RI Poor People’s Campaign demands major party candidates commit to addressing the needs of the poor & low-wage in the state

The RI Poor People’s Campaign demands candidates seeking office commit to addressing the crisis of death by poverty and low-wealth, which kills 800 people daily and 295,000 annually.

The Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign and a growing coalition of impacted people and organizations co-hosted a press conference on Monday morning at Mathewson St. Church in Downtown Providence to detail their plans to challenge Democrats, Republicans, and other candidates seeking office, to commit to addressing the crisis of death by poverty in the United States. The campaign is calling on candidates to embrace its 17-point Agenda of policies and demands that includes living wages, voting rights, and other essential policies that lift from the bottom.

The Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign will also announce new mobilization partners who are organizing the June 29th “Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington, D.C., and to the Polls.” The mass assembly and moral march is being led by poor people, workers, and their allies who are calling on all candidates seeking elected office to attend. 

In addition to Monday’s press conference, local Poor People’s Campaign organizers in 15+ other states are hosting simultaneous press conferences to announce local mobilizing partners and invite candidates seeking office to attend the June 29th gathering in Washington D.C. Other states holding press conferences include Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington D.C., and West Virginia.

Pamela Poniatowski, Tri-Chair of the Rhode Island Poor People's Campaign: We are the Poor People's Campaign and the reason we are here is to talk about the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington, D.C., and to the Polls. It will be Saturday, June 29th at 10:00 am and it'll be at 3rd and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.

If you believe in the issues that ought to be at the center of our political agenda because our votes are our demands and not merely about popularity and personality, then we need you to march and assemble with us, mobilize voters with us, and bring everybody who believes in love, truth, and non-violence.

On Saturday, March 2nd, state-based fusion coalitions came together in mass assemblies in 32 states and Washington DC to launch a simultaneous mass voter mobilization effort to mobilize 15 million poor and low-wage voters across the nation. At these mass assemblies across the country, impacted people, faith leaders, and advocates lifted policy demands and called on lawmakers to take immediate action to end the crisis of death by poverty in the United States. Those assemblies marked the beginning of a 40-week push to mobilize poor and low-wage workers and amplify a moral public policy agenda throughout and beyond the 2024 election season.

It is morally reprehensible that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. In a country with so much wealth, poor and low-wage voters are fighting back against the myth of scarcity and instead declaring that our votes are our demand for living wages, voting rights, and other policies to save lives. At each mass assembly, low-wage voters shared powerful testimony to put our politicians on notice. If you want our votes in November, you must address the crisis of poverty.

Kevin Simon, Director of Outreach and Communications at Mathewson St. United Methodist Church: Each day, hundreds of Rhode Islanders sleep outside. There are not enough shelter beds and there is a tremendous lack of affordable housing which leaves so many of our friends without a place to rest their heads at night. People are being evicted every day due to the astronomical rent prices here in our state. Here at Matthewson UMC, we see members of our community come through our doors who are food insecure, who need clothes, who have spent the previous night outside in the rain, the snow, or the extreme heat, and who just need a place to be.

This is not okay. Every single person walking this earth should have food, clothing, and shelter. I am here, along with members of our community, to stand with the Poor People's Campaign, a National Call for Moral Revival, and with the Rhode Island Poor People's Campaign.

It is time to wake up. It is time for our voices to be heard. It is time to demand that people who are in positions to create change do just that. The vision for our world is rooted in love and in fixing the injustices that we see every day. We urge you to join us on June 29th in Washington DC to be a part of creating change and creating a world that we all want. A world where everyone has a roof over their head, food to eat, clothes to wear, access to healthcare, a good education, and where we have clean air and clean water to drink. A world where we have peace. Join us. God bless.

Eric Hirsch, interim director of the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (RIHAP). I'm the interim director because Barbara Frietas, who spent years living homeless, often in tents, and one of the first people to establish tent encampments in the state, has health consequences from that and she's recovering. So I agreed to be the interim director even though I've never experienced homelessness. I also want to say that we've lost three really important leaders who had been homeless - very early in their lives. John Freitas, John Joyce, and David St. Germain, all of whom died in their forties and fifties because of having lived outside, which is unacceptable. So that's why I'm standing up here as an interim director.

Dr. Martin Luther King created the first Poor People's campaign in November of 1967, just five months before he was assassinated and the issues were pretty much the same as today - which is very disappointing. Half a century later we are dealing with the same issues. Dr. King talked about the problem of people not having enough income to live, buy food, get health insurance, and to be able to afford housing. We are talking about the same things in this revival of the Poor People's campaign. RIHAP supports everything the Poor People's Campaign is doing. This is a comprehensive plan to end poverty and it's not just about poverty, it's about inequality.

