that the persistence
of poverty, hunger, lack of healthcare and inadequate schools is a national
scandal as well as a massive violation of people's basic human rights.
Some 18 percent of children in Ohio are living in poverty--up from 13 percent
in 1980--and fully half the job categories that are growing the fastest
pay poverty wages. Overall in America, more than 36 million people do not
have adequate access to food and more than 44 million are without health
insurance. After almost a decade of economic growth and low levels of unemployment
and inflation, the United States remains afflicted by pervasive poverty
and a growing gap between rich and poor.
The
good news is that a grassroots antipoverty movement rooted in the promotion
of economic human rights is building across the country. Schoolcroft and
other women and children from the impoverished community of Beaver, Ohio,
are trying to fight back through their growing community organization,
CommUNITY Pride. In Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union has
just sponsored a huge march at the Republican National Convention in which
thousands of poor people and their allies demanded economic rights.
The
fifty-three-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, representing more
than a quarter of House Democrats, believes in the importance of these
groups' efforts and the legitimacy of their demands. During the tour we
released position papers on income inequality, healthcare and the federal
budget that offer new solutions to poverty. The Health Care paper lays
out steps to insure healthcare access for all and to spread coverage for
low-income people. The Income Inequality position paper offers specific
proposals on raising the minimum wage, enacting a living wage, closing
the pay gap and ending wage discrimination based on gender.
We
ended the trip with the conviction that poor people's organizations like
the one Donna Schoolcroft belongs to--if linked to grassroots activists,
national advocacy organizations and progressives in government--have the
power to end poverty in this country. As we drove through the hills of
Northern Appalachia, we discovered another aspect of a rekindling of activism
that has spread across this country in the wake of the battle of Seattle. |