What is a Truth Commission?

The stories of those who are struggling for survival in this country have been silenced. Many people around the world do not believe that poor people exist in the United States. A Truth Commission is a space where we can tell the truth about what's happening in this country and show that all these human rights violations have one thing in common: that they could have been prevented. It is a space for telling and listening to people's stories in a concrete, organized forum, and a space for analyzing the causes of and solutions for the preventable plights of their lives. It is also space where we can indict our government for the human rights abuses it is committing against us.

Components Of A Truth Commission

Gathering Documentation
To have a Truth Commission we need to collect the stories of the millions of people in this country who have been downsized, outsourced, cut off the welfare rolls, evicted, denied healthcare, and gone without food for their families. We have to talk to those around us, we have to talk to those we don’t know, and we have to record their stories in any variety of ways. A documented human rights violation can be a photograph, a filled out form, a video, a poem, a song, a painting, a narrative or any combination of these things.

Organizing and Building Membership
The process of gathering documentation for a Truth Commission also serves as a great organizing opportunity. When going out and talking to people in our communities to get stories of those who are uninsured, unemployed, homeless, or without running water in their homes, for example, we should also use it as an opportunity to tell people about our organizations and recruit them and their talents into our movement. In this way, the documentation process can do a tremendous job of building an organizations’ membership.

Likewise, the process of finding judges from your community or elsewhere to present findings of your Truth Commissions, as well as the process of advertising and doing outreach to people to come to the Truth Commission can serve as an organizing opportunity and way to recruit members into our organizations.

Developing Leaders
Gathering documentation and helping with other organizing aspects of planning a Truth Commission can really help develop leaders in our organizations. Going out and gathering documentation, compiling it, sorting it, or coordinating other details in the planning process, can really show someone that they have ownership over a very important division of labor toward fulfilling a very important vision. Leadership comes with responsibility and responsibility comes with leadership. They are integrally bound. Planning a great Truth Commission will make all those involved feel more involved and more committed as a result.

Breaking Our Isolation
We want our stories to be heard and we want our images to be seen. A Truth Commission should involve widespread documentation, widespread outreach, and a press strategy, which will all work to attract people to the mission of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. Afterwards, a publication reflective of the documented stories and the experience of the Truth Commission will serve to highlight your work beyond the one day event.

Education and Raising Political Consciousness
The process of planning a Truth Commission can be very useful in teaching people about the notion of rights, and about economic human rights in particular. So often poor people and American people more generally are told that they have to work hard to earn what they deserve. The necessary relationship between basic human needs and human rights is not affirmed. A Truth Commission and the process of planning one advance the idea of rights and thus are important elements of building this movement. Some of the testimony at the Truth Commission can be based on research and statistics on particular issues related to people’s stories; gathering and sharing research and statistics will be an important learning process as well.

If you want to know more or get involved in Truth Commissions go to our contact page...

More Stories!!!

Rick S.’s Story...

In 2000 Rick was enjoying a stable and well-paying job in his chosen profession. Soon after, he shared with his employer that he had been diagnosed with a chronic illness and that he was being placed on medication for one year which would have bad side effects. During this year Rick was also suffering from a second yet undiagnosed chronic illness. Together these illnesses and medications left Rick weak and visibly ill. He began to endure severe and various forms of harassment by his supervisor and fellow employees for the following nine months. Read More...