FAQs about our Campaign & Organizing Plan

Frequently asked questions about Put People First! PA’s Campaign and Organizing plan and the arc of the year 

By Nijmie D., Legislative & Research Team & Root Coordinator

How do we create our Campaign and Organizing Plan?

The specifics evolve a bit every year, because we are a learning organization and we make the struggle a school. However, many things are time-tested, based on our human rights principles, and they remain consistent. For instance, participation. The process to review and ratify the Campaign and Organizing Plan is an important part of our internal democracy. We make sure that every active member is invited to review a draft plan, and contribute questions, ideas, suggestions and challenges to the plan and its feasibility. Another practice that remains consistent is the organization of the plan around the components of our organizing model: the Class Struggle (our campaign), the Class Organization (our structure), and the Classroom (our study process). Under the Class Struggle fall our campaign pillars: Build the Nonviolent Medicaid Army, Expose and Target Profiteers, Hold All Powerholders Accountable, and a new pillar: Shift the Narrative. This year for the first time, we piloted a 3-year Campaign and Organizing Plan: 2025-2027. Additionally, this year is the first time that the Roots Collective as a whole drafted the plan. 

Are the phases of the year connected? If so, how?

Definitely! Like the Nonviolent Medicaid Army nationally, we tend to think of our year as an “arc” with each phase building on the next. 

In the winter season in the early part of the year, we study, train and prepare – with activities like 

  • Landscape Assessment, where we dig into the political, economic and social conditions of the counties where we organized. We share information about what we know from our own experience, we ask others, and we also do research.
  • Training: In 2025, Put People First! PA collaborated with the PA Poor People’s Campaign on a Holding Powerholders Accountable series focused on understanding how things work in Harrisburg and why. 
  • The Winter Study (a six week course on key topics) for active Healthcare Rights Committee (HRC) and Team members (and sometimes focused on people coordinating now or in the future) in collaboration with the National Nonviolent Medicaid Army. 

In the spring and summer we move from research, training and study and reflection to on the ground organizing solidly and simultaneously in multiple places across our 5 regional Healthcare Rights Committees. We focus on connecting with our base of those on or excluded from Medicaid. Each Healthcare Rights Committee makes a plan to do a regular public base building event or Project of Survival once a month or more. We also conduct our summer study, or Solidarity School, with the NVMA. 

The months between April and September are when we come into contact with hundreds and even thousands of people in our communities, letting them know there is a movement to abolish poverty led by the poor that they can not only be a part of, but also help to lead! The Landscape Assessment we conduct during the winter months guides us in planning our base building. The training and study keeps us connected to each other, strengthening the relationships which are necessary to engage in the struggle while also providing key information, insights, and lessons which help us to work smarter. We generally hold a New Member Orientation during the summer to welcome folks who have gone through the New Member Enlistment process to officially become active members!

In the fall we take the energy and momentum of all the new, developing and experienced leaders and direct our efforts toward two major events: the National Day of Action with the Nonviolent Medicaid Army and the PA Membership Assembly. We also continue to build our base, incorporating new leaders into the process throughout the fall and winter!

What does the “arc” of the year mean and why does it matter?

The phases of the year we just talked about make up the arc of the year. It means that there is a pattern to how we do things, that we repeat, and improve over time. Each season brings some specific areas of focus, they are all connected, and each one builds on the next and then the cycle repeats. We try to get better and better each time, and we make the struggle a school, consistently debriefing and analyzing our own work and what we’re up against. Understanding the arc of the year can help us see that every meeting, every visit with a legislator, every 1 on 1,  every People’s Clinic, every statewide call, every action is not an end in and of itself, but part of a larger plan. Understanding that helps us make the most of each opportunity. 

Our Response to AI

Our Response to AI
By Rebecca, Northeast PA
Put People First! PA

Governor Shapiro has repeatedly stated that building AI data centers will bring ‘economic prosperity’ to Pennsylvania. Politicians are scrambling to change zoning ordinances to allow this to happen. Emergency Town Hall meetings are being held left and right as powerholders attempt to steamroll over the will of the People. Notably, these efforts have been bipartisan. 

The state of Pennsylvania has infinite money to spend on “AI readiness” but nothing to keep our hospitals open. Governor Shapiro pledged 10 million of our tax dollars specifically to train workers for Amazon’s data center in Berwick. That money would have been enough to continue running Berwick Hospital for over ten years. Instead Amazon – the second largest employer in the world – doesn’t have to pay to train its own employees. Big Daddy government is footing that bill for them. Both parties of Wall Street (Democrats and Republicans) are united in their desire to convert as much of our land and our workforce over to the service of AI as possible. They spout big scary talking points about “winning the war of AI supremacy” without even being clear about who we are fighting against. 

What even is an AI data center? A traditional data center is just rows of CPUs and servers sitting in a warehouse. An AI data center also houses much more advanced devices called GPUs and TPUs which are built to handle the larger volumes of unstructured data necessary for machine learning. They require significantly more power and advanced cooling. The extra power usage can be so intense that it causes blackouts for local communities. The cooling systems require vast amounts of water that is mixed with refrigerants, making it impossible to be used for human needs. 

