Blog
-
We Cry Justice
During this Mass Outreach season, our Base Building Team, made up of leaders in Allegany, Baltimore, and Carroll counties, has been busy outreaching to other poor people to learn more about the struggles people are facing within and across their counties. Using the projects of survival survey as framework for our conversations has been instrumental to our campaign reconnaissance process. As we seek to address people’s fundamental needs through ongoing projects of survival, we are learning more about the systems and structures that exploit and oppress us, as well as exploring ways we can push back. Coming together for regular statewide Base Building Team meetings has offered us a chance to debrief and learn from each other in order to further develop our understanding of the conditions and organizing challenges we’re seeing.
As we connect with potential members, we have been inviting them to our Justice Jams, a community event born out of a small bible study using the Kairos Center’s We Cry Justice book. We are now replicating the success of this series across the state in order to explore the history and moral underpinnings of the poor fighting for justice through biblical and other religious texts. We look forward to sharing more from these series of events.
As our Mass Outreach season comes to a close for this year we are now gearing up for our First Annual Statewide Membership Assembly. During this retreat, members from across the state as well as movement partners will be coming together to celebrate and reflect on our 20 year history as a mass organization led by the poor and recommit ourselves to the ongoing struggle to end poverty
In this e-alert we will also share some updates from our Open House and another segment from “Learning as we Lead: 20 Years of United Workers”.
Updates From the Field:
United Workers Open House
United Workers hosted an Open House on Thursday, September 29th at our new headquarters, to reconnect and share with our wider network in Baltimore and Maryland what we’ve learned over our 20 year history, what we’ve been up to recently, and where we’re headed. It was great to see old and new faces, including many of our siblings in the MD Poor People’s Campaign, as well as potential members we’ve met through this year’s mass outreach season.
Click the images below to watch the corresponding segment of the program.
Organizer Michael Coleman led a program about the 20 year history of United Workers, sharing our successes, defeats, and the lessons learned from both. We called on our longtime leaders to participate, sharing their insights and demonstrating the dedicated leadership developed through our campaigns.
Next, United Workers Executive Director Ashley Hufnagel spoke about the foundational connections between United Workers and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, from the meetings that preceded the launch of the campaign to our ongoing work to develop the campaign across Maryland and the nation.
Finally, organizer Terrell Askew focused our attention on the upcoming Year of Reconnaissance. He shared the importance of reconnaissance before action and how we plan to collectively carry out this reconnaissance in stages over the next year with the goal of growing statewide and deciding on our next campaign.
This event represented an important milestone for many in attendance. For those we’ve met for the first time at our outreach events this Fall, the event was an introduction to the history and mission of United Workers, a first step into the movement to end poverty. We, in turn, got to learn from them as we embark on our Year of Reconnaissance. The Open House offered a first opportunity for us to share our exciting plans with our Maryland network and get initial feedback. We are excited to continue learning and listening with our base and our network over the next year.
The following is an excerpt from this edition of our series on United Workers history. You can read the full version here.
Part V: United Workers History
Human Rights Zone Campaign at the Inner Harbor Part 2
Written By: Todd Cherkis, United Workers’ Organizer
A Pedagogy of Reflective Action – How do we get Clear about Capacity?
The legendary Chinese General, military strategist, writer and philosopher Sun Tzu famously wrote of the necessity for both knowledge of your opponent and knowledge of yourself: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” We were learning through the organizing that the Inner Harbor opponents were managing systemic abuses from wage theft, failing to pay minimum wage, health and safety issues, no control over schedules, and more. We were learning through our research that the Inner Harbor represented entrenched power heavily invested by our public resources. And through our campaign we experienced this power organized to marginalize and keep hidden these issues we were raising.
By years 3 and 4 of the campaign (2011 and 2012) we were concluding that we didn’t have the capacity to create the necessary leverage to achieve the change we had sought. The workplace organizing produced the same numbers of active members, the same members we classified as emerging leaders. We were not able to build a greater force that could expand exponentially each year. We had an amazing committed core but we could not grow beyond it. This was the result of too many workplaces, unpredictable schedules that hindered our ability to build relationships through home visits or group meetings and employer intimidation that further eroded the possibility of building relationships or waging a public fight.
Ironically one of our successes at the Inner Harbor – forming the core group of leaders itself revealed that we didn’t have the capacity to fully exploit the contradictions the Inner Harbor represented. The core group emerged from a workplace struggle when ESPNZone shutdown without giving workers notice in June 2010. It was the first ESPNZone in the country, opened 12 years earlier by Disney, its parent company. The restaurant and sports bar anchored the Power Plant, developed by the Cordish Company.
ESPNZone
As we entered the second full year of the Human Rights Zone Campaign, we got the news that ESPNZone was shutting down in less than a week. We quickly responded by sending our summer organizers team down to the restaurant to hear if this was true. We hurriedly shared our contact info with every worker in an ESPNZone uniform and gathered phone numbers. We said we will hold a meeting to better understand the situation and think together about potential redress. Thinking to ourselves… “Is this legal? Can an employer just shut down without notice like this?”
We contacted Peter Sabonis, at Maryland Legal AID. Sabonis and an intern XXX researched relevant laws and found that a potentially strong case could be made that ESPNZone and its parent company Disney violated the Federal WARN Act which stipulates that companies of a certain size had to give workers notice before closing. ESPN Zone employed enough people to come under the Federal law.
Twenty-five or so workers crammed into a Legal Aid meeting room. Workers who attended were risking whatever remaining wages they were owed. ESPNZone had threatened they would lose out if they spoke to anyone about the closing including talking to the media. We listened as workers including Emanuel McCray, Leonard Gray, Winston Gupton, Janice Watkins and Keith Brown told their experiences of finding out the news. From that first meeting this group would form the backbone of the fight against ESPNZone and to lift up the tenets of the Human Rights Zone Campaign, that we called Fair Development.
Winston Gupton who worked at ESPNZone for 7 and ½ years, would later describe hearing the news and what it did to him: “I went into work on it must have been the 8th of June. I get there early in the morning. There is a chef on the back dock and the first thing he says is ‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’ And he says ‘They are going to be closing down in a week’. I just couldn’t believe that this was going to happen. It is almost like someone comes up and robs you at gun point and takes everything from you. We were dedicated. I was anyway. Dedicated to my job, to my position with Disney. Unfortunately, they weren’t that dedicated to their employees. I have always worked but today… it’s been since June and this is February almost March. I haven’t worked since. You want to get back to work. You know you are good for something. You know you are better than what you are, the position that you are in but you really can’t do anything about it. I have to sit on my hands everyday in order to keep myself from going crazy I just sit there and I weep until I start to feel better. And I got myself together and I go on out and meet the school bus get my daughter off the school bus that reminds me that my day is a little better.”
Continue reading on our Blog...
-
United Workers History- Part V
Human Rights Zone Campaign at the Inner Harbor: Part 2
Written By: Todd Cherkis, United Workers’ Organizer
A Pedagogy of Reflective Action – How do we get Clear about Capacity?
The legendary Chinese General, military strategist, writer and philosopher Sun Tzu famously wrote of the necessity for both knowledge of your opponent and knowledge of yourself: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” We were learning through the organizing that the Inner Harbor opponents were managing systemic abuses from wage theft, failing to pay minimum wage, health and safety issues, no control over schedules, and more. We were learning through our research that the Inner Harbor represented entrenched power heavily invested by our public resources. And through our campaign we experienced this power organized to marginalize and keep hidden these issues we were raising.
By years 3 and 4 of the campaign (2011 and 2012) we were concluding that we didn’t have the capacity to create the necessary leverage to achieve the change we had sought. The workplace organizing produced the same numbers of active members, the same members we classified as emerging leaders. We were not able to build a greater force that could expand exponentially each year. We had an amazing committed core but we could not grow beyond it. This was the result of too many workplaces, unpredictable schedules that hindered our ability to build relationships through home visits or group meetings and employer intimidation that further eroded the possibility of building relationships or waging a public fight.
Ironically one of our successes at the Inner Harbor – forming the core group of leaders itself revealed that we didn’t have the capacity to fully exploit the contradictions the Inner Harbor represented.The core group emerged from a workplace struggle when ESPNZone shutdown without giving workers notice in June 2010. It was the first ESPNZone in the country, opened 12 years earlier by Disney, its parent company. The restaurant and sports bar anchored the Power Plant, developed by the Cordish Company.
