Better Pay Comes When We Demand It
BY JESSE
JACKSON
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015
Los Angeles just voted to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.
The nation’s second-biggest city joins Seattle, San Francisco and little
Emeryville, Calif., in forging the way to a decent minimum.
Similar measures are now being considered in New York City, Kansas City,
Mo., and Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. Facebook is now paying its
workers a $15 minimum and joins Apple and Microsoft in demanding that its
contractors pay a $15 minimum and offer paid leave days.
These victories are a product of the demonstrations and protests of fast
food and other low-wage workers. They risked their jobs to demand decency. They
put a human face on workers who labor full time but can’t lift their families
out of poverty. They exposed the lie that these were transitory jobs for the
young while they went to college or high school. Their demonstrations —
organized under the hashtag slogan #FightFor15 — drew national press attention.
Their struggles touched the hearts of citizens of conscience. They built the
coalition that forced the politicians to respond.
Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that “freedom is never voluntarily given
by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” There are three ways to
respond to repression, he told us. The first is acquiescence, adjusting quietly
to injustice and becoming conditioned to it. “Been down so long it feels like up
to me.” Acquiescence, he warned, turns people into part of the problem.
The second way to respond is with physical violence and corrosive hatred.
But violence never solves problems; it simply creates more difficult and
complicated problems. An eye for an eye, he warned, would leave us all
blinded.
The third way is nonviolent resistance. Nonviolence rejects acquiescence
and violence. It confronts the oppressor, gives voice to the oppressed, and
exposes the injustice. It starts always against the odds, so it requires faith.
“Faith,” Dr. King wrote, “is taking the first step even when you don’t see the
whole staircase.”
The #FightFor15 workers had faith. They chose to resist, not accept their
poverty wages. They demonstrated for decency. And they have created a movement
that surely will spread across the country.
California is one of eight states that ban the subminimum wage that is
inflicted on so-called “tipped workers,” the wait staff and service workers that
serve our food, clear our plates or carry our bags. California also voted to
start publishing the names of companies that have more than 100 workers on
Medicaid and the costs that they force on the states. Informed customers may
well prefer to do business with high-road employers rather than those profiting
from a low road.
Most of our news coverage follows the frozen partisan politics of
Washington. There, Republican leaders in Congress won’t even allow a vote on a
modest Democratic proposal for a $12-an-hour minimum wage. The only time
Congress seems to act is when the corporate community wants a tax break or a
trade deal passed, or when the Pentagon demands more money to waste.
But across the country, people are beginning to stir. Blacks and whites are
joining together to demonstrate that #BlackLivesMatter. Latinos are demanding
immigration reforms that will bring millions out of the shadow economy. Gays and
lesbians are demanding equal rights. Women are demanding equal pay, and men and
women are insisting that the decision to have a child has to be one that they
and not politicians make. Change will come, but only when people demand it and
force their politicians to salute.
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