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Media Release from the Coalition for a Ban on Winter Evictions
c/o Women & Poverty Public Education Initiative
3782 North 12th Streeet, Milwaukee, WI 53206 - (414) 265-3925
For Immediate Release: Sept. 17, 1999
Attn: Assignment Editor & Public Service Announcements
Media Contact: Jean Verber - (414) 265-3925
Sen. Moore & Others to Demand Suspension of W-2's 2-Year Time Limits and Full Accounting of Fate of Each W-2 Participant
A Press Conference and Rally will be held Wednesday, Sept. 29, 11:00 am, outside the Milwaukee Four Points Sheraton Hotel, 4747 South Howell. The purpose of the event is to demand the State of Wisconsin suspend the 2-year time limit on participation in W-2, the state's welfare reform program, and give an accurate account of what has happened to each W-2 participant.
The Hotel will be the site of a two-day state-sponsored conference on W-2. Gov. Tommy Thompson is scheduled to address the conference at noon on the 29th.
Among those scheduled to speak at the press conference are State Senator Gwendolynne Moore; Mary Thomas of the Save Our Children Coalition; representatives of social service agencies, labor, community-based organizations, and women directly affected by the 2-year time limit.
"With the loss of all cash benefits, these women in the W-2 program face the very real possibility of complete destitution, homelessness, and ultimately having their children taken from them and placed in the foster care program, for no other reason than that they are poor," said Jean Verber, of the Women & Poverty Public Education Initiative, one of the groups calling the press conference.
According to an article in the Sept. 13 edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as many as 2,000 Milwaukee County women in the W-2 program could lose all financial benefits as a result of reaching the two-year limit imposed on their participation in W-2. These would include 500 who reach the limit by Jan. 1, "nearly 900 more whose eligibility will be used up over the winter", and "several hundred new mothers" exhausting their 12-week maternity exemptions.
The Journal article also pointed out that "tens of thousands of former recipients have quietly melted away from the welfare rolls in W-2's first two years."
"And yet there is no official accounting of what has actually happened to these women," said Verber. "Did they find another job? Are they unemployed? Are they homeless? Did they lose their children? We want to know what has happened to each and every woman and child. Otherwise, no one can honestly claim W-2 has been a success."
The Sept. 29 press conference and rally is being called by the Coalition for a Ban on Winter Evictions, including the organizations Repairers of the Breach, A Job is a Right Campaign and the Women & Poverty Public Education Initiative. Last year the Coalition was successful in getting the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to unanimously pass a resolution that for the first time officially linked the rise in evictions and homelessness in the county to W-2 and called for the creation of an emergency rent fund.
Jim Barrett of Milwaukee Pledge of Resistance informed us this evening that Allan Nairn, well-known journalist and activist in support of the struggle for independence in East Timor, has been arrested in East Timor and is being held in West Timor by the Indonesian government. He is reportedly being interrogated twice a day. Nairn, a journalist for The New York Times, the Nation and other publications, was the guest speaker here in Milwaukee last November at the annual Rice & Beans Dinner sponsored by the Pledge. Some of us in Job is a Right had the pleasure of meeting him at that event.
Our organization has faxed the following letter to the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, with copies to the head of the Indonesian military, the U.S. State Department, Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold and the Times. Fax numbers for the embassy follow. We urge all our members and friends to do the same immediately, as well as to contact Senator Feingold's office and urge him to demand the U.S. State Department guarantee Nairn's safety. Indonesia is militarily and economically dependent on Washington and the U.S. government must ultimately be held responsible for the fate of all those detained in the current crisis.
September 17, 1999
To the Ambassador of Indonesia to the United States
Indonesian Embassy
Washington, D.C.
Fax: (202) 775-5365
Dear Sir or Madam:
This letter is to express our extreme outrage at news of the continued detention and interrogation of U.S. journalist Allan Nairn, now being held by your government in West Timor.
Mr. Nairn is well known in this country and around the world for his courage, professionalism, and integrity in reporting the difficult realities of the struggle of the people for East Timor for self-determination. The detention of Mr. Nairn is a blatant admission by your government of its complete lack of respect for the opinions of a concerned world.
We demand the immediate release of Mr. Nairn as well as that of all the other detainees of the current wave of repression being carried out in East Timor by the so-called militia, with the overt support of your government, and the tacit support of the government of the United States.
At the same time, we are calling on the government of the United States to immediately sever all military, political and economic ties with Indonesia. We will further work to promote the total economic boycott of all products made in Indonesia until the current crisis is resolved.
Sincerely,
Phil Wilayto
for A Job is a Right Campaign
cc: General Wiranto, Indonesian Military
Senator Russell Feingold, U.S. Senate (Wisconsin)
U.S. State Department
The New York Times
For more informationon East Timor, see the statement from the International Action Center on the massacre in East Timor.
Called by Casa Maria Catholic Worker
Saturday - Oct. 16 - noon to 1 pm
Reiss Federal Building, corner of 3rd & Wisconsin, downtown Milwaukee
For more information: (414) 344-5745
Since the end of the Persian Gulf War, over 1.5 million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S./U.N.-imposed sanctions. Over half have been children under the age of five. AJRC urges all its members and friends to attend this important event.