The Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) is committed to attaining economic human rights for all people. In a land of abundance, there is no reason anyone's basic human needs should not be met. WEAP is diligently working to organize the poor, low-income workers, and unemployed into a movement to achieve a vision of a world without poverty and despair, a world that Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of in his Poor People's Campaign of 1968.
ARTICLES
Sometimes, when you're up to your chin in alligators, it's hard to focus on the fact that there's a big, broad, alligator-free world waiting somewhere out there, beyond the edge of the swamp. In this case, it's hard for most Americans to even imagine that nobody in the rest of the developed world lives this way. We've been living inside the restrictions and making the trade-offs required to hang onto our all-important health care coverage for so long that we don't even realize that we're cutting those deals, or what we're giving up, or how thoroughly those choices have come to dominate and limit our lives.
WEAP's recent June 2009 Teach-In & Dialogue on ‘Health Care is an Economic Human Right’ covered the newly proposed California budget cuts, current National health care reform plans, Sacramento’s ‘Right to Safe Ground Campaign,’ and other actions, tools, and methodologies needed to build a broad social movement to secure health justice and poverty elimination. Teach-In presenters included WEAP, California Partnership, the California Nurses Association, CHAM Deliverance Ministry, the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, SEIU 1021, Saint Mary's Center, and Hip Hop Congress, in addition to other members of the community.
Hello, I’m Denice Milligan with the Women’s Economic Agenda Project. I know I don’t look it, but I’m 40 years old. I’ve been poor all my life. I was born with Cerebral Palsy. My poverty and my handicaps don’t stop me from enjoying my life. I have wonderful friends and a wonderful church. But I don’t enjoy life when I get sick. Because I’m poor, I have an awful time getting the medical care I need. In 2007 I was hospitalized 13 times in 10 months with serious medical problems. I have MediCal. My MediCal card would get me admitted to the hospital. But the doctors there kept trying to push me out before I was well. I would still be deathly ill if my family hadn’t pushed and pushed and pushed on the doctors and the nurses to get me good care, not just minimum care.
The people of America, the ones who are under-educated or uninformed as to the realities of the working poor in this country, do not realize that the blame should not fall on those who are poor. I know many readers and television watchers have heard this statement a million times, but it’s the truth. The working poor are a product of the system and a product of the individuals that created and hold power in this ‘system.’ We live under a corporate capitalist system where everyone is fighting for the ‘American Dream.’ Many people are born into a life where most of the wealth is controlled by the rich elites. The little remaining wealth leftover has to be competed for by the rest of the population.
"We, the poor, jobless, downsized, uninsured victims of welfare reform and others abused by the institutions of domination are no longer silent. We are moving forward with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many freedom fighters to improve the lives of Americans."
-Portia Anderson, WEAP
Upcoming Events
| 07/05/09 | Rally for Single Payer - San Jose, CA |
| 07/16/09 | National Conference to Abolish Poverty - Building the Unsettling Force - Louisville, KY |
| 07/29/09 | 8th National Conference - Hip Hop Congress - Seattle, WA |
| 07/30/09 | Single Payer Rally - Washington DC |
| 08/05/09 | Teach-In & Dialogue - Health Care: A Human Right - Oakland, CA |
| 10/17/09 | Leadership & Social Justice Conference - St. Mary's College - Moraga, CA |
| 12/06/09 | Global Gathering - Conceptualizing Global Democracy - Cairo, Egypt |