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FROM THE “WALK FOR ADEQUATEWELFARE” TO THE “MARCH FOR OURLIVES”: WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING INTHE 1960S AND 1990SMelissa R. Gilbert aa Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 Tel: 215-204-5482 Fax:215-204-7833 mgilbert@nimbus.ocis.temple.eduPublished online: 16 May 2013.

To cite this article: Melissa R. Gilbert (2001) FROM THE “WALK FOR ADEQUATE WELFARE” TO THE“MARCH FOR OUR LIVES”: WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S, Urban Geography,22:5, 440-456, DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.22.5.440

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FROM THE "WALK FOR ADEQUATE WELFARE" TO THE "MARCH FOR OUR LIVES": WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE

1960S AND 1990S1

Melissa R. Gilbert Department of Geography and Urban Studies

Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122

Tel: 215-204-5482 Fax: 215-204-7833

mgilbert@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu

Abstract: Implementing progressive policies to eliminate poverty requires political action by poor people that is grounded in their lived experiences and analyses. Consequently, it is crucial that we analyze the goals and strategies of poor people's organizations. In this paper, I compare welfare rights organizing in the 1960s to the antipoverty movement that began growing in the 1990s. Both periods have seen significant changes in welfare policy, but the different political and economic contexts have significantly shaped the way that poor people articulate the prob­lems that they are facing and the manner in which they develop a collective response. Addition­ally, the contemporary movement is shaped by analyses of the strategies employed in the 1960s. A comparison of the National Welfare Rights Organization (1960s) and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (1990s) reveals important differences including: (1) a shift to multiracial organiz­ing; (2) an insistence today that poor people assume leadership and control of the movement; (3) a shift from a focus on welfare rights and a guaranteed income to human rights and the right to living wage jobs; (4) attempts today to build a movement of both the unemployed poor and the working poor as well as to build alliances with the labor movement; and (5) a shift away from attempts to influence the Democratic party to attempts to influence the United Nations as part of a broader strategy of resistance based on the politics of scale. [Key words: urban social move­ments, welfare reform, human rights.]

It's not somebody who has to read what it's like [to be poor] in a book that is going to change it; it's someone who has lived it that is going to change it (working poor woman, personal interview, May 1991, Worcester, MA).

We need to make the poor visible and vocal....We have no intention of trying to manage or bandage poverty, we are building a movement to end it. We will not profit from other people's misery. (Cheri Honkala, Executive Director, Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Co-President, National Welfare Rights Union, public meet­ing, April 11, 1997, Philadelphia, PA)

Historically, welfare as a policy has often been used to serve symbolic purposes at the expense of providing substantive benefits, in good part because a wide variety of groups have sought to address their symbolic concerns related to welfare and welfare recipients have remained politically powerless and unable to voice their concerns regarding the provision of substantive benefits....Until women in need of

440 Urban Geography, 2001, 22, 5, pp. 440-456. Copyright © 2001 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

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WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S 441

public assistance get to speak for themselves, welfare will in all likelihood continue to be a realm where symbolic purposes will override the provision of substantive benefits. (Schram, 1995, p. 141)

All too often academics, policy-makers, and politicians who rarely have experienced poverty themselves control the debates about poverty and welfare policy. As a result, the experiences, analyses, and voices of poor women and men are marginalized or ignored despite the fact that they are the people most affected by such policies. In addition to ensuring that poverty policy is not grounded in the lived experience or analyses of poor people, silencing the poor serves to mask the political nature of poverty policy. Policy can be purported to be a purely technical and rational exercise aimed at "curing" the poor rather than an exercise of power that further disadvantages the poor, including those groups marginalized in society that are disproportionately represented among the poor: racially subordinated minorities, women, and youth. The fact that numerous studies by social scientists demonstrating that the current punitive policies are based on inaccurate assumptions about the nature and causes of poverty had no discernible impact on the implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 only serves to highlight the political nature of welfare policy.

As the above quotes suggest, implementing progressive policies will require political action by poor people that is grounded in their experiences and analyses. Therefore, it becomes important to analyze the goals and strategies of poor people's organizations.2 In this paper, I compare welfare rights organizing in the 1960s to that occurring in the 1990s. Both periods have seen significant changes in welfare policy, but the different political and economic contexts have significantly shaped the organizing strategies of welfare rights groups. In addition, analyses of the strategies of the 1960s are informing the strat­egies today. Specifically, I will examine how the political and economic context of each period shapes the way that poor people articulate the problems that they are addressing, their goals, structure, membership, strategies, and tactics.

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, THE STATE, AND THE POLITICS OF WELFARE POLICY IN THE 1960S

An analysis of the development and nature of poor people's organizing in both the 1960s and 1990s must be undertaken within a broader framework of economic processes, state restructuring, social and demographic shifts, the changing nature of poverty, and the politics of welfare policy. While it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of these processes in this limited space, in this section I will attempt to provide the necessary context for an analysis of welfare rights organizing in the 1960s.

In the 1960s, the United States was experiencing economic growth and increasing pro­ductivity due to its industrial strength and world dominance. The post-World War II period, often referred to as Fordism, was characterized by a "social contract" between industry and unions that meant that union workers received increasing wages and benefits in exchange for increased productivity. This social contract was undergirded by state intervention and regulation in the economic sphere and an expanding welfare state, often referred to as Keynesian policies.

