Interfaith Vigil for Just Health Care Reform Draws 138 People

138 people attended an interfaith vigil for health care reform yesterday at the First United Methodist Church. Participants represented congregations throughout Omaha, including the First Christian Church, the Niagara Foundation, St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, St. Agnes Parish, St. Francis of Assisi, Claire Memorial United Methodist Church, and more. Clergy led prayers and gave testimony in support of health care reform, and people came forward with personal stories of family and friends not able to afford the care they need.

Franco, a leader of a Guatemalan indigenous group from St. Francis of Assisi, gave a prayer in his native language, Qanjobal, and the vice president of the Niagara Foundation, Ferhat Ozturk, recited a passage from the Quran. Rev. Frederick McCullough of St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church gave a brief message on the need for health care. “It is time that pastors and congregations come together to speak out against the injustice we see in the health care system that robs the poor of the access that all deserve,” he said. “We must be a voice for the voiceless.”

The event was organized by Interfaith Worker Justice and the participating pastors. “We support worker justice and the right for workers to organize without being fired or harassed, which is why we want the Employee Free Choice Act to pass the Senate this September,” said Noel Andersen of Interfaith Worker Justice. “We know workers are much more likely to have health care when they have a union.”

A group of 22 interfaith clergy had a meeting last Friday with Senator Nelson in person to talk about the moral imperative and ethical responsibility of creating health care reform now, to ensure that the marginalized can also receive care. Many clergy pushed for the public option as the most viable form to reign in large insurance companies.

the value of conversation

Admittedly I have neglected sharing my experience with you all. After you all caught your respective flights out of New Orleans my internship experience began to truly take shape. Prior to this summer, I had no organizing experience, no real experience with the labor movement, so my time here has been quite eye-opening as I have begun to discover this whole new world. After much reflection, I offer to you all some thoughts about my time here so far.

As a person who has had several years of full-time ministry work, I have struggled this summer. The challenges I have recognized have been mostly with my lack of awareness of the realities of life in post-Katrina New Orleans, struggling with feelings of guilt surrounding the privileges I have, feeling restricted by the shortness of this internship, and experiencing the realities of the limited resources that this one staff member office has available. Even though as time has gone on these struggles have not disappeared, time has provided many valuable conversations and experiences that have moved me from a sense of being paralyzed by these struggles to an awareness of the beauty of being able to bring all of who I am (struggles, gifts, etc.) to each day. I appreciate this awareness because I feel that it makes it possible for me to be in communion with the people I encounter each day. As we attempt to be in solidarity with those around us and to enter into relationships in a spirit of God's love, we need to move beyond that which is paralyzing. (As I have tried to move beyond that which I have recognized as paralyzing, I wonder what things (whether real or perceived) paralyze other individuals and movements for social change? How do we move beyond that which holds us back?)

At this point in my reflection on my internship thus far what I have valued most have been the conversations that I have been a part of. Conversations about health care, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and recovery of N.O., public housing, community outreach, religion, forced evictions, social justice, and racism are the ones which immediately come to mind as the most powerful.

It is through conversations that my eyes have been opened to see injustice and oppression. It is through conversations that I experience God in the midst of this place in which I find myself. It is through conversations that I find hope. It is through conversations that we are going to be able to come together to change the systems and structures so that all people can know justice and peace.

It seems to me that today often times it is our fear of conversation (of open dialog with the "other") that paralyzes us.

I look forward to the conversations that I will have during my last days here as well as those which we will share during debrief.

Nebraskan Atrocities and the Struggle to Organize

Omaha Nebraska is known for its beef industry. Coming through L Street in South Omaha you can smell the raw stench of death. The workers describe to me the condition on the “kill floor” facing 2500 cattle a day. First the head is cut off, then the feet and then slits in the skin so a machine can suck it all off at once. Next comes the slicing and dicing which is hard work, carrying heavy loads and cutting through massive muscle. If a worker isn’t trained to sharpen their knives right it’s even harder work, as a friend of mine from Greater Omaha beef, s

till no union, explained he did not get proper training and hurt his shoulder. Most workers are immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Sudan or Vietnam with some Chicanos, African American and whites mixed in.

The Human Rights Watch put out a report called Blood, Sweat and Fear telling of the now famous rights abuses from the meatpacking industry, “failure to prevent serious workplace injury and illness, denial of compensation to injured workers, interference with workers’ freedom of association—are directly linked to the vulnerable immigration status of most workers in the industry and the willingness of employers to take advantage of that vulnerability (Watch, 2004).”

Maria works at Skyler, a plant that has been organized for some time, and now she helps her union, United Food Commercial Workers (UFCW), to organize other plants. The Nebraska Beef plant is notorious for its anti-union campaigns. In 2001, the UFCW filed charges against the company for its illegal firing of workers which finally, “The NLRB upheld a hearing officer's findings that the company used a broad range of intimidation tactics to deny workers a voice on the job in the 2001 election (Rivera, 2009)."

Now the UFCW is starting to organize Nebraska Beef and Greater Omaha again, but its uphill struggle against these historically anti-union plants that have fought hard and dirty to keep from unionization. Last week, Father Jack McCaslin and myself went to help “handbill,” to get authorization cards. Perhaps this is a new beginning to a long stronghold of worker intimidation wherein the Employee Free Choice Act could pass soon and change the entire playing field to give workers the right to organize, binding arbitration and stiffer penalties against illegal anti-union mistreatment of workers. We must keep on in this struggle and make sure that we are involving faith leaders as we together figure out what it means to live out our faith in this context of extreme capitalitism and exploitation.

