On October 1, 1999, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) launched the March of the Americas, a month-long march from Washington, DC to New York City organized to call attention to the ways in which the US government violates the economic human rights of its impoverished citizens. Starting in Lafayette Park outside the White House, the march participants (the majority of whom are themselves poor and/or homeless) held rallies at various seats of political and economic power. The march ended outside the United Nations on November 1, where KWRU representatives delivered documentation of the US government's economic rights abuses. They met with the office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. The documentation presented to the United Nations included the Poor People's Report on Economic Human Rights, which contains stories of economic human rights violations and the efforts to organize a movement to end poverty.

  The March of the Americas is the latest tactic in the KWRU's Economic Human Rights Campaign. The campaign uses mobilizations and direct actions as a means to educate the public about the growing disparities between the rich and poor in this country (and abroad), not only in terms of income but also in access to housing, health care, education, and employment opportunities.

  The Kensington Welfare Rights Union was founded in 1991 by six "welfare mothers" in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia who sought to organize to protest proposed cuts in public assistance. Eight years later, the KWRU has approximately four thousand members, and is known both nationally and internationally as a model for organizing welfare recipients, the homeless, and the working poor. Despite the exponential growth in the organization, the KWRU continues to be directed and staffed by poor and homeless individuals, keeping true to its commitment to empowering this disenfranchised portion of the population.

  The March of the Americas has two principal goals, both of which are aimed towards bringing about a radical transformation in the political and economic order. The first is to give poor people a voice in the debate on welfare reform, as well as in the making of other social policies. The KWRU argues that the poor have been historically marginalized in policy debates, and that a just welfare system will never be created unless this is rectified. Because, as the KWRU maintains, the poor have few opportunities to speak within the "halls of power," its demands for economic justice must be voiced primarily through direct actions and other community-based events. The March of the Americas exemplifies this tactic. By holding events at strategic locations such as the White House and United Nations, the march seeks to bring the KWRU's message to the attention of key public officials as well as to the public as a whole. The ultimate goal, however, is to open up the formal policy-making process and other spaces of political power for these presently excluded groups. Until this is achieved, the KWRU will use tactics like the March of the Americas in order to provide the poor with alternative channels to express their demands.

  The second goal of the March of the Americas is to build an international economic justice movement. Although the primary focus of the organization is Kensington, its members assert that a genuine transformation of the economic order will only be achieved by a broad-based, global movement. The March of the Americas was organized with this goal in mind. The name itself reflects the desire of the organization to broaden its thinking about the struggle against poverty, and to link the struggle in the US to those taking place in other parts of the hemisphere. One of the key speakers at the rally held in Lafayette Park was Marina Dos Santos, a representative of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), who eloquently illustrated the commonalities between the efforts of her organization and those of the KWRU. Links were established with other anti-poverty organizations in Latin America during the process of organizing the march that either sent representatives or are holding similar events in their own countries.

  The march not only seeks to create links with activists in other countries but also to build a coalition of organizations to join forces around economic justice issues in this country. Again, the march organizers chose the speakers at the opening rally in order to demonstrate the breadth of organizations that were supporting the march, and also to give key supporters a visible role in the activity. Other key speakers included Patricia Ireland of the National Organization of Women, a representative of the Labor Party, a representative from the AFL-CIO, representative of the Coalition for the Homeless, and the 50 Years Is Enough Network Director, Njoki Njoroge Njehû.