ESPNZone
As we entered the second full year of the Human Rights Zone Campaign, we got the news that ESPNZone was shutting down in less than a week. We quickly responded by sending our summer organizers team down to the restaurant to hear if this was true. We hurriedly shared our contact info with every worker in an ESPNZone uniform and gathered phone numbers. We said we will hold a meeting to better understand the situation and think together about potential redress. Thinking to ourselves… “Is this legal? Can an employer just shut down without notice like this?”
We contacted Peter Sabonis, at Maryland Legal AID. Sabonis and an intern XXX researched relevant laws and found that a potentially strong case could be made that ESPNZone and its parent company Disney violated the Federal WARN Act which stipulates that companies of a certain size had to give workers notice before closing. ESPN Zone employed enough people to come under the Federal law.
Twenty-five or so workers crammed into a Legal Aid meeting room. Workers who attended were risking whatever remaining wages they were owed. ESPNZone had threatened they would lose out if they spoke to anyone about the closing including talking to the media. We listened as workers including Emanuel McCray, Leonard Gray, Winston Gupton, Janice Watkins and Keith Brown told their experiences of finding out the news. From that first meeting this group would form the backbone of the fight against ESPNZone and to lift up the tenets of the Human Rights Zone Campaign, that we called Fair Development.
Winston Gupton who worked at ESPNZone for 7 and ½ years, would later describe hearing the news and what it did to him: “I went into work on it must have been the 8th of June. I get there early in the morning. There is a chef on the back dock and the first thing he says is ‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’ And he says ‘They are going to be closing down in a week’. I just couldn’t believe that this was going to happen. It is almost like someone comes up and robs you at gun point and takes everything from you. We were dedicated. I was anyway. Dedicated to my job, to my position with Disney. Unfortunately, they weren’t that dedicated to their employees. I have always worked but today… it’s been since June and this is February almost March. I haven’t worked since. You want to get back to work. You know you are good for something. You know you are better than what you are, the position that you are in but you really can’t do anything about it. I have to sit on my hands everyday in order to keep myself from going crazy I just sit there and I weep until I start to feel better. And I got myself together and I go on out and meet the school bus get my daughter off the school bus that reminds me that my day is a little better.”
Check out his powerful testimony here.
Dave Zirin of The Nation wrote of the Inner Harbor Human Rights Zone Campaign and the ESPNZone struggle: “When a chain abruptly shuts its doors, like ESPN Zone did, the UW wants to be treated like workers and not disposable equipment. As Debra Harris, a former ESPN Zone cook said, “We are sending a message to Disney, ESPN Zone and Inner Harbor developers that private gain should not take precedence over human life. Corporate executives think they can break the law and just get away with it, because harbor developers do not enforce any human rights standards, but we are human beings and we have the right to dignity and respect."
When we asked if the group wanted to do something about the shutdown and would they be willing to hold a press conference at ESPNZone there was no hesitation. Emmanuel McCray appealed to the group and what he saw as the central issue - the lack of respect his employer had shown everyone. Like at Camden Yards where discussions surfaced more anger at the lack of respect and dignity than issues like higher wages, ESPNZone workers were mostly furious that management had not been more upfront and honest.
Reverend Roger Powers of Light Street Presbyterian Church stepped up to the microphone among a crowd of ESPN Zone and other Inner Harbor workers in front of the ESPNZone, opening the press conference with a prayer: “I’m here today to stand in solidarity with the workers who lost their jobs with the closing of ESPN Zone. I support their cry for justice and dignity. I support their appeal for the respect of human rights. It was certainly immoral for ESPNZone to close without giving its employees adequate notice so that they would have time to look for other jobs. It may even have been illegal a violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act passed by congress in 1988. Immoral or illegal either way it wasn’t right. These workers deserved to be treated with dignity and respect. But instead when they were no longer needed by ESPN Zone they were tossed out as though they were disposable. Workers are human beings. They are people. They are not disposable. They are children of God. The management of ESPN Zone forgot the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You can bet that ESPN Zone executives would want to know ahead of time if they were about to be terminated. The cooks, waiters, and dishwashers that worked here deserved the same courtesy”.
At that moment a Power Plant security guard approached Rev. Powers, interrupting “sir.. this is private property”
Rev. Powers: “I’m in the middle of a press conference”.
The security guard responded: “I understand”. He then tried to grab the microphone. Rev. Powers continued with his prayer, moving his body away from the guard’s outreached hand: “Whatever money ESPN Zone made over the years was the result of the hard work of its employees. [Rev. Powers’ voice rising above the guards pleas of of “sir”] Their employees deserved better particularly in this economy. So it is my hope and prayer that in the next week there will be a face to face meeting between ESPN Zone executives and workers and that a fair and equitable settlement will be agreed upon [more shouts from the security guard]. I would like you to join your hearts and minds with me in prayer… [head bowed down] Gracious and loving God we call you by many names Holy One, Elohim, Allah, Creator, Christ, Spirit but by whatever name we know you to be a God of justice and mercy. You are a God of love and peace who seeks wholeness and health. Prosperity and security for the whole human family for all of your children. We pray for all the workers who lost their jobs as ESPN Zone. Help them to find new jobs quickly so that they can support themselves and their families. Watch over them at this difficult time. Hear their cries Oh God for justice for dignity for human rights we ask you to give them strength and courage”.
The security guard stepped back up to Rev. Powers, attempting to block the television news camera views, cell phone held up to his ear: “Sir you are not allowed to be here”.
Rev. Powers unphased continued: “To speak truth to power as they demand what is there right.”
Security guard: “Sir you are not allowed to be here. You are on private property”.
Rev. Powers: “We pray for the executives that made the decision to close this ESPN Zone without giving fair notice to their employees. Stir their consciousness oh God. Instill in them a sense of justice and fairness. Help them to see the error of their ways. Bring them to the table to meet with these workers face to face.”
Security guard, cell phone still held to his ear: “this is private property”.
“Open their hearts and minds. Make them receptive to the workers’ appeal. Move them to do the right thing and give these workers’ their do. We prayer to you Oh God in the confidence that you hear and answer our prayer, may it be so. Amen.”
At that moment with a full tableau of reporters and cameras Peter Sabonis stepped forward and asked the security guard “are you acting on behalf of David Cordish”. The guard with phone still at his ear turned and walked away. This guard later told us that he had been on the phone with David Cordish who was watching from somewhere in the Power Plant building, and giving instructions to shut it down. With the security guard backed off and assuming the police would soon arrive, we continued.
Leonard Gray, a cook, shared: “We are the backbone of the Inner Harbor. Without us there wouldn’t be an Inner Harbor. We should be treated as human beings and get the respect that we deserve.”. This wasn’t the first time a restaurant decided to shutdown suddenly at the Inner Harbor. Gray had worked at another Power Plant restaurant that also shutdown without giving notice to workers; and called out Planet Hollywood for taking similar action against their workers when it closed at the Inner Harbor. Gray called this a “pattern of poverty zone development”, calling on “Cordish and GGP to enter into a Fair Development Agreement to ensure living wages, healthcare, education, respect, and dignity for all low wage workers at the Inner Harbor”. Gray demanded also demanded “ESPNZone to meet face to face with workers within seven days”.
Workers from ESPN Zone as well as from throughout the Inner Harbor would lead multiple public actions after the initial press conference to keep public pressure on Disney and ESPN Zone to resolve the WARN Act violations. Maryland Legal AID turned over the case to attorney Andrew Friedman of Brown, Goldstein and Levy who filed the class action lawsuit in October. A little over two years later in January 2013 U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Blake ruled in our favor. Commenting to the Baltimore Sun Friedman said, “"We are very pleased by Judge Blake's opinion, which we think is thorough and thoughtful and does a real service to these employees and employees all over the country," he said. "Our one disappointment is that it has taken two and a half years to get here."
United Workers’ leader Emanuel McCray told the Baltimore Brew: “I hope that this important federal court ruling will spur a renewed energy to rethink development in Baltimore so that our public resources are used to ensure work with dignity”.
The strength of the ESPN Zone organizing, the depth and determination of the leaders of this fight showed that this wasn’t simply about a court case or single grievance. They immediately made the connections between the ESPN Zone shutdown and a larger pattern of “Poverty Zone Development”. They stood with workers form Cheesecake Factory and M and S Grill and Five Guys connecting other abuses such as wage theft and sexual harassment to an unaccountable development regime. Many of these leaders have gone on to be elected to our decision-making board called the Leadership Council. Emanuel McCray helped rally and fight a six year successful campaign to pass statewide legislation to ensure workers can earn paid sick leave all while battling cancer.
