STOP mobilizes for convention protests to demand housing and healthcare – not warfare!
Mobilizing to Minnesotta- convention protests demand housing and healthcare – not warfare
Families from around the country gathered at this summer’s political conventions demanding an end to the war and respect for Human Rights in the U.S. STOP joined the Poor people’s economic human rights campaign (PPEHRC) and the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War for convention protests and activities including a march against the war in St. Paul on September 1st; a truth commission about human rights violations in the U.S. the evening of the 1st; and the “March for Our Lives” on September 2nd, where thousands marched to demand “money for housing and healthcare – not for war.” The “March for Our Lives” brought war veterans, families from public housing and Native American reservations, rural peoples losing farms to foreclosure, truckers losing their homes because of rising gas costs, youth , immigrants, and other poor people of all races to the doorsteps of the Republican Convention to denounce the role of the Republicans in the most recent policy attacks affecting housing, healthcare and other basic human rights.
“This was a march for poor people by poor people on a subject that we can no longer ignore-- housing and healthcare. We have to realize that we are part of the global economy now, and it is failing us. If we don’t want to fall with it any more than we already have we’re all going to have to stand up for our human rights. Poor people, communities of color-- we need to recognize that we are under attack and fight back,” says STOP co-founder Sharyn Payne.
STOP and the Coalition to Protect Public Housing sent twenty people to Minnesotta and had four representatives testify on the violation of the human rights to health care and housing at the truth commission.