The event was chaired by Mary Kay Harris, lead organizer of DARE (Direct Action for Rights & Equality), a Providence-based community organization whose membership and mission is for low-income communities of color.The key-note speaker was Larry Holmes, national organizer for the Bail-Out The People Movement.
In attendance were representatives of the Rhode Island Unemployed Council, the George Wiley Center, the RI Public Housing Tenants Association, the RI HUD Tenant Project, the Behind-The-Walls prison campaign of DARE, The Green Party of Rhode Island, the Providence Community Library, RI Jobs with Justice, Immigrants United, the Womens Fight-back Network, FIST Youth, the Laborers Union, the United Steelworkers of America, UniteHERE, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, RI State Senator Harold Metts, and RI State Representative Joe Almeida.
Harris opened the assembly with a call for a moment of silence for the people of Haiti and Henry Shelton, the founder of the Pawtucket Rhode Island-based anti-poverty organization who was recently hospitalized with a stroke.
Holmes energized and inspired everyone with a call to study and carry-on Dr. Kingss Campaign for Jobs or Income and an Economic Bill of Rights. He saluted the multi-national rainbow of poor and working people who came together from Rhode Island and New England in the historic All-Peoples Assembly. He urged everyone to study the lessons and the real legacy of King, which ultimately was the understanding that racism, unemployment, poverty, and war were inter-twined, inter-related, and inseperable.
Holmes saluted King for not backing-down when the-powers-that-be said there were no funds for jobs, housing, healthcare, and education because of the escalating cost of The Vietnam War, relating it to today when the same powers-that-be give The Banks $27 Trillion and The U.S. Military $1Trillion for wars and occupations and tell us there are no funds for jobs, housing, healthcare, and education.
He called upon everyone to fight to make a job at a living wage a right for all. He called for a massive public jobs program such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s which put 9 million unemployed people to work. He informed everyone that this April marks the 75th Anniversary of the WPA and the Bail-Out The People Movement is calling for a National Right-To-A-Job Day on Saturday April 10 involving a mass mobilization to Washington DC and in other cities naionwide.
Holmes said that fighting-back is important not only because it is the only way human progress is made but also because it helps us deal with the mental illness and social self-destruction that unemployment and poverty inflicts on us. Right now millions of unemployed workers are blaming themselves and asking Whats wrong with me?......Why did i get laid-off but they kept Bob and Sue?.....
Why am i a failure as a provider for my mate and my family? But once you start to fight, and meet other workers facing the same problems, your attitude changes, your chest puffs-out & your back stiffens.
Regarding Haiti, he said, Haiti was a disaster by design. He cited Haiti as an example of a heroic people who achieved the greatest victorious slave revolution in human history in 1804 when they militarily defeated the French colonial forces and declared the worlds first Black Republic. In return they were isolated, surrounded, blockaded, invaded, and plundered for the last 200 years by the U.S., France and the other capitalist countries.
Then the microphone was passed around the room and everone had three minutes to speak. The people spoke about Rhode Islands high unemployment rate officially (U-3) just under 13% but when counting those who have exhausted their benefits, those that can only get part-time work, and those that have given-up looking (U-6), the real rate is no less than 20% overall----25% in the building trades,
30% for Black workers, and 50% for Black Youth. Black and Latin workers demanded to be allowed into the unions and be given access to the good jobs that too often go only to whites.
Foreclosures in Rhode Island were reported to be taking 5.3% of all homes and that only 7% of applicants for the HARP loan-restructuring program have been made permanent. Rhode Islands prison population was reported to be bulging with a huge over-representation of Black and Latin inmates and a huge over-representation in Black and Latin recitiviism because when they get out there are no jobs and no housing. A campaign was announced to demand that the Census count the inmates from their neighborhoods not from the prison which is located in Cranston, an overwhelmingly white and middle class city.
Women reminded everyone that they hold-up half the sky and the fact that they are assigned a low social position in this society makes them good fighters because their backs are against the wall as they have nothing left to loose as they try to make ends meet for their families. Tens of millions of dollars in cuts to education, social services, healthcare, and daycare in the governors budget were slammed as attacks on women, children, youth, and families.
The Action Plan of the All-Peoples Assembly includes:
(a) A Call to all community groups, human needs advocates, social service providers, unions, students & youth, seniors, and the clergy to mobilize in a massive way for a Peoples State of The State demonstration on the day of RI Governor Carcieris State of The State Address 4PM WEDNESDAY JANUARY 27 at the RI STATEHOUSE
(b.)To Hold A Follow-up Assembly on Monday 1st of February 6pm at the DARE office 340 Lockwood Steet Providence
(c.) To Mobilize Buses to Washington DC for the National A-Job-Is-A-Right Day Saturday April 10 (The 75th Anniversary of The WPA)
(d.) To Begin Planning for A Massive Local March on Saturday May 1 in Rhode Island for Jobs, Human Needs, & Justice