Hey everyone!
WRAP Hosts UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights – plus, check out our match and donate today!
We have a match in November and December! A pool of generous people will match all donations 1:1 up to $15,000 – a $100 gift will become $200! So please donate today and support the important work of WRAP in fighting criminalizing of people who are poor and houseless and for a community that houses, and takes care of, everyone!
Through WRAP research and the Without Housing Campaign, the Federal mass-divestment in affordable housing and subsequent massive growth in homelessness became a national discussion and put pressure and focus on restoring national funding for affordable housing. Through street outreach and further intensive research, WRAP also began documenting the steep increase in laws across the country that criminalize people for being poor and homeless.
Through further street outreach, 1000’s of interviews of homeless people across the country, we began to document their ideas for solutions to these violent laws. We wrote legislation, the Right to Rest Act, and began organizing from our state bases in California, Colorado and Oregon around our Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign. In 2018 we are continuing these statewide campaigns and organizing for housing and human rights, fought for by WRAP’s core members, accountable community organizations! We put this struggle within the context of current as well as historic criminalization, including Jim Crow, Anti-Okie, Ugly Laws. We fight from an intersectional perspective and know that classism and racism, sexism and ableism work hand in hand to instigate the violence we see against all of our communities.
As with all WRAP campaigns, the Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign (HBRC) brings together grassroots, social justice groups from across the Western U.S. to build our strength and power together while organizing from the base and strengths of each of our own communities.
WRAP members will be hosting two United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteurs and hosting town hall meetings. First, the Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights in December (in Los Angeles and San Francisco) and again in January with the Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (in San Francisco). UN Special Rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back, in an unpaid capacity, on specific human rights themes. They also make annual presentations to the General Assembly committee dealing with human rights issues. This shows our leadership and our message is getting out and our power is building!
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