The World Courts of Women understands that any serious discussion of poverty, jobs, and education must be grounded in the 21^st Century shift from a labor-based economy to a technology-based economy. The rapidly increasing corporate investment in labor-replacing computerized and high-tech production greatly reduces the number of good jobs available for the working class, and is a key cause of the rise in poverty in the U.S. Also, the corporate global economy’s thirst for the cheapest human labor possible means that U.S. workers are pitted against workers all around the world. Many are forced by the search for work to become migrants in the global economy, and a significant number are women. The global push for profit hurts workers all around the world. More and more of us in the working class depend on contingent work that does not include the job security (healthcare, benefits, etc.) that our old educational and economic system was structured upon. Many of us are pushed out of the economy completely, leading to unemployment rates of 40% or more among some populations in the U.S. and even more globally. Meanwhile the world’s super-rich claim an ever growing percentage of the world’s wealth. The 20^th Century social contract of a decent wage for a decent day’s work has been shattered.

Society desperately needs a new vision of a social contract that will meet the needs of the 99%. We need a shift in education that supports collective understanding of the challenges to individual self-sustainability in this hostile, corporate-controlled world. We need the social and cultural literacy necessary for survival for those of us who now must rely on each other for the security that the economy has taken away from us.

Women are at least half of our collective society, and the violence and oppression they experience in today’s economy is a forerunner of the destruction spreading across our entire society. To focus on the experiences of women is not to exclude others, but to shine a light on the most glaring manifestations of poverty. The first step of healing is to bring out these stories, not separately from one another, but connected in our common cause. When we all work together to craft actions for change, women’s healing starts to reverberate throughout society as collective healing, allowing for rebuilding community, human healing & repairing & healing the planet.

The core issue is that when globalization is pitting workers against robots and against each other, continuing to allow our economy to be organized for private profit will no longer meet the needs of society. A new economic vision is imperative. The World Courts roundtable discussions will interweave this vision with the practice of women’s healing where we are able to share, be heard, and engage our experiences as survivors, resistors and those who have been greatly impacted by the violence of poverty. On this basis we are resolved to be architects for a new,safe, more just, compassionate, and economically secure future.

Consideration for Informing Our Vision & Recommendations in
Resolutions of Actions

WHAT WORK IS MOST IMPORTANT FOR COLLECTIVE SUSTAINABILITY?

1. Necessary commodities: technology, sustainable food production, water, construction/civil engineering, transportation.

2. Improved quality of life jobs: education, fitness & health, art, music.

WHAT JOBS BECOME LESS IMPORTANT IN A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY?

Justice system, military, insurance, investment banking.

WHAT WORK IS NECESSARY FOR SURVIVING AND THRIVING?

Care work, health/well-being, education, sustainable food production, arts, creativity.

WHAT HEALING/RESISTANCE MUST OCCUR IN THIS CONTEXT?

1. Resources for collective sustainability must be publicly owned & managed.

a. National, public education, healthcare, housing, etc.

b. Fostering of human curiosity, creation and innovation.

2. Creation of a new social contract.

a. Need to consider the historical production of society, work & work ethic, wealth & poverty.

i. How has wealth been acquired and held?

ii. How do we address the ways in which that has been accepted in larger society?

iii. How can we change government policies and laws that protect the accumulation of wealth over a collective sustainability?

b. Based on the new tools, not old ideology.

GIVEN THE OVERARCHING FRAME/ANALYSIS,

ROUNDTABLE FOR THE WESTERN REGION

World Courts of Women on Poverty in the US TRIBUNAL:

1. Poverty, Jobs & Immigration

2. Foreclosures, Homelessness & Property Rights

3. Environment & the Justice System

4. Healthcare for the 99%

5. Organizing for Quality Public Education – Education for the 99%,”

(Organizing Methodologies)

Become a part of the historical event, the World Courts of Women on Poverty in the US by volunteering for one of our leadership positions. We need your support now more than ever in this final stage of preparation. In the face of state budget cuts slashing crucial services to the most at risk communities, corporate greed and record numbers of women living in poverty, we offer a critical analysis of capitalism through a women and poverty lens. We are calling on you to become involved and to mobilize your communities to help present both the problems and the solutions. Click here (Link forthcoming) to review the job descriptions and sign up!

