[asia-apec 1776] Economic Human Rights Bus Tour and Media

[Anuradha Mittal]

Economic Human Rights Bus Tour from May 29-31,2001, organized by Food 
First, and endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, generated a 
lot of media coverage. Please find attached 2 op-eds that appeared in 
newspapers across the country.

This was distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Media Services. 
___________________________

United States Lagging in Economic Human Rights

         OAKLAND, CA -- When Americans think of human rights violations, 
they don't normally think of people like 
Freman Davis, a 71-year old retired African-
American machinist living here in the Oakland Homeless
Project. Mr. Davis' troubles began seven years ago when
he was evicted from his apartment. With rising real estate
prices here, he was never able to find another one that
would fit within the means of his $570 monthly Social
Security check.

         Mr. Davis, who is also a disabled veteran of the
Korean War, is one of the witnesses testifying as part of
the Economic Human Rights Bus Tour. They told their
stories this week to network TV crews, and audiences
that included US Representatives Barbara Lee of
Oakland, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, and John
Conyers of Detroit. They were articulate, persuasive, and
often eloquent. A sixteen-year-old homeless high school
girl noted that while "other girls my age were worrying
about who to date and what to wear, I was thinking about
where I was going to sleep and where my next meal
would come from."

         The Bus Tour, sponsored by the Oakland-based
policy group Food First, visited homeless centers and
single room occupancy hotels in downtown Oakland this
week to shine a spotlight on homelessness and poverty in
California. More ambitiously, the affiliated groups are
demanding that such basic needs as food, shelter, and
health care be recognized by the United States
government as fundamental human rights. They are
backed not only by hundreds of activist and advocacy
groups throughout the country, but also by the 56-
member Progressive Caucus in the US Congress.

         Are they ahead of their time? Or is America
behind the times? The United States is alone among the
wealthy nations of the world in its failure to provide
universal health insurance. The resulting patchwork of
public and private insurers is so wasteful and inefficient
that we end up spending twice as much per person on
health care as do countries like Sweden, and still leave 43
million people uninsured. With insurance premiums now
rising again at double-digit rates, it is possible that the
switch to a more efficient, universal, single insurer
system would actually save money over the long run. But
even if it cost more, it is well within our means to insure
the millions of people whose first and only visits to the
doctor are in the emergency room.

         Estimates of the homeless vary widely, but we
could easily provide for them with a lot less than the $500
billion that the Bush Administration's tax cut is giving to
the richest one percent of taxpayers (average income:
$1.1 million). And we already have a food stamp
program, which would need to be expanded as well as
extended to the millions of families who are currently
eligible, but do not participate.

         Although some may think these battles have been
lost with the passage of President Bush's tax cut, this is
not necessarily true. That tax cut represents only about a
quarter of the projected budget surpluses over the next
decade. Right now, both parties are committed to using
more than half of these surpluses -- that is, twice the
amount that went to the tax cut -- for paying down the
national debt. This commitment -- which would provide
very little, if any, benefit to the economy -- is a recently
developed bit of ideological nonsense that will surely
fade if the economy continues to slow.

         But we should not have to wait for a recession
before we do something to provide for people's most
basic needs. On the contrary, the recent economic
expansion -- the longest in American history -- has
provided opportunities far beyond those that existed in
the 1960s, the last time this country officially committed
itself to a "War on Poverty." Regardless of what happens
to the economy in the next year or so, the government's
future finances look better than they ever have in the past
half-century.

         Less than five years ago we lost our most
important federal entitlement for poor children -- Aid to
Families with Dependent Children -- despite the fact that
we have the highest child poverty rate in the developed
world (currently one in six). And our largest and most
successful anti-poverty program -- Social Security -- is
being set up by the Bush Administration for partial
privatization and cuts.

         All the more reason to establish the principle that
basic needs such as food, shelter, and health care are
fundamental economic human rights -- so they cannot be
swept aside with shifts in the political winds.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is
co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: the
Phony Crisis (2000, University of Chicago Press).
****************************************************

PERSPECTIVES

Food Is a Human Right

Why should the charitable whims of the rich decide who eats well and who 
doesn't?

By Anuradha Mittal

President Bush, in his recent commencement speech at the University of 
Notre Dame, renewed his call for a war on poverty. Once again, he linked 
this call to his tax cut initiative. The idea is that tax benefits for 
the rich will stimulate charitable giving and create a type of 
altruistic market dynamic that will eventually trickle down to the poor.

Of course, the historical record flatly defeats this logic, and policies 
such as these have proven to be the fertile soil in which poverty and 
hunger flourish. Feeding each American must certainly be considered a 
necessity, one more pressing than enriching the top 10 percent of the 
population with nearly three-fifths of the tax cut benefits.

For a nation endowed with the world's greatest acreage of arable land, 
the United States is plagued by hunger and poverty. According to USDA 
estimates, 10.5 million American households (1 out of 10) did not have 
adequate access to food in 1998. A survey of 25 cities conducted in 
December 2000 by the U.S. Conference of Mayors showed an increase of 17 
percent in requests for emergency food assistance, the highest increase 
since 1992.

To respond to this crisis, President Bush said in his acceptance speech 
at the Republican National Convention, "In the next bold step of welfare 
reform, we will support the heroic work of homeless shelters and food 
pantries. Government cannot do this work.. My administration will give 
taxpayers new incentives to donate to charity."

But relying on charity is simply not enough. The growth of 
private-sector food programs is a sign not of success, but of political 
failure -- the failure of American policy makers to join other nations 
that long ago adopted the human right to feed oneself..

Implicit in the idea of human rights is that these rights are guaranteed 
to all, not charitably bestowed on some by the patronage of others. 
Human rights belong to the realm of government, not the discretion of 
the wealthiest citizens. With the United States losing its seat on the 
United Nations Human Rights Commission, it's time to strengthen our 
human rights record at home and implement all Americans' right to feed 
themselves.

Seeking solutions through charitable handouts fails to address the loss 
of human dignity associated with the inability to house, feed, and 
clothe oneself and one's family. Of the 36 million food-insecure 
individuals living in America in 1998 (40 percent of whom were children 
under the age of 18), half belong to households with at least one 
full-time worker. The leading cause of growing food insecurity is not 
simply joblessness; it is poverty, low-paying jobs, high housing costs, 
food stamp cuts, and welfare reform.

Cutbacks in federal food programs have created a tremendous pressure for 
private food assistance programs to fill the void. The hunger gap left 
by the food stamp program cuts is four times the amount that Second 
Harvest, the national food bank network of emergency food providers, 
could provide every year. Most of the people requesting emergency food 
assistance are children and their parents. And almost half are employed. 
Yet this emergency is largely relegated to the domain of charity while 
discussions are underway for a budgetary reordering that siphons ever 
greater funds away from social programs.

Leaving responsibility for human rights to the private sector is 
unacceptable. Private sector programs cannot displace the responsibility 
of government to the basic social and economic human rights for its 
people. In the age of "personal responsibility," does it not follow that 
we each have a responsibility to hold our elected government accountable 
to the universal standards it holds other nations to? Which of the 
following best stands for the values espoused by Americans -- a broad 
and sturdy safety net for all members of our society, or one of five 
children hungry and poor in the richest nation on earth?

 

Anuradha Mittal is the co-director of Oakland-based Food First, which 
wraps up its anti-poverty bus tour today. For more information, 
including how to get involved with Food First's local campaigns, go to 
<http://www.foodfirst.org>www.foodfirst.org.

Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst at foodfirst.org.

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