Monday, November 23, 2009
Teenager denied lifesaving transplant in US: National appeal to save Eduardo's life
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While heath care reform dominates the national debate, there is a 14 year-old boy in Kansas City, Kansas named Eduardo Loredo who could die any day.
Eduardo is being denied a heart transplant because he does not have health insurance (or enough money) to pay for a heart transplant and follow up care. Eduardo was diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy, a serious disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and eventually stops working altogether, and was hospitalized at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO beginning in July 2009. Eduardo was sent home from Children’s Mercy Hospital on October 14, 2009 and told that he had the potential to live another two or three years, but that he could also die any day. Missouri’s Medicaid program is generally available only to citizens and certain legal immigrants who meet a five year waiting period. These restrictive rules prevent Eduardo from qualifying for health insurance that would cover both the transplant procedure and the long-term follow up care required to ensure a successful transplant. Without this coverage, the total cost of the transplant would cost his family $500,000. Children’s Mercy Hospital told Eduardo that without an up-front payment of $100,000, he would not even be able to get on the waiting list for a heart transplant. While Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, MO originally offered to perform the transplant surgery for no cost, this offer was later retracted. His family is simply being told that his life is not a priority.
On December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These human rights include necessities such as housing, education, food, and health care. Although the United States signed this declaration, we are still waiting for our government to guarantee these rights.
Martin Luther King, Jr declared: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Whoever we are—whatever the color of our skin or how much money we have in the bank account or where we come from—we all deserve the chance to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. And so does Eduardo.
The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) calls on hospitals, doctors, health clinics, politicians, religious people, and all people of conscience to take responsibility for Eduardo’s life, and help him to live. Please contact Cheri Honkala, national Organizer of PPEHRC, at 267-439-8419 or cherippehrc@hotmail.comto help us save Eduardo.
As our government continues the battle to reform our health care system, may they look at Eduardo and declare: ENOUGH.
Enough people have died as a result of being barred from medical care that could have saved their lives.
Not one more Death. Health Care is a Human Right!
Labels: Cheri Honkala, Eduardo Loredo, Health Care, Kansas, Kansas City
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Opening Reception of PPEHRC's National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center
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Save the Date!!
Opening Reception of
PPEHRC's National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center
December 10th, 2009 (International Human Rights Day)
7:00 to 9:00 PM
1542 E. Montgomery Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19125
In observation of International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2009, join us to celebrate the opening of PPEHRC's new National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center in Philadelphia.
Located in Kensington, the poorest neighborhood in the state of Pennsylvania, where the KWRU and the PPEHRC were born, the PPEHRC's new National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center will serve as a local and national educational and organizing center for a growing movement for the Human Rights to Health Care, Housing, Education, Food, Water and Jobs at a Living Wage, led by poor and homeless families.
As thousands of people in Philadelphia, and millions of people in the US and around the world suffer from growing poverty and skyrocketing unemployment, hunger and homelessness, and as the rampant denial of health care in the U.S. continues to take the lives of people we love, join us in building a movement for Economic Human Rights.
Please contact Cheri Honkala at 267-439-8419 or cherippehrc@hotmail.com for more information or to RSVP for the December 10th opening.
Opening Reception of
PPEHRC's National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center
December 10th, 2009 (International Human Rights Day)
7:00 to 9:00 PM
1542 E. Montgomery Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19125
In observation of International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2009, join us to celebrate the opening of PPEHRC's new National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center in Philadelphia.
Located in Kensington, the poorest neighborhood in the state of Pennsylvania, where the KWRU and the PPEHRC were born, the PPEHRC's new National Education, Organizing and Cultural Center will serve as a local and national educational and organizing center for a growing movement for the Human Rights to Health Care, Housing, Education, Food, Water and Jobs at a Living Wage, led by poor and homeless families.
