Pennsylvania Poor People’s Campaign Legislative Demands

Poverty is the 4th leading cause of death in this country and it doesn’t have to be that way. We won’t be silent anymore.

We are tired of being either blamed or ignored altogether. We are tired of having to beg and grovel for years to get our elected officials to do what is in the best interests of the majority of people. We are tired of them acting like we work for them instead of them working for us, and we are tired of them doing the work of big money special interests.

We demand justice, we demand democracy, we demand a society built around the needs of the least of these - who are the most of us - and not around the greed of billionaires. Our deadline is not the next election, our deadline is a society where everybody has a right to live.

We are a national movement of the 140 million poor and near poor people in this country. Our goals are to abolish poverty, the brutal war economy and denial of health care, ecological devastation, systemic racism, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. And we are a movement that votes. Poor people have power as a voting block. In PA in 2020, the margin of victory was 1.2% and the share of low-income voters was 34.12%. Our votes are not an endorsement - they are a demand.

  • There are 4.2 million poor and low income people in Pennsylvania, and in our Governor’s budget address in February, he did not even say the word ‘poverty.’
  • By the end of March 2024, over 670,000 Pennsylvanians will have lost their Medicaid since the end of pandemic protections.
  • There is a crisis in our rural hospitals and all hospitals serving poor people. The latest hospital closure is Penn Highlands Elk closing its maternity services.
  • Pennsylvania produces 1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and we poison our air, land, and water. One of the biggest climate disasters in recent years occurred right here in Pennsylvania outside of Johnstown, the poorest small city in the state. In 13 days at the end of 2022, 1 billion cubic feet of methane escaped from a natural gas storage well. That single release erased emissions from half of the electric vehicles sold in the US last year.
  • Poor and low-income Pennsylvania households spend 8 times as much of their income on energy costs as the average household.
  • We are mean to our immigrant neighbors and we fail to provide basic human rights to immigrants. If our Pennsylvania tax dollars stopped going toward deportations and border control, we could instead subsidize 104,000 public housing units.
  • Our minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 / hour, and 31% of the workforce earns less than $15 / hour, even though a real living wage is $25 / hour.
  • Students in Pennsylvania are currently in almost $80 million of lunch debt, and some counties are now sending children’s debt to collections agencies.
  • Pennsylvania alone contributes more than 135 million dollars through our taxes to fund the genocide that is currently taking place in Gaza. (Source, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights)
  • Our elected officials are being legally bribed with unlimited gifts, campaign contributions, side jobs, revolving door jobs, and dark money.
  • Our votes are distorted by gerrymandering, closed primaries, and a two-party system that structurally locks out other parties.

What is Happening in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania is not run by the Golden Rule of Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, it is run by the rule, The Guy with The Gold Makes the Rule. Our state government needs to be responsive to the people, not to the oil and gas industry, or the healthcare industry, or wall street, or any other big corporate special interest.

If our elected officials in both parties want to show that they work for the people and not for big money special interests, we need to see proof.

WE DEMAND:

  • A just immigration system that welcomes our neighbors and is free from the systemic racism that seeks to divide and conquer the working class. We demand the immediate passage of:

    • HB 769: Drivers Licenses for all, regardless of immigration status

    • Universal Representation to expand the access of legal representation in cases of immigration

  • A healthcare system that prioritizes people over profit and ensures that healthcare is a human right and not a privilege of the ruling class. We demand the immediate passage of:

    •  SB 955 - Restoring the Adult Dental Benefit in Medicaid; Funding the restoration of the benefit in the 2024 budget

    • Establishing an office of the Public Healthcare Advocate in PA

    • Expanding Medicaid eligibility.

  • Every student deserves to learn in an environment that is free from discrimination, harassment, and the criminalization of poverty. We demand the immediate passage of:

    • HB 1997, HB 1998, HB 1999, and HB 2024: To make schools into welcoming places and not places of hatred and discrimination based on somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

    • HB and SB 180: The cancellation of school lunch debt and universal school lunch!

  • Every Pennsylvanian has the constitutional right (Article 1:27) to clean air, land, and water. We demand the immediate passage of:

    • A full stop to all fracking and all new fossil fuel development.

    • A massive unionized jobs program to immediately and rapidly remediate our ecological devastation and transition to a green economy based in love and respect for each other and our world.

  • We do not trust our State Legislature or Governor to do anything fundamentally different for the people of Pennsylvania, because corruption is legal and our public officials are systemically corrupted by legal bribery. We demand the immediate passage of:

    • HB 484: The Gift Ban.

    • Campaign Finance Reform, a Dark Money ban, a Side Jobs ban, and the closing of the revolving door between the State Capitol and lobbying firms.

    • We need to make our votes more meaningful, we demand Ranked Choice Voting, HB 1178!

  • We demand a minimum wage of $25 / hour and the raising of social service eligibility limits!

  • We demand safe and strong communities!

  • We demand housing, transportation, and education as fully funded human rights!

  • We demand the abolition of poverty!

  • Somebody’s hurting our people. It’s gone on far too long. And we won’t be silent anymore.