Points of Unity

1.  We are building the power of the working class in Providence by empowering people to take control of their neighborhoods, workplaces, and community institutions. 

2.  Working people have little to no control over the decisions that most deeply and directly affect our lives. We work jobs that pay us a small fraction of the value we contribute to the process, while landlords try to take as much as they can at the end of each month.  As isolated individuals or families, we can do little more than just get by; but united as a class, we can change the world.

3.  POWR prioritizes the struggles of peoples facing multiple forms of oppression within the working class.  We recognize that racial and gender oppression compound class exploitation.  We uphold the position that the emancipation of a specific oppressed community is bound up with the liberation of the working class as a whole. The best way to bridge divisions within the class and address social injustices is to abolish the system that produce them: capitalist-imperialism.

4. We use mass collective direct action to win our goals.  We think reforms are won by organizing outside of official politics, relying on the power of the people. 

5.  We do not need to maintain good relationships with bosses, landlords, politicians, oppressive state agencies, or wealthy funders in order to defend and improve our working and living conditions.   

6.  POWR seeks to be the type of organized community force in Providence that sets the tone for working-class politics and demands for change.  Political power for working people has always come through our own self-organization – people coming together to pursue their own best interest collectively. 

7.  POWR is directly democratic – we collectively decide what problems we want to address and how to address them. We want to build a coalition of people that shares knowledge and skills with each other. We aim to become self-sufficient and support communities’ desire to live and grow on our own terms, not those of the wealthy and privileged.

8.  We fight for tenant and resident control of housing and believe that housing is a basic human need and right.  We believe workers should control their own workplaces – we support efforts to fight wage theft, improve wages and conditions at work, and efforts to unionize and collectivize workplaces.  

9. We support efforts to stand up to brutal and corrupt police and to help foster alternatives to the ongoing criminalization, mass incarceration and often a lack of safety in our neighborhoods.  We aim to harness enough collective power and organization to resist and replace repressive state institutions, particularly the police agencies that operate as an oppressive occupational force in our neighborhoods.  

10. POWR also hopes to be a springboard for efforts to improve schools, transit, environmental sustainability and the future of our city and society.   

If you have ideas that resonate with the above points, if you want to get involved, or just receive updates on the work we are doing, get in touch…