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:
On the apps? Donate through Venmo @UWATreasurer, write Put People First! PA in the note
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.
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!
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
In September, the Nonviolent Medicaid Army held simultaneous actions across more than 12 states with additional actions in the following days. At the beginning of each of these actions, leaders read this statement to politically ground and unify the action. Click here or below the watch the video! See below the statement for national HIGHLIGHTS!
Today, September 6, 2025, we are taking action together as the national Nonviolent Medicaid Army in more than 12 states across the South, Midwest, Appalachia and the Northeast to declare: Medicaid cuts = policy murder! We are exposing the violence of ongoing attacks on healthcare, the harm caused to our communities and how we’re coming together for support, survival and strategy. Healthcare is a human right!
This crisis didn’t start with this administration. One third of our people don’t have a primary doctor. Nearly half of us delay or don’t get care because of costs. Our working and housing conditions, the industrial food we eat, and the contamination of our air and water are making us sick. Further Medicaid cuts will result in hospital closures, impacting both rural, suburban, and urban communities while health care companies put profit before people’s lives. Millions more losing their healthcare and hundreds of hospitals on the chopping block is a national emergency in the richest country in the history of the world.
People on Medicaid are not the cause of skyrocketing healthcare costs. Those who are making millions – billions – off our sickness are the cause. Claiming that some of us deserve healthcare and others do not is an attempt to gaslight the American people. But we are not fooled. We know and see the truth. We all have a body, we were all made in the image of God, and we all deserve care. There is more than enough for everyone to have healthcare in this nation.
Today, September 6, we honor the birthday and lifelong work of Detroit labor leader and movement ancestor General Gordon Baker, Jr. who taught us to “make thinkers out of fighters and fighters out of thinkers” by continuing his work. We are building power and uniting across all lines of division, getting into step, and asserting our political independence. We won’t be silent anymore! Who are we? The Medicaid Army!
Hoosier Motorcade for Medicaid caravan through Indiana
The Wisconsin Poor People’s Campaign, partnered with the NVMA, take action in Monroe
NY NVMA speaks out in front of shuttered Mt Sinai Beth Israel hospital in NYC & in Albany
Ohio NVMA takes their first collective action at Summa Hospital in Akron
United Workers in Maryland rally across the urban and rural divide
Southern Story Share brings leaders together across geography on zoom
Mass NVMA demands more in Greenfield at at-risk hospital, Baystate Franklin Medical Center
Reflecting on her own conditions and highlighting the importance of our work during the Southern Story Share, Texas NVMA leader Denita voiced, “it’s important that we continue to organize. It’s important that we continue to build these states up. Because those of you who live in Texas [know], it takes three days for us to cross it, so we’re going to need a big army.”
The Nonviolent Medicaid Army is a growing militant force of poor and dispossessed working class people united across race, region, and religion who are on or unjustly excluded from Medicaid. We’re made up of people who know from our life experience that we need to unite to have a voice. No one else is going to advocate for us as effectively as we will for ourselves. We have the intelligence, creativity, and survival skills to make a way out of no way. The work requirements for SNAP jeopardize food security for millions of us. This toolkit will help us safeguard, unite, and organize our class through this current period.
Right now there are two different attacks happening on SNAP – the first is the immediate threat of benefits not being paid in November due to the federal government shutdown.
The second is the longer term problem of new work requirements after the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires, which could limit food stamps to 3 months every 3 years. These changes have already taken effect and the first 3 month period will be over on November 30th, which is why we have to act NOW.
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.
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, poetry, comedy and more.
On September 8, 2025, eight members of Put People First! PA (PPF-PA) held a peaceful sit-in in the lobby of the shuttered Crozer-Chester hospital, demanding that the county take back the hospital from Wall Street.
Outside, over 50 healthcare workers, local residents, and other PPF-PA members rallied in support. Inside, the “Crozer 8” prayed, sang, and shared testimonies about the devastation of the hospital closures, gathered from months of outreach in the community.
Within minutes, police were called, and after about 35 minutes they led the Crozer 8 out in handcuffs. We, the united poor demanding what we need to live, were arrested; Prospect Medical Holdings, and other entities that cause mass death and suffering by profiting off of our sickness and running hospitals into the ground, have yet to face consequences.
The Crozer 8 were criminally charged with “defiant trespass,” a third degree misdemeanor. Seven of our members were released on unsecured bail, while one member was forced to pay the maximum possible bail, $2500, in order to be released. All of the 8 are expecting to pay court fees of $300 each ($2400 total) as we go through the legal process.
As a politically-independent organization of the poor, with a small budget that comes from grassroots fundraising, we’re asking for your support in covering these costs.
November Saturday School of Struggle: Live from the VWC Membership Assembly
Join us for the November 2025 Saturday School of Struggle this Saturday, November 8th at **SPECIAL TIME** 1:30 pm ET (90 minutes).
This month we’ll be Live from the Vermont Workers Center’s Membership Assembly with the topic of Uniting the Poor Through the Fight for Our Health: Stories from the Front Lines!
The hybrid session for November’s Saturday School of Struggle will feature a discussion with leaders in Vermont and around the country on organizing in this moment, what’s on the horizon, and how we’re uniting the poor through the fight for our health!
Healthcare Rights Committee Meetings
Put People First! PA is organized into five regions: Southeast, Southwest, Central-Appalachia, South Central and Northeast. In each of these regions, members participate in twice a month meetings held by phone and online, organized around our healthcare struggles. If you’re new to Put People First! PA, attend a monthly Statewide Call or Saturday School or contact any of the Coordinators listed here to learn more.
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.