However, the big breakthrough in the organizing of ESPN Zone workers did not translate to other restaurants at the Inner Harbor.
What made the ESPN Zone struggle different from the larger Human Rights Zone campaign were clear to our organizing team: ESPN Zone had acted with impunity against all the workers providing a unifying issue, and with everyone out of work, they had the time necessary to take on this fight, once they got over ESPN Zone’s threats of losing remaining wages if they spoke out. In the years prior to the shutdown, ESPN Zone workers sided with the Human Rights Zone Campaign however few had become active do to exhaustive schedules, second jobs, and other commitments.
ESPN Zone breakthrough proved the exception to our organizing strategy. We knew this because we had stuck to a campaign plan, dedicating 4 organizers to Inner Harbor outreach for each summer’s tourist season. Each season we tracked the number of contacts made at the Inner Harbor through talking to workers coming to work or leaving at the end of their shift; we logged each attempt at a home visit (ranging from the most common – “Not Home” to the prized successful visits where we noted a workers’ enthusiasm for the campaign); and we recorded attendance at meetings, rallies, and internal United Workers events like membership elections to our Leadership Council, the decision making body of the organization. We were not only documenting over 700 relationships with workers each tourist season, we were measuring our capacity – what we were capable of creating. Each year we evaluated progress – less than two years into the campaign when ESPN Zone shut down we were already beginning to see the signs that our limited capacity was not enough to rally 13 restaurants against the Inner Harbor developers. We were learning that we could reach between 700-800 workers each summer and have successful home visits with about 10% of that group – meaning visits that established a relationship and the potential for deeper action by workers. We evaluated progress week by week with our team of summer organizers.
We used our limited capacity without distractions, allowing us to learn what we were capable of within the human rights zone campaign we had designed. Going back to Sun Tzu’s proverb – part of our pedagogy was to learn about ourselves just like we were learning about our opponents. We learned that with the exception of the ESPN Zone case that we lacked the capacity to build the relationships with workers necessary to exert leverage over workplaces. Our experiences either attempting to create a dialogue with developers through a city council resolution as well as our deep research and published report were revealing that our opponents at the Inner Harbor had strengths we were not yet prepared to overtake.
This knowledge gained through the discipline of having a plan for the campaign, following through on our plans, and through myriad reflective spaces led us in three directions: one towards expanding capacity internally through a reorganization towards human rights committees in neighborhoods, schools and faith communities; towards campaigns that are democratized through deep collaboration across organizations, and another in which we expanded our Fair Development framework going beyond work with dignity to include housing and environmental justice.
-
United Workers History - Part IV
Human Rights Zone Campaign at the Inner Harbor: Part 1
Written By: Todd Cherkis, United Workers' Organizer
When United Workers first began we focused on having meetings at shelters in order to talk to workers – we tried a couple of different spaces starting with the lobby of 300 Cathedral St. where Homeless Persons Representation Project had its office. But then workers had to make a choice – getting a guaranteed shelter bed by showing up on time or risk not getting into the shelter by coming to our early evening meeting. So we negotiated with the Eutaw Street Shelter, an old abandoned fire station, that on Thursday nights our members, if they signed up at the Oasis drop-in center in the morning, would be guaranteed a bed. They were willing to reserve between 10-20 beds one night a week for members. From this agreement we were able to establish a regular meeting for workshops and strategic discussions. We were also able to have our ”classroom” held upstairs at the fire station, away from the very loud TV in the main common area, minimizing distractions and keeping the focus on the discussions.
Once this routine was established, outreach efforts fanned out to other shelters, the drop in center where you were assigned a chair and of course the day labor agencies themselves. We would go early in the morning (around 5 AM) or in mid-afternoon starting around 4pm to talk to returning workers. My experience in Atlanta with outreach at day labor agencies was that it was challenging – we generally had to get as close as possible to the temp agency doors; this meant being on private property if possible. The managers were unpredictable in that sometimes they didn’t bother us and other times they would come outside and make a big show of how little they thought of unions or the prospect of workers having a say about wages or working conditions. In the parlance of labor union organizing we went “public” immediately. Managers in Baltimore were much more agitated by our presence. The manager at a temp agency called Tops on Howard Street, a main downtown thoroughfare, chased me down the street with a baseball bat, hitting light poles and mail boxes in full view of rush hour traffic. The manager kept yelling “you want to talk about baseball?!” At Just Temps a manager assaulted one of our members pushing him into oncoming traffic on Russell Street – the main road to I-95. The same manager would randomly appear with a disposable camera taking pictures of us talking to workers. Suffice it to say that this made conversations with workers compromised. Workers worried about being seen talking with organizers. And at any moment conversations could be disrupted by a day labor manager’s angry outburst or act of violence.
When we began the Camden Yards campaign we started to focus on the hundreds of workers who simply came to the stadium and waited for work outside of Gate F. Some were sent down by van ride from Labor Ready but a large contingent waited in line to sign up on “Fernando’s clipboard” for the night’s work. Fernando acknowledged our presence but didn’t seem to care. And we wound up with a captive audience of bored workers waiting for the game to end. If the game went into extra innings we had even more time to talk with workers, document abuses, and share information about United Workers. We even brought a camcorder and filmed workers as they told us their stories.
After the first baseball season of the Living Wages Campaign at Camden Yards we took advantage of the change in cleaning contractors. The Maryland Stadium Authority decided to award Knight FM – a multi-national labor sourcing company based in Saginaw Michigan the contract. We met with them before they had an office set up in Baltimore. They had heard about our campaign and complaints. They understood that the reason they won out over Aramark was because of the public campaign we began and the abuses we brought to light. These abuses had included sexual harassment by an Aramark staffer. A woman worker from Labor Ready complained to us that the Aramark worker had exposed his genitals to her. When we met with the Maryland Stadium Authority, the Aramark representatives couldn’t deny that this had happened. Knight FM was ready to work with us and attempted to cultivate a different image, one of Midwestern good-natured care and concern for workers’ well-being. We met with Knight FM and asked them to sign a Code of Conduct that essentially did two things: created a public record that they would abide by all relevant labor laws include minimum wage, sexual harassment and race and gender-based discrimination. And as importantly the Code of Conduct recognized United Workers as a legitimate representative of the workers, empowered to grieve Code of Conduct complaints.
This negotiation with Knight FM was a moment of strategic sleight of hand – we knew they underestimated us, or were at least confused – we were not a labor union nor were we a charity. We also knew that they would see themselves as a different type of company, above the amoral world of day labor agencies who seemed to prey on people’s misfortune. They didn’t know we were desperate to carve out a more credible space for discussions with workers, credibility that a signed Code of Conduct would confer. We assured Knight FM that it would be preferred by all parties that rather than have public protests and get in the news media it would be beneficial to simply work directly with Knight FM to resolve grievances. We explained that the blame for the cheap contract with the Maryland Stadium Authority and the Baltimore Orioles rested with Peter Angelos, the Orioles Owner who had broken his living wage promise.
Knight FM signed the Code of Conduct.
We then went to each day labor agency they hired and got them to sign using a similar approach – we explained that we understood they were better than the old agencies, while pitting them against Peter Angelos and his broken promise. They all signed. This meant that instead of standing on a sidewalk 50 yards from the temp agency door hoping to catch workers coming or going and on guard for a manager’s protests or worse… we walked right in the front door and sat down among the rows of workers waiting to have their name called. We brazenly held meetings inside the day labor hiring halls who had contracts with Knight FM for the stadium cleaning work. Every worker got their own copy of the Code of Conduct. We started hearing grievances.
When we started talking to workers at the Inner Harbor it felt much more like those earlier times when day labor managers did their best to intimidate and disrupt workers talking with us. And we would soon learn that the restaurants including Baltimore’s own Philips Seafood and the national chains such as Cheesecake Factory, HardRock Café and Five Guys were less inclined to underestimate us. At Camden Yards those Code of Conduct agreements represented both a hedge against United Workers’ public protest and a signal to us that they underestimated our organization and workers’ agency. After winning that campaign in 2007 and enforcing this victory in 2008 by winning a union fight we didn’t have the luxury of being underestimated. Once Phillips saw organizers talking to their workers we were told they held an employee “captive audience” meeting where they threatened to shut down if workers’ unionized. At Cheesecake Factory they pitted one group of immigrants against another group who happened to be from a rival town in Guatemala. At Five Guys they clocked workers out and then made them work cleaning the restaurant unpaid.
