Highlights from Spring-Summer 2024 Base-building across the PA!

Put People First! PA members have been out in our Regional Healthcare Rights Committees in different areas across the state almost every week since March! Members go out together and knock on doors to meet people at their homes or set up in public places like food pantries or at community events. Everywhere we look to connect with people about their healthcare experiences, and talk with one another about what it would take to change this system. At People’s Clinics we meet basic needs like helping people sign up for state benefits and provide basic medical services like blood pressure screenings. We ask people to share their healthcare stories to help us break our isolation and to join us to get organized.

Here are some highlights from Spring-Summer 2024 Base-building across the Pennsylvania!

June 11th Southeast PA (SEPA): People’s Clinic at Murphy’s Market. The SEPA Healthcare Rights Committee (HRC) comes out to Murphy’s Market, a local food pantry in Upper Darby, twice a month to hold a People’s Clinic. 

June 8th Southwest PA (SWPA): The Southwest PA Healthcare Rights Committee (SWPA HRC) held a People’s Clinic at the Swissvale Farmer’s Market at the STEAM academy on Saturday June 8th. Melanie, Benita, Rica, Barbara & Briann volunteered and offered blood pressure screening, Medicaid/SNAP signup, and listened to healthcare stories from those who visited us. We build our base to build our power!

June 8th South Central PA (SCPA): Put People First! PA South Central Healthcare Rights Committee joined the “Peace in the Streets Block Party” at Culliton Park in Lancaster, PA organized by the Kendall Movement, dedicated to Kendall Cook and all those who lost their lives due to gun violence, Paying it Forward, an organization that offers food boxes and SOWE, a Lancaster City neighborhood group.  Click here to read more!

May 26 Southwest PA (SWPA): Scouting today in Lawrence County with Steph, who is currently going through the New Member Enlistment process in SWPA.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is AD_4nXdPGt_dX3ORhtuNIjUriRey-eFoXTBL7pmhoy95R7htF35nBHnp-B4No9pMEYVlfT84tQ20cD4CQqzy38spe6CGlB5L2CvEP4PT_mYprrA3DUxWtVQC7i8MDBA7q4ljVg61HiGmh3DG7ensf5CQXgQiZgI8

May 25th Central / Appalachia PA (CAPA): Scouting today in Mifflin county – public housing developments and laundromats!

May 25th Southeast PA (SEPA): We had an amazing people’s clinic in Pottstown today! We met a lot of people we will follow up with in the coming week! We’re a month out from Mission of Mercy and that will be an exciting time to develop leaders here in SEPA!

May 19th Northeast PA (NEPA): NEPA Healthcare Rights Committee (HRC) held a People’s Clinic yesterday in Newberry Estates public housing in Williamsport. We did door knocking there a month ago with fliers for the clinic. Such a great community. 

May 11 Southwest PA (SWPA): The Southwest PA Healthcare Rights Committee hit up 3 laundromats in Washington, PA today! Had some powerful conversations, definitely met some gold and witnessed firsthand the consequences of someone being denied their medication as we had to call an ambulance for a young woman who had a seizure.

May 11 South Central PA (SCPA): Door knocking in South Central PA!

April 28 Southeast PA (SEPA):  First time door knocking in our new member, Robin’s, neighborhood in Pottstown!

April 27 Central / Appalachia PA (CAPA): CAPA’s first door knocking of the season in Oakhurst (a public housing development in Johnstown) today! We met up with a contact that we previously met door knocking in Oakhurst and who got involved for a bit, including coming to a legislative visit with Senator Langerholc, but we lost touch when his number changed. Today, we went to his house and reconnected, and he came out to door knock with us! 

April 20 Noutheast PA (NEPA): Yesterday was our first community event of the year: a Doorknocking at Newberry Estates in Williamsport. We heard devastating stories of the effects of poverty. 

????️ S who had to fight an uphill battle in order to get home health aid.

????️ T whose mother can barely scrap together the money for her copays every month.

????️ C who worries since she started working part time, she might lose her access to healthcare.

????️ J who lost her husband 3 years ago and suffers from high copays for her lifesaving meds.

????️ R who reapplied to Medicaid five times before the state allowed her to have healthcare.

????️ C who has healthcare for her kids, but struggles to access it for herself.

????️ K whose brother died far too young. We won’t stand by as poverty kills our people anymore!

Sharing our stories is how we break our isolation, how we let other folks know that they are not alone in laboring under this death-dealing system. We must shift the narratives around poverty, by shifting the narrator to the voices of those most oppressed. 

We won’t be silent anymore!!

