On December 10, the National Union of the Homeless (NUH), along with a number of local and regional organizations working to organize poor people in the United States, marked the seventy-seventh anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—with an online hearing, on what is now known as Human Rights Day. The hearing’s purpose, organizers say, was to indict signers of the thirty-article document for failing to uphold its promise.
“Poor and working-class people are the majority,” NUH media coordinator Tammy Rosing said at the hearing. “It’s about time we acted like it. We indict the United States for allowing people to die from poverty and the denial of human rights. We deserve better.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 48 to 0 in 1948, was written after revelations about Nazi brutality during World War II became known. It established, for the first time, the aspirational goal of honoring the “inherent dignity” of every person.
Now signed by 193 countries in every corner of the world, the Declaration’s Article 25 makes clear that every human being, regardless of race, gender, spoken language, or national or social origin, should have “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his (sic) family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services.” Its other articles support the right to freedom of movement, including the right to seek asylum and the right to live free from political, religious, or social persecution.
Before volunteering with the NUH, Rosing was an unhoused resident of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They tell The Progressive that the hearing was part of the group’s two-and-a-half-month Winter Offensive, intended to draw attention to the most deadly time of year for the poor and unhoused. By calling attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifically, organizers hoped to highlight the fact that, despite signing the declaration, the United States has failed to abide by its principles.
Rosing notes that 67 percent of U.S. workers currently live paycheck to paycheck, and increasing numbers of tenants scramble to pay ever-increasing rent and utility costs each month. Moreover, in recent months, the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans have passed deep cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other safety-net protections—policy choices, they say, that signal the government’s overt hostility to the poor.
The December 10 hearing, Rosing adds, was intended to inspire people who are directly impacted by the cuts to organize themselves and demand what they need to live and thrive. “We live in a society where those in power create poverty and injustice and then criminalize those who are impacted by it,” they say.
As a case-in-point, Rosing cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which allows municipalities to fine or jail unhoused people who congregate or “camp” on the street or in public parks. A July 2025 Executive Order signed by Donald Trump took this further, urging city and state law enforcement to not only arrest and jail unhoused “loiterers,” but also to forcibly institutionalize them through weakened involuntary commitment policies.
While the White House claims that these actions will end “crime and disorder” on America’s streets, NUH and other groups vehemently disagree, decrying policies that make sleeping in a car, distributing food to people congregating in public areas, or pitching tents or unrolling sleeping bags in a park punishable offenses in most of the country.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, between June 2024 and June 2025, cities across the country introduced 320 bills to criminalize unhoused individuals, and approximately 220 of them passed. These laws put more than 771,000 people in the crosshairs of law enforcement personnel, based on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2024 “Point in Time” estimate, which offers a one-night count of folks huddled in doorways, camping in parks, or taking shelter in cars or on buses, trains, or benches in transportation hubs.
The crisis facing those with no place to go, activists say, is enormous. But it is not just the already unhoused who are at risk.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 7.2 million people live in households that pay 50 percent or more of their income for shelter, putting them in a state of economic precarity should an unexpected emergency arise. Small wonder, the Alliance reports, that 3.2 million people are living doubled or tripled up, and 1.5 million stayed in a shelter at some point during 2024. And while the Alliance notes that 66 percent of unhoused people are single adults, families, often including children and/or someone who is disabled or elderly, make up the final third.
Kristen Colangelo, NUH’s New Jersey-based political education coordinator, says the group has created a three-pronged strategy to fight anti-poor policies, which it describes as “plight, fight, insight.”
“First, we want to expose egregious conditions,” Colangelo tells The Progressive. “Then we want to organize ourselves to fight back to improve these conditions. Finally, we study social movements and our own efforts. We want to gain insight from each fight so that we can continue to push for the world we want.”
The goal, she adds, is for NUH members to become what the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called an “unsettling force,” a united front that can push those holding power to say “yes” when they want to say “no.” This involves on-the-ground mobilizations to bring low-income people together around their collective interests, rather than the interests of billionaires.
Fighting for economic and human rights, and opposing cuts to housing, SNAP, Medicaid, and other social welfare supports, Colangelo says, requires trained leaders and multiracial, multigender, and multiclass unity among disparate and often-divided populations. She knows this won’t be easily achieved but she nonetheless remains optimistic. “Common points of struggle can bring people together,” she told The Progressive.
Those testifying at NUH’s Human Rights Day hearing cheered speakers who repeatedly urged low-income people to organize. At the same time, they lambasted Congressional passage of a $900 billion defense budget while simultaneously slashing benefits to the poor and trouncing the human rights of the unhoused, hungry, and disabled.
In his hearing testimony, Father Ty Hullinger of NUH Maryland read the NUH’s mission statement, which calls on people to work to end poverty and homelessness, promote economic justice for all, and fight against all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, and abuse.
It’s a mighty call to action—as is the vision outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.