We are currently searching to fill a variety of volunteer positions, both for the WCW and ongoing after the event. We welcome all kinds of volunteers with different learning objectives and skill levels regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, etc.

You can find all relevant positions below.  Be sure to visit again as positions and shifts are added. Have a service you can offer that is not listed below? Let us know in the comments section below!

• Documentation Coordinator: These volunteers will be responsible for video, audio or written documentation for the event.
• Blogger: This person will be responsible for blogging for the WCW page during the course of the event itself. Join us for this historical event and help utilize your online skills to build a movement.
• Art Curator: Help keep our art safe! This person will manage our art displays.
• Child Care Provider: This volunteer will be providing child care during the World Court of Women. Help support our attendees! Credentials required.
• Registration Table Staff: This volunteer will be working the conference registration table during their shift, signing folks in, distributing literature and providing attendees with all of the proper paperwork. They will also be helping compile and organize registration prior to the event.
• Food Coordinator/Server: Depending on the event, these volunteers will either help prepare meals or will help serve pre-pared meals.
• Health Care Provider: These volunteers will help provide health care and medical suppose to those on site that may need it. Credentials required.
• Performer: Performers are to be plugged into the appropriate section of the WCW. We are interested in singers, choirs, dancers, poets, emcees, spoken word artists, visual artists and much more.
• Program Material Coordinator: Help put together the materials for registrants at the conference. This could includes organizing and collating large numbers of gift bags, pamphlet copies, etc.
• Security: This person will be working to secure the premises throughout the course of the WCW. They will work the registration area, the round tables area, and generally circulate throughout the location.
• Set Up and Breakdown Staff: This volunteer will help with the details of set or the details of breakdown before and after the event.
• Sign Language Specialist: This person will be responsible for helping to ensure the participation of the deaf during the course of the WCW.
• Runner: This person is responsible for managing the sound at a roundtable, cultural event, or specific event at the World Court of Women.
• Sound Engineer: This person is responsible for managing the sound at a roundtable, cultural event or specific event at the World Court of Women.
• Translater (Multiple Languages): This position is responsible for helping to transcribe, translate on the spot, or support speakers during panel discussions, roundtable and other WCW events.
• Usher/Host: Ushers and Hosts are assigned to help keep the flow and movement of events throughout the day. They will also be information points for WCW and Laney Facility related questions.
  

• Fund Development Researcher/Assistant: Help build a movement! These volunteers will use their skills to help identify funding prospects, do research when appropriate for WEAP materials, and help draw up proposals grants and other funding opportunities.
• Health Care and Human Rights Trainee: This volunteer will specialize in learning and training in WEAP’s vision and body of knowledge to assist WEAP and allies.
• People’s Education & Curriculum Development Leader: These volunteers will learn to and teach others in WEAP led Human Rights Education workshops and trainings.
• Social Justice/Teach-In Assistant: These volunteers will assist with Social Justice and human rights training, outreach projects and various other tasks within WEAP. Volunteers should have already had Human Rights training and some outreach experience.
• Speakers Bureau Participant: Be part of the speaking team for WEAP and represent human rights and healh care through the WEAP Speakers Bureau.
• Web & Social Media Assistant: Help develop WEAP fact sheets and drafts  and produce and execute plans for internet and social media applications.

Contact the Women’s Economic Agenda Project: 510-986-8620

weap@weap.org www.weap.org @weaporg

Blowing the lid on an ugly U.S. truth:

Why so much poverty in the midst of plenty?

New public hearings focus on violence caused by growing U.S. poverty. Widening gap between rich and poor is a violation of human rights.

