New England Joint Action Campaign

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As a member of the InterValley Project cooperative organizing network, the Kennebec Valley Organization helped to lead a New England-wide campaign to deal with the twin pressures on working and low-income families: high housing costs and limited access to decent jobs. The Organizing Leadership and Training Center (OLTC) and Anti-Displacement Project (A-DP) took part in the campaign as well.

On May 21, 2005, more than 850 delegates from our organizations gathered at the Parish of the Transfiguration in Manchester, New Hampshire to call on our New England Congressional delegations, as well other public officials, to protect 4 key housing and education progams from cuts in the federal budget: Section 8 housing vouchers, Community Development Block Grants, Pell grants, and adult education.

KVO clergy and women religious also joined hundreds of their colleagues from across New England in signing onto the New England Joint Action Clergy Statement, "Budgets are Moral Documents."

To read the statement, click here.

As a result of the efforts of the New England Joint Action and similar efforts throughout the country, these four programs avoided catastrophic cuts and changes in the 2006 federal budget.