One Class-One Cause Campaign Overview

The Assembly to End Poverty is a group of individuals and organizations located in the United States working to create a unified voice to claim the abundance we have produced, to rebuild our country and governments and to demand an end to poverty and exploitation forever within these systems.

Early Tuesday morning on June 22nd, 2010, 350 people gathered in Detroit at the United States Social Forum Poverty Summit to vision a US without domination, exploitation and poverty and to begin to plan the steps to create that world.  During that early morning, and in the following days of the Forum, the people of the Poverty Summit and the US Social Forum Poverty Working Group leaders created a resolution to bring us together in our demand that the abundance of this country be used to meet the basic human needs of all it’s people.

To fulfill our mission and achieve our vision, we will:

• Build a broad-based and inclusive assembly of organizations committed to and actively engaged in a movement to end poverty and the threat of poverty;
• Scrutinize collectively practical strategies and tactics in the face of the annihilation of the “safety net” and the social contract;
• Develop, analyze, and propose systemic solutions to the economic crisis;
• Sponsor political education and leadership development workshops and events;
• Support whenever possible the actions of Assembly members through promotion, publicity, participation, exchange of skills and materials, and coordinated campaigns.

The Resolution of the Poverty Summit calls for the creation of a new group to unify us and support the fronts of struggle and resistance in our communities.  the Assembly to End Poverty and the One Class-One Cause Campaign bring us together and amplify our work and our demands. The Poverty Working Group of the US Social Forum has rallied to this charge and created The Assembly to End Poverty.

One Class-One Cause Campaign:  We are asking for you to support this first Campaign led by the Assembly to End Poverty.  Over 20 organizations and 30 individuals (these numbers are growing each day) are actively working on this Campaign.  Partners include: Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (Detroit); National Welfare Rights Organization (national); Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (national); US/Canadian Alliance of Inhabitants (national); Sisters Of The Road (Portland, OR); 8th Day Center for Justice (Chicago); Women’s Economic Agenda Project (Oakland); CHANGER (Chattanooga); Women in Transition (Louisville); Organize Ohio!; New Orleans Welfare Rights Organization and Direct Action Welfare Group (West Virginia).

The goals of the Campaign are two-fold:

1)      Organize a National March on Washington, DC June 30, 2012. Join us in mounting this national March on Washington DC-- and the local and national organizing and educational campaign of which it is a part.

We will unite all sections of workers – the able-bodied and the disabled – the organized and the unorganized – the high paid, the low paid and the unpaid. We are one class – the working class.

We are marching on Washington, D.C. because it is both the seat of national government and a blatant example of everything wrong with this country that we are gathering to fight. We are marching toward the building of what history demands from us – a world where the needs of the many out-weigh the needs of the few. We have to craft a society that cares for mother earth, and allows all people to thrive and not merely survive.

2)      We will support People’s Movement Assemblies (PMA’s) to End Poverty taking place across the country in 2011 and 2012. A PMA is a gathering of people to discuss and analyze our conditions, to come up with demands, commitments, and visions for how things could be different. The PMA is a facilitated space to decide and coordinate, actions that will bring us closer to those visions.

Together these PMA's and the March on Washington are being declared the One Class- One Cause Campaign.  We call on every region, every state, every community to gather its people for a "People's Movement Assembly on Building the Movement to End Poverty in the US" leading up to and following the March on Washington.  These PMA's will continue to build a solid, shared understanding and language and will build strategy, relationships and the movement to end poverty in this country. These PMA’s will also inform the One Class-One Cause Campaign and the March on Washington.  For more information on People’s Movement Assemblies, go to: http://pma2010.org/

Please join us in the creation of this new vitally important, unified voice to claim the abundance we have produced, to rebuild our country and governments and to demand an end to poverty and exploitation forever within these systems.

To become a supporter/endorser of the Assembly to End Poverty, please download the form below:

_Assembly to End Poverty  c/o 8th Day Center for Justice
205 W. Monroe - 5th fl  Chicago, IL 60606

or e-mail endpoverty2012@gmail.com
www.end-poverty.org   also www.oneclassonecause.org