So I haven’t posted in ages but I thought I would put up the abstract that I have constructed so far for the thesis project I am working on with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign so that my friends can know what I’ve been up to and what’s to come in the fall.

A Participatory Action Research Project Examining Structural Poverty With The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign

With a current national unemployment rate of 9.4% and nearly 350,000 homes lost to foreclosure in the month of April 2009 alone, the harsh impacts of a failing economy are being experienced by a tremendous number of Americans.  The myth of upward mobility helps to maintain the American capitalist economic system.   The idea that we are capable of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps to achieve the American Dream obscures the reality that the majority of working class individuals are structurally entrapped into poverty for their entire lifetime.  However, it is critical to recognize that some groups are disproportionately affected by poverty because of interlocking systems of power, privilege, and oppression that American society operates within.  The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) is the largest multiracial movement of poor people in the United States working to abolish poverty through the guarantee of basic human rights to health care, housing, living wage jobs, and access to quality primary, secondary, and higher education.  This research project seeks to explore possible linkages between PPEHRC and other poor people’s movements throughout the world using standpoint epistemology as well as intersectional feminism as tools of analysis.  Participatory action research and in-depth interviews will be conducted in cooperation with the PPEHRC, which will allow me to engage closely with strategies of resistance employed by the movement.  Because this project is grounded in practices of horizontal knowledge creation, it is important that research foci are determined in direct consultation with the needs of the PPEHRC.   These foci will become more apparent upon my attendance of the movement’s national conference in July.  I will continue participating in grounded research in the fall of 2009 with the organization’s Minneapolis chapter.  Research implications will be used to organize a chapter of the PPEHRC in Humboldt County along with local community members using the skills I acquire working in Minneapolis.  I intend to also produce a formal thesis paper that could be utilized for consciousness-raising purposes within the local community as well as in the University.

Keywords:  Participatory Action Research, Poverty, Intersectional Feminism, Social Movements, Social Justice, Horizontal Research, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign