June, 12 2018, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Rev. Don Gillett, Lexington - 859-396-5925, Tayna Fogle, Lexington - 859-492-0397, Reverend Megan Huston, Bowling Green - 270-996-7021, Pam McMichael, Louisville - 865-235-7077
Kentucky Poor People's Campaign Shut Out of State Capitol Second Week in a Row
Media Availability in Frankfort with Rev. William Barber, National Co-Chair
Frankfort, KY
Calling on lawmakers to address housing, worker issues, and public education, 150 poor people, clergy and advocates rallied in Frankfort Monday as the Kentucky Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival continued its fifth straight week of nonviolent direct action. The action in Kentucky was part of a wave of protests hitting nearly 40 state capitals and Washington, D.C.
Kentucky is the only state in the country that has denied Poor People's Campaign participants access to their statehouse. Rev. Barber is returning to Kentucky on Wednesday, June 13, 2018 and will be available to the media from 10:30 am - 11:30 am on the Capitol steps.
Bearing an eight-foot scroll with Kentucky and national statistics and demands, participants sought once again to enter the Capitol as a group, based on the constitutional right of peaceful assembly to redress grievances through 'petition, address or remonstrance'. Citing the 'two in, two out' rule created specifically for the KY Poor People's Campaign, protestors were denied access to the Rotunda by armed Kentucky State Police. Kentucky Poor People's Campaign participants sang, prayed and shared stories as they kept the front doors open into the early evening to emphasize having been denied access.
The KY Poor People's Campaign is demanding access to a public building that houses elected officials, including the Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General, Supreme Court, Senate President and Speaker of the House.
UN: POVERTY GETTING WORSE UNDER TRUMP
In 35 state capitals, poor people, clergy and advocates demanded the right to healthcare and a healthy environment for all. The protests Monday come days after U.N. officials sounded the alarm on the Trump administration's efforts to undermine social safety net programs for the poor. On Saturday, Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty, criticized rollbacks to healthcare and welfare benefits in the U.S. over the past year, which aim to "punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship," Alston said. He said that under the Trump administration and the current Congress, America's poor are becoming more destitute.
The U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other country, at approximately $10,348 per person per year, yet there are more than 32 million people who lack health insurance in America, including 4.6 million Black people, 10.2 million Latinx and 13.6 million Whites. And environmental degradation in the U.S. exacerbates the healthcare crisis hurting America's poor the most: at least 4 million families in the U.S. are exposed to high levels of lead from drinking water and other sources, while an estimated 13.8 million U.S. households cannot afford water.
THE UNFINISHED WORK OF 1968 POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN
Over the past two years, leaders of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival have been laying the groundwork for this week's protests. They carried out a listening tour in dozens of states across this nation, meeting with tens of thousands of people from El Paso, Texas to Marks, Mississippi to South Charleston, West Virginia. Led by the Revs. Barber and Theoharis, the campaign has gathered testimonies from hundreds of poor people and listened to their demands for a better society.
A Poor People's Campaign Moral Agenda, announced in April, was drawn from this listening tour, while an audit of America conducted with allied organizations, including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Urban Institute, showed that, in many ways, we are worse off than we were in 1968.
Earlier this year, poor people, clergy and advocates traveled to statehouses all over the country and the U.S. Capitol to serve notice on lawmakers of the demand that they address the enmeshed evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and America's distorted national morality. Lawmakers have failed to act, and this spring's six weeks of nonviolent moral fusion direct action is yet another attempt to instruct them on these issues.
The Campaign draws on the unfinished work of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, reigniting the effort led by civil rights organizations, labor union and tenant unions, farm workers, Native American elders and grassroots organizers to foster a moral revolution of values. Despite real political wins in 1968 and beyond, the original Poor People's Campaign was tragically cut short, both by Dr. King's assassination and by the subversion of the coalition that sustained it. Still, the original vision and many of its followers did not go away.
The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral is building a broad and deep national moral movement - rooted in the leadership of poor people and reflecting the great moral teachings - to unite our country from the bottom up. Coalitions have formed in 39 states and Washington, D.C. to challenge extremism locally and at the federal level and to demand a moral agenda for the common good.
