Part I

On Day 7 of the March of the Americas, actor Danny Glover awarded the Institute for Policy Studies' Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award to the group spearheading the march, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a small multi-racial group of poor and homeless people from North Philadelphia, the poorest neighborhood in Pennsylvania. Referring to the group and its Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Glover said:

"It is our fight. It is the only fight. It is the only fight. It is a fight to say what's important-not the accumulation of wealth, but how we treat our people, how we educate our children, how we look on those who are poor, how we provide health care. That is the fight we have to talk about. Anything other than that is bullshit."

Bruce Springsteen--on each night of his late September (six day) stand in Philadelphia--plugged the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the March before introducing "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and/or "The Streets of Philadelphia." Ani DiFranco has publicized the March at her concerts. Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Irene Ferrara, John McCutcheon and Dar Williams have all taken part in the march, as have dozens of other folk singers, rock musicians and hip hop crews.

The March of the Americas is the culmination of over two years of documentation of violations of the fifty-year-old United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, particularly Articles 23, "The right to jobs at a living wage and just conditions of work"; Article 25, "The right to well-being of a person and their family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services; and Article 26, the right to a quality education. The Kensington Welfare Rights Union actually chartered a bus last summer and drove to 34 different cities and towns throughout the country documenting violations of these rights and networking with other poor people's organizations.

That work led to a Poor People's Summit in Philadelphia last October. It was at that conference that a coalition of migrant farmworkers from Immokalee, Florida proposed a month-long March of the Americas. The March would show the solidarity of poor people throughout the western hemisphere in holding the United States government accountable for its violations of these human rights. A year later, over forty such groups have made the March of the Americas happen. Groups like the National Welfare Rights Union, Oakland's Women's Economic Agenda Project, Jobs with Justice, Asian Americans United, the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, Kensington and Immokalee have been joined by representatives of the Labor Party, the National Organization of Women, the United Auto Workers and students from Albion and Kalamazoo in Michigan, Sarah Lawrence, Cornell, NYU, Duke, Emory and ETS-Atlanta, Haverford, Villanova, Swarthmore, Temple, Eastern College and the University of Pennsylvania. And the list is truly international, with groups taking part from Toronto and Quebec, as well as Haiti, Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

And yet this is a case study in the limits of star power and the disinterest of the mainstream media in grassroots movements. Despite the fact that a march such as this one-led by and for poor people-is nearly miraculous all by itself, and despite the fact that all of these artists have shown their support, so far, the March of the Americas is not even a blip on the mainstream media's radar screen.

Part II

Having written for the newsletter, Rock & Rap Confidential (RRC) for over a decade, I knew such an event was likely to go unreported despite all that makes it unique and important. That's RRC's role. Former Rolling Stone editor Dave Marsh started RRC in 1983 because he knew that no one in the mainstream media was going to help musicians and their audiences face their common concerns with the Recession. RRC's top priority would be to build bridges between artists and their audiences. Over the next decade, RRC would be one of the loudest voices against music censorship, while bringing together musicians, labor activists, poor people's organizations and others fighting social injustice. We have followed the growth of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) since its founding in 1991, through its rich history which has been documented in two films, Poverty Outlaw (Skylight 1997) and Outriders (Skylight 1999), and featured in the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Zucchino, The Myth of the Welfare Queen (Scribners 1997).

After Steve Earle introduced KWRU to the international Folk Alliance conference held in Albuquerque last February, the entire staff of RRC agreed to meet in Philadelphia for Day 16 of the March, which was dubbed "Music Day." In truth, every day of the March has been a music day, with musicians joining the March periodically and others sending taped music to be played during the March. What has happened since the March began October 1st has exceeded anyone's expectations.

When 2/3s of the Kansas City delegation to the March of the Americas arrived at the airport around midnight, Friday, October 15th, I assumed we might have to wait a while to catch a ride out to the marchers' campsite. I hadn't talked to the folks at KWRU for a couple of weeks, and, though I had given them flight information, I assumed I'd have to call to get someone to pick us up. My first step was to call, but I found myself waving out the window to my ride, already there and ready to go. Throughout our visit, the level of organization was astounding.

We were driven to the campsite for the evening, on and around the steps of the State Office building in downtown Philadelphia. Two rap crews, Name Squad and Acoustic Architects, had already performed that evening, and those few who were still awake looked beat and ready to go to bed when we arrived. Tents were set up, while some were out in the open in sleeping bags.

