In the spring of 2007, Marguerite Casey Foundation, in partnership with the organizations and families it supports, asked two questions: What would a nationwide movement aimed at raising the voices of poor and working families look like? and What would it take to spark and sustain a movement that ensured those voices were heard, not on a single issue but across all issues that affect their lives?
The movement we envisioned, now called Equal Voice, would cross divisions of race, geography and political turf. It would recognize families as the best source for solutions to their own concerns, and it would make enough collective noise to press those solutions onto the national stage.
We began by convening a series of 65 town hall meetings in 12 states around the country, where families came together to create a national platform that voiced their concerns and offered possible solutions. Early on, we anticipated that these events might result in a single Equal Voice convention of perhaps 5,000 family members.
To say that what resulted exceeded our expectations is more than an understatement.
Today, we can count at least 15,000 family members who participated in the town hall meetings between 2007 and 2008, and another 15,000 who gathered at simultaneous conventions in Los Angeles, Chicago and Birmingham, Ala., on September 6, 2008, to ratify the Equal Voice National Family Platform.
Click for National Platform in English