The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization founded by the Rev. Barber; the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; and hundreds of local and national grassroots groups across the country.
LATEST NEWS
In 'Abandonment of Public Education,' Louisiana to Allow Tax Dollars to Pay for Private Schools
"We must build and maintain a public education system that serves all children," said one Democratic lawmaker.
May 18, 2024
After an aggressive push by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, the Louisiana Senate advanced a bill this week that would allow public funds to be used for private school tuition—sending what one Democrat called an "abandonment" of the state's public schools to the state House, where it is expected to pass.
The state Senate approved the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program in a vote of 25-15 on Thursday, with just four Republicans joining the Democratic Party in opposing the bill.
The program would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to create "education savings accounts" (ESAs), which would give families state tax dollars to pay for private school tuition, uniforms, and other expenses.
The grants would first be available to low-income families and special education students, but in the program's third year the ESAs are set to be available to all Louisiana families.
The legislation was briefly shelved this week over concerns about its cost, but Landry, backed by right-wing groups and donors, used television ads to push his party to support the ESAs.
Landry went as far as suggesting lawmakers could revise the state constitution to end a restriction mandating that certain public funds are set aside for K-12 public schools. He called on the state Senate to hold a special convention to do so, in order to unlock funding for the $520 million yearly cost of the LA GATOR program.
Moments before the Senate voted on Thursday, state Sen. Royce Duplessis (D-5) said the bill was "nothing short of an abandonment of public education."
"We as a state are making the decision and taking the step to say that it's too hard, it's too complex" to fund public schools, said Duplessis.
Landry told the Louisiana Illuminator that the success of the bill was "a big win for the kids of Louisiana," but local school board members, teachers, and superintendents lobbied Republicans ahead of the vote to protect funding for public schools, where a majority of students in the state are educated.
"These universal voucher bills are a step in the wrong direction," Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, toldPublic News Service earlier this month. "We've seen in other states around the country, like Arizona and Ohio, where these bills have been passed, [schools are] now facing a budget crisis, and we're hoping that we cannot go down that same road."
"If we're cutting that funding stream, Louisiana students will have fewer nurses and counselors, less options for after school programs, and certainly limited access to field trips and AP courses that help prepare them for their next step in life," he added.
Louisiana-based journalist Dayne Sherman said the LA Gator program will provide a lesson in "how to starve your local Louisiana public school, Clownfish-style."
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GOP Farm Bill Decried as Pro-Corporate, Anti-Family 'Waste of Everyone's Time'
The head of MomsRising said that "it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."
May 17, 2024
Echoing early May criticism of U.S. House Republicans' blueprint for the next Farm Bill, anti-hunger and green groups on Friday fiercely condemned the GOP's discussion draft text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.
Released by U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.), the draft is competing with a Democratic proposal—Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act.
While Thomspon claimed that his bill "is the product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies," Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the panel's ranking member, said that the draft "confirms my worst fears."
"House Republicans plan to pay for the farm bill by taking food out of the mouths of America's hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis," he warned, referring to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The economic impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts alone "would be staggering," Scott emphasized. "A $27 billion reduction in food purchasing power would not only increase hunger, but it would also reduce demand for jobs in the agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and grocery sectors."
Leaders at advocacy groups on Friday similarly slammed the Republican bill. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
reiterated her previous condemnation of GOP attempts to cut the benefits of hungry families, saying that "this is unacceptable; Congress should reject it."
"Every SNAP participant would receive less to buy groceries in future years than they would under current law, putting a healthy diet out of reach for millions of people. This would be the largest cut to SNAP since 1996 if enacted and these cuts would grow even deeper over time," Jones Cox explained, debunking Thompson's description of the changes.
"And the cut to future SNAP benefits isn't the only harmful policy in this bill. For example, it would allow states to outsource SNAP administration to private contractors. But prior privatization efforts delayed benefits for people in need, worsened errors, and increased costs," she continued. "Congress should reject Chair Thompson's harmful proposal and instead work to pass a farm bill that truly protects and strengthens SNAP."