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442 MELISSA R. GILBERT

While many workers experienced increasing prosperity, many people were excluded from the economic prosperity of the period and the New Deal welfare state programs that were in existence with modifications until the political activism of African-Americans in the 1960s forced the expansion of the welfare state (Piven and Cloward, 1997). Due to the political power of Southern Democrats, the New Deal social programs largely excluded African Americans by exempting agricultural and domestic workers from the core pro­grams of the Social Security Act, National Labor Relations Act, and Fair Labor Standards Act.3 Instead, African Americans were relegated to the two means-tested programs: Aid to Families with Children and Old Age Assistance. These programs provided minimal support, and local welfare authorities determined the eligibility and benefit rules.

By 1960, 22% of the population, 20% of Whites, over 50% of Blacks, and nearly 50% of people living in female-headed households were poor (Abramovitz, 1996). While many were impoverished, the total number of beneficiaries remained small until the mid-1960s; 803,000 families were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in 1960 (Abramovitz, 1996). Despite the paucity of support, the relatively low numbers of families receiving AFDC, and the clear links between economic conditions and the fluctuating numbers of recipients, benefits were cut and eligibility restricted between the early 1940s and the 1960s (Abramovitz, 1996).4

By the early 1960s, Democratic presidents were forced to abandon the coalition of Southern Whites and the urban, working-class North that had produced the New Deal programs that discriminated against African Americans. The strength of the Civil Rights Movement and the culmination of 20 years of Black migration to urban centers in north­ern industrial states that were key to presidential elections forced Democratic presidents to support the goal of the movement to end racial inequality (Piven and Cloward, 1997; Abramovitz, 1996; Quadagno, 1994).

By the early 1960s, many in the Civil Rights Movement had shifted its emphasis to economic issues, as evidenced by the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. President Johnson began preparing his antipoverty program within months, and in the summer of 1964, as urban uprisings were occurring in many inner-city neighbor­hoods, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act that established programs dealing with housing, job training, health care, education, and community action. Quadagno (1994) made a persuasive argument that the War on Poverty was Johnson's attempt to reorient the nation's social policy to eradicate rather than perpetuate racial inequality. By putting money into urban "ghettos" and creating the Community Action Program, the War on Poverty provided resources and a vehicle for African Americans in those neighborhoods to mobilize for increased government services and created political oppor­tunities (Piven and Cloward, 1979; West, 1981; Quadagno 1994; Abramovitz, 1996). The antipoverty programs and staff greatly contributed to the rising number of welfare recipients:

After 1965, in short, the poor were informed of their "right" to welfare, encouraged to apply for it, and helped to attain it. A multifaceted campaign against welfare restrictiveness had formed with the federal government as its chief source of both resources and legitimacy. (Piven and Cloward, 1979, p. 272)

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WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S 443

THE NATIONAL WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION: ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S

It was within this broader context that the welfare rights movement developed in the 1960s.5 In the early 1960s, a number of groups demanding increased levels of and access to benefits began forming in inner cities across the country. In the mid-1960s, George Wiley and other mostly male veterans of the Civil Rights Movement decided to form a National Welfare Rights Organization. In June 1966, Ohio welfare rights groups staged a 155-mile "Walk for Adequate Welfare" from Cleveland to Columbus. Wiley used this opportunity to gain media attention and to get other welfare rights groups around the country to hold simultaneous demonstrations. Wiley called for a meeting of recipient leaders and organizers who included members of Students for a Democratic Society, church people, and, most predominantly, antipoverty program workers. As a result, in 1966, welfare rights groups around the country formed a National Coordinating Commit­tee of Welfare Groups that produced the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). When it was formed, the NWRO had 5000 dues-paying members concentrated in nine states. At its height in 1969, membership reached approximately 25,000, the majority of whom were African American women with children (Kornbluh, 1997). In addition, by 1971, there were 540 separate local Welfare Rights Organizations (WROs) across the country (Kornbluh, 1997).

During this period, the problem that poor people faced was articulated as the denial of poor women's right to adequate benefits. Since the early 1940s, in part to deny access to African American women, welfare benefits had been cut and eligibility rules were made increasingly restrictive. Consequently, the two main goals of the NWRO were to improve public assistance and to establish a federally guaranteed income. "The idea was to give the women the supports they needed to keep their families together and to offer education and training when they decided to re-enter the workforce" (Kramer, 1996, p. 358). These demands for benefits and increased income were articulated as rights deriving from citi­zenship, not participation in waged labor (Kornbluh, 1997).

