RI Poor People’s Campaign delivers demands to General Assembly Leadership

"We may not run this economy, but we make it run..."

From a press release:

The Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign refuses to accept poverty as the fourth leading cause of death in America. The campaign declared that poverty is a policy choice and that the death of  800 people on average in this country constitutes policy murder enacted federally and at state houses of this nation, as the Reverend Carl Jefferson stressed. The Rhode Island campaign, like those in 31 other states, emphasized that people’s votes are their demands, demands for living wages and health care for all;  voting and women’s rights; environmental justice; and a just transition for workers in the war economy to sectors that contribute to the common good.

This Tuesday, the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign delivered its demands to offices of the leadership of the Rhode Island General Assembly. The visits were part of the campaign’s major statewide mobilization of poor and low-wage voters ahead of November’s election.

To convey its analysis and agenda, the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign has made several attempts to set up meetings with General Assembly leadership: House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi (Democrat, District 23, Warwick), House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale (Republican, District 40, Coventry, Foster Glocester), Senate President Dominick Ruggerio (Democrat, District 4, North Providence), and Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz (Republican, District 23, Burrillville, Glocester). Thus far, the campaign has not succeeded in scheduling any such meetings. 

At the Rhode Island State House, impacted people shared how United States iniquities affect their lives. Noel Dandy of Woonsocket, a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign, recently was sent to the Rhode Island Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation of his competence in court. Dandy spent more than five months locked away in the hospital. His stay continued a full month after a mental health doctor declared him competent. Dandy summed up his experience in a message in which he stated: “Poverty, inequality, and systemic racism speak loudly for our justice system. Judges have said ‘some are guilty before trial.’ It spreads in criminal and civil cases against people of color and the poor.”

Organizers Tuesday stressed that it is immoral to accept poverty as the fourth leading cause of death in this country, where this is a policy choice. Already in 2020, in its Waking the Sleeping Giant report, the Poor People’s Campaign laid out the facts that show that poor and low-wage people have the power to end policy murder and fundamentally change who represents their interests federally and at statehouses across this nation.

Diamond Madsen, another coordinating committee member, spoke about her ex-husband, Rodney Earl Callies. “He went back and forth between prison and the streets,” said Madsen. “He had a tough life but fought tooth and nail to get clean. He tried to do right by his family and by his one daughter, who meant the world to him. He worked hard but still was homeless. And then, last year he got sick and broke his back twice. It turned out that he had stage-four lung cancer. He died in the company of his friends from Mathewson Street Church, which had served as his home.”

“In God's eyes we are all wholly and equally loved,” said the Reverend Tracey Griffin, Minister of the Community Prayer for the Rhode Island Council of Churches. “My prayer is that our legislators have clarity of conscience to act honestly and fairly, on behalf of ALL the people of Rhode Island independent of their economic status. The time to act is now!”

Members of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival participated across the country in simultaneous press conferences, where leaders explained that poor and low-wage voters participate in elections at lower rates not because they have no interest in politics, but because politics has no interest in them.

“The Poor People’s Campaign is waking up the sleeping giant of low-wage voters who have been ignored for far too long,” said the Reverend Doctor William Barber II, national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and co-chair of the 2024 mobilization. “We declare today that poor and low-wage voters are coming together with religious leaders and moral advocates to say, ‘our votes are demands.’ We are not voting for personality; our votes are for policy. If candidates want our votes, then they must talk to the very voters they have been leaving behind,” 

In 1965, at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. observed that the greatest fear of the Southern aristocracy was for masses of people to come together across racial lines and form a voting block that could fundamentally shift the economic architecture of this country. On Tuesday, organizers with the Poor People’s Campaign vowed to persist in their focus on fusion, to create such a block, and to carry out the nation’s urgent, unfinished, and long-overdue business.

Simultaneous press conferences and demand deliveries took place in Alabama, Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

Partners of the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign include East Bay Citizens for Peace, George Wiley Center, Just Peace Rhode Island, Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty, Mathewson Street United Methodist Church, members of Providence Friends Meeting, No Endless War and Excessive Militarism (NEWEM), Pax Christi Rhode Island, Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (RIHAP), Rhode Island Housing Justice Organizing Committee, Rhode Island State Council of Churches, Sisters of Mercy Ecology, and the Sisters of Mercy Justice Team.

1. Who we are and why we are here:

   • The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is a national campaign dedicated to organizing the 140 million poor and low-income people in the nation, and moral allies, to take action together around the systemic injustices of

     1. systemic racism;

     2. poverty and inequality;

     3. ecological devastation and the denial of health care;

     4. the war economy and militarism; and

     5. the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.