Our housing problems are not due to people being poor, it's that people are rich and there's so much money at the top of the system that our entire housing production system focuses only on luxury housing. Show me even a middle-income house or apartment produced recently - there aren't any. There are zero. You have to have government subsidies to provide more middle-class housing now.

The problem is that the rich are very wealthy and don't pay their fair share of taxes and they also dominate politically - nationally, at the state level, and locally. It's inequality that we have to solve, not just poverty. We need a successful anti-poverty campaign.

This is about the worst situation there has ever been in Rhode Island regarding homelessness. We have well over 2000 people on any given night, probably five or 6,000 over a year and right now we have over 600 people living outside. That's about 10 times what it was before Covid hit. When Covid hit, we had to reduce the number of shelters. There were economic consequences, coupled with the incredible rise in rents - due to inequality - now we have over 600 people outside and over 2000 people on any given night who are homeless.

We need action at the national level to build housing for extremely low-income people and to create permanent supportive housing when people need housing with services. We need the Governor to declare a state of emergency. The governor needs to do that because it is an emergency for the people who are out there. We need to fight the NIMBYism that prevents us from creating shelter beds and extremely low-income housing. People seem to care more about having to see people who are homeless than getting them into housing. That's the most important barrier we have to solving this problem. RIHAP fully supports the Poor People's Campaign - what they're doing locally and their March and Rally in Washington DC on June 29th.

Diamond, advocate for the unhoused: Martin Luther King's favorite line was, “I have a dream.” I have a dream too - to be treated like an individual. I'm formerly homeless. I walked through these doors almost a decade ago with nothing and I stand here today as an example. When you say my name anywhere in the state of Rhode Island, everybody either knows my name, knows of me or knows what I do.

I am not on the bottom. I'm not in the middle. I'm right here - but I suffer. I just moved into my new apartment. Nobody wants to be homeless, trust me. But there's not enough affordable housing for everybody.

You are one paycheck away from being where we're at. We have homeless adults, homeless children, and homeless people with mental health issues like I have. The simple things that upper-class people take for granted, like a blanket, a pillow, a hot meal, or someone to say it's going to be okay - you don't have to fight this fight alone. This church here is safe for people and we need more churches like this because, without places like this, more people are going to die this summer.

Mayor Smiley, please stop tearing down encampments. Stop taking people's cars from them. If they can't afford a house they sleep in their car - consider what they go through. These are working people and you're saying it's okay to take something away from them. Homelessness is not the same as what it was when Dr Martin Luther King was alive. It was different then different then. It is a crisis now. It's an epidemic. It's a systematic epidemic.

Come walk in our shoes for a week and tell me you could do it. I do this because this is my heart. I'm broke. The streets broke me. You don't care that we die but people in this church care. We're good people - we just want the simple things that you guys have in life. A clean bed, shower, bathroom, and door where we can put our key in. Safe affordable housing means it's safe and affordable. You're not freezing in the winter. Your landlords don't torture you.

Martin Luther King had a dream. Why can't we have a dream? This is our dream today.

Pamela Poniatowski: There are 337,000 people in Rhode Island who are poor and low-wealth and those people are $400 away from a complete disaster that they don't know is coming. We are closer to that than becoming a millionaire. That's why we're marching This is why we're asking for a third reconstruction and this is why we're asking our legislators to listen to us as voters - to start doing the things that we need that will raise us up. If you lift from the bottom, everybody rises.

Jonathan Daly-Labelle: I'm a local peace organizer and activist. I'm primarily involved with Just Peace RI, which is primarily focused on legislative issues at the state level, and No Endless War or Excessive Militarism, which has been focused on the issue of Palestine and Israel. But over the years, I have been involved in trying to reduce militarism, militaries, and military spending and invest in other places. I have been supportive and appreciative of the Poor People's Campaign because the work and advocacy that I'm interested in and work on ties in with the mission of the Poor People's Campaign. We have to understand that when we're anti-war or we're working for peace, we're working to lift people of color - our brown and black brothers and sisters around the world - because we can see in the wars that happen and the oppression that happens that those are the communities that bear the brunt of it here in our country.

We talk about housing. We talk about climate. We talk about the lack of healthcare. We talk about how our schools are not what we would like them to be. Social services and support are not there for people. When we look at our state leaders, when we look at our federal leaders, when we look at our president, when we look at Congress, they are making conscious choices, day after day, week after week, year after year, to fund the military's budget. We have local leaders here in Rhode Island and across the country who tell us the way to create jobs is to build weapons of mass destruction. Here in Rhode Island, there is a special focus on building nuclear submarines. How many nuclear submarines do we need?

People can't afford to live. People are on the street. People are without healthcare. We can create jobs provide healthcare to people, keep our schools up, and keep our roads and bridges up. We haven't discussed bridges today, but that's near and dear to our hearts. We need to create jobs building homes. The only way the government can create jobs is in these weapons of war, but we can create jobs in ways that lift people up.