Initially, there were two interrelated strategies developed to attain these goals. Many of the local groups that had formed were focused on demanding redress from welfare offices for individual and collective grievances; sit-ins, demonstrations, and direct confrontation with welfare offices were common. In order to build the organization, the NWRO contin­ued the strategy of benefit campaigns to inform recipients of special grants that many were unaware of.6 A second strategy, devised by academic/activists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, was to flood the welfare system with applicants. The belief was that the resulting fiscal crisis would cause big city Democratic coalitions to split over how to spend resources. The ensuing political crisis would force the Democratic Party to come up with a federal solution for redistribution of income to the poor. While this strategy to influence the Democratic Party was not pursued due to internal disagreements, the NWRO did pursue a strategy of lobbying the Democratic Party as well as using the courts against, for example, man-in-the-house rules and forced-work programs. Finally, begin­ning in 1968, welfare rights activists began a campaign to gain consumer credit that cul­minated in a national boycott of Sears.7

As the political climate shifted against the poor, the economy deteriorated, the state changed welfare laws and regulations to quell protests, and funding became harder to

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444 MELISSA R. GILBERT

come by, the NWRO switched from a mass mobilization strategy to "lobbying against Nixon's Family Assistance Plan (1969-1971), working with local welfare departments to bring about change, and applying for government grants"(Abramovitz, 1996, p. 130). Many felt that these external pressures had caused both the recipient and nonrecipient leadership to be co-opted by politicians and welfare agencies.

In addition, as West (1981) has documented extensively, contradictions within the NWRO and its relations with allies due to class, gender, and "race" dynamics contributed to the organization's demise:

It was a movement of women led by men, a movement of the welfare poor financed by middle-class liberals, a movement of blacks supported primarily by whites. Although NWRO's base constituency was composed overwhelmingly of unem­ployed black women—mothers with dependent children—few unions or black or women's organizations responded to its appeals for allies. (West, 1981, p. 4)

Many of the recipients were angered by the organizers' attempts to control members, strategies, and issues. The women recipient leaders developed an alternative organizing model based on the leadership of poor women that emphasized building long-term soli­darity of members in local groups through mutual assistance (the Tillmon Model). Fur­thermore, the recipient leaders were not interested in Wiley's strategy to increase the organization's power by organizing other poor people such as the working poor. Recipient leaders felt that their goals and increasing power would be threatened. In 1972, Wiley was forced to resign, and Johnnie Tillmon, a recipient organizer, was made executive director. Wiley began a new organization called the Movement for Economic Justice, which began to compete for funds. In the process of taking power, the women of the NWRO lost the support of White, middle-class liberals in the churches, foundations, universities, and welfare agencies. The contradictions caused by class, race, and gender dynamics and the changing political and economic context resulted in declining membership and lack of funds, leading the NWRO to disband in 1975.

ECONOMIC CRISIS, THE STATE, AND THE POLITICS OF WELFARE POLICY IN THE 1990S

As a result of the liberalization of welfare policy, brought about in part by welfare rights organizing, as well as the continued growth of the United States population, female-headed households, and poor families, the welfare rolls increased dramatically from the mid-1960s, particularly in urban centers in the North and West (Abramovitz, 1996).8 The growing costs, the numbers of non-White recipients, and the fact that wages became lower than welfare benefits in some high-benefit states, led to a conservative backlash at the end of the 1960s that continues today (Abramovitz, 1996).

The attacks on AFDC must be understood within the broader context of economic and welfare state restructuring occurring since the 1970s, often referred to as post-Fordism, in which the state is managing an economic crisis by shifting the burden onto the working class and poor to recreate conditions for capital accumulation. As Piven and Cloward (1997, p. 9) stated:

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WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S 445

Post-industrial economic changes, including internationalization, are facilitating much more aggressive capitalist political efforts to dismantle the industrial era social compact. The campaign first unfolded in the workplace, where employers mobilized to get rid of unions and to roll back wages and benefits, and workers rights using the threat of plant closings to intimidate workers. And now business is in full campaign mode in the public sphere, with an agenda of business tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts in social provision.

Post-Fordist economic and welfare state restructuring have resulted in dramatic increases in income inequality, falling wages for low-skilled workers, and increasing pov­erty (Kodras, 1997; Amott, 1993; Wolch and Dear, 1993; Harrison and Bluestone, 1990). While economic insecurity is affecting many people regardless of race, gender, and geo­graphic location, the gendered and racialized nature of economic restructuring (e.g., the incorporation of women and racialized minorities into the expanding low-wage service sector), demographic shifts (e.g., the increase in female-headed households and increas­ing Latino population), and the geography of economic and demographic changes (e.g., the decline of central city manufacturing, regional economic shifts, and the large numbers of Blacks and Latinos in central cities) have ensured that women, racialized minorities, and poor people living in cities have disproportionately borne the brunt of economic and welfare state restructuring.

Despite the clear linkages between economic restructuring and increases in poverty, over two decades of political attacks on AFDC—supported by public policy and aca­demic discourse about the "urban underclass" which locates the cause of poverty in the behavior and moral condition of poor minorities, culminated in the Personal Responsibil­ity and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that eliminated the federal guaran­tee of cash assistance to poor people and replaced it with a new system, operated by the states, that contains stringent work requirements in exchange for time-limited assistance.9

The attack on welfare, along with the stereotyping as well as scapegoating of poor, racial­ized minority women that is a central part of it,

eases the economic, moral, and racial panics provoked by economic insecurity, changing family structures, and racial progress. It diverts attention from the under­lying causes of the nation's problems and focuses instead on the values and behav­ior of the poor. Bashing welfare also protects politicians and employers from the angry protests by a middle class that is worried about its deteriorating economic situation (Abramovitz, 1996, p. 47).

