Statement on loss of Rev. Annie Chambers
We first met Rev. Annie through our work with the National Welfare Rights Union (NWRU). As part of her work in the historic National Welfare Rights Organization, she fought against the tide of attacks on welfare mothers and for their right to have the cash to enable them to raise their own children rather than be forced into workfare (jobs outside the home in order to receive benefits) and for food security, housing, and other resources, all of which we also stood for. We were also demanding a care income for unpaid work in the home, the community and on the land which Rev Annie also supported. We quickly became close comrades in struggle. Some of us worked with her on the Steering Committee or as members of the NWRU. She became active in the network of Women of Color in the GWS including participating in our international planning meetings.
We went many places together, including frequently to Washington DC where she spoke at a press conference along with Congresswoman Gwen Moore who introduced legislation that redefined work to include mothers and other unpaid family caregivers and students in the Earned Income Tax Credit. Congresswoman Moore took the opportunity to speak about Rev Annie’s decades of activism and how Rev Annie’s work and the welfare rights movement personally impacted her.
She frequently came to Philadelphia for events and meetings. She was a panelist at our 2023 gathering End Women’s Poverty – A Guaranteed Care Income for Caregivers of People and Planet. As part of the gathering we held a picket outside the Philadelphia Family Court protesting the removal of children from their families. There, in true form, Rev. Annie not only cussed out “child welfare” agencies and policies. She also blocked the police with her wheelchair when they tried to move us. She told them, hell no we are not moving! They backed off, they didn’t dare cross Rev. Annie who told them they would have hell to pay if they messed with us. Rev. Annie was never ever afraid to confront the state and cuss them out. What a powerhouse!
Rev. Annie was not afraid to call out those in the movement either. She was a supporter of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC) and had a longtime working relationship with the Rev Liz who had become a joint coordinator of the PPC, but she was not afraid to call out others in the national and local PPC when she thought they weren’t true to the principles established by the welfare rights movement. Another example was at a NWRU conference in Baltimore, NWRU made the difficult decision to break with an organization that had part of welfare rights. Rev. Annie volunteered to break the news to the representative of the organization and did it in her straightforward, principled, loving way while leaving the door open for reconciliation.
Rev Annie’s movement training went way back. She shared with us training by her hero Malcolm X. She spoke about the invisible help that the Black movement in the US received from Fidel Castro and others disparaged by the US government. When Martin Luther King called for the Poor People’s Campaign, Rev Annie along with other welfare rights members became a field organizer. She was sent to white impoverished areas of Kentucky to mobilize support. On her way to Resurrection City, the area the PPC had occupied in Washington DC, she gave birth. Rev Annie made sure the baby was cared for and kept right on to the protest. True Rev. Annie determination and commitment!
She was fearless, including in face-to-face confrontations with white supremacists. We heard that she barged into a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members in Las Vegas where welfare rights were organizing a protest. She told them that she didn’t care if they didn’t want their children to marry hers. She told them that you don’t like me and I don’t like you, but your food stamps and welfare is being cut just like mine, you need to come out and protest against that. In so doing, Rev. Annie reminded us of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and his organizing work with white so-named “rednecks” in Chicago, where he was successful in getting them to support some of the BPP protests there. Perhaps Chairman Fred was taking his lead from Rev. Annie rather than the other way around.
She was a creative and effective organizer. When Baltimore city public officials, with the support of the mayor, cut back on food assistance to impoverished residents, she invited them to a community lunch to share a meal with and prepared by poor people. The mayor said he found the meal delicious and got a second helping. She then told them what they had just eaten was dog food, which poor people had to eat so as not to starve. Point made. Of course, the community was in on it and no-one else ate the food.
One of the many injustices she was passionate about was stopping child welfare from snatching children, in particular Black children, but also Brown and poor white children, from their mothers or primary caregivers and placing them in foster care or up for adoption with strangers. It was kidnapping she said and at every opportunity she had she called them out including the profit they made by separating families. She said this separation overwhelmingly of Black families was like in the slave days, we fought it then and we are fighting it now. She tirelessly worked with mothers across race fighting to get their children back and she stood with them, defended their right to raise their own children and to have the money, housing, food and other resources needed to care for them. She is featured in the new book: How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action.
Rev. Annie never gave up or gave in. She fought until the very end. It was the medical neglect uncovered by her family that caused her life to be under threat. It was her family, including her adopted son and comrade Ian who fought daily and tirelessly with the medical industry for Rev Annie’s life, demanding she get proper respectful care. Welfare rights in Detroit also sent someone to the hospital to raise hell about the neglect she faced. Rev Annie while in intensive care couldn’t speak but seemed to know what was going on around her and what was being said. When we got word that Rev. Annie was in intensive care and that it was uncertain she would make it through the night, two of our members in Philadelphia, Pat and Phoebe, representing our network, immediately dropped what they were doing and drove down to Baltimore to see her. Others of us further away spoke to her by phone . In her last days we were in regular contact on her health with welfare rights leadership in Detroit.
She passed away peacefully as though she knew she would be getting some rest and will be joining other movement organizers in the ancestor world. Rev Annie has ended her earth walk now we must do the work of ensuring she is never forgotten, to always say her name. She was the kind of fearless, passionate, principled, non-separatist grassroots leader that is today sadly too rare, her life must be an example for and lifted up by the upcoming generation of activists. She was and will continue to be an inspiration, a reminder to us all that freedom isn’t free or given but something to be fought for. And like Rev Annie did, when we lose one battle, we like Rev Annie must pick ourselves up and continue the fight, even under the most difficult circumstances.
As we mourn her passing, we are also celebrating her life and all that she gave to each of us, and to the movement for change not only in the US but the world. We suspect she was drawn to our network not only because she shared what we stood for but because we were always international. She never forgot our sisters and brothers from Palestine to Cuba to Haiti to Congo, to Venezuela. She knew and walked with great leaders like Fidel, Malcolm X. She supported the late President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. She is most known for standing she with and fighting alongside the most impoverished among us, she lifted up Black youth and called out police abuse against them. She refused to be used by the powers that be to quell rebellions, so-named riots, that took place on the street.
We are outraged at the medical neglect she faced and are deeply sad and devastated by her passing, but she will always be with us in spirit and her example and our memories of working with her, will always be an inspiration as we carry on the work of changing the world. We loved and will always love Rev. Annie and we miss her greatly. Many tears among us fell at news of her passing, but we are picking ourselves up, we feel her spirit and commitment and are determined to carry on and broaden the work of the movement to which she dedicated her life.
In the words of Rev Annie: Revolution! All power to the people and free the land! And we add all power to the sisters internationally! Rev. Annie Presente!
Condolences to her family and all who loved her we join you in grieving her passing and celebrating her life from our affiliated international networks including: Selma James, Founder of the Wages for Housework Campaign (WFH); All African Women’s Group/London England; Give Us Back Our Children; Global Women Against Deportations; Global Women’s Strike & WFH/India, Ireland, Peru, Thailand, UK, US; Legal Action for Women/London, England; Payday men’s network/France, Italy, UK, US; Queer Strike; Support Not Separation/Scotland, England, US, Wales; US Prostitutes Collective; WinVisible/women with visible and invisible disabilities; Women Against Rape/UK.
Pat Albright and Phoebe Schellenberg, Global Women’s Strike
Margaret Prescod, Black Women for Wages for Housework and Women of Color/GWS
