13th Annual Membership Assembly Report back!

The 13th Annual Membership Assembly kicked off in sunny State College, Pennsylvania, on October 17th, 2025. This was Put People First! PA’s largest Membership Assembly to date with over 160 adults and 40 youth in person as well as virtual participants attending on zoom. A third of those in the room were leaders from our broader network, the Nonviolent Medicaid Army, which made this weekend not only a crucial moment for our organizing in Pennsylvania but for our whole network, as we continue to build politically independent, poverty abolitionist movement led by the poor and dispossessed united across all lines of division.

Saturday morning began with participants collectively building a movement altar. Leaders from Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, and California as well as international partners from Cuba and Brazil, brought an object that reflected their local history of struggle and led the group in a chant. As groups processed, we sang,

Let the Medicaid Army
Shine its light on you
Let the Medicaid army
Shine its light on you!

Well if you ever come to (Appalachia)
They’re gonna walk tall
But the rich and the greedy
Shove their backs against the wall
But with discipline and high morale

We’ll get through this dark night
You find that Medicaid Army
You find that big old light

– Let The Medicaid Army by John Rowland, adapting Lead Belly, “Let The Midnight Special”

The Membership Assembly is a key moment every year where a huge number of people experience first hand the Community Agreement “Everyone is responsible for the success of the space.” From housing to A/V to childcare, the weekend was planned by a 19 member team, who in turn incorporated nearly all participants at the Assembly to support in carrying out these divisions of labor over the weekend.

Assembly content kicked off with a session on Hospital Closures & the Political Economy of Healthcare. This was followed by workshops on Political Storytelling, People’s Clinics, Medicaid Sign-ups and Appeals and Song leading. Saturday night ended as it always does with Arts & Culture Night with nearly 50 participants of all ages sharing stories, songs, visual art, jokes and more.

Sunday opened with informal discussion space for participants to come together to strategize our response to SNAP cuts – collectively and individually, what we need to know to keep our food stamps in the face of work requirements – as well as for regions and formations to reflect on the weekend. The next block of workshops focused on how we embody our key political principle of Leadership across Difference in the Battle for the Bible, Unity Across Language and Housing and Healthcare. We ended the 13th Assembly with a closing, bringing us all together in song, appreciation for the space and one another, and an agitation for how we bring forward what we learned from the weekend to make the struggle every day.

Stay tuned for a fuller report back from the weekend.