THE NATIONAL WELFARE RIGHTS UNION AND THE KENSINGTON WELFARE RIGHTS UNION: ORGANIZING IN THE 1990S

Clearly, the poor people's movement building today is taking place within a very dif­ferent political and economic context than that of the 1960s. This context is shaping the way that poor people articulate the problems that they are facing, their organizational goals and strategies, structure and membership. Additionally, the contemporary move­ment is shaped by analyses of the strategies employed in the 1960s. Consequently, there are important differences between the organizing in the 1960s and the 1990s. I will high-

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light the following differences: (1) a shift to multiracial organizing; (2) an insistence that poor people must assume leadership and control of the movement; (3) a shift from a focus on welfare rights and a guaranteed income to human rights and the right to a living wage job; (4) a shift to organizing the working poor as well as the unemployed poor as well as to form alliances with the labor movement; and (5) a shift away from attempts to influ­ence the Democratic Party to attempts to influence the United Nations as part of a broader strategy of resistance based on the politics of scale.

The National Welfare Rights Union

While the NWRO was disbanded in 1975, many of the state organizations continued to organize around poverty issues, hunger, childcare, and the new issues of homelessness and workfare.10 In the late 1980s, welfare activists who were upset with the fact that most pro­fessionals were supporting the Family Support Act and mandatory work requirements decided that they needed to represent themselves. In 1987, 21 years after the founding of the NWRO, the National Welfare Rights Union was formed. Many of the women had been involved in the NWRO, mostly at the local level. Organizers discussed how the economic and political situation had changed since the NWRO—homelessness, the displacement of workers through technology, waivers requested by governors—and decided it was neces­sary to build unity among low-income workers, the unemployed, and the homeless:

Just as the social and political consequences of the cotton picking machine pro­duced the Welfare Rights Movement of the 1960's, the social and political conse­quences of the electronic microchip are producing the new welfare rights and anti-poverty movement of the 1990's. Objectively, the welfare recipients are no longer alone in their battle for the basic necessities of life....The potential for a new and longer-lasting morality based on immediate common economic self-interests now exist among the growing impoverished millions (Kramer et al., 1993, no page numbers).

They also decided that the Johnnie Tillmon model of organizing—leadership assumed by the poor, organizing through meeting the basic needs of people, and minimizing depen­dence on outside resources—was best suited to current political and economic conditions because it was least dependent on the resources of the federal government or liberal, mid­dle-class, allies (Kramer et al., 1993).

One hundred people from 18 states came to the first convention in September of 1988. Then in July of 1989, about 350 people attended a National Survival Summit in Philadel­phia organized by the NWRU, the National Union of Homeless, and the National Anti-Hunger Coalition. The participants agreed to organize state summits and a national "Up and Out of Poverty Now!" campaign led by poor people. Today, there are 14 chapters in 11 states at various stages of development.

The Kensington Welfare Rights Union

I will now focus on the activities of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) to illustrate more specifically the types of organizing taking place under the umbrella of the

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WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S 447

NWRU.11 KWRU is a particularly good example because the organization is leading the economic human rights campaign that has become a national campaign supported by the NWRU. Additionally, Cheri Honkala, the executive director of KWRU, has been co-pres­ident of the NWRU since 1995, and Willie Baptist, the Education Director of KWRU, is Director of the Annie Smart Leadership Development Institute, which is the education and training arm of the NWRU.

KWRU was started by a group of poor women in April of 1991. With the exception of Cheri Honkala, who had moved to Philadelphia from Minneapolis, they were all from Kensington, North Philadelphia—a multiracial neighborhood devastated by deindustrial-ization. They came together in order to fight cuts to General Assistance made by then-Governor Casey.

Today, KWRU is a multiracial organization built by poor and homeless women and men, some of whom receive public assistance, but many of whom do not due to the decreasing availability of assistance. The majority of people who participate in KWRU are African American women and Latinas, but Whites and men make up a significant minority.12 There are few Asian American members, which is a source of concern for KWRU. Its organizational structure is flexible, enabling it to deal with various and chang­ing campaigns and tasks. The executive board, commonly referred to as the War Council, makes long-term decisions and determines strategies. The War Council consists of approximately ten people (women and men, and African Americans, Whites, and Lati­nos) including the executive director (a White woman). In order to ensure that leadership and control stays with poor people, nonpoor people who work with KWRU are organized into a group called the Underground Railroad Project (including lawyers, social workers, academics, a photographer, and documentary filmmakers. In addition, Empty the Shel­ters, a student organization founded in the early 1990s by mostly non-poor university students dissatisfied with community service, is working almost exclusively with KWRU and provides considerable support. There is always a small group of former students who work full-time with KWRU on administrative tasks.

KWRU members articulate the problems that poor people face in terms of the post-Fordist economy, the reduction of the welfare state, and the stereotyping and invisibility of the poor. They argue that globalization and technological change have made many people and communities expendable. Simultaneously, the safety net is being dismantled. Yet poor people are not part of the decision making because they are made invisible through stereotyping and oppression. A statement by the KWRU War Council is illustra­tive of its analysis:

Kensington, North Philly is the poorest district in the state of PA. The well-known devastation in this community rivals Haiti and Beirut. It symbolizes extreme pov­erty in the midst of extreme wealth. This is uncalled for particularly in the U.S., the richest country in the world! This country alone has the resources and high technol­ogy to eliminate poverty and homelessness once and for all. Kensington, being mul­tiracial, shows that being poor and homeless knows no color, no sex, no age, no anything except a society and economy that have failed its people and not the other way around. The KWRU, being based in Kensington, has come to represent the plight and fight of the poorest of the poor, those who are or are being cast outside of the economy and outside of a money-based democracy. In fact, it is a multiracial

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organization built and run by the poor and homeless including the working poor. (Statement of the War Council distributed at training workshop in Philadelphia, September 1997; emphasis original).