We are determined to band together to change what’s politically possible in Pennsylvania. That’s why we’re holding a People’s Clinic at the same location next month, to get our community ORGANIZED, to get their needs met, and to become a political center of gravity.

South Central HRC joins “Peace in the Streets Block Party”

On June 8th the Put People First! PA South Central Healthcare Rights Committee joined the “Peace in the Streets Block Party” at Culliton Park in Lancaster, PA organized by the Kendall Movement, dedicated to Kendall Cook and all those who lost their lives due to gun violence, Paying it Forward, a charity organization that offers food boxes and SOWE, a Lancaster City neighborhood group. 

We joined the event to engage in conversations about the Medicaid Cut-offs Organizing Drive and offer help with state benefit sign ups & renewals and register people for our upcoming Project of Survival where we will be providing transportation to a free dental clinic in Reading PA June 21st & 22nd which is being organized by Mission of Mercy (MOM-n-PA).

We had a great time being with the community while developing our 4 Cs of leadership. The organizing conversations we had were amazing! We talked about how life would be different if we were guaranteed our human rights to things such as healthcare & housing. We discussed our theory of change and how the poor and dispossessed have the power to create the fundamental change we need to save us.

With a looming housing market crash and inflation at an all time high, the skyrocketing cost of healthcare is more than we can bear. We demand the reinstatement of the adult dental benefit back in medicaid, a stop to medicaid cuts in, expansion of benefit eligibility and the creation of the office of a Public Healthcare Advocate to fight for us NOT the healthcare profiteers!

Join us in the fight for our human rights and an end to poverty! Join us and become a Poverty Abolitionist!

Medicaid Appeal Victory! Jen’s testimony

Did you get a notice saying you no longer qualify for your Medicaid benefits? Did you know that you have a legal right to appeal this decision? Put People First! PA will help you fight back. 

Here’s a testimony from Jen, a Put People First! PA member in Southeast PA, who recently won her Medicaid appeal:

In March 2024 after about eight years of being on Medicaid, I received a cut off notice saying that I made too much money and was going to be cut. I’m a substitute teacher.When I got the notice I was sitting in a classroom full of teenagers and I started crying. I had no idea what I was gonna do. Medicaid has been the best healthcare I’ve ever had. With Medicaid, I could focus on my health, not whether or not something was covered, or whether I was gonna get a bill for some thing that I thought was covered, or finding out that I had a hole in my coverage because of some miscommunication or bureaucratic issue. With medicaid I could focus on my mental health and not fighting constantly for the medications to keep me well for other care, physical and mental healthcare that keeps me well. I can focus on my family. My job, my work, all of the things in my life.

May be an image of 2 people and text

So when I received my cut off notice, I was terrified. I was terrified of having to go back to Pennie for healthcare. I have been on marketplace insurance plans multiple times, for several years, with 2 different companies and the whole time it was a nightmare. I had high co-pays and premiums. There were times I thought I was covered and wasn’t and got huge bills for treatment that I found out afterward wasn’t covered for various reasons.

But fortunately, I’m a member of Put People First! PA. I had been involved for the last year with our Medicaid cut offs organizing drive, helping other people to appeal and encouraging other people to appeal cut offs. So when I got my notice, I knew that I have the right to appeal and that I have an organization behind me that would help me appeal and stick with me through it all, whether I win my appeal or not. I also knew that I could appeal immediately and keep my Medicaid while I waited for the hearing. Importantly, I knew that I wasn’t alone, that I had the right to healthcare.

PPF-PA was with me every step of the way. Within days of my receiving the notice, several of us met. PPF-PA members helped me by listening to how I was feeling. They helped me figure out how to immediately file the appeal and helped me to submit the appeal so that I kept my Medicaid. They helped me communicate with the welfare office to make sure it was still on and they’ve been continuously available to me to provide support: to listen to me, to answer questions, to deal with the welfare office and to make sure that my appeal went through and that my Medicaid stayed on while I waited for the hearing.

When I got my date for my hearing a couple months later in May, PPF-PA members immediately got into motion helping me figure out my case. We talked about how the welfare office determined that I made too much, but because I’m a substitute teacher I’m not salaried. I only make money when I work and so for the three months of the year that I don’t work and during the year when school holidays and vacations and breaks or days off, I don’t get paid.

In the end, the caseworker didn’t appear, so I won my case and get to keep my Medicaid on!!

This is all unnecessary. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can have it so much better if we fight and organize and build this movement so that everyone can have all of our human needs as human rights.