At Camden Yards we not only had succeeded at claiming organizing space at the day labor agencies and at Camden Yards, we were also able to do home visits to workers. Despite homelessness many workers lived with family members or “couch surfed” or endured evictions every couple of months or negotiated with slumlords to keep on having a roof over one’s head. If the Orioles were not playing in Baltimore most of the stadium cleaners would be home. Our visits to hundreds of members were structured like one-on-one workshop sessions created to uncover abuses, deepen workers’ understanding of the labor supply chain to which they were at the bottom, which meant they were the most exploited and the most links in the chain. We would invite participation in our next meeting, event, or action. We spent a lot of time tracking down members who invariably moved or had to change phone numbers. We home visited members literally in the middle of having their belongings put out on the sidewalk. And yet these visits despite how transitory people were, the visits became a definitive way workers joined and became members, participating and growing our capacity to engage the campaign.
We discovered at the Inner Harbor that not only was the point of entry extremely challenging we would also learn that doing home visits was very difficult. The low wage service workers at the Inner Harbor had no control over when they worked and many held multiple jobs cobbling together several part-time gigs to make ends meet. This made reconnecting with workers once we got their contact information very difficult, much less finding regular times for groups of workers to all meet at once.
While we had more staff organizers than during the Camden Yards Campaign the size and challenges of the Inner Harbor were too much. For four years we had a team of 4 organizers (at Camden Yards it was 1) conduct outreach and home visits to workers. Every year we were able to connect with over 700 workers getting their address and phone number. And by the end of the peak tourist season May-August) we had engaged beyond one home visit, maybe 70 workers. Certainly not enough to think we had leverage over the policies and practices of a dozen restaurants and two major international developers.
The Battle of Ideas - Reframing the Inner Harbor
The experience of the Inner Harbor created a profound and humbling sense of not knowing all the answers. We had been wrong about our power assessment, our understanding of our capacity and this led to a painful loss. This lesson has pushed our pedagogy to value challenging assumptions and to attempt to go beyond sentimentality about the plight of the poor.
As one of our mentors, Willie Baptist, reminds us “it is not enough to be angry”.
We had chosen to extend and expand our organizing from Camden Yards to the Inner Harbor because the working conditions were so similar – low wage service jobs, mostly for the tourist season which nearly matched the baseball season and what we thought of as a big brand – the brand of the Inner Harbor – another iconographic symbol of Baltimore like Camden Yards. This choice came after a year of research and winning a union contract at Camden Yards in the Summer of 2008. The research was conducted by staff, members and Poverty Scholars in our New Organizers Program. However, this research largely focused on working conditions. We didn’t fully understand the entrenched power represented at the waterfront.
Instead we researched the campaign as we were waging it. From 2008 until 2011 we studied the Inner Harbor, the developers who leased or owned the properties, particularly the Cordish Company which leased the Power Plant from the city and General Growth Properties (GGP) – a large real estate company that owned malls around the country and had purchased the two waterfront shopping pavilions from the Rouse Corporation in 2004.
Our research was done by a mix of workers, volunteers, and staff spearheaded by Robin Bingham in partnership with the National Economic Social Rights Initiative. We spent months pouring over economic development reports, learning the ins and outs of various tax subsidies at the city, state and federal level. The Inner Harbor was a source of great interest from Baltimore City leadership and its development arm - the Baltimore Development Corporation. However, despite the stacks of studies, newspaper articles and reports very little mention was given to the workers at the Inner Harbor or the working conditions they endured. Our Hidden In Plain Sight report published in 2011 attempted to fill in the gaps and hold accountable political leadership. We detailed the history of Baltimore development, the broken promises on which the Inner Harbor was built (to replace lost manufacturing jobs) and the huge subsidies that have gone into this project (estimated at over $1 Billion).
Hidden in Plan Sight Release
Internally, discussions about the research and its implications pondered whether or not city leadership knew that the Inner Harbor was possibly a net money loser and that it represented a dying development model based on the whims of tourists and convention goers rather than more sustainable support. Our days and nights of outreach confirmed that once the tourism season was over after Labor Day the mall and its shops were mostly empty. Workers reported having their hours cut and having to go on unemployment or find other jobs. And yet the city and the Baltimore Development Corporation kept putting money towards the development. While GGP was an out-of-state conglomerate seemingly hobbled by the 2008 real estate crash, the Cordish Co. was very much a product of Baltimore and represented entrenched political power. Its campaign contributions reflected its power and brazenness. The Baltimore Brew reported in 2011 that Cordish contributed to then Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s campaign at the same time lobbying the city to reduce its rental payments for its Power Plant properties.
The Brew reported: “A partnership controlled by heavyweight developer David S. Cordish contributed $4,000 to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s reelection committee a month before he first approached the city to try to reduce the rent on his Power Plant complex in the Inner Harbor. This campaign check – plus an earlier donation by his wife, Susan Cordish – brings to $21,000 the contributions identified so far as coming from Cordish-controlled companies to the mayor, who has final say on whether to grant the company $3 million in rent relief. The Brew revealed Tuesday that Cordish gave $16,000 to the mayor’s campaign committee through a cluster of corporate entities not readily identified with the developer. Cordish is building a large slots casino at Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover and is expected to bid on the city’s planned casino south of M&T Bank Stadium. Lower-level staff at the Baltimore Development Corp. (BDC) first reviewed Cordish’s rent-abatement proposal in February, according to agency minutes. By early May, when Cordish made the bulk of his political contributions, the BDC board had heard his pitch for rent relief and the idea was under discussion by BDC president M.J. “Jay” Brodie and deputy mayor Kaliope Parthemos. Public disclosure of the rent-reduction plan was first reported by this website in June, when the proposal was sent to Rawlings-Blake. Today, the mayor said she still has not reviewed the Cordish proposal. She defended the contributions – criticized by two of her opponents – as fully within Maryland election laws”.
Later Cordish would leverage the most expensive ballot initiative in state history that decided to permit casinos around the state to get further tax breaks from state legislators so that he would not spend his cash opposing the measure.
We were learning through struggle and engagement with our opponents just how entrenched their power had become. We considered the Inner Harbor as much if not more a political struggle than a labor issue. Our campaign’s big picture question: How could political leaders continue to justify public investment in the Inner Harbor developments while workers’ struggled with mere seasonal employment and substandard working conditions? Soon after we released Hidden in Plain Sight in 2011 we worked with city council member Mary Pat Clarke who had been City Council President during the successful campaign to win passage of the first in the nation city living wage ordinance in the 1990s. We drafted a non-binding resolution that affirmed the findings of the Hidden in Plain Sight Report and called on public agencies and the Baltimore Development Corporation to account for the lack of dignified working conditions. The heart of the resolution stated:
“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, that the Council calls on representative from the Departments of Finance, Housing and Community Development, and from the Baltimore Development Corporation to appear before it to explain the City’s current policies for ensuring that public subsidies provided to private developers result in economic activity that produces jobs that pay living wages and promote worker dignity, the City’s current policies for encouraging public participation and private accountability in such city-subsidized economic development decisions, and to provide recommendations to the Council to guarantee such outcomes in the future.”
We were attempting to get Baltimore’s legislative body to call on public agencies and the quasi public Baltimore Development Corporation to testify about its mission and its ability to deliver for the residents of Baltimore. Public Agencies come before the council all the time as does the Baltimore Development Corporation. Nothing about this request is terribly out of the norm. The city talks about creating good jobs and promotes its policies as good for economic health so discussing the Inner Harbor working conditions and what it is doing to ensure public subsidies create the types of good jobs it promotes seems almost routine.
But here is where we dared to disrupt the patronage system, the resolution goes on to advocate for positioning human needs as the first priority of publicly subsidized economic development polices and projects; calls for those projects to provide living wages; and resolves to ensure workers directly impacted participate in a meaningful way in decision making:
“AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the improvement of the standards of living of the citizens of Baltimore be regarded as the principal objective in the planning of economic development.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that workers who are eventually employed in Baltimore as a result of publicly subsidized economic development, should receive fair and living wages, health care benefits, opportunities for skill enhancement, and be afforded respect and dignity at the workplace.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that all Baltimore citizens have the right to active, free and meaningful participation in the decisions regarding public economic development subsidies and to the fair distribution of benefits resulting therefrom.”
We knew from our research that these three demands were breaking with Baltimore’s political and economic beliefs and practices in trickle-down economics that essentially have stolen workers’ wages (profits) to subsidize wealth building for the very rich (waterfront shopping malls and market rate housing). The Baltimore Development Corporation has opposed raises to the minimum wage, or mandating living wages for certain large big box retailers. They have also shut out the press during their deliberations in violation of the open meetings requirements much less acquiesce to workers’ demands for meaningful participation in decision making.
Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke submitted the resolution. It garnered several co-sponsors. A hearing date was scheduled. Then at the city council weekly lunch the resolution was quietly stopped by Councilman Bill Cole who represented the 11th district which included the Inner Harbor and other downtown development interests. Cole used council tradition to protest the resolution claiming that Councilwoman Clarke violated the unspoken rule of attempting to legislate in someone else’s district. He did not support the resolution. The hearing was canceled and the resolution died. Three years later Councilman Bill Cole was selected to become the President and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation.
The Inner Harbor was Baltimore’s greatest example of machine politics – a patronage system that had robbed communities of wealth and opportunity so that Cordish and other members of the donor-class could enrich themselves. The Human Rights Zone Campaign at the Inner Harbor gave us an up-close experience of this entrenched power. In a campaign the first step is defining the problem and then you can move to the solution phase based on this definition. At Camden Yards nobody denied the abuses taking place, most of the campaign energy went towards building the credibility of the workers to represent themselves and to hold accountable a labor supply chain which through outsourcing was meant to facilitate denial of rights. At the Inner Harbor we struggled to achieve the first phase of defining the problem. Organizations like the Baltimore Development Corporation never met with workers or made public comments about our claims. Our first forays at engaging the city council further illustrated how stymied we were.
1. Baltimore Brew August 31, 2011 by Mark Reutter titled: “Update: Cordish contributions to Rawlings-Blake reach $21,000: https://baltimorebrew.com/2011/08/31/update-cordish-contributions-to-rawlings-blake-reach-21000/
2. Michael Dresser, “Gambling Expansion Wins Narrow Victory”, Baltimore Sun, November 7, 2012.
-
Our Mass Outreach is in Full Swing
Our mass outreach season is in full swing! Our leaders have been traveling across Baltimore and the state of Maryland to learn more about the issues impacting poor communities. Using our Projects of Survival Survey, we’re canvassing public housing complexes, food pantries, health clinics, churches, and other places to listen to people’s needs and to find ways of pushing back. And by exposing and documenting the issues impacting poor people across Maryland, this work will inform our decision about a campaign that will unite and grow our base statewide. We know that the only way to end poverty is to unite the poor across racial, geographic, partisan, and other historic lines of division. In this e-alert, we’ll share what we’ve learned from our outreach so far and our upcoming outreach days.
Reporting From the Field: August/September
We are in the middle of our base building season. This means our base building team is organizing projects of survival and zeroing in on points of entry where our base either lives or gathers to get their needs met. These pictures were taken from two outreach activities in Western Maryland.
In this first picture, Michael Coleman and Shirley Eatmon are reviewing a list of addresses of people whose landlords are taking them to court. In other words, these are people at risk of being evicted and losing their homes.
That day Shirley and Michael visited with several households in this situation including a visit with this couple. One tenant was facing eviction after falling behind on her rent when she had to cover the costs of burying her young son. Another couple was in the process of applying for emergency rental assistance but hadn't been able to get their landlord to participate- a needed step to receive the assistance. In these cases we were able to over the course of the week work with the tenants to help resolve their cases with the landlord and avoid eviction. That was last week. This week's cases of people having to go to rent court grew from 8 to 42. We are thinking about how this Project of Survival can expand and train other key organizers in Carroll as well as think about how we protest these violations of people's right to housing.
We also traveled to Cumberland to work with several of our base building team on following up with residents who we met at a food pantry the week prior. Our home visits revealed people experiencing homelessness, inadequate health care, and working jobs that did not pay enough to make ends meet. The picture featured here is of Todd Cherkis and Vicki who along with Connie shared struggles around how to care for family members who have become homeless.
Closer to Home
In addition to our outreach across the state, we’re also doing outreach closer to home. Just a few blocks from our office on Kirk Ave is the Donald Bentley food pantry, open every Saturday to serve the growing number of people unable to afford to meet their most basic needs. Most people arrive at the pantry on foot from the surrounding community, but since the pandemic more people have been arriving in cars from across the city. We set up a table by the exit and had conversations over bagels, coffee, and donuts. People were taking interest in United Workers before we’d even set up our canopy. One woman shared that she was paying $400 a month to live in what she described as a “closet”, and was facing a rent hike to $650 that she didn’t think she’d be able to afford. Another gentleman, who worked for an investment firm managing over a trillion dollars, had been priced out of New York and was still struggling to make ends meet in Baltimore after several rent increases. Whether it was rent, medical debt, unemployment, or other issues, people felt they were being squeezed and knew that action must be taken. As we follow up on our day of outreach, we’ll be inviting these folks into our movement so we can take action together.
Join our Upcoming Outreach Days!
Check out our Blog page to read past editions of our e-alerts.
We need to build a mass movement of working class people to end poverty, and we need your help to do it. If you’d like to support our work by volunteering your time and skills, please reach out to us at [email protected] to get involved in our ongoing campaigns. You can also support us by clicking the button below and donating to United Workers. Your financial support will contribute to us becoming independently sustained by our base of members, family, and friends.
-
Reflecting on June 18th
United Workers knows that a mass movement of poor people, led by the poor, is the only answer to the evils of racism, poverty, militarism, and ecological devastation. On June 18th, we took a big step in growing that movement together. We brought over 100 of our base to join the thousands from across the country that gathered for the mass assembly in D.C. In our band of unlikely brothers and sisters included members who are homeless and surviving in shelters, senior citizens and grandkids, leaders who committed themselves to bringing their neighbors, family and co-workers.
We could see on our buses traveling to D.C. in the early morning and in the thousands that greeted us on the national mall, what Dr. Martin Luther King called a “new and unsettling force” that would be needed to shake this nation from complacency and usher in lasting change.
As we were reminded on June 18th this was not about a day but a declaration of commitment to the long struggle ahead. This summer, United Workers will be embarking on an historic challenge of organizing across lines of division as we grow statewide, crossing boundaries of race, geography and culture. We look forward to sharing more about our summer outreach plans in upcoming e-alerts.
Included in this e-alert we will share a reflection on June 18th from Mike Hughes, a MD Poor People’s Campaign leader from Western Maryland, a video created by the United Workers Media Team capturing the day, and finally our third installment of “Learning As We Lead:” 20 Years of United Workers.
Member Reflections of June 18th
Written By Mike Hughes, MD PPC
On the weekend of Juneteenth 2022, the Poor People's Campaign gathered for a Moral March and Assembly, in Washington, DC. People arrived on buses from around the country, many to share their testimonies of struggle and survival. On stage, the theomusicology team was in force with a full gospel band and choir, stirring the crowd of several thousand with songs from the movement.
"There is power in our stories," said one testifier, asking the crowd to close their eyes and imagine, "What would America look like?"
Another testifier talked of the shame they experienced growing up LGBTQ+ and how they wondered "if being myself was worth it? How can my existence be a threat?"
Other testifiers talked about how "incarcerated lives matter too." How they made mistakes, but they are not a mistake, crying out, "I too am America."
With the capital behind him, Bishop Reverend William Barber called for a Third Reconstruction Agenda, denouncing the politics of greed that leads to policy murder, calling it a moral crisis in America. "There comes a time," he proclaimed, "when we must have a moral meeting ... and we won't be silent or unseen or unheard anymore." He then spoke of building a fusion coalition of the rejected, the outsiders, of those at the bottom, to build a non-violent, moral army, announcing, "We are not an insurrection, but we are a resurrection."
Those words, "not an insurrection, but a resurrection," inspired me. My name is Mike Hughes. It was during the COVID lockdowns and the mass demonstrations protesting the murder of George Floyd that I first became aware of the Poor People's Campaign. Watching a PPC rally on television, much like this year's event, was where I first became involved, texting the number to sign up.
I live in Western Maryland with my wife and I’m the proud parent of four children. My wife and I are both disabled. Though our disabilities are hidden, they affect every part of our lives. I have autism. And my wife has heart failure, along with auto-immune disorders which force her to live in chronic pain. I am able to work. My wife is not. Our experiences have made me see how fragile life can be, how we're only a couple of bad weeks from financial disaster.
Seeing the attack on our capital on television was one of the most traumatic events I've experienced as an American. "So it's come to this," I remember thinking. Since then, the efforts by red states to enact laws to suppress voting have intensified, trying to limit the vote to only the "real" Americans. Today's march, however, declared that ALL AMERICANS ARE REAL AMERICANS, that all voices deserve to be heard, again, like Rev. Barber said, "we won't be silent or unseen or unheard anymore."