We are all too familiar with the false promises of big business that destroy our beautiful woodlands for their own profit. The natural gas industry, the lumber barons, and big king coal, ALL promised to lift hardworking Pennsylvanians out of poverty. Each time it was a lie, each time the only reward for our hard work was ecological devastation. These bloated profiteers abandoned our communities the second there was no more money to be made, leaving us to live with polluted waterways, deforestation, black lung, and crushing poverty.

Genesis 1:28 says that we are to be good stewards “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The Hebrew word “radah” which we translate as “steward” literally means having the responsibility of ruling, managing, and having wise oversight over the natural world. It means we are to act as God Himself would when we cultivate His creation. This command is not one of exploitation, but of responsible care for the Earth and its inhabitants. I cannot help but worry that our pursuit of the new technology of AI will lead us away from this sacred responsibility. I am not saying new technology is evil. I think it can be a great blessing in our lives and God has promised us great blessings. But we must not forget that we belong first to our Creator and have been entrusted with safeguarding His Creation.

In a few short years, after all of these AI data centers are built, will we say it was worth the destruction of our natural landscape to further enrich the already unfathomably wealthy like Jeff Bezos? These data centers will steal hundreds of thousands of gallons from our water table. Will our local farmers say this was an “economic windfall” when their land cannot support the crops we need to survive? 

Funny how these politicians wanna try to sell us lines about “good jobs.” They must think that we were born yesterday. Make no mistake, AI does not create jobs. It is LABOR-REPLACING technology. For every person who sits in an AI data center babysitting machines, thousands, even millions, of jobs are destroyed. AI is being trained to take jobs from artists, writers, customer service, accountants, administrative assistants, cashiers, paralegals, and reporters. There is not a single sector of labor that won’t be affected. A McKinsey report projects that by 2030, 30% of current U.S. jobs could be automated, with 60% significantly altered by AI tools. That’s 50 million jobs that the ruling class projects they will be able to wipe out in the next four years.

Will we still be saying that we are “winning the AI war” when more and more healthcare decisions are made by AI? I personally don’t want to see a future where algorithms decide to deny healthcare… but that is already happening. Six states are going to start using AI to reject Medicare claims. In January this new program will begin rolling out in New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington. The big tech companies who run it will be paid kickbacks for each rejected claim that their AI justifies.  A 2023 Lancet study estimates 25% of medical administrative tasks could vanish by 2035. Diagnostic AI and robotic surgery are also advancing in an effort by corporate greed to remove even doctors from our healthcare. At the personal care home my kiddo worked at, they have started integrating AI to watch the residents while they sleep. This is happening right in our backyards, not some far off place.
In 1967 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” With the rise of the labor-replacing technology like AI, his call to action is more urgent than ever before. We must acknowledge the personhood of each human being. This thought process of treating people as things, comes from a false scarcity mindset. That scarcity mindset has got to go! We live in overwhelming abundance. We are on the cusp of an incredible technological revolution that is going to make it so we don’t have to toil endless hours of every day just to survive. That should be a cause for celebration, not worry and certainly not the false shame of “not working hard enough.” We don’t have a resource problem, we have an ownership and distribution problem. There are no “deserving” or “undeserving” poor people. We are all deserving of food, of housing, of healthcare, of all of our human rights, just by the virtue of being an alive person. In Matthew 25:40, Jesus called us to care for the “least of these”. If we are truly a Christian nation, we will heed His command and care for other poor people as though each and every one were Jesus Himself.

National Union of the Homeless Winter Offensive

NUH 2025 WINTER OFFENSIVE STATEMENT

During the Holiday Season The National Union of the Homeless comes together across 5 U.S. regions (the South, Appalachia, Midwest, West and the Northeast) to declare: Housing and Healthcare NOW. An End to Genocide and the War Economy! No more death on the streets both here and abroad!

The Homeless Union’s Winter Offensive is a series of synchronized actions and protests that take place from Thanksgiving through Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday in order to highlight the time of year when the poor and homeless experience the most deadly conditions and the highest rates of suicide and death.

We work together to fulfill our mission statement, declaring that “we commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for social and economic justice for all.”

As our Leader Dr Rev Savina cries “At a time when they sing Peace on Earth our land groans under the weight of injustice!” Again we shout: HOUSING AND HEALTHCARE NOW! NO MORE DEATH ON THE STREETS BOTH HERE AND ABROAD!

As we enter 2026 we are also feeling the deadly effects of the June 28, 2024 Supreme Court decision Grant’s Pass v. Johnson, as well as executive orders by state governors and the President that further criminalize homelessness and poverty. We are seeing an increase in the deadly practice of sweeps and in the incarceration of our homeless communities.

Simultaneously we are facing massive cuts to benefit programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Hospitals continue to close while we build new prisons and forced labor camps for the unhoused and terrorize and imprison undocumented workers. Our nation’s military budget nearing one trillion dollars annually. Sixty (60%) percent of the United States population reports they are struggling to make ends meet while the top ten billionaires grew their collective wealth by $698 billion dollars in the last year alone.