   • We are organized in more than 30 states across the country, alongside statewide partner organizations, unions, faith leaders, and religious denominations.

   • Our goals are to change the narrative on these interlocking injustices, build the power of poor and low-income people, and move the political will to establish justice and promote the general welfare of all.

   • The Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign is organizing across Rhode Island to bring attention and power to the 337,000 poor and low-income people in our state making up more than 30% of the state’s population.

2. The true extent and impact of poverty and injustice in the US:

   • We live in the wealthiest nation in the world, but 40% of people living in this country are affected by economic insecurity and poverty every single day.

   • Today, poverty is the 4^th leading cause of death nationwide, accounting for 800 poverty deaths each day in the United States. That number exceeds other causes such as homicide, gun violence, overdoses, and diabetes, and 800 per day was the number before the pandemic.

   • This is happening right here in Rhode Island: Disabled, sick with cancer, and being evicted while unhoused

3. Diamond Madsen is a member of the coordinating committee of the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign. Her ex-husband, Rodney Earl Callies, went back and forth between prison and the streets. He had a tough life but fought tooth and nail to get clean. He tried to do right by his family and by his one daughter, who meant the world to him. He worked hard and yet was homeless. And then, last year he got sick and broke his back twice. Then it was found that he had stage-four lung cancer. He died in the company of his friends at Mathewson Street Church, which had served as his home.

   • This isn’t just one individual story. As mentioned, one-third of the Rhode Island population consists of poor and low-income people who, day in and day out, face these dangers and crises.

   • At the intersection of systemic racism, poverty and inequality in Rhode Island is the following:

     1. The Rhode Island probation system is one of the harshest in the country with a probation rate nearly twice the national average.

     2. In Rhode Island probation cases in 2022, one in four defendants were Black, while only one in fourteen people in Rhode Island were Black.

     3. Similarly, in the Rhode Island Psychiatric Hospital the Black population declared incompetent is over-represented by a factor of three. This, as the Providence Journal reported last January 25, is exactly what happened to Noel Dandy: A Woonsocket man was declared incompetent. It took advocates months to get him out of the hospital.

4. We know it doesn’t have to be this way:

   • Our nation’s wealth and abundance are being hoarded by a small number of people and corporations, rather than going to those who would benefit from them the most.

   • It’s happening in Rhode Island too. A recent report from the Rhode Island Food Bank found that:

     1. A record number of Rhode Islanders need food assistance due to high food prices, the steep rise in housing costs, and the end of COVID-19 relief programs;

     2. Nearly one in three Rhode Island households cannot afford adequate food;

     3. Communities of color and families with children are at the greatest risk of hunger;

     4. Ending free meals for all students led to a decline in the number of children participating in school breakfast and school lunch in Rhode Island;

     5. SNAP benefits went down by 32% in 2023;

     6. Food Prices increased by 11% in 2023; and

     7. Rent increased by 14% in 2023.

   • There is an alternative to funding deportations and the war economy:

     • In Rhode Island, state taxpayer dollars for deportations and border control could instead subsidize 11,000 public housing units. Taxpayer dollars for nuclear weapons could provide health insurance for 34,000 children;

     • War economy spending in Rhode Island accounted for $7.6 billion of the State’s Gross Domestic Product in 2022, as an economic impact study released JUNE 08, 2023 by SENEDIA showed.

5. Moving resources to where they are most needed will not only save lives, it will benefit our economy overall:

   1. Every dollar going to a poor or low-income household stimulates the economy MORE than giving that dollar to the wealthy or the war economy. And it creates jobs that sustain our communities;

   2. In 2021, 185,000 children received the expanded Child Tax Credit and 48,000 low-wage workers received the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit. Since these pandemic programs have expired, poverty has been on the rise — proving that poverty is a policy choice; and

   3. We may not run this economy, but we make it run.

6. We have questions for you: How will you ensure that poverty is no longer killing us here in Rhode Island? What policies and programs are you prioritizing that meet our needs?

7. We leave these facts for you and hope you will ponder them in your heart. In addition:

   • Something that you might want to note is that there are 241,000 poor and low-income voters in Rhode Island. That is 25% of the electorate.

   • Elected officials must take the needs of Rhode Islanders’ needs seriously. Please do!

   • On our end, we will continue to do our work in Rhode Island to organize poor and low-income voters, and we’ll bring this information to you again as we march and rally at the State House on March 2^nd, to all legislators on March 4^th, on November 5^th at the ballot box, and with even greater numbers in 2025, until our demands are met.