Poor People United holds "People's Picnic and Shoutout"

About 150 people joined the festivities at href="http://www.poorpeopleunited.org">Poor People United's "People's
Picnic and Shoutout" held in the park at Anthony Jordan Health Care Center
last Saturday. PPU gave out food and played music as well as discussed the
realities people face today and strategies for social change.

People enjoyed the afternoon playing spades and chess, talking, and playing
basketball and baseball on the courts and field nearby. Folks seemed to have
a great time hanging out with others in the neighborhood and lounging in the
beautiful weather.

"We thought it would be a good idea to have a picnic for the people,"
explained Charles Kellum, an organizer with PPU. "I grew up in this
neighborhood and we always found a way to talk about issues that were
important to us."

The issue that PPU focused that afternoon on was economic human rights.

"Housing is an economic human right. Food is an economic human right. Jobs
are an economic human right. Health Care is an economic human right.
Education is an economic human right," Claire Olsen announced over the sound
system set up by PPU. "We need to work together on getting these basic
necessities, which are our human rights."#file_3#

After Claire was done, Charles stepped up to the microphone and addressed the
picnickers. "Shelter, food, clothing. These are things you have a right to
as an individual - as a human being. Without these things you will surely die
and this is what's being denied to us right now. If you go to the back of
McDonald's you can see them throw out food. Bags and bags of food. And we
have people here who are starving."

Dave Cox spoke after Charles. "There is something we can do about this. We
can unite, organize and take action that is directly related to the change
that we seek. What we're finding is, people on a grass roots level all over
the country and in fact all over the world are figuring it out. It's about
communism - that is, communal living. It's about people who are in this boat
realizing that we have to hold this boat together."

Poor People United then asked people in the crowd to share their stories of
how their economic human rights weren't being met. Several people got up on
stage and talked to the crowd while others spoke into a tape recorder brought
by PPU. Leroy, a homeless man, spoke to the crowd saying, "I don't want to
see nobody going through what I'm going through. We're going to make a
difference on that. I know we will."

PPU will use the interviews they recorded to document the conditions that
people are living through. They plan to use them to explain to the county
legislature the problems that face poor people in our society.

"The most powerful weapon that we have as so called poor people is our voice."
Dave told the crowd, "Somebody told me something years ago - it was my mother
and I thank her for it. She said, 'Son, you would be a fool to suffer in
silence.' It's time that poor people realized that you not only have a right
to exist, you have a right to thrive."