International Day to Eradicate Poverty
Calling for the abolition of hunger and homelessness, hundreds of Oakland schoolchildren marched with homeless seniors, religious activists, teachers, homeless military veterans and housing advocates.
by Terry Messman
Children at St. Mary's Center are sheltered by the giant puppet of Martin Luther King constructed by seniors at the center. Lydia Gans photoThe voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. boomed out with prophetic urgency once again on October 17, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. King's prophetic cry, "Let Freedom Ring!" was resurrected and rang out from loudspeakers outside the Federal Building in Oakland, as a monumental puppet of Dr. King displayed the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while nearly 400 demonstrators demanded that the federal government make a renewed commitment to ending the scourge of poverty.
The demonstration was organized by St. Mary's Center in Oakland and brought together a vibrant cross-section of the community in support of economic justice and human rights. Calling for the abolition of hunger and homelessness, hundreds of Oakland schoolchildren marched with homeless seniors, religious activists, teachers, homeless military veterans and housing advocates.
The procession of hundreds of Oakland residents marched from St. Mary's Center to the Oakland City Hall and State Building, culminating in a rally at the Federal Building, where Rep. Barbara Lee gave a stirring call to abolish poverty.
The march was inspired by Martin Luther King's commitment to end poverty, and, fittingly, the marchers were led every step of the way by a giant puppet of King crafted by seniors at St. Mary's Center.
Just before the march began, those who had created the MLK puppet described how they "built it out of nothing" but glue, newspapers and house paint. "We built it out of nothing," they declared, "and that's how we'll build the movement." With those words, they attached the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Martin Luther King's hand and began the march to the Federal Building.
Marchers on this International Day to End Poverty embodied King's electrifying words: "No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Yet the course of poverty is also a mighty cascade, a raging current that flows down from the federal government in the form of cutbacks to housing, food and welfare, and ends in torrential poverty in local communities. The watercourse of poverty gives the lie to the Republican pretense that wealth "trickles down" from the rich to the poor. Instead, poverty cascades down from the federal government to the inner city of Oakland, as the wealthiest Americans receive unprecedented tax breaks. This transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest is funded by severe housing cutbacks, and a shattering assault on human services.
The United Nations General Assembly declared October 17 as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The UN invited nongovernmental organizations to hold events to proclaim the need to end poverty in the world.
St. Mary's Center had worked with the United Nations last February to help document the effects of poverty and homelessness on low-income seniors. Growing out of that collaboration, UN officials invited St. Mary's to hold an Oakland event to mark this year's International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
Carol Johnson, the executive director of St. Mary's Center, explained: "It is a day of solidarity, when we stand together for the rights of all to live in dignity and free from want." Scores of similar events were held all over the world, including a major observance at United Nations headquarters in New York City.
One of the most successful aspects of the Oakland event was how St. Mary's Center mobilized more than 200 schoolchildren from four Oakland middle schools to lend their youthful enthusiasm to the call to abolish poverty. Students, teachers and parents from Corpus Christi School, St. Martin de Porres, St. Lawrence O'Toole, and Park Day School helped swell the ranks of the event.
Many of these students had already been involved in volunteering at St. Mary's Center and providing lunches for poor and homeless seniors.
Margaret Molina, Education and Advocacy Coordinator at St. Mary's, said they were inspired to get children engaged in the struggle to end poverty by the way the civil rights movement led by Dr. King had children march for civil rights and even go to jail for freedom.
Molina said, "We gave presentations to the different classrooms about the Eradication of Poverty Day. It's powerful when the United Nations decides to put on a day of eradicating poverty, and it impressed the teachers that the event hosted by St. Mary's was part of UN observances. It was so exciting to see the teachers get excited about it."
That excitement fed back into the event at St. Mary's Center, when hundreds of children showed up to take part. "Once the children started coming in, classroom by classroom, filling up our auditorium here with their signs and with their smiles, we felt the energy," Molina said. "We can't have any movement without the kids because that's what it's all about -- it's about the future. So that's the spirit that the kids brought in."
Carol Johnson greeted the assembly of students, teachers, homeless seniors and housing advocates by noting that the roots of the event began in 1948 with the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 calls for the full spectrum of economic rights to be granted to all people, including the rights to affordable housing, food, welfare, living wage jobs and decent health care.
Johnson told the gathering, "We are among possibly the first generation in history to understand that eradicating poverty in our world is a possibility and a task that each of us has to take on. We will hear from some of the people in our community who have suffered the humiliation and indignities of hunger, isolation, violence and homelessness. If the dignity of every person is to be recognized, all of us together need to take action and refuse to accept the injustice of poverty."
Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute, a longtime activist for economic justice, gave the keynote address."We come together to demand an end to poverty," Mittal said. At present, an estimated 854 million people in the world are hungry, and 39 million Americans are identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as being "food insecure."
Second Harvest, the nation's largest hunger relief organization, reported that it served 25 million Americans last year; more than nine million were children.
Mittal said that the Bush administration is cutting the federal housing budget even as homelessness is rapidly increasing. The nation's inadequate health care presents an equally dismal picture, she said, noting that the U.S. Census Bureau reported recently that 46.6 million Americans have no health insurance.