Based on its articulation of the problems that poor people face, KWRU has three goals. First, the members want to speak to the issues that directly face their lives. They want to participate in debates like welfare reform and reframe the debate from the perspective of poor people's experiences. Second, they want to build a broad-based movement, led by poor people, to end poverty. Finally, they are committed to helping other poor people attain the basic necessities for survival.

These goals have led to three interrelated strategies. First, they believe it is necessary to build a multiracial movement in order to build a mass movement to end poverty and in order to fight the racist and sexist stereotypes of the poor that result in attacks on the poor. Consequently, KWRU members privilege a common experience of poverty—a class identity—as a basis for mobilization. But they conceptualize class, race, and gender as interrelated processes. This conceptualization allows for identification, and subsequent analyses of poverty, in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, immigration, and language depending on their audience and among themselves.13 For example, while KWRU clearly privileges class oppression over racism, it draws heavily on aspects of Black identity in terms of its articulation of the problems that poor people face and its organizing strate­gies. KWRU critiques the current welfare reform in terms of slavery, both in the sense that the people on workfare are being forced to work in exchange for having their basic needs met and in the sense that it is an attempt to destroy the wage structure and push people into slave-like living standards.14 In addition, KWRU articulates its organizing strategy in terms of the "Six Panther Ps," drawing upon its analysis of the success and failures of the Black Panthers.15

Second, they believe it is crucial that poor people assume the leadership and control of the movement while simultaneously building broad based alliances. In particular, they are trying to build alliances with the labor movement. In order to build a mass movement, they believe that they need to make connections between the employed and unemployed. They are also trying to form alliances with professionals who can provide resources such as social workers, lawyers, and academics. However, KWRU constantly talk about need­ing the power to end poverty, not pity to manage it.

Finally, they are redefining poverty in terms of economic human rights. They argue that poverty and welfare reform result in economic human rights violations, and they articulate a right to jobs at living wages. The idea is that they will be better able to build a mass movement by demanding living-wage jobs than by asking for a guaranteed income, given the political climate and the stereotyping of welfare recipients as lazy women who refuse to work. However, it is important to note that they see human rights as a framework for broadening and deepening the meaning of welfare rights. Additionally, the demand for jobs at living wages is seen to encompass the demand for a guaranteed income.

KWRU's tactics are multifaceted, reflecting its overall goals and strategies, including lobbying, filing individual and class-action suits, marches and demonstrations, civil dis­obedience, food and clothing distribution, and helping people to obtain housing and wel­fare benefits (referred to as projects of survival). KWRU began establishing Tent Cities in

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North Philadelphia in 1991 to meet immediate housing needs and to educate families turned away by the shelter system. They took over the abandoned St. Edward's Catholic Church in Philadelphia to house 40 homeless families during the winter of 1995 and pro­ceeded to take over vacant homes owned by HUD in a Homes for the Holidays campaign. It was during the St. Edward's Church takeover that the Underground Railroad Project was formed, because KWRU received a great deal of publicity and a large number of nonpoor supporters began helping.

In August of 1996 KWRU its Refuse to Lose Campaign to protest President Clinton's federal welfare cuts. Members were arrested on the White House lawn while protesting the signing of the PRWORA of 1996 that ended the federal entitlement to welfare. Cheri Honkala testified at Congressional hearings examining welfare reform issues in February of 1996. KWRU then led about 35 people on a 140-mile "March for Our Lives" from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to protest Governor Ridge's plans to cut medical assistance to the poor. As part of this march, they moved Ridgeville, a tent city established in Philadel­phia, to the state capitol, in Harrisburg, where homeless families slept inside the building for two weeks until a law was passed forbidding them to do so. Then they slept on the steps for four weeks until the legislature passed another law. Finally, it became a walking demonstration. As the laws were passed and the police harassed them, poor people from Harrisburg began to offer their support; KWRU called it a strategy of winning by losing. It was also during this time that they created a Poor People's Embassy to represent the legislative needs of the poor to Harrisburg.

One goal of the march to Harrisburg was to highlight the class and multiracial charac­ter of poverty by marching through predominantly White areas of Pennsylvania and attempting to organize poor Whites. Willie Baptist explains how KWRU's analysis of the interrelationships of class, race, and gender gets translated into tactics:

I was petrified to walk though Pennsylvania. I expected a lot of anti-black feeling. But I saw encampments of white homeless people....We had been focusing on Kensington to highlight the multiracial and class character of poverty. We wanted to put a white face on poverty. We made sure that Cheri and other whites were up front. And we were able to rally everybody that way. We still spoke to issues of race within the broader context. In fact, we looked at racism in a much more realistic way. The whites saw that racism was blocking our cause. These people are trying to help me and they are getting shit on. For example, in the tent city the cops did a raid and put [an African American man] in jail. The white welfare mothers fought the hardest. They fought like hell. Not out of guilt. It is hard to make poor whites feel guilty, but because this guy was part of us. (Personal interview, October 1998)

It was through the march to Harrisburg that they began to make connections with orga­nized labor. After the march, Henry Nicholas, president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, approached KWRU. On March 3, 1997, the date Pennsylva­nia implemented its new state welfare reform plan (TANF), KWRU staged an act of civil disobedience by taking over a jobs center in Philadelphia and announced that KWRU had become an affiliate of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, AFSCME, AFL-CIO.