That message was reinforced by co-chair Reverend Liz Theo Harris when she said, "Hope comes from the bottom. We will transform this nation from the bottom up."
Later, Bernice King, daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that poverty is violence, and that our nation doesn't suffer from a deficit of resources, but a deficit of will. Stating that poverty is not someone else's problem, that the least of these is becoming the most of these, and poverty will not stop at low-income workers. Poverty is a system that will continue to consume more and more people.
Throughout the day, a blustery wind kept the participants cool, with several speakers commenting that the spirit was moving. While storm clouds threatened briefly to rain out the event, the wind prevailed and brushed away the clouds.
The event ended with singing and with Rev. Barber calling for viewers to join the movement, then he offered an outline of the Poor People's Campaign's plans for non-violent direct action in the halls of Congress in September. As one speaker said, "This isn't the end, it's the beginning."
Video Reflections from Father Ty
United Workers leader Father Ty Hullinger gave his thoughts on the mass march from the middle of the action in D.C. on June 18th. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more footage from the ground and other content from the United Workers Media Team!
To watch our other videos, please check out our YouTube channel here.
PART III: Camden Yards Victory
The following is an excerpt from the latest entry in our Learning as we Lead series, documenting the history of United Workers. To read the full story, or to see the other entries in our series, check out our blog here.
...We drafted our story and learned that if we could take control of the timeline as best we could, we would maximize our resources. When we did things was as important as how we did things or why.
Our strategic plans revolved around a peak organizing period – the baseball season. We wanted media attention, so we planned protests when the media would be most available – in the Spring before students’ summer break and then after Labor Day. During the summer months we would focus all our efforts on organizing workers. To develop new members we developed what we called “Unity Actions” and we held a weekend getaway retreat called the “Staying on Track Retreat”.
In 2004 our first Spring Action was on Opening Day – the time of the baseball season when everyone pays the most attention. The result of this opening day salvo was immediate ongoing talks with the Maryland Stadium Authority who managed the cleaning contract because the stadium was owned by the state. And in a more limited way talks began with Peter Angelos. In fact even before our first protest Angelos had reached out, having heard from labor unions about our planned opening day march from the shelter down Eutaw Street to the main entrance to Camden Yards. Unions had called Angelos apparently to warn him and to avoid being blamed for this seemingly surprise protest. It appeared that our strategy was already bearing fruit - Angelos didn’t want bad publicity on such an important day. So before we even put out a press release or finished our protest signs and banners we - this ragtag group had gotten the attention of Baltimore’s most powerful person.
The dialogues with the Maryland Stadium Authority led to Aramark, the cleaning contractor, losing its contract. Workers got a raise to $7/hr.
We need to build a mass movement of working class people to end poverty, and we need your help to do it. If you’d like to support our work by volunteering your time and skills, please reach out to us at [email protected] to get involved in our ongoing campaigns. You can also support us by clicking the button below and donating to United Workers. Your financial support will contribute to us becoming independently sustained by our base of members, family, and friends.
-
United Workers History- Part III
Camden Yards Victory
Written by: Todd Cherkis, Leadership Organizer
You could have the greatest individual talents — a team full of Kobe, Jordan, LeBron and Curry and still fall short. An injury, an ego, a mismatch of strengths that work to highlight great weaknesses all can lead to disappointing losses. During this period (2002-2004) we were identifying and developing leaders through exchanges with other organizations including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union as well as others within a network of poor people’s organizations with roots in the National Union of the Homeless organizing of the 1980s and 1990s. We also facilitated discussions at our weekly meeting at the Eutaw Street homeless shelters. We concerned ourselves with the systemic causes of poverty, examining the powerful alignment of forces that led to an invisible day labor system employing homeless people below even a minimum wage of $4/hr. Day laborers were working at some of the biggest corporations, construction projects and internationally recognized sports stadiums. We experienced dozens of abuses from being charged for rides to job sites to gender-based discrimination in hiring, to unsafe working conditions. What were we up against and how might we come together not for charity or temporary relief but for economic justice?
We saw other organizations gravitate towards conflating building power with getting in the news media. For every political crisis or headline one could react – quickly assemble for a protest, or a press conference. Get outraged. Mobilize. Protest. Repeat. However this seemed a way to exhaust yourself, give up this reflective strategic space. Give it over to whatever the powerful were debating in the media. Was this how to build a movement, or use what little capacity we had?
There are so many battles – cuts to social programs, a new policy being drafted to erect new barriers for housing vouchers, day labor agencies that pay below minimum wage or don’t provide even a bathroom for workers, or that shelter manager who was nasty to a member. It can feel like a sea of crisis, overwhelming, paralysis inducing.
Our discussions at our weekly evening meeting kept us grounded, kept us from leaping from one thing to the next. Instead reflections allowed members to “step back” so as to get a better view. We decided to focus on one campaign targeting the roots of the day labor system – the corporations who bought our labor on the cheap from the day labor agencies.
We started by interviewing our peers about conditions, and where they were sent each day to work. These interviews were summarized in a report “Our Stolen Sweat” and featured the Camden Yards baseball stadium and working conditions there. We were introducing the idea that the Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority were responsible for deplorable working conditions – workers paid as low as $3/hr, made to eat lunch in the supply closet out of view of fans, hired based on race and gender.
We focused all of our energies on the hundreds of day laborers who cleaned Camden Yards. We demanded a living wage from Peter Angelos, the Orioles Owner and the Maryland Stadium Authority that hired Aramark who then hired day labor agencies who then hired the workers. We read up on Peter Angelos – his history of winning asbestos cases on behalf of steelworkers, we saw he was named most powerful Baltimorean by Baltimore Magazine. And we wondered what a group of homeless workers could do to win a living wage or even get his attention. There were doubts. Some thought it was too big an opponent. Yet we had seen the CIW take on big fast food brands, rally consumers, and succeed at building a movement. We could do this in Baltimore. We read Naomi Klein’s No Logo chapter on the brand “boomerang” where activists used the glow and attention brands created through multi-million dollar ad campaigns – turning this brand attention on itself by exposing workers’ abuses at Nike for instance – getting added attention from consumers. Camden Yards and the Orioles – everyone in town knew about the team and the stadium and cared deeply about the franchise. What if the public knew that behind the games were homeless day laborers underpaid and experiencing some of the worst rights abuses in the country? Would this reality smudge up the glorious images we all had of the Orioles? Would the media, public and politicians feel compelled to do something about it?
Our group sitting in metal folding chairs, looking up at butcher paper taped to an empty wall included notes on strengths and weaknesses – a hypothesis for building power – strength “our story” – weakness “lots of day laborers …we can’t strike”; strength “Orioles have an image to protect” – weakness “stereotypes – people don’t have a high opinion of the homeless” “Peter Angelos can ignore us”. Strength “lots of workers at the stadium… everyone has worked there it seems”.
We decided to try this out and publicly launch our first campaign — the Living Wages Campaign At Camden Yards.
We also took several lessons from our studies and close work with the Poor Peoples’ Economic Human Rights Campaign’s educational structure – the University of the Poor and the CIW. We learned through discussions with the leaders of these campaigns that you build on assessed strengths and weaknesses of your side and your opponent’s side. This political and economic assessment was critical to determining how you were going to build power.
Just as profound – we saw that groups created campaigns that were meant to grow over time. The campaigns created new networks and relationships: students, faith, labor, civic as well as online through email listservs and updates; a website that documented the campaign and informed the public on how to get involved. We also saw by being up close to the CIW’s Fair Food Campaign that these fights were planned, they were battles of stories with members and leaders being authors carefully crafting the next chapters – escalating tension, introducing new alliances and new ways to tell the story (new perspectives as well as different media from songs to videos to street theater performance). Our leaders had traveled with the CIW’s Fair Food campaign and saw this battle of stories first hand - even participating on their media team, making short videos that were posted on their website as part of daily reports from national protest marches.
Mainly we understood that strategy meant study and making a plan.
So we started making strategic plans. We drafted our story and learned that if we could take control of the timeline as best we could we would maximize our resources. When we did things was as important as how we did things or why.
Our strategic plans revolved around a peak organizing period – the baseball season. We wanted media attention so we planned protests when the media would be most available – in the Spring before students’ summer break and then after Labor Day. During the summer months we would focus all our efforts on organizing workers. To develop new members we developed what we called “Unity Actions” and we held a weekend getaway retreat called the “Staying on Track Retreat”.