We know there’s enough food to feed everyone and that there are 24 empty homes for every single individual in need of one while 1000 souls will freeze to death on the streets this year and homelessness and poverty continues to rise at record numbers! We declare NO MORE.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has shown that poverty is the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S., and 800 people die every day in the richest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world! Our system is FAILING – and we are DYING as a result of a system that puts PROFIT over our lives. We mourn, lift up and honor the names of those we’ve lost.

Join us, the National Union of the Homeless and the Nonviolent Medicaid Army, as we organize to unite our class to end this system that profits from poverty, homelessness and death and to create a society organized around our human rights to health, housing, food and lives of dignity so that we can together thrive, not merely survive.

YOU ONLY GET WHAT YOU ARE ORGANIZED TO TAKE!

Mission

The heart and soul of the National Union of the Homeless is to commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for social and economic justice for all. We dedicate ourselves to raising the awareness of our sisters and brothers, to planning a sustained struggle and to building an organization that can obtain freedom through revolutionary perseverance. We pledge to deepen our personal commitment to end all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, and abuse. True solidarity demands that we create not only the new society, but also the new human being.

The National Union of the Homeless Winter Offensive Organizing Drive

The Main slogans used and promoted throughout the WO are: 

  • One paycheck or healthcare crisis away from poverty and homelessness!
  • Homeless not Helpless!
  • No Housing, No Peace!
  • You Only Get What You Are Organized to Take!
  • No Room at the Inn!
  • How Can You Worship a Homeless man on Sunday and Ignore One on Monday?!
  • Put Christ Back into Christmas; the feeder of the hungry, the healer of the sick, the homeless revolutionary fighting for the liberation of the least of us. 
  • Jesus did not ask for a co-pay! 

Partnership with Freedom Church of the Poor for National Virtual Events

The Important Winter Days highlighted during the WO are:

  • Launch Event Sunday 11/23 – Zoom and Livestream
  • December 10th –Anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Right (UDHR)  – PEOPLE’S HEARING 7-9PM WED 12/10
  • December 21st – Annual National Homeless Memorial Day  – Services with FCOP
  • December 25th  – Birth of Jesus Christ – Jesus was a Revolutionary – Services with FCOP
  • New Year and the making of Revolutionary Resolutions for next year work of the National Homeless Union and its locals. – Social Media campaign  – What is your revolutionary resolution for 2026
  • January 15th – Birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. –Day of action and organizing

www.nationalunionofthehomeless.org

2020NUH@gmail.com

Kristin Colangelo – National Organizer – 609-405-7037 – Text is best

We are also on Facebook, Instagram and TicTock

Donate on #GivingTuesday to Put People First! PA’s member-led, staff-free work!

Donate on #GivingTuesday to Put People First! PA’s member-led, staff-free work!

Did you know? Put People First! PA is the only organization in Pennsylvania that is led by people who are on or unfairly excluded from Medicaid. We are also member-led and staff-free, meaning that all of our resources go directly into building leadership and political independence among Pennsylvania’s 13 million people across 67 counties. We’re 13 years old this year and continuing our fight for Healthcare As a Human Right – which unites the poor and dispossessed working class across all lines of division, including the urban and rural divide.

Our funds go toward things like our Annual Membership Assembly (this year’s was the largest ever!); helping leaders through periods of crisis with Community Care Funds; travel and transport to build our regional Healthcare Rights Committees; sending delegations across the country and internationally for schools, conferences and exchanges; and of course the everyday costs of our organizing – Zoom lines, printing, food, childcare, and more! There are multiple ways to contribute:

  1. Support one or more of our brave leaders on their MightyCause group fundraiser page
  2. Go traditional through the Put People First! PA website.
  3. On the apps? Donate through Venmo @UWATreasurer, write Put People First! PA in the note
Fundraising Graphic with a person seated with a black sign that says "healthcare is a human right" and two others holding a red banner.

We’ve just completed another powerful year of organizing in Pennsylvania and helping to lead the national Nonviolent Medicaid Army in 12 states, and expanding our Medicaid Cut-offs Organizing Drive with a new toolkit to assert our welfare rights in the face of SNAP cuts and work requirements. As the economic crisis deepens and political conditions shift, there are significant dangers but also important opportunities. Our work to identify, develop and unite leaders in the movement to end poverty led by the poor is more necessary than ever.

Share this link to support our work: bit.ly/DonatePutPeopleFirstPA

Image says "March out as the poor" with bees inside a circle and a sea of people in the background
  • A contribution of $500 provides a year of Community Care Funds for a leader in crisis.
  • A contribution of $366 pays for one person to attend our yearly Membership Assembly in full.
  • A contribution of $100 pays for a gas card for a Coordinator.
  • A contribution of $45 pays for childcare for a Healthcare Rights Committee meeting.

We know these are difficult times and every amount truly helps. We appreciate all of our coordinators, leaders, mobilizers, our extended network of supporters, and the working class a whole. Thank you for all you do to Put People First!

Donate today to Put People First!

Donations are tax deductible and will be processed through our sibling organization and fiscal sponsor, United Workers Association. Their tax ID number is: 20-4345458

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