Coalition Against Poverty was founded in 1994 to bring together low-income women, especially current and former welfare recipients, to oppose punitive welfare reform in Massachusetts.  Since that time, we have succeeded in building a vibrant organization deeply rooted in low-income communities in Fall River and New Bedford.  We are also in the process of expanding our operations to Brockton. 

We have played a leading role in building state-wide campaigns to reduce inequities of welfare reform, increase the minimum wage, implement and expand the state Earned Income Tax Credit, increase funding for affordable child care, prevent demolition of public housing, and stop budget cuts through closing unfair tax loopholes.   On most of these issues, we have shared responsibility for founding and leading state-wide organizations to coordinate these campaigns, as well as mobilizing our base in Fall River and New Bedford.  We are proud of our achievements over the past years:

• We have developed a solid leadership core of current and former welfare mothers.  Our leaders and paid staff are dedicated low-income activists who are all new to social activism.  Our lead organizer and director is a former welfare recipient who rose up through the ranks, from volunteer to apprentice organizer to staff organizer.  We have also recruited a group of 90 volunteers who will participate in door-to-door outreach and phone banking, and a larger group of over 300 volunteers, who can be counted on to vote, call their legislators, write individualized postcards or letters, circulate postcards, and attend public events

• We have played an important role in campaigns to win significantly increased funding for affordable child care, a major increase in the state minimum wage, the first welfare grant increase in 12 years, and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families.

• We have built the capacity to significantly influence elected officials.  We have held several large public rallies around health care, child care, welfare, housing, minimum wage and budget cuts, attracting between 100-275 people for each event.  We have involved 200-300 people in several organized "call-ins" to legislators.  We have organized thousands to send postcards to legislators.   

• We have increased the voter participation of low-income, predominately minority residents of public housing, by 300% through systematic voter registration, education and get-out-to-vote drives.       

• We have taken the lead in the fight to reform Massachusetts’ highly punitive 2-year time limit.  Our 1998 Welfare Speak-Out, attended by 275 people, was the largest event of its kind in Massachusetts.     

• We led a determined 3-year battle to defeat plans to demolish public housing in Fall River.  Although we were ultimately unsuccessful, we built strong opposition and will now work to stop future demolition efforts originating in other communities. 

• We played a leading role in the 2002 campaign to fight statewide budget cuts in Massachusetts.  We succeeded in winning a progressive $1.1 billion tax package, including elimination of the capital gains tax loophole.  Our role at the Legislature's February, 2002 Public Hearing in Fall River, including testimony by 25 people from all walks of life and attendance by over 100 people, was decisive in winning legislative support for our tax proposals.  We are now at the forefront of the 2003 Stop the Cuts Campaign.

• In 2003, we played a leading role in the fight to stop the cuts to MassHealth.  We helped to win restoration of MassHealth eligibility for 36,000 long-term unemployed who had been stripped of their coverage, and to preserve the Methadone drug treatment program that was slated for extinction.

• In 2003, we also played a key role in passing legislation to allow welfare recipients with children under 6 to substitute education and training for the work requirement.  This was critical in preserving access to education and training for parents who would otherwise had to stop or cut back on participation in these programs.    We got 13 legislators to agree to talk to the Speaker to advocate for this vote, and ending up winning by a 1-vote margin.  This was the largest amount of support we have gotten from legislators on a core welfare issue since we started our work on this issue in 1994.  We can say with certainty that our work provided the margin of victory on this issue.