Staying on Track Retreat, 2007
In 2004 our first Spring Action was on Opening Day – the time of the baseball season when everyone pays the most attention. The result of this opening day salvo was immediate ongoing talks with the Maryland Stadium Authority who managed the cleaning contract because the stadium was owned by the state. And in a more limited way talks began with Peter Angelos. In fact even before our first protest Angelos had reached out, having heard from labor unions about our planned opening day march from the shelter down Eutaw Street to the main entrance to Camden Yards. Unions had called Angelos apparently to warn him and to avoid being blamed for this seemingly surprise protest. It appeared that our strategy was already bearing fruit - Angelos didn’t want bad publicity on such an important day. So before we even put out a press release or finished our protest signs and banners we - this ragtag group had gotten the attention of Baltimore’s most powerful person.
The dialogues with the Maryland Stadium Authority led to Aramark -the cleaning contractor losing its contract, workers got a raise to $7/hr.
Peter Angelos spoke directly with our lawyer, Homeless Persons Representation Project (HPRP) attorney Peter Sabonis, promising that he would pay the difference between $7 and a living wage to ensure the workers were paid fairly. Angelos would end up reneging on his promise… not having the decency to share this news until Opening Day the following season. In response we held our 2005 Spring action on union night when labor unions got discounted tickets. Our aim was to embarrass Peter Angelos for faking his support of workers and build support with union members. Workers held large images of Peter Angelos with the words “Labor Faker” written across or simply “Liar”. Attorneys at HPRP warned us that we might get sued. We thought to ourselves - that would be a good thing - a new chapter in our battle of stories - a real David vs. Goliath court drama. Angelos was too smart for that and we were not hit with a lawsuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP6QhRoRHHU
After the ramp up actions of the Spring we would consolidate leaders at midsummer Staying on Track retreats. The first one was held in Washington, DC in 2006 and included a trip to the national mall and the Lincoln Memorial – a first for members. At this retreat we studied the Abolitionist movement and the leadership of Harriet Tubman. We introduced the concept that to create a movement requires sacrifice. Tubman had risked certain death to bring thousands to freedom. We needed to think about what sacrifices we were prepared to make in order to break free of the day labor system that was keeping us poor. Our first act of sacrifice was to stage an all night prayer vigil at Peter Angelos’s office on Charles Street. Workers would march, picket, pray, and sing together all evening, all night and in the morning we would lead a march to his office. Workers leaving the baseball game after work would join as well.
A year later the Staying on Track Retreat was held at Frostburg State University tucked into the Appalachian mountains in western Maryland. Because we had introduced and reflected on this idea of sacrifice and carried out a more intense action the year prior we were able to discuss and decide to do something even more intense. We also were able to bring to the retreat a leader from the CIW who had himself participated in a hunger strike against Taco Bell in 2003. United Workers founder, Todd Cherkis, also participated in this hunger strike. We were able to “bring” these experiences into the retreat and reflect on sacrifice, solidarity, and the necessity of escalating the campaign. We decided to go on a hunger strike in front of Camden Yards. 15 workers and allies made the commitment at a special ceremony we performed at the end of the retreat. This ceremony was planned by leaders Carl Johnson, Luis Larin, and Tom Kertes, in their own way echoing the underground Freedom Churches of the Poor that developed as part of the Abolitionist movement. It was a powerful moment of recognition of how far we had all come as leaders to be able to respond to such a call - to put our bodies on the frontlines. At the ceremony members and supporters who would stand with hunger strikers received a black wrist band to wear. Those that would put their bodies at risk stepped forward and took a yellow wrist band. Each of us in these two concentric circles lit a candle as a memorial to those that have sacrificed and come before. The 15 hunger strikers who stood together represented this Muti-racial, bi-lingual, multi-gendered “new and unsettling” force, a continuation of struggle.
Part of our strategic plan was to give the Maryland Stadium Authority a deadline we knew they wouldn’t meet. So for months we were telling them they had to give workers a living wage by Labor Day. Their failure would prompt and justify workers going on hunger strike. The Stadium Authority acted as predicted, putting us off earlier that summer saying “the living wage issue is a Fall issue we can discuss after the season” admitting they would miss our deadline.
When we gathered back in Baltimore in early August after the retreat and announced the hunger strike at Camden Yards to widespread media coverage. We were playing to our strengths – committed leadership unafraid to tell our story. Within three weeks of ongoing press coverage we had largely planned through the preparation and hunger strike announcement - the Mayor and Governor publicly sided with our campaign and the Maryland Stadium Authority held an emergency board meeting. The Maryland Stadium Authority board voted to approve a living wage for stadium workers averting the spectacle of seeing starving workers at the city’s famous sports venue.
Hunger Strike Announcement
Results
Winning this campaign was an extension of what we were learning and practicing all along – a pedagogy of reflective action whereas one of our mentors Willie Baptist of the Kairos Center would say “campaigns are classrooms”. We were learning, we could study, we could be scholars. We were learning we could strategize and plan and respond using our intelligence. We were learning we could make history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csYab5zJB-U
-
June 18th Reflection
On the weekend of Juneteenth 2022, the Poor People's Campaign gathered for a Moral March and Assembly, in Washington, DC. People arrived on buses from around the country, many to share their testimonies of struggle and survival. On stage, the theomusicology team was in force with a full gospel band and choir, stirring the crowd of several thousand with songs from the movement.
"There is power in our stories," said one testifier, asking the crowd to close their eyes and imagine, "What would America look like?"
Another testifier talked of the shame they experienced growing up LGBTQ+ and how they wondered "if being myself was worth it? How can my existence be a threat?"
Other testifiers talked about how "incarcerated lives matter too." How they made mistakes, but they are not a mistake, crying out, "I too am America."
With the capital behind him, Bishop Reverend William Barber called for a Third Reconstruction Agenda, denouncing the politics of greed that leads to policy murder, calling it a moral crisis in America. "There comes a time," he proclaimed, "when we must have a moral meeting ... and we won't be silent or unseen or unheard anymore." He then spoke of building a fusion coalition of the rejected, the outsiders, of those at the bottom, to build a non-violent, moral army, announcing, "We are not an insurrection, but we are a resurrection."
Those words, "not an insurrection, but a resurrection," inspired me. My name is Mike Hughes. It was during the COVID lockdowns and the mass demonstrations protesting the murder of George Floyd that I first became aware of the Poor People's Campaign. Watching a PPC rally on television, much like this year's event, was where I first became involved, texting the number to sign up.I live in Western Maryland with my wife and I’m the proud parent of four children. My wife and I are both disabled. Though our disabilities are hidden, they affect every part of our lives. I have autism. And my wife has heart failure, along with auto-immune disorders which force her to live in chronic pain. I am able to work. My wife is not. Our experiences have made me see how fragile life can be, how we're only a couple of bad weeks from financial disaster.Seeing the attack on our capital on television was one of the most traumatic events I've experienced as an American. "So it's come to this," I remember thinking. Since then, the efforts by red states to enact laws to suppress voting have intensified, trying to limit the vote to only the "real" Americans. Today's march, however, declared that ALL AMERICANS ARE REAL AMERICANS, that all voices deserve to be heard, again, like Rev. Barber said, "we won't be silent or unseen or unheard anymore."
That message was reinforced by co-chair Reverend Liz Theo Harris when she said, "Hope comes from the bottom. We will transform this nation from the bottom up."
Later, Bernice King, daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that poverty is violence, and that our nation doesn't suffer from a deficit of resources, but a deficit of will. Stating that poverty is not someone else's problem, that the least of these is becoming the most of these, and poverty will not stop at low-income workers. Poverty is a system that will continue to consume more and more people.
Throughout the day, a blustery wind kept the participants cool, with several speakers commenting that the spirit was moving. While storm clouds threatened briefly to rain out the event, the wind prevailed and brushed away the clouds.
The event ended with singing and with Rev. Barber calling for viewers to join the movement, then he offered an outline of the Poor People's Campaign's plans for non-violent direct action in the halls of Congress in September. As one speaker said, "This isn't the end, it's the beginning." -
Rise Up!
As a mass organization led by the poor, United Workers has been busy gearing up for the June 18th Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. June 18th is not just a march, it's a declaration of an ongoing moral movement coalesced by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The goals of this campaign are to unite and build the power of the 140 million poor and low-wealth people in this country, shift the political narrative, and make real policies to fully address poverty and low wealth from the bottom up.
