PRESS RELEASE: As new Child Tax Credit legislation is introduced in Congress, international networks gather in Philadelphia to demand an End of Mothers’/Caregivers’ Poverty.
What: An International & Community Gathering: End Women’s Poverty – A Guaranteed Care Income for All Caregivers of People & Planet
When: June 9-11, 2023
Where: Crossroads Women’s Center, 5011 Wayne Ave, Philadelphia PA 19144
This week new legislation making permanent the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was introduced into Congress (The American Family Act). The expanded refundable CTC which expired last year had cut the child poverty rate in the US almost in half. This and other measures to get cash directly into the hands of mothers and families will be the focus of a national and international gathering this weekend June 9-11, entitled End Women’s Poverty – A Guaranteed Care Income for All Caregivers of People & Planet. Childcare available.
Full Gathering program here: https://globalwomenstrike.net/end-womens-poverty-2023/
This multi-racial event marks the grand opening of the new Crossroads Women’s Center in a low-income neighborhood of Philadelphia. It comes at a crucial moment when women and the children who depend on them face ever growing poverty. Considering the demands from some policy makers for work requirements for food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid, organizers will challenge official definitions of work that still exclude the mothers and other unpaid caregivers who contribute more than $1.5 trillion to the US economy. Worldwide that figure is $10.9 trillion.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore will present at the Gathering on her Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act which updates the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by expanding the definition of work to recognize unpaid family caregivers and low-income students, making both eligible for the EITC for the first time.
The Gathering is a rare and exciting opportunity for women and all genders from Philadelphia and across the US, including Indigenous nations, as well as from Canada, England, India, Ireland, Haiti, Malaysia, Peru, Scotland, Thailand and more, to come together to build and consolidate the movement against poverty which in the US and around the world disproportionately impacts women and children. Panels and workshop range across movements, including on the climate crisis, child welfare system abuses, criminalization, international solidarity and unity in autonomy.
With the climate crisis increasing, Friday, June 9, will feature a workshop: How nature regulates the climate and how natural farming can help, with author and soil strategist Didi Pershouse, founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative based in Vermont, and Dr Vijay Kumar, key agricultural advisor to the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, which has the world’s largest agroecology program spearheaded by women farmers organized in tens of thousands of self-help groups. The work and challenges of urban farmers in Philadelphia and elsewhere, defenders of the natural world, and lessons we can learn from their work, will also be represented.
Friday evening will be the grand opening of Crossroads Women’s Center in Philadelphia. The Center has been an organizing hub for over two decades and celebrates moving into its new larger space at 5011 Wayne Avenue. And the Grand Opening & Half a Century of Archives with Selma James who launched Wages for Housework in 1972 and co-ordinates the Global Women’s Strike (GWS), Margaret Prescod co-founder, Black Women for Wages for Housework and co-coordinator of Women of Color/GWS, and others will also celebrate 51 years of organizing.
On Saturday and Sunday June 10-11 there will be four panels followed by in depth workshops:
- Take Away Our Poverty Not Our Children on organizing to stop child welfare abuses
- End the Criminalization of Poverty and Protest
- Autonomy: central to organizing and unity
- A Care Income, a movement whose time has come, on valuing the work of giving birth to and raising children, caring for others and for the natural world, and paying caregivers for that work.
On Saturday June 10th, the Gathering will hear a keynote address from Mildred Aristide the former first lady of Haiti.
Panelists will include speakers organizing in England, Scotland, Peru, Thailand, the US including Indigenous communities, formerly incarcerated women and men and more, to end poverty, sexism, racism, violence against women and their criminalization; separation of children from families by child welfare; fighting discrimination including against people of color, immigrants, queer/trans people and people with disabilities; food sovereignty; and for financial recognition for unpaid caregiving work, accomplished overwhelmingly by women.
Crossroads Women’s Center, based in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, will host this exciting Gathering.
This event will be both live and online; participants can register at https://globalwomenstrike.net/end-womens-poverty-2023/