As thousands of people in Philadelphia, and millions of people in the US and around the world suffer from growing poverty and skyrocketing unemployment, hunger and homelessness, and as the rampant denial of health care in the U.S. continues to take the lives of people we love, join us in building a movement for Economic Human Rights.
Please contact Cheri Honkala at 267-439-8419 or cherippehrc@hotmail.com for more information or to RSVP for the December 10th opening.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Denver VOICE article: Fulfilling King’s Last Dream
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This will be in the December issue of the Denver VOICE streetpaper.
Fulfilling King's Last Dream
Fulfilling King's Last Dream
by: Jason Bosch
This past November I visited Glendora, Mississippi to meet up with Cheri Honkala and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).
Glendora is where 14-year-old Emmitt Till's body was found in 1955 after he was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman (an all white jury later acquitted his white murders). Today racism in Glendora is less prominent than the devastating poverty of the area.
On a nearby plantation (they still call it that) I saw a row of what appeared to be old abandoned sharecropper shacks alongside railroad tracks. Windows were broken. Ripped screen doors barely hung from rusty hinges. Grey wood panels rotted beneath rusted metal rooftops. As we approached, several beautiful children peered through the screen door of one of the units. Their mothers came out. Two sisters, one who later explained to me that she had been evicted from one of the other units (in equal disrepair) because she could not afford the $135 rent. They were now all living together in this one small unit. The other sister stood with her back to me wearing a heavy coat with the hood covering her head. I wanted to tell her that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.
While their case is extreme, these two sisters are not alone in their poverty. More and more are becoming poor and poorer as mega-corporations play city against city, state against state, nation against nation, and worker against worker to see who will sacrifice the most for the least amount in return. Wages drop or remain stagnant as the cost of living rises annually. The few remaining safety nets and consumer protections are being dismantled leaving the common people isolated in competition for decreasing lower and middle class wealth. Home foreclosures are at their highest since the Great Depression (1 notice every 13 seconds in the U.S. according to responsiblelending.org). Unemployment is the highest ever recorded and the experts almost all unanimously agree that things are going to get worse.
I was in Glendora helping to organize the "March to Fulfill the Dream", which will begin in Marks, Mississippi on April 4th, 2010 (on the anniversary of MLK Jr.'s assassination). This historic two and a half month long march will be led primarily by poor and homeless people and supported by musicians, artists, poets, performers, actors, photographers, filmmakers, and other cultural visionaries from across America. It will travel from the Mississippi Delta up through the rust-belt and culminate in Detroit at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum on June 22nd with the aim of building multiracial solidarity among poor people to demand housing, health care, living wage jobs, and education.
In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had organized a similar Poor People's Campaign as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement. They planned to lobby congress (which King's said had demonstrated "hostility to the poor") for an "Economic Bill of Rights", which included things such as housing and a guaranteed income for all Americans. They organized a poor people's march to begin in Marks, Mississippi on May 12th but King was assassinated on April 4th, one month before the march was to happen. The organizers went ahead with the march to Washington D.C. where "resurrection city" was built by the poor on the mall. That march faced many problems but the vision remained intact. The 2010 March to Fulfill the Dream intends on reawakening King's last dream.
December 6th, 2009 from 1:00 – 4:30 PM at the Mercury Café (2199 California St., Denver) ArgusFest will host a special event with music, film, poetry, and joined by Lee Ballinger of PPEHRC sharing information about the upcoming march and cultural events being organized across the country in support. The event will coincide with our 6th Annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar. We are calling on artists, musicians, poets, performers, and supporters to come learn more about the fastest growing social movement in America today and become involved. For more information visit http://www.argusfest.org or call Jason at 303-669-7286
This past November I visited Glendora, Mississippi to meet up with Cheri Honkala and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).
Glendora is where 14-year-old Emmitt Till's body was found in 1955 after he was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman (an all white jury later acquitted his white murders). Today racism in Glendora is less prominent than the devastating poverty of the area.