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Te Medicaid matters to my and my family and and their families students communities. and stop the cuts! Death! Medicaid cuts Medicaid 4 All # NoMedicaid cuts PA # Medicaid Mondays BUTPEOPLE PUT UFDEOPLEFIRSTE EOPLEFIRST! PEOPLE FIRSTIRA FIRST!PA A'

Supreme Court case Grants Pass v Johnson: Will Homelessness Be Criminalized!?

No photo description available.

By Tammy Rosing, South Central Healthcare Rights Committee, PA Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, National Union of the Homeless

On Friday, January 12, 2024, the United States Supreme Court announced it would take up the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which is the most significant case about homelessness in over 40 years.

Grants Pass, Oregon has outlawed “camping” on public property. Camping to them is using these items in public spaces: blankets, cardboard, pillows, or even the activity of lying down! Authorities in Grants Pass are not using this law to just ticket anyone, they are specifically targeting those in violation of this law who are also perceived to be unhoused.

This directly violates a 2018 9th Circuit Court ruling: which states you cannot criminalize sleeping on public property if there isn’t adequate shelter.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on the case April 22, 2024, and it’s final outcome will be “to determine whether, if under our constitution, a local government can make it a crime to involuntarily live outside and unsheltered, when adequate shelter is not available” with a ruling expected to come by the end of June 2024. 

I first heard about this case coming up to the Supreme Court a couple of weeks after they had agreed to take it up. I learned it was taking place because I came across a Tik Tok video of someone sharing about it with their comment and concern seeming to be that we, as a nation, are returning to the ways of institutionalizing the unhoused poor working class and with hearing that I needed to learn more. 

There began my journey of learning all I could about the case of Grants Pass v Johnson, the role and power of our nation’s Supreme Court and what a ruling on this case means for the poor working class of the United States. What I have learned to date has astounded me and ultimately has left me with the realization that us poor folk are in the midst of a fight for our lives, more specifically our human right to merely exist!

Grants Pass doesn’t care whether there are available shelter beds (there isn’t) and this is not just happening in Grants Pass, the criminalization of the poor and unhoused is happening across the nation and it’s rising. 2023 had record levels of police violence hand-in-hand with rising poverty and rising criminalization and incarceration of the poor.

In 2023, 135 million people (more than 40% of our nation’s population), were poor or low-income and just one paycheck or healthcare emergency away from homelessness. Over 50% of all renters in the nation are struggling to pay rent. Homelessness has increased 12% from 2022 to 2023 a record number since 2007 as rents soar and pandemic aid lapses. Even owning your own home doesn’t protect you from homelessness, currently 30.8% of all homeowners in the United States are struggling to maintain their homes, they are being referred to as “House Poor.” On top of all that 21 million+ people have been cut from Medicaid since April 1, 2023 and 60% of our nation’s population are living paycheck to paycheck.  

The media and many people in power really talk about us unhoused folks like we are a different species or something, a disease on this planet, like we aren’t even human and this dehumanizing rhetoric insinuates that we are the ones to blame for the economic woes of everyone and affects our health as well as puts our lives at risk.  The Put People First! PA Media & Communications Team recently studied Media coverage of Grants Pass. We saw in the videos how the poor are always treated as a criminal case or as a pity case – NEVER as powerful leaders who are capable of upending this system.

Government and Judicial officials, profiteers and special interests criminalize us for the poverty they create through their policies and lobbying then use the media to spew out false narratives that lead to mistreatment by those around us or vigilantes who beat or even kill us as if we are the cause of the problems they face. 

I’m a leader in the Pennsylvania & National Union of the Homeless and earlier this year, as well as several other times throughout my life, I experienced homelessness. Our landlord announced they needed to rent the unit to family and won’t be renewing our lease. Luckily we had a lot of support this time around, thanks to the people we organize with, so it wasn’t as bad as the previous times. However it was still very emotionally draining, intense and I was under constant stress. It took us four months to find a place and that was with a lot of people helping us, like the people in Put People First! PA and various community programs. So needless to say this ruling that we will hear soon from the Supreme Court, which will determine whether or not being homeless is a crime, is very personal to me and concerns me greatly.

The current path of the United States is a grim future of prison or death for the poorest of the poor and the time for us to organize is NOW! We MUST unite and push back!

There are many ways to get involved and fight for systemic fundamental change to this death dealing system! You can join the National Union of the Homeless or Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival in your state or you can join us at Put People First! PA.

We gotta rise up and lead and demand justice! We need to demand our right to exist and demand our right to housing, healthcare and other basic human needs. Join us and become a poverty abolitionist!

Resources to learn more:

Share these Kairos Center graphics
1 2 3 4 … 69