The politics of war and hunger
Rather than trying to make citizens more secure by eradicating extreme poverty, Mittal said that the Bush administration has tried to make our nation secure "by spending $370 billion on fighting a war in Iraq which has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis. and over 3,000 U.S. soldiers. And there is no democracy, there is no freedom in Iraq. The country is up in flames. Iraq is burning and the poor in the United States are burning."
Mittal asked the gathering to imagine how the billions spent on war could reduce poverty. "Do you know what we could do with that kind of money? Millions of children in America could have health insurance with that kind of money. You could have hired over 6 million public school teachers with that $370 billion."
Janny Castillo, who works with homeless people at BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency), said: "Whatever we, as a community, can do to insure that everyone has affordable health care that does not put people in positions where they have to decide between food and medicine, between electricity and a doctor's appointment -- we must do it."
At BOSS, Castillo sees many homeless parents with young children. She said, "It is unforgivable that we as a people allow even one homeless child to go hungry. In the words of Martin Luther King, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'"
Michael Diehl, a community organizer with BOSS, described being homeless in Berkeley and learning at first hand, when he tried to sleep out on the sidewalk, that the police don't tolerate homeless people there. That experience made him care more about the fate of others.
"I can't walk by and see a homeless person being harassed by the police," Diehl said. "I try to draw attention to it. I felt like there was a higher reason for me to experience homelessness so that I could help other people in that situation, and so I've been able to turn my suffering into something beneficial to other people."
Following the gathering at St. Mary's, the assembly turned into a colorful, mobile demonstration for justice and human rights. Giant puppets of Gandhi and Martin Luther King led a singing throng of the old and the young, the housed and the homeless poor, as they marched to the Oakland City Hall and the State of California building, on their way to the day's final ceremony at the Federal Building.
Rep. Barbara Lee speaks out
When Congresswoman Barbara Lee came out of the Federal Building to greet the protesters, she was welcomed by a thunderous ovation. Lee told the gathering: "It is appalling that in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, 37 million people and climbing are living in poverty. That is wrong! It's immoral, it's unethical. Look at our homeless veterans. Shame on America!"
Rep. Lee described legislation she is introducing in Congress that calls for the eradication of poverty. "Let me just say to you that this community is leading the way to eradicate poverty," Lee said. "We're putting Congress on notice." One resolution, HR 282, calls for repeal of all tax cuts enacted after 2001 which benefited the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans and calls for the revenues from such repeal to be used to "alleviate poverty in America."
Lee also spoke out against the failure of the U.S. government to help poor people left homeless in the wake of Katrina. "Our government exacerbated the disasters of Katrina and Rita," she said. "We saw poor people, African Americans, hanging on rooftops, fending for themselves with no government response or help. Let's pull the cover off to show the two Americas."
Rep. Lee called for legislation to "ensure that our Katrina survivors can get home and get home fast, and have decent housing, and that the landlords stop gouging, which is what they're doing now. They're raising the rents like you would not believe. I've been down there twice and it is scary -- the landgrab that is taking place."
Lee emphasized that the local protest in Oakland was part of a global effort to end the misery caused by economic injustice. "Millions of people are living in poverty throughout the world," she said. "This is a global struggle to eradicate poverty, to end homelessness, to end hunger and to ensure affordable, accessible health care for all."
The Martin Luther King Puppet
Before and after the speeches at the Federal Building, recordings of Martin Luther King's impassioned speeches were played near his towering puppet, reminding everyone that King had organized the first Poor People's Campaign in 1968 on the eve of his assassination.
Susan Werner worked for more than six weeks with the seniors at St. Mary's to build the giant puppet. She said, "Right now, when we're dedicating ourselves to eradicating poverty, we wanted Dr. King to lead us again in rededicating our efforts. Dr. King represents our dedication to human rights. We're carrying on his commitment and enfleshing his dream anew."
St. Mary's first-time puppetmakers were taught by K. Ruby of Wise Fools how to construct the towering figure. Kathy Mejia, a senior at St. Mary's and a very talented artist, designed the King puppet to "look as realistic as possible," Werner said, "and since he was an elegant dresser, she wanted him to look proud on this march."
At least 25 people worked on the puppet, but a really dedicated core of six artists came over and over again. The six main artists were Kathy Mejia, Barbara Varner, Milas Hackett, Erskine Murphy, Sophie Edmonson and Gary Alexander.
Susan Werner said that it was amazing to watch as seniors with no experience in puppetmaking rose to the occasion. They really felt that "King gave them the spirit and commitment to create this monumental puppet," Werner said.
When asked what Martin Luther King would say today at the Federal Building in Oakland if his namesake puppet actually came to life, Werner said he would declare, "Now is the time for the immediate abolition of poverty."
After the event, Carol Johnson reflected on what the International Day to Eradicate Poverty had meant to those who attended. "I thought it was a real opportunity to raise the face of poverty in our own community," she said. "Poverty is so terribly ignored in our own city, and we had the chance to link that face of poverty with poor people throughout the world and understand that we're all in this struggle together."
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