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, argued that "at this time when skyrocketing food prices have increased hunger and food insecurity, forcing tens of millions of U.S. families to make impossible choices between food and other essentials, it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."
Describing the benefits, formerly called food stamps, as "the nation's first line of defense against hunger," Rowe-Finkbeiner highlighted that "more than 42 million people count on SNAP benefits each month and nearly four in five of them are children, seniors, people with disabilities, or veterans."
"In contrast, the bipartisan Senate Farm Bill—the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act—aids farmers and treats hunger in America as the emergency it is," she noted. "It is a bold bill that would protect SNAP benefits and increase access to this essential program for groups that have long been excluded, reducing barriers to participation for older adults, military families, some college students, and others. It is an easy choice. Without question, the Senate Farm Bill is the version that should become law."
The GOP's efforts to restrict food assistance aren't limited to the United States, as Gina Cummings, Oxfam vice president for advocacy, alliances, and policy, pointed out Friday, declaring that "at a time when over 281 million people are suffering from acute hunger, any proposal to undercut crucial international food assistance programs is damaging."
As Cummings detailed:
The resilience-building programs housed in Food for Peace are vital to preparing frontline communities for future shocks that could impact their food security—whether it be from climate change, conflict, or economic downturns.
Oxfam has raised concerns about the American Farmers Feed the World Act, which is where many of the cuts to Food for Peace originate from—since its introduction last summer. The bill has proposed gutting funding for resilience-building activities that ensure communities can build up their local markets, withstand the next drought, flood, or conflict, and not go hungry. The House Farm Bill as it is currently written includes some of the most concerning provisions of the bill and would render these vital interventions inoperable, resulting in as many as 3 million fewer people being reached by these programs based on their current scale.
The House must reject the provisions of the American Farmers Feed the World Act included in the House Farm Bill draft as the bill goes for markup. The inclusion of such provisions is a threat to global food security and a shift towards a less-efficient model of international aid by the United States.
The AFL-CIO said on social media that it "strongly opposes" the Republican proposal, adding: "Families rely on Food for Peace—and also SNAP, SNAP's Thrifty Food Plan, and other federal nutrition and food security programs. We cannot support making harmful policy changes or funding cuts to any of them."
In addition to calling out the GOP for trying to leave more people hungry, advocates denounced Republican efforts to gut climate-friendly requirements from the Inflation Reduction Act and enact the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act.
"The Farm Bill is a seminal opportunity to reform our food and agriculture sector away from factory farms and corporate greed," said Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones. "Instead, House Republicans want to double down."
"Some of leadership's more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture—both the EATS Act and support for factory farm biogas must be dead on arrival," he asserted. "It's time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts."
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "weakening safeguards that protect people from pesticides, slashing protections for endangered species, and recklessly expanding industrial logging should have no place in the Farm Bill."
"It's unfortunate that chairman Thompson has put forward such a destructive farm bill to appease the most fringe members of Congress," Hartl added. "This bill can't pass the House and it's a waste of everyone's time."
In a joint statement released Friday after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats on Thompson's panel, Scott and Statenow stressed that members of their party are "committed to passing a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill that strengthens the farm and family safety nets and invests in our rural communities."
"America's farmers, families, workers, and rural communities deserve the certainty of a five-year Farm Bill, and everyone knows it must be bipartisan to pass," the pair said, blasting divisive GOP proposals. "Democrats remain ready and willing to work with Republicans on a truly bipartisan Farm Bill to keep farmers farming, families fed, and rural communities strong."
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Rights Groups Slam 'Malicious Crackdown' on Migrants and Civil Society in Tunisia
"The clampdown on migration-related work at the same time as the increasing arrest of government critics and journalists sends a chilling message," said one campaigner.
May 17, 2024
Human rights defenders on Friday decried what Amnesty International called "an unprecedented repressive clampdown" by Tunisia's increasingly authoritarian government on migrants, their civil society advocates, and journalists over the past two weeks.
Hundreds of Tunisian attorneys led a strike in the capital Tunis on Thursday to protest rising arrests of lawyers, one of whom, Mahdi Zagrouba, said he was tortured during interrogation—an allegation denied by Tunisian officials. Demonstrators chanted "No fear, no terror! Power belongs to the people!" as they marched on the Palace of Justice.