On a nearby plantation (they still call it that) I saw a row of what appeared to be old abandoned sharecropper shacks alongside railroad tracks. Windows were broken. Ripped screen doors barely hung from rusty hinges. Grey wood panels rotted beneath rusted metal rooftops. As we approached, several beautiful children peered through the screen door of one of the units. Their mothers came out. Two sisters, one who later explained to me that she had been evicted from one of the other units (in equal disrepair) because she could not afford the $135 rent. They were now all living together in this one small unit. The other sister stood with her back to me wearing a heavy coat with the hood covering her head. I wanted to tell her that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.
While their case is extreme, these two sisters are not alone in their poverty. More and more are becoming poor and poorer as mega-corporations play city against city, state against state, nation against nation, and worker against worker to see who will sacrifice the most for the least amount in return. Wages drop or remain stagnant as the cost of living rises annually. The few remaining safety nets and consumer protections are being dismantled leaving the common people isolated in competition for decreasing lower and middle class wealth. Home foreclosures are at their highest since the Great Depression (1 notice every 13 seconds in the U.S. according to responsiblelending.org). Unemployment is the highest ever recorded and the experts almost all unanimously agree that things are going to get worse.
I was in Glendora helping to organize the "March to Fulfill the Dream", which will begin in Marks, Mississippi on April 4th, 2010 (on the anniversary of MLK Jr.'s assassination). This historic two and a half month long march will be led primarily by poor and homeless people and supported by musicians, artists, poets, performers, actors, photographers, filmmakers, and other cultural visionaries from across America. It will travel from the Mississippi Delta up through the rust-belt and culminate in Detroit at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum on June 22nd with the aim of building multiracial solidarity among poor people to demand housing, health care, living wage jobs, and education.
In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had organized a similar Poor People's Campaign as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement. They planned to lobby congress (which King's said had demonstrated "hostility to the poor") for an "Economic Bill of Rights", which included things such as housing and a guaranteed income for all Americans. They organized a poor people's march to begin in Marks, Mississippi on May 12th but King was assassinated on April 4th, one month before the march was to happen. The organizers went ahead with the march to Washington D.C. where "resurrection city" was built by the poor on the mall. That march faced many problems but the vision remained intact. The 2010 March to Fulfill the Dream intends on reawakening King's last dream.
December 6th, 2009 from 1:00 – 4:30 PM at the Mercury Café (2199 California St., Denver) ArgusFest will host a special event with music, film, poetry, and joined by Lee Ballinger of PPEHRC sharing information about the upcoming march and cultural events being organized across the country in support. The event will coincide with our 6th Annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar. We are calling on artists, musicians, poets, performers, and supporters to come learn more about the fastest growing social movement in America today and become involved. For more information visit http://www.argusfest.org or call Jason at 303-669-7286
Thursday, November 12, 2009
PPEHRC presents testimony to UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, at the National Forum on the Human Right to Housing
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On November 8th, PPEHRC member groups from across the nation presented testimony to the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik at the National Forum on the Human Right to Housing. Special Rapporteur Rolnik was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in May of 2008 to examine the crisis surrounding homelessness as well as inadequate and unaffordable housing, as part of a larger movement for an adequate standard of living for all people in the US and the rest of the world. This is a historic first official visit to the United States for the Rapporteur, who spent 18 days travelling the country meeting with housing experts and people experiencing housing issues.
In her final stop, Special Rapporteur Rolnik hosted a town hall meeting to hear the voices of over 20 organizations that deal with housing issues to include in her final report, which will be submitted to the United Nations HRC in March 2010. All of the testimony along with an expanded report will be published on the Internet at restorehousingrights.org. We listened to several hours of testimony. Testimony was given by PPEHRC member groups from the Gulf of Mississippi, St. Petersburg, Florida, Rhode Island, California, Chicago, Illinois, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The movement organized and presented a packet of written testimony, from PPEHRC groups in attendance as well as those who could not make it, to the Special Rapporteur. Cheri Honkala, national organizer for PPEHRC, insisted that the focus of the forum be on poor people as the central leadership in the movement to end poverty. We are hopeful that the final report will have this crucial emphasis on the stories of those of us who are suffering daily with housing issues.