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They affiliated with both the union and the Labor Party because of their analysis of current economic and political conditions. According to KWRU members, it was clear that the new work requirements were going to mean that welfare recipients were going to be used to replace union workers. They also believe that globalization and technological change means that what was happening in Kensington was going to happen in middle America. In their view, the only organizations that still have some members and resources, albeit depleted, are unions. According to KWRU, it would be a disaster if wel­fare recipients were seen in conflict with them. They saw this happening in New York where welfare recipients were taking union jobs. As one KWRU member said "Poor peo­ple being pit against poor people is a bad scenario." As a result, KWRU decided to shift from demanding a guaranteed income to demanding living-wage jobs. KWRU's focus on the living wage is also a result of its decision because it decided to affiliate with the Labor Party.16 They see the Labor Party as the best alternative to a Democratic Party responsible for welfare reform and controlled by the corporations.

It was during this period that the idea developed to take KWRU protests against wel­fare reform to the international community.17 KWRU decided to organize a ten-day, 125-mile March for Our Lives from the Liberty Bell to the United Nations. They also began the Economic Human Rights Documentation Project to document violations of the Uni­versal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) resulting from poverty and welfare reform. In particular, they are focusing on Articles 23, 25, and 26 of the UDHR, which state that everyone has the right to jobs at fair wages, an adequate standard of living, and educa­tion.18 The goal was to march to the United Nations with these violations and to present them formally at a later date. Cheri Honkala explained the march:

We are marching to the United Nations because we have already taken this issue to Harrisburg, we've taken it to DC, our government clearly intends to carry on this welfare reform which violates the human rights of all Americans, so we are taking it to a higher body. We will now take these human rights violations to the court of world opinion. We are marching to show that poor and homeless people in the United States are ready to fight for the right to have a job at a living wage so we can feed, clothe and house ourselves and our children in this, the richest country in the world....We will camp on the side of the road and seek hospitality from schools, unions, religious congregations and others along the route. We will bring with us a coffin filled with documentation of the deaths and misery caused by poverty and welfare reform. We are committed to exposing the poverty, homelessness, and third-world conditions in the United States and bringing these human rights viola­tions to the international community.... By bringing these life and death matters before the court of world opinion, we will continue to build a movement to end poverty, led by poor and homeless people. We March for Our Lives to protest the human rights violations of our government's current welfare reform policies. We March for Our Lives to demand that everyone have a job at a living wage. We March for Our Lives to bring not only the plight, but the fight of poor people in the United States to the attention of the world. (KWRU, n.d.)

About 100 people, including NWRU and Up and Out of Poverty Now members from Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and California, marched the entire route from Phil-

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adelphia to New York City. There were rallies at both ends; approximately 120 people attended in Philadelphia and 300 people attending the rally in front of the United Nations. About two-thirds of the marchers were poor, and the rest were supporters, including Henry Nicholas (president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Workers), who participated in the entire march. Many of the people participating were union mem­bers. In addition, a number of unions had given financial support for the march, and the Labor Party provided important contacts to people who helped with logistical arrange­ments along the route. People who spoke at the United Nations rally included Bob Brown, head of the Labor Party; union representatives; Patricia Ireland, President of the National Organization for Women; and NWRU members. At the march, KWRU announced that it had been granted meetings with the International Labor Organization and Human Rights Committee. In the months prior to the march, New York based NGOs helped KWRU members gain access to the UN.

At a meeting a week later, KWRU members assessed the march. They thought that a significant result of the march was the political connections being forged across the coun­try. They felt that there was a lot of momentum building to organize around the country. In addition, they felt that they had countered many of the stereotypes of poor people as passive and as having no skills or organization. They had gotten comments from labor union members and church groups about their discipline and organizing abilities. The labor leaders were astounded that they could do this without paying organizers! As Willie Baptist stated:

The stereotypes of lazies and crazies and so forth have been put forth to put aside some vital issues for debate and discussion. Why in the land of plenty do we have people without homes and food and the necessary medical care and so forth? That message was put out there because we were able to break through every stereo­type—we got up and out every morning, the places were clean, we marched with our heads up high, determined to get where we wanted to get to. We made people feel good about what they were involved in. ...These stereotypes, which serve as an obstacle for people understanding some very critical issues, just burst at the march. (Personal interview, July 8, 1997).

CONCLUSIONS

In the 1960s, economic prosperity, a powerful Civil Rights Movement, and the Demo­crat's War on Poverty provided the context in which the National Welfare Rights Organi­zation was formed and in which poor, predominantly African American women demanded increased public assistance and a guaranteed income. While they did not achieve their goal of a guaranteed income, they helped liberalize the welfare rules, expand eligibility, and transfer millions of dollars to poor people (West, 1981; Abramovitz, 1996). The welfare rights movement also politicized many poor women and provided valuable organizing experience to national and local leaders. Some of these women are at the forefront of the movement emerging today.