OAKLAND, CA – Because poverty is rapidly growing in the U.S., and how to end poverty gets hardly any serious public discussion, the Women’s Economic Agenda Project and its allies are mounting a series of public hearings to shed more light on this shameful, mostly hidden issue.

The serious damage poverty causes in the lives of working people, employed and unemployed, and how to end the scourge of poverty in the richest country the world has ever known, will be spotlighted in the very first World Courts of Women on Poverty in the U.S. These Courts of Women will be held at Laney College in Oakland, CA., May 10-13, 2012.

Ethel Long-Scott, executive director of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP), the lead organization sponsoring the Courts, said: “When companies take the jobs away to increase their profits, a just and humane society builds a supportive society that ensure economic security for all . We are going to break the silence on the horror stories happening to women by the thousands every day in this country because our people are falling right through a safety net shredded by budget cuts and corporate dominance of our government.

“And we will talk about something else that gets almost no public discussion, the fact that capitalism has entered a new stage that won’t allow a return of good jobs to all the workers who want one. Every month more and more of our goods and services are produced by computer-controlled machines, not workers. Our productivity gains now depend on robots, not workers. The good industrial jobs with decent benefits are not coming back – we need a smarter vision of the future that’s good for everyone, not just the 1 percent.”

The Courts of Women are public hearings held to share voices of survival and resistance from the margins. In addition to heartbreaking stories of struggle, there will be roundtable discussions of issues raised by the stories. A panel of jurors will draw conclusions and recommendations from testimony people will give about the impact of poverty on their lives. There will also be art, music, and other entertainment that looks toward the future

The Oakland hearings are an outgrowth of 37 Courts of Women held in various countries around the world, but never before in the United States. For 29 years The Courts have focused on the damage cultural and systemic violence does to women and their families. The U.S. Courts will focus on violence caused by poverty in the midst of plenty.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in November that 49.1 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, lived in poverty in 2010, 2.6 million more than the previous year. It was the highest number in the 52 years the Bureau has been publishing poverty figures.

Different social groups are affected in different ways. In 2008 59 percent of adults in poverty were women, and more than 14 percent of all women lived below the poverty line. In 2010 the bureau reported 14.3 percent of whites were living in poverty, compared to 25.4 percent of African Americans and 28.2 percent of Hispanics.

“Poverty is hell for the people living in it,” said Long-Scott. “Poverty keeps families from giving their kids good nutrition, finding good schools, providing them with safe neighborhoods to live in, getting decent medical care. It breeds so many forms of violence against people and families that result in desperation and despair.”

A major focus of the Courts of Women is to “find new visions for our times,” according to the 2010 U.S. Social Forum resolution calling for an end to poverty. The resolution looked at how, “The effects of globalization, the increase in wealth disparity, and dismantling of the social safety net have pushed our communities into destitution while corporate powers and banking institutions have profited tremendously at our expense.” It continued:

“We link our struggles here in the United States to the struggles of poor people throughout the World. We are committed to uniting the poor as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty everywhere and forever.”

“Remember,” Long-Scott said, “there was a time when people thought you couldn’t abolish slavery, when people thought women would never be able to vote, when people thought they couldn’t force an end to an unpopular war, when people thought there was nothing they could do to end the Arab dictatorships. It was a people’s movement with a wiser vision of a better future that forced the changes conventional wisdom said would never come. We need to build a transformational movement to end poverty!”

The myth that everyone who lives in America can create a decent livelihood if they work hard, hides the reality that the tremendous wealth of this country is held in the hands of a very small number of individuals.

The Women’s Economic Agenda Project, based in Oakland, has a 27-year history of working to attain economic human rights for all people. WEAP believes that in a land of abundance, there is no reason anyone’s basic human needs should not be met. WEAP is diligently working to organize low-income workers and the unemployed into a movement to achieve a vision of a world without poverty and despair, a world that Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of in his Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.