The National Forum on the Human Right to Housing continued the following day with workshops and planning sessions with the people affected by the crisis and advocacy groups in attendance centered on how to end homelessness. Cheri Honkala participated in a panel entitled, “Development-based and the Human Right to Housing” along with Coalition to Protect Public Housing organizer, J.R. Fleming and Erika Sipp and Mr. Bonner of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants. We talked about the importance of ratifying the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
Because of the moving testimony given on behalf of the Minnesota 5, a lawyer has stepped forward to represent the women in their struggle to hold onto their homes. More information on this exciting development will be released very soon. We look forward to other people in the legal community stepping forward to assist members of an organized movement to end poverty.
PPEHRC Groups Represented:
Minneapolis PPEHRC
Kensington Welfare Rights Union - Philadelphia
Fair Valley York, PA
Western Regional Advocacy Project – California
Coalition to Protect Public Housing – Chicago
Waveland Watchers – Mississippi Gulf
St. Petersburg, Florida PPEHRC
National PPEHRC
Labels: Cheri Honkala, Erika Sipp, J. R. Flemming, National Alliance of HUD Tenants, UN Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik United Nations Human Rights Council
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
EDUARDO NEEDS A HEART...and he can't get one because he does not have health insurance
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A 14 year old boy named Eduardo Loredo was hospitalized at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, on July 2009. It was discovered that his heart was enlarging, making the pumping of the blood difficult. Eduardo has been at Children's for 3 months since July. Eduardo was given medication to improve his heart condition, but the medication did not have an effect on his heart. Doctors eventually told the family that Eduardo would need a heart transplant. Children's Mercy worked with St. Luke's Hospital to ensure that Eduardo would receive the transplant and Karina, Eduardo's mom, was told by St. Luke hospital that St. Luke hospital would pay for all the operation expenses. A few days Karina received a phone call from St. Luke's Hospital letting her know that they had made a mistake and Eduardo would not be receiving the heart transplant. Moreover, Children's Mercy hospital told Karina that in order to put her son on the waiting list for a heart, the family would need $100,000 as a down payment. Eduardo and his family don't have health insurance. On Wed. Oct. 14th, after being at Children's Mercy for 3 months, Eduardo was sent home by the hospital. He was denied being place on the waiting list and denied the heart transplant. The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign have made their priority letting everyone know in our community and the nation that EDUARDO needs a HEART transplant and that this inhumanity and injustice against Eduardo and his family will not be tolerated.
Please, help us spread the word and let us know if you know of anyone who could possibly help Eduardo.
Please contact:
The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club at: lunajccc@gmail.com
Nicole Vengrove from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign at nicvengrove@gmail.com.
Labels: Eduardo Loredo, Health Care
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Organize for health reform in Philadelphia!
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The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) will be hosting a brainstorming meeting to organize for health reform in Philadelphia. Help prevent more from dying from the lack of health insurance!
What: Organizing for health reform
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 6-8pm
Location: Atonement Lutheran Church, 1542 E Montgomery Ave, 2nd floor, Philadelphia.
Please RSVP (or just show up!) to: Nicole Vengrove nicvengrove@gmail.com or Cheri Honkola cheriPPEHRC@hotmail.com
What: Organizing for health reform
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 6-8pm
Location: Atonement Lutheran Church, 1542 E Montgomery Ave, 2nd floor, Philadelphia.
Please RSVP (or just show up!) to: Nicole Vengrove nicvengrove@gmail.com or Cheri Honkola cheriPPEHRC@hotmail.com
Labels: Health Care, Philadelphia, PPEHRC
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