Political Education and the Labor Movement

I have been part of many groups throughout college and too often these groups focus on the day to day tasks of running an organization: building membership, filing paper work with student life, fundraising, etc. All of these mundane and time consuming tasks often get in the way of what is important- educating ourselves and those around us. As the political director of the Loras College Democrats one of my duties was political education, but with the election I pushed that aside in order to allow more time for our group to volunteer with campaigns. At the time this seemed to make sense, but now I am realizing what a huge mistake that was!

ROC-Miami is teaching me how crucial political education is to building a movement. We hold political education classes during all of our bartending classes and, to my surprise, people really seem to enjoy it! People want to learn more about the world around them and what they can do to change things. It is not uncommon for people to start shouting things out or to ask “how can I get involved” during a political education class. For example, this week’s class was about the power of organizing. John was asking them what they thought would happen if the fifty people in the room walked down to Ocean Drive to one of the restaurants. One person shouted “we would scare the s*** out of them” to which another person responded “let’s do it!” I am learning that as people learn more they become more eager to join the movement and as they learn even more they become willing to make sacrifices, sometimes as large as losing their job, in order to change things. It is unlikely that an uneducated person would be willing to lay everything on the line, but it seems like an educated person would. This is why political education is so important; people need to truly understand problems in order to fight against them, otherwise they are simply a person holding a sign.

John was telling me about the Vietnamese military, during the Vietnam War. This military had two heads of it: one for the military strategy and another for political education. The sole role of this political education director was to educate the troops about issues. They found that in educating the military more the soldiers understood what they were fighting for and as a result they were willing to do anything necessary to ensure victory. In essence they became better soldiers because they were mentally prepared for the battle through political education.
Another lesson learned…

The last few weeks...

A few weeks ago, sorry I am a little behind; John and I participated in a demonstration in front of a Wal-Mart in Miami! The demonstration was organized by unions in the area and other groups that organize workers. I was very surprised when we showed up and discovered that we were actually allowed on the Wal-Mart property, well at least in the parking lot. We marched around the parking lot of almost an hour educating people shopping their and the workers about EFCA. At the end workers from that Wal-Mart spoke about their experiences as employees of Wal-Mart. I was excited to learn that this particular Wal-Mart is very close to unionizing!

A few days later I attended my first Wage Theft Task Force Meeting. The goal of this task force is to pass a wage theft ordinance in Miami-Dade County, which is very needed because Florida does not have a department of labor which makes it almost impossible for workers to claim unpaid wages. This first meeting was with a commissioner so we spent more of the time trying to convince her that wage theft is a serious problem here and as such it deserves a serious solution- an ordinance. It was a little disappointing to hear that she agreed with us about it being a serious problem but that with budget cuts it would be impossible to fund the enforcement of this ordinance. As a result she recommended passing a resolution first and down the road passing an ordinance. Since then I have attended two meetings with the Wage Theft Task Force alone. In these meetings we have discussed the pros and cons of a resolution. Some of the problems with it is that it has no teeth, it gives the opposition time to organize, and it allows the politicians to say they have done something when they haven’t solved the problem. Some of the advantages are that it allows us to hold three town hall meetings to raise awareness, it puts the issue on the table, and it is a step forward. We also have been working on identifying our opposition and our allies. This has all been very interesting to me because I have interned with a city managing and city planning office so I have seen many resolutions and ordinances from that perspective but I have never seen what goes into passing a resolution from the “outside” of government. It is a lot more challenging that is for sure!

Aside from these two things we have been preparing for our first membership meeting! The national co-founders will be in town for this so it is very important that we have a really good turnout. To ensure this we have send out a postcard, e-mailed everyone, and are currently calling to remind them. It has been a lot of work but it will be very exciting to see the turnout tomorrow! That is all for now from Miami!

ROC-Maine, research and rain...what a summer!

Hey all!

Sorry I haven't posted anything yet - to be honest I've been waiting for something 'exciting' to happen around here that would seem worth blogging about - but I'm learning that the excitement of actions is one thing, but the real work of organizing is in the day to day grind and forming relationships with the community.

The bulk of my work this summer has been conducting interviews with restaurant employers in the area as part of a pretty intense research project for ROC-Maine. I've been hitting the rainy streets and meeting Portland's owners and managers, trying to coax an hour of their time for an interview. If you're ever in the area, I've can give you a run down of just about any type of dining we've got here!

It's been really interesting to see both the worker and employer side of workplace concerns. I've had the opportunity to conduct a few focus groups with ROC members about their experiences in the workplace and it's been fascinating to see how their frustrations over wages, healthcare, sick days, health and safety violations, etc - are echoed by employers. There are certainly employers out there who are taking advantage of their workers, but there are also a lot of great employers who are affected by the economics of the industry and feel they can't create a just workplace and keep their doors open. What's so cool about this research is that we're able to identify 'high road' employers - those who are both just employers and successful business owners. We can lift these employers up as a model to the rest of the restaurant community and help pressure low road employers to treat workers well.

I can't believe we only have three weeks left! For these last few weeks, I'll be finishing up some interviews and planning an interfaith breakfast with Mackenzie. She and I are working with different organizations (but our desks are right next to each other in the same office) and we're collaborating to join her interfaith committee with my ROC members and new employer friends in the area. We hope to create an event where we can bring all these different circles together to facilitate some open dialogue and help create networks that will positively impact the Portland faith and restaurant communities. I think it will be a great way to sum up our time here this summer and kick start ROC's work for the fall!

Our offices in downtown Portland!

A little ROC motivation. We love restaurant workers!

My supervisors Tracy and Genet, and I in our classroom where we do new member orientations, bar tending and fine dining training, and ESL courses.

I can't wait to see you all in just a few weeks and hear about the great work you've been up to!

Photos from Internship Training