With Grants Pass, Supreme Court Does Its Job as We Face a New Stage of State Violence.
We will take over houses and redistribute basic necessities.
A Statement from Poor People’s Army, June 29, 2024
At a time when more and more people lack adequate income and face threats of homelessness, the highest court in the United States just approved the criminalization of homelessness. The Supreme Court is acting exactly as designed. It is protecting private property for the rich elite, while the vast majority of humanity needs basic necessities (food, clothing, housing, healthcare, etc.) to become commonly owned and shared. What else can the powerful elite do except threaten state violence to those at the bottom?
People offhandedly call this era “late-stage capitalism” without analyzing precisely what it means. The decisions coming out of the Supreme Court–an unelected group of powerful lawmakers–continue to uphold the expansion of surveillance and domination by the ruling class. Capitalism is truly crumbling under its own weight, but as it collapses, the rich elite are trying to transform it into a class system that preserves their power. The new system being formed is not based on human labor or the buying and selling of goods, but on total domination through the control of machine and electronic labor.
The ruling elite know that the vast majority of humanity cannot thrive without sharing the immense productive power of this new economy. If the rest of us are united, we have the numbers to reclaim control of our lives and take back what we need to survive, and those in power understand this. The continued progress of science and technology means that every job can eventually be done without human labor. If we can’t use our labor to earn the money we need for the basic necessities of life, we will have to distribute them in some other way.
Capitalism was founded on the stolen land and lives of indigenous people and stolen labor and lives of countless people of African descent. It is also based on human exploitation; the threat of homelessness and starvation has forced us to sell our labor, but as human labor becomes less and less necessary, so does exploitation. What role will be left for those of us on the bottom? While figments of “freedom” and “democracy” are still projected by our nation’s rulers and business owners, they are incrementally increasing physical control through rulings in cases like Grants Pass v. Johnson, and psychological control through a culture of division and isolation within the general population.
Our greatest strength lies in building consciousness and unity among our new class–a class of people who will inevitably become permanently unemployed who must band together in order to sustain humanity, regardless of philosophy or ideology. The Poor People’s Army organizes people at the bottom–those thrown out of the system–by finding ways to keep them alive and training them for this historically new stage. People on the economic margins must be kept alive by any means necessary, and we should utilize tactics that make plain the contradictions in this era. According to the Feminist Mapping Collective, there are 10 vacant housing units for every 1 homeless person in Philadelphia. In Chicago there are 29, and in Detroit there are 53. In order to keep people alive and to organize, the Poor People’s Army has developed a method of taking over abandoned government-owned houses. With the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling, this tactic is necessary now more than ever.
The Poor People’s Army is organizing a national book tour of a new book–Takeover! A Human Rights Approach to Housing–available for pre-order now at https://poorpeoplespress.com/. "This publication is not just a guide on housing struggles, but a historical and theoretical rearticulation of the meaning and evolution of human rights,” says Ajamu Baraka, of Black Alliance for Peace, an international human rights pioneer and 2016 Green Party Vice Presidential nominee. “Combining theory with years of frontline practice, it captures the fact that human rights must emerge from, and ultimately will be protected and advanced by, the organized people themselves." If you want to fight the Supreme Court, the corporate duopoly in Washington, and the rich elite and corporations that control this country and economy, join us in this effort. The book and organizing tour will launch in the fall following several events and protests this summer.
The Poor People’s Army is working with other groups to hold the People’s 1st Convention in Milwaukee, WI on July 13 and 14, 2024, followed by a march on the opening day of the Republican National Convention on July 15. On August 3, we will begin a 100-mile march from Milwaukee to Chicago to build momentum and publicity for the Poor People’s Army March on the DNC to be held on August 19, 2024. On August 18, we will host a PeoplesFest Concert in Chicago. More information can be found at https://www.poorpeoplesarmy.org/
