From October 25-27th, 2024, Put People First! PA (PPF-PA) held our annual Membership Assembly, where we brought together PPF-PA leaders new and old from across Pennsylvania, as well as representatives of the Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA) from across the country. This year we were also honored to have representatives of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) from Brazil, the Martin Luther King Center from Cuba and a leader of the poor from Tunisia.
Check out Put People First! PA’s facebook page for more photos from the weekend!
This year, our 12th year, was our largest Assembly yet, with over 150 people coming together across all lines of difference – age, culture, religion, race, immigration and documentation status, and geography. The gathering was planned by dozens of volunteer member-leaders, and co-constructed with every participant who attended. We gathered in Camp Hill, PA for a weekend of study, of sharing our healthcare stories, art and culture, lessons in organizing, and of strategizing to build this movement for our human right to healthcare and for a revolution of values that Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned and insisted was necessary.
Highlights of the weekend included creating an altar, representing the spirit of the struggle, where we shared the history of the poor organizing the poor in our regions, from the movement to end slavery, to labor struggles, to the National Union of the Homeless, to the struggle of the landless workers in Brazil. Our host Healthcare Rights Committee, South Central, started the Assembly with a deep dive into the local People’s History. We then studied how we can unite the poor across all differences in our country and globally with a domestic and international panel and discussion. Sunday kicked off with a workshop on fighting against the Medicaid cut offs and breakouts on our tactics of #MedicaidMondays, People’s Clinics and Medicaid Sign Ups and Appeals.
In between each of these sessions, we broke bread together. We built new relationships and deepened old ones. We mourned those we’ve lost, sang together, shared our pain and hope, and committed to the struggle ahead.
We named our common oppressor: the system which is denying us our human rights to our basic needs, killing the people we love and destroying our planet, while committing genocide, waging war and putting deadly sanctions on the poor globally. At this divisive time, we came together across many differences to unite the poor and dispossessed statewide, nationally and internationally to commit to continue organizing for a future where our basic needs are treated as human rights here and across the globe.
Check out Put People First! PA’s facebook page for more photos from the weekend!
