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Ending with the shame and blame about poverty

Mary Briker @ Poor People Human Right Campaign

Mary lives and works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A and she is a Poor People Human Right Campaign's activist. The main purpose of the organization is to eradicate poverty and social exclusion from the world.
In the last years in Chattanooga many families are dealing with poverty and precariuos condition; it's a real "chain of the poverty": becoming unemployed, they are unable to pay the mortgage and loe their houses.
Mary says that the first and biggest problem is to remove the poor people's sense of guilty; they think they are loosers and they have something wrong and they are unable to change their own problematic conditions.
The organization operate at local level, giving practical and legal informations to families, and supporting the community in occupying the empty houses of the area.
The good practices implemented by the organisation demonstrate that the community work has a positive effect: people meet and work together without cultural religious and social barriers and they claim a State working to serve the people and not the profit.
Social action methodology used by the protagonists:
social work,community work,training,houses occupation.
Principal themes:
Anti-racism  , Citizenship , Group dynamics  , Right to housing , Social inclusion
Key words, tags:
citizienship, social exclusion, human rights, housing rights, homelessness, poverty
United States