On May 10, faith, labor, and community leaders will convene in Chicago for a gathering entitled, “The People’s Agenda,” which seeks to build organizational unity “in unprecedented times,” according to the People’s Agenda website.
“Every day we are witnessing attacks on our communities, the expansion of war, and a deepening economic crisis,” reads a statement on the website. “People across the country are standing up, organizing, and mobilizing. This is a growing movement to defend human and civil rights, against exploitation and oppression.” The gathering is endorsed by IFCO: Pastors for Peace, Healthy Hood Chicago, the ANSWER Coalition, the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN), the Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability, and the Mexican ruling political party National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).
“Our strength lies in our unity,” said Rev. Claudia De la Cruz, the Executive Director of IFCO. “Whenever people have united across the lines of division – race, religion, immigration status – we’ve become an unstoppable force of transformation.”
Speakers at the People’s Agenda gathering include Manuel Castro of the MORENA party, Saul Garcia, a high school social studies teacher and leader in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Rev. Tanya Lozano Washington, chairwoman of Healthy Hood Chicago, Maram Safi of the Palestinian Youth Movement, Yanitza Carmona y Correa of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and others.
“We need a people’s agenda,” said Shawna Bowman, a pastor at the Friendship Presbyterian Church in Chicago, in a promotional video for the gathering. “Those of us working most closely with people on the ground are seeing how folks are already being impacted and hurting from the policies of this administration, and we know that trading in and out other billionaires in these spaces are not gonna make for the kind of radical change we’re looking for.”
“We are building an independent movement to protect what we’ve earned and fight for all we deserve: dignity, justice, and a future free from billionaires,” De la Cruz told Peoples Dispatch. “Their agenda has ruled for too long. Ours is just beginning, and our coming together in spaces of debate, exchange and conversation is a contribution to building the movement we so urgently need.”