Cheri Honkala, the most outspoken leader of KWRU, was still hard at work. She explained that the police made them move the portijohns (to who knows where) earlier, so it was going to be a long night. And then she instructed us where to sleep, in an old church van affectionately dubbed "The Blue Flame," perhaps because it was blue and because it had a cross in flames on the outside of it.

The temperatures dropped significantly that night, but we slept well. In the morning, a van shuttled marchers to a nearby hospital to use the restroom, while others chose to walk. When I returned from the morning sink bath, Steve Earle was already there with RRC editor Cheryl Burns. He had marched the day before, and he was raring to go at it again. We started at about 10:00 a.m. and marched for about two miles before the first musical rally at the New Jerusalem Recovery Center.

After making connections between fighting for recovery and fighting a sick social system, Steve Earle sang "Christmas in Washington, " an indictment of the U.S. government for its abdication of responsibility to its people. It was appropriate because, as he called for Woody Guthrie to "come back," as he called for Jesus to "help us out," as he called for the resurrection of not only labor musicians like Joe Hill but also peoples' leaders such as Emma Goldman, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, all we had to do was take a look around at the men and women, the children, all ages of faces looking up at the flatbed truck stage to see what he was talking about. We had these people all around us-the poor and homeless leadership, the music industry people determined to walk it like they talk it, the welfare rights workers, the labor party leaders, and the many students. The song became a rallying cry for us to greet the day with a sense of our own history.

Similarly, when Jackson Browne took the stand to play a short set, his song that most clearly defined the moment was a recent one, "The Next Voice You Hear," which he insisted to the marchers, "will be your own." Singer Stefan Smith, who opens for Ani DiFranco on her next tour, also celebrated the moment with the title cut of his album, "Now is the Time."

Embodying the spirit of Guthrie, Hill and so many others, Earle, Browne and Smith would play all day long-during the march and at two different rallies, and then after dinner that evening and at a benefit concert thrown by Earle just a mile from the marcher's campsite. As they played on the back of a truck leading the march, the singer's amplified voices were often overwhelmed by the sounds of a busy city on a Saturday afternoon. But even at the back of the line of hundreds of marchers, the sight of these musicians playing up ahead was an inspiring testament to their commitment. It made the ten-mile walk--under a surprisingly hot October sun--a lot easier.

Music was a crucial, spontaneous part of the march that exploded from all directions. The marchers played the tapes sent in as well as well-known favorites like Nas and Lauryn Hill. At one point, a group of children in the back of the line broke into a chorus of the Sister Sledge's "We Are Family"; when the song actually caught on, they threw themselves into a second chorus with more abandon. At another point along the march, a group of drummers along the side of the road gave us new polyrhythms to energize our steps.

The real power of Music Day of the March of the Americas was best expressed by a friend of mine who commented that she didn't really feel she had done anything (she had), but she had just been there as a witness. Then she paused and said, "but I guess that's the point."

Music Day was about witnessing-each other and the vital community around us. It was about witnessing the commitment of musicians to the fight to end poverty, but, even more crucially, it was about the music community witnessing the vitality of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. We walked from the State Office Building in downtown Philadelphia through the poorest sections of North Philadelphia to cheers from people on the side of the road, raised fists and honking cars, often carrying a carload of children. We passed one neighborhood church after another with a large part of the congregation out on the front steps to greet us as we passed by. The marchers gained strength from this overwhelmingly positive community response, and all of us from other parts of the country were moved by the walk through North Philadelphia where the devastation of poverty-block upon block of boarded up homes and factories, the homeless sleeping in the factories, families of every race still streaming from whatever housing's left-is inescapable and unforgettable, and the people all but gave us a ticker tape parade.

The March was joined by a busload of representatives from the Industrial Union Council (IUC) of the New Jersey AFL-CIO at the shell of the Schmidt's Brewery on the edge of Kensington. As the homeless peeked out of the factory, four representatives of the IUC made stirring speeches. Then the labor music Solidarity Singers took the mic, followed by another set from Jackson Browne.

After that set, we walked to the Quaker meeting house in Old Philadelphia for dinner and a song by singer-songwriter Mati and another set by Jackson Browne. Browne closed his set with "Running on Empty," re-energizing and redefining the song in the presence of the road-weary marchers. Later that night at his very successful benefit, Steve Earle again sang "Christmas in Washington." He dedicated the song to the marchers, saying "Tonight KWRU are my heroes." Everywhere he looked, a witness was in sight.

-Danny Alexander