But the NWRO was severely damaged by its initial reliance on the leadership of non-poor people and on the support and resources of White churches and the Democratic Party. Organizers today have the benefit of analyzing the limitations and strengths of the

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452 MELISSA R. GILBERT

organizing in the 1960s. This can be clearly seen in their insistence that poor people pro­vide the leadership and control of the movement, in their multiracial organizing strategy, in their attempts to form alliances with other groups of poor people in order to build a mass movement, and in concerns about building an independent financial base.

In addition to analyzing previous strategies, organizers today have had to analyze the implications of the current political and economic context. Consequently, the ways in which poor people articulate the problems they are facing, their goals, organizational structure, membership, strategies, and tactics reflect this different context, as I have dem­onstrated through an analysis of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

The shift to a multiracial organizing strategy is indicative of both the changing demo­graphics of United States society, cities, and poverty and a different racial project of the welfare state. Whereas the War on Poverty was an attempt to eradicate racial inequality, the elimination of the federal guarantee of assistance to poor people has been justified by (falsely) painting AFDC as a program for racially subordinated minorities, thereby play­ing to and aggravating White racism. KWRU uses multiracial organizing to challenge the discourse about race and poverty embodied in the racially coded discourse of the poverty debates (i.e., the "urban underclass," "welfare queens," urban gangs). KWRU believes that emphasizing the economic causes of poverty and a shared class identity, where the fundamentally racist and sexist character of class oppression is central to a class analysis, is a successful strategy for building a broad-based movement to end poverty in a period of economic restructuring that is having a devastating impact on the White working class as well as working-class Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans. An attempt to take advantage of possible fissures in the White unity undergirding racism due to economic restructuring is the articulation of living-wage jobs as a human right.19

By demanding the right to living-wage jobs within a human rights framework, KWRU is both challenging the discourse about poverty and providing an avenue for building a multiracial movement of women and men encompassing the unemployed poor and the working poor. The expansion of its focus from welfare rights and a guaranteed income to human rights and a living wage reflects the intersection of political, social, and economic processes. As middle-class women entered the workforce in large numbers, it became more tenable to demand living-wage jobs rather than a guaranteed income for poor women. By demanding living-wage jobs, KWRU is attempting to fight the stereotypes of poor people, particularly poor women, embraced in the public discourse about poverty. It also provides the basis for women and men to organize together.

The demand for living-wage jobs has also provided KWRU the grounds on which to organize the working poor as well as the unemployed poor and to build alliances with the labor movement at a time when workfare and time-limited assistance has put welfare recipients directly and indirectly in competition with union members and low-wage workers. While the decimation of unions during the post-Fordist period has almost surely contributed to the increased willingness of at least some unions to join forces with the unemployed poor, the democracy movement and the increasing organization of people of color and women in service-sector jobs are also significant. Finally, the emphasis on the right to living-wage jobs both enables and is the result of the alliance with the newly formed Labor Party.

The attempt to influence the United Nations rather than the Democratic Party reflects the shifting policies of the Democratic Party as well as the increasing prominence of the

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United Nations, and more specifically the concept of human rights, in the political mobi­lization of oppressed people around the world. While it is important to recognize that the United Nations strategy is an attempt to influence the nation-state, an international strat­egy is perhaps unsurprising when the globalization specter is used to dismantle the wel­fare state and explain economic insecurity.

Organizers in the 1990s have made organizing at multiple and interconnected scales central to their strategy for building a poor people's movement. The Economic Human Rights Documentation Project is a vehicle for politicizing poor people by placing their experiences in the framework of economic human rights. People's stories of economic human rights violations are collected through campaigns and projects of survival at the local scale in order to give voice to and organize the poor at multiple scales from the local to the international. The use of a human rights framework and the United Nations as a means of gaining legitimacy at multiple scales is further indication of what Neil Smith has referred to as "jumping scales" as a part of a politics of resistance that redefines the scale of everyday life for poor people (Smith, 1993).

While it is impossible to judge the long-term success of KWRU, it is clear that its innovative strategies have the potential to legitimize the demands of the poor people's movement and open up an ideological space for a different discourse about poverty. There is also short-term evidence to suggest that the framework of economic human rights may succeed in building a multiracial movement of unemployed poor and working poor women and men. The Economic Human Rights Documentation Project has become the basis for a national Economic Human Rights Campaign. In June 1998, the New Freedom Bus Tour, organized by KWRU, traveled to 34 places around the country collecting evi­dence of economic human rights violations. On July 1, 1998, the project held the third annual March for Our Lives to the United Nations, where there was a rally and tribunal outside the UN. In October of 1998, approximately 350 people from around the country, including many who participated in the Freedom Bus Tour, met in Philadelphia for a Poor People's Summit that was co-sponsored by KWRU. The purpose of the summit was to provide a forum for poor people to share their visions and strategies for building a national movement and organizing in their local communities to demand economic human rights. At the summit, the next stage of the campaign was announced, which was to have the fourth annual March for Our Lives link the struggles for economic human rights in North America and Latin America .

There are many radical working-class grassroots organizations forming across the country today.20 There appears to be a renewed sense of urgency and some optimism as poor people respond to the vicious attacks on their ability and even right to survive.