# # # #

This past year has been monumental in the movement to highlight and protest against social inequality, corporate greed, and disparities between rich and poor with the emergence of the Occupy Movement. Within months, over 2,700 communities across the world joined the movement to address the impact of rising unemployment and cuts to social service programs. As part of our leadership in this movement, WEAP developed tools to document injustices facing the “99 percent” including Fact Sheets and a Health Addendum that expose human rights violations (found on WEAP’s website).

The World Courts of Women could not come at a more critical time. WEAP has been working hard to build on our transformative people’s movement to end poverty and highlight injustice facing women and families. Through planning of the WCW, we built alliances and partnerships with over 30 organizations across California to develop organizing committees that meet on a bi-weekly basis. These endorsing organizations, including Central Valley Journey for Justice, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), Hip-Hop Congress and many others, that bring a wealth of knowledge and leadership to the planning process. This Planning Committee has made major gains in the progress of the WCW including creating a “Visual Call to Action,” a Youtube video advertising and explaining the Oakland Court (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0EBu9S9F4Y ) and a blog providing daily updates on the progress of WCW (http://worldcourtsofwomen.wordpress.com/). Additionally, we’ve started our registration process, making our registration form available online and developed an extensive volunteer database and descriptions of opportunities to become involved.

Over the past 15 years, the WCW has had a significant impact on placing gender at the center of the theory and practice of human rights as well as strengthening the networks of grassroots NGOs locally and transnationally. In every region they are held, the WCW gather people in conversations across race, religions, and cultures to highlight the knowledge and wisdoms of women in the region; laying the groundwork for transformative practices that challenge the dominant world view that move us all collectively towards a new generation of women’s human rights. Women, men and youth from all areas and histories bring their personal testimonies of violence to the Court.

We need your support now more than ever in this final stage of preparation. In the face of state budget cuts slashing crucial services to the most at risk communities, corporate greed and record numbers of women living in poverty, we offer a critical analysis of capitalism through a women and poverty lens. We are calling on you to become involved and to mobilize your communities to help present both the problems and the solutions.

The World Courts of Women will expose the great violence poverty is doing to increasing numbers of women in the U.S and assess the toll poverty is taking on our nation’s families, and protect & expand public resources for the benefit of the 99%, such as truly universal health care.

Come listen to the soul-searing stories and share your own, bring your organization, endorse, donate or volunteer. As the Assembly to End Poverty says, “It is time we STAND UP AND BUILD a new United States of America.

Who are we who support the World Courts of Women on Poverty in the U.S.?

• We are the mothers of children experiencing the pangs of hunger.

• We are the families who have lost our homes to foreclosure due to the tremendous greed of bankers and politicians.

• We are the incarcerated fathers who were ripped from our families by the prison industrial complex.

• We are the homeless veterans who have been abandoned by the government we fought to protect.

• We are the mothers who fear and suffer from the separation of our families due to our immigrant status.

• We are the millions of uninsured in this country who suffer and die daily due to lack of adequate health care.

•We are the youth that have been thrown away by a government that has continuously revoked all our after-school programs, public libraries, and recreation centers.

• We are the workers who struggle every day to make ends meet while corporations reap billions in profit from our labor.

• We are the immigrants who work tirelessly in a country that denies us basic human rights.

• We are the educators that find ourselves incapable of developing the leadership of our youth while schools are shutting down and funding is cut back.

• We are the women who survive and resist in a world that perpetuates tremendous violence at our expense.

We are thrilled to kick off the exciting event by letting you all know how you can stay involved in the process. We encourage you to RSVP to the World Court of Women Facebook event page which will continually be updated in the run up to the event. You can also follow @WEAPOrg on twitter and subscribe to the hashtag #WCW2012 to stay informed on our progress. You can subscribe to this blog by using the RSS feed here and on the front page. Alternatively, you can subscribe to blog update via email using the tool on the right. We also have a YouTube channel you can follow and engage with. You can also find all video and the LiveStream page in the toolbar above.

We are eager to share in this groundbreaking event with you and cannot wait to hear the conversation that will take place before, during, and well after this event!

See you in Oakland April 5th, 2012!