Activists for Economic Reform Wage Campaign

Riders traveling on the “New Freedom Bus” stopped at sites in Long Beach on Tuesday as part of their monthlong cross-country campaign against welfare reform and poverty called Economic Human Rights Campaign ’98.

“We know you can’t change things in one day,” said Long Beach activist Pamela Foster of the Barton Hills Neighborhood Organization. “But we want to just shake things up a bit.”

The 50 bus riders, coupled with labor, religious and student organizations, traveled to Rancho San Pedro Park, Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and the First Congregational Church to talk to residents of low-income neighborhoods and hold meetings featuring testimony of people who said their economic human rights had been violated.

The riders, who are sponsored by the National Welfare Rights Union, began their nationwide campaign June 1 in Philadelphia.

According to a statement released by bus organizers, the riders will continue to Texas today. They are scheduled to arrive in New York City at the United Nations on July 1, when organizers said they plan to initiate “a formal case against the United States on behalf of poor people throughout the country.”