As Cheri Honkala said in response to a question someone asked at a public meeting in Philadelphia (April 11, 1997), a response that echoes the sentiments of other organizers: "It is not the 1960s. It's not really academic anymore. We have to build a movement or our families will die. Staying alive requires a movement. I'm totally optimistic."

NOTES

1I thank Meghan Cope for suggesting that we organize a session on welfare reform at the AAG meetings in Boston, for being a joy to work with, and for helpful comments on this paper. I thank Laura Pulido for reading an earlier draft of this paper and for continually challenging my thinking

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on social movements and identity politics. I thank Jürgen von Mahs for comments on this paper and many conversations on this topic. Finally, I thank the members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Underground Railroad who have taken time out of their crazy schedules and inspiring work to talk to me, and Joy Butts and Willie Baptist for their insightful comments on this paper. 2It also becomes necessary, although beyond the purview of this paper, to analyze our role as aca­demics in affecting progressive policy formation. 3For analyses of the gendered and racialized nature of the social Security Act of 19835, including Aid to Families with Children (which became Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1962), see Piven and Cloward (1997), Abramavitz (1996), Quadagno (1994), and Gordon (1994). 4The changing racial composition of ADC recipients helped fuel the attack: the percentage of ADC recipients who were Black increased from 21% in 1942 to 48% in 1961 (Abramovitz, 1996). 5The following account of the National Welfare Rights Organization relies upon West (1981), Piven and Cloward (1979); Abramovitz (1996), and Kramer (1996) unless otherwise noted. 6Some welfare departments provided special grants for clothing and furniture, but few recipients knew about them or received them. The WROs in New York and Massachusetts were extremely successful at organizing through special grant or benefits campaigns. Millions of dollars were dis­tributed in those states. As these campaigns spread across the country, welfare departments began instituting flat grants to save money and stop the demonstrations. For discussion of the devastating impact on organizing in New York, see Pope (1990) and Piven and Cloward (1979). 7For a fascinating account of the consumption-based politics of the NWRO, see Kornbluh (1997). 8Abramovitz (1996) reported that the number of families receiving AFDC increased from approxi­mately 1 million in 1965 to 1.9 million in 1970 and 3 million in 1972. 9Key legislation during this period included the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which lowered benefits, tightened eligibility rules, and increased local and state discretion, and the 1988 Family Support Act, which mandated work in exchange for benefits (Abramovitz, 1996; Peck, 1998). In addition, the Bush and, to a much greater extent, the Clinton administrations granted waivers to states that allowed them to experiment with reforms to their welfare systems. (For a dis­cussion of the waivers and the 1996 legislation, see Peck, 1998.). 10The discussion of the National Welfare Rights Union relies on Kramer (1996) and Abramovitz (1996). Marian Kramer is currently co-president of NWRU. She was a founder of NWRU and was involved with NWRO at the local level. For a discussion of the broader welfare rights network developing today, see Abramovitz (1996, especially part 4). 11This account is based on participant observation, formal and informal interviews, and content analysis of KWRU literature. I have been a member of the Underground Railroad Project, a group of nonpoor people who support KWRU, since April 1997. 12It is difficult to estimate the number of people involved in KWRU at any one point in time, over time, or in terms of varying degrees of involvement. KWRU usually has a number of campaigns occurring simultaneously as well as regular activities such as food and clothing distribution and assistance with housing, utilities, childcare, and welfare regulations and benefits. Assistance is given under the condition that the person becomes involved in KWRU and assists others. 13Pulido (1997), in her analysis the environmental justice movement in the Southwest, suggests that a unitary identity (in this case, the experience of racism as people of color) is essential for mobilizing a counter-hegemonic movement. But this identity is not totalizing because the activists invoked a situational identity allowing for individual racial identification among themselves. 14The National Welfare Rights Union also draws upon the image of slavery and the abolitionist movement. For example, one initiative was to set up "Survival Sanctuaries" around the nation where "Runaways from Poverty" can seek refuge, advocacy, and food. (Dujon and Withorn, 1996) 15While highlighting the differences between the 1960s and 1990s welfare rights organizing, it is important to note that contemporary activists do see continuities in their efforts not only with NWRO, but with other oppositional movements. For example, the KWRU leadership is aware of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s attempts to organize a multiracial movement to demand economic rights

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WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN THE 1960S AND 1990S 455

from the government before he was murdered and Malcolm X's plans to bright the plight of Afri­can Americans to the United Nations as violations of human rights before he was murdered. 16The Labor Party was founded in 1996 by local unions, Central Labor Councils, International Unions, and community activists. The Labor Party is organizing around The 28th Amendment Campaign that is calling for a constitutional right to a job at a living wage. 17The National Welfare Rights Union has utilized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since at least 1993 (Stevens, 1996). KWRU, however, was the first welfare rights organization to march to the United Nations. 18Article 23 states, "(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplement, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." Article 24 states, "(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection." Article 26 states "(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for mainte­nance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." 19I would like to thank Willie Baptist for bringing this to my attention. 20For a discussion of a number of these organizations, see Kelley 1997. Geographers have also ana­lyzed a number of these organizations (Pulido, 1996, 1997, 1998;Gilmore, 1999; Savage, 1998).

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