Sub-Saharan African migrants—recently described by Tunisian President Kais Saied as "hordes of illegal immigrants" who bring "violence, crime, and unacceptable practices" to Tunisia and threaten its "Arab and Islamic" character—have been particularly targeted, as have those who help them.
"On May 11, security officers stormed the Tunisian Bar Association's headquarters during a live television broadcast, arresting a media commentator and lawyer, Sonia Dahmani, for sarcastic comments made on May 7 questioning the claim that Black African migrants were seeking to settle in Tunisia," Human Rights Watch said Friday.
"Based on media reports, Dahmani's arrest and subsequent detention was based on Decree-Law 54 on cybercrime, which imposes heavy prison sentences for spreading 'fake news' and 'rumors' online and in the media, after she refused to respond to a summons for questioning," the group added.
Other recent arrestees include Saadia Mosbah, a Black Tunisian woman who heads the anti-racism group Mnemty (My Dream); and journalists Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies
"The clampdown on migration-related work at the same time as the increasing arrest of government critics and journalists sends a chilling message that anyone who doesn't fall in line may end up in the authorities' crosshairs," Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "By targeting these civil society groups, Tunisian authorities jeopardize the vital support they provide migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers living in extremely vulnerable situations."
According to Amnesty International:
Tunisian authorities have since May 3 arrested, summoned, and investigated the heads, former staff, or members of at least 12 organizations over unclear accusations including "financial crimes" for providing aid to migrants, including a Tunisian organization that works in partnership with the [United Nations] Refugee Agency, UNHCR, on supporting asylum-seekers through the refugee status determination process in the country. They have also arrested at least two journalists and referred them to trial for their independent reporting and comments in the media.
In parallel, security forces have escalated their collective unlawful deportations of refugees and migrants, as well as multiple forced evictions and have arrested and convicted landlords for renting apartments to migrants without permits.
"Tunisia's authorities have stepped up their malicious crackdown against civil society organizations working on migrants and refugee rights using misleading claims about their work and harassing and prosecuting NGO workers, lawyers, and journalists," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for Middle East and North Africa.
"A smear campaign online and in the media, supported by the Tunisian president himself, has put refugees and migrants in the country at risk," she continued. "It also undermines the work of civil society groups and sends a chilling message to all critical voices."
"Tunisia's authorities must immediately end this vicious campaign and halt all reprisals against NGO workers providing essential support, including shelter, to migrants and refugees," Morayef added. "The European Union should be urgently reviewing its cooperation agreements with Tunisia to ensure that it is not complicit in human rights violations against migrants and refugees nor in the clampdown on media, lawyers, migrants, and activists."
Last July, the E.U. and Tunisia signed a memorandum of understanding that included up to €1 billion ($1.09 billion) in funding for the North African nation. Around 10% of that aid is meant to be spent on stopping migrants from reaching Europe.
"The European Union should be urgently reviewing its cooperation agreements with Tunisia to ensure that it is not complicit in human rights violations."
Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights toldAl Jazeera Friday that "the regime's machinery is operating very efficiently, meaning it devours anyone who has a critical perspective on the situation... lawyers, journalists, bloggers, citizens, or associations."
"So, of course, Kais Saied from now until the elections has a long list of individuals, associations, parties, and journalists whom he will gradually criminalize to always maintain the sympathy of his electoral base," Ben Amor added, referring to this fall's expected presidential contest.
Over the past three years, Saied—who was initially supported by both leftists and Islamists when elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2019—has dissolved Parliament and suspended most of Tunisia's 2014 Constitution, allowing him to rule by decree. He has consolidated power by pushing through a new constitution, eroding the judiciary's independence, repressing civil liberties, undermining workers' rights, weakening democratic institutions, and other methods.
"Tunisian authorities must urgently reverse this significant backsliding on human rights," Morayef asserted. "They must cease this judicial harassment and release all those detained solely for the exercise of their freedom of expression and freedom of association. People should have the freedom to express themselves without fear of reprisal."
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