Resolution of the Poverty Summit

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We are clear that poverty is not the result of personal failures. It is the product of an economic system that increases and deepens poverty as it concentrates the abundance of this country and the world in the hands of the few. Those who control that system, with governments acting as their agents, have shredded even the “safety net” that historically met some basic human needs. They have abandoned those they no longer need. They have created a growing class of dispossessed. We are conscious members of that class.

Through our groups and organizations, we have fought for decades for reforms. It is clear to us now that our efforts have been, and continue to be, necessary--but not sufficient. We are clear that we must unite as never before to demand that the abundance of this country be used to meet the basic human needs of its people—no exceptions.

We commit to that unity. As a first step, we hereby create an Assembly to End Poverty through which we can share our knowledge and skills, support each other, educate and engage our neighbors and friends, and act democratically and collectively to press our demands and secure our claims to economic justice.

To implement this call concretely, we charge the USSF Poverty Working Group to draft a constitution for the Assembly to End Poverty to be presented to us for deliberation and ratification within three months. And we commit to act collectively in our local communities through our groups and organizations on a national day of action to be proposed with that constitution.

Finally, we commit to return to our communities with the clarity that we are dispossessed but not defeated, that we have a just claim to the abundance we have produced, and that we must--and can--take back our country and governments to live responsibly and respectfully on this planet with all the world’s peoples.
Submitted by the Poverty Summit PMA, June 25, 2010

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