Since the early days, United Workers has been a part of this national and statewide effort to reawaken Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign. This revival of the Poor People’s campaign is not merely a reenactment, but a continuation of Dr. King’s strategic vision. We share the goals of this campaign. As Dr. King teaches us in the above quote, the poor must be the leaders of this movement to end poverty. Only by taking action together can we, the poor and dispossessed, become the “new and unsettling force” that will transform our country.
In this month’s e-alert, we’ll share some of the creative ways we’re demonstrating our leadership and mobilizing across our state towards June 18th. We’ll share a video from a recent Art Build in Westminster hosted by the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign, a member’s reflection on being a mobilization captain for June 18th, spoken poetry by Damontae Taylor, a United Workers Youth Leader, and another installment of our United Workers' history series.
Art Build
On May Day, a group of United Workers leaders traveled to Westminster to participate in the Maryland Poor People's Campaign Art Build to gear up for June 18th. Check out this short video from the event!
With June 18th less than a month away, our mobilizing captains have been working hard in organizing people to join in the Moral March on Washington. Here are reflections from two of United Workers leaders on why they decided to become mobilization captains and why June 18th is so important.
“We decided to be mobilizing captains for June 18th because it is important to build unity and leadership of low income and poor people. We all need to come together so that we can demand better housing, an end to homelessness, better education, less crime, and equal rights for all. We must do our part in order to educate people and bring them out to the March on Washington.” -Jerry and Jackie Mayo, United Workers Leaders
Leadership Day
On April 16th, we held our annual Leadership Day for the first time in person since the pandemic. This year we focused on how we as an organization and as individual leaders can carry on the legacy of Dr. King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in our current times. During our opening exercise participants were asked to read Dr. Kings quotes and create skits that reflect the message of his words. Click below to watch one of the groups perform their skit.
To watch the other skits please check out our YouTube channel here.PART II: Why Human Rights?
When United Workers began, we had to confront the challenges of how to unite into a powerful and as Dr. King described, “new and unsettling force”. How do you bring workers together when they are day laborers who are contending with being hired and fired everyday, working jobs that may not last more than a day or a week. And when there is no legal framework that upholds the right to organize. And when conditions are so bad that many of these workers are depending on homeless shelters and meal programs to survive.
These are big challenges that in so many ways have only gotten worse since our founding in 2002. We see more and more of the workforce becoming temporary workers and part-time workers so corporations can exploit our labor and reap tremendous profits at our expense. As day laborers you have no job security and you don’t know how many hours you are going to work from week to week.. that must sound familiar to a majority of workers employed at the largest employers in American including Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon; or with rising new comers dispatching work via cell phone such as Lyft and Door Dash.
How do you build an organization when you are up against Wall Street and Big Tech that have bet big time on corporations that see us as expendable? That create, refine and invest in business models that turn more of us into simple a part of a logistics plan for moving inventory or to be replaced by automation in the very near termed?
Below is a piece Todd Cherkis, wrote when trying to summarize this initial period where we had more questions than answers. We were trying to understand what values have the potential to build community and unite working class people across historic divisions as well as new divisions based on new technological advances making our labor more precarious. Further - we also wanted to best describe what our experiences were and that our struggles were not about small concessions here or there but about our survival. That is how how high we saw the stakes 20 years ago and now after enduring the ongoing Pandemic and seeing even further how vulnerable we all are, we know the stakes are rising for a growing majority..... Click here to read more!
Art and Culture
Spoken Poetry By: Damontae Taylor, United Workers' Youth Leader
We need to build a mass movement of working class people to end poverty, and we need your help to do it. If you’d like to support our work by volunteering your time and skills, please reach out to us at [email protected] to get involved in our ongoing campaigns. You can also support us by clicking the button below and donating to United Workers. Your financial support will contribute to us becoming independently sustained by our base of members, family, and friends.
-
United Workers History- Part II
When United Workers began, we had to confront the challenges of how to unite into a powerful and as Dr. King described, “new and unsettling force”. How do you bring workers together when they are day laborers who are contending with being hired and fired everyday, working jobs that may not last more than a day or a week. And when there is no legal framework that upholds the right to organize. And when conditions are so bad that many of these workers are depending on homeless shelters and meal programs to survive.
These are big challenges that in so many ways have only gotten worse since our founding in 2002. We see more and more of the workforce becoming temporary workers and part-time workers so corporations can exploit our labor and reap tremendous profits at our expense. As day laborers you have no job security and you don’t know how many hours you are going to work from week to week.. that must sound familiar to a majority of workers employed at the largest employers in American including Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon; or with rising new comers dispatching work via cell phone such as Lyft andDoor Dash.
How do you build an organization when you are up against Wall Street and Big Tech that have bet big time on corporations that see us as expendable? That create, refine and invest in business models that turn more of us into simple a part of a logistics plan for moving inventory or to be replaced by automation in the very near termed?
Below is a piece Todd Cherkis, wrote when trying to summarize this initial period where we had more questions than answers. We were trying to understand what values have the potential to build community and unite working class people across historic divisions as well as new divisions based on new technological advances making our labor more precarious. Further - we also wanted to best describe what our experiences were and that our struggles were not about small concessions here or there but about our survival. That is how how high we saw the stakes 20 years ago and now after enduring the ongoing Pandemic and seeing even further how vulnerable we all are, we know the stakes are rising for a growing majority.
Why Human Rights?
Written By: Todd Cherkis, Leadership Organizer
United Workers confronted a number of organizing challenges when it set out to improve the working conditions and pay for day laborers in Baltimore. First, as traditional union organizers know, it is extremely difficult to organize temporary workers who are dispersed over multiple and changing work-sites that are characterized by very high turn-over that produce an entirely new workforce every few months. In Baltimore, day laborers work for dozens of labor agencies and dozens of different contractors throughout the city, which makes even identifying and reaching them difficult. Second, day laborers inherently lack leverage vis-à-vis employers. Unlike production-based industries, where employers can suffer economic losses from the withdrawal of skilled labor, day labor agencies can draw from vast pools of unskilled and readily available workers to replace laborers who stop working. In Baltimore specifically, day labor agencies maintain their access to large pools of surplus labor through the homeless shelters and soup kitchens with which they maintain good relationships. Third, the legal framework for traditional labor organizing, based in the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Board, provides no redress for day laborers. Among other things, legal prohibitions against “secondary targets” would deprive day laborers of their only leverage. These factors compelled us to look beyond traditional union organizing. Other approaches, however, were rejected either because they implied “charity” or reinforced identity politics. United Workers turned instead to human rights both as an alternative to union-based, charity-based and identity-based models and as a way of overcoming the weaknesses inherent to these approaches.
We found in the human rights framework means for overcoming the challenges of reaching and organize day laborers, as well as for cultivating interest in and mobilizing allies. Embedding day laborers’ grievances and demands in the broader human rights framework, with its emphasis on universality and human dignity, accomplishes the following. First, by its very nature, temporary work is not conducive to workers developing a commitment to a particular workplace or employer. Embedding demands in human rights is providing the possibility of reaching and mobilizing workers irrespective of workplace, duration of employment or employer because the issues transcend place and time. We attribute the strong appeal that human rights has registered with members to the effectiveness that framing our demands in terms of a political struggle for larger principles. The broader framework of universal principles has also helped to penetrate race and ethnic barriers that have exacerbated day laborers’ spatial dispersal.
Second, by calling attention to a living wage and freedom from poverty as inalienable human rights to which all human beings are entitled, including day laborers, United Workers is able to articulate demands that have the potential to reach the public at large. Instead of calling on the public to come out in support of these particular workers’ demands for higher wages, they are calling on the public to support the human rights of all. Indeed, rather than seeking charity to alleviate the dire conditions faced by day laborers, the human rights model spotlights the political and economic cultures that force some to rely on charity instead of ensuring a distribution of resources that upholds the dignity and justice to which all persons have an inalienable right.
Our first major campaign - the Living Wages Campaign at Camden Yards was a human rights campaign calling for work with dignity. It would come to transcend racial lines, gender, and even where people caught temp work to go and clean up Camden Yards as throughout the 4 years of the campaign, many temporary agencies were deployed to disorganize and disunite our campaign.
Through our focus on values - human rights values - that all life is sacred no matter how much you earn, what race or gender you are, your immigration status or whether you had a criminal record.. these values become the sacred center of our work and the fight for our dignity and survival at Camden Yards - at the time the largest employer of day laborers in Baltimore.
-
Member Reflections
Here are some reflections from two of our youth leaders who participated in the youth programing at the Hope Garden:
"There are many things we do at the garden and one of those are media. In media we used DJI cameras and drones to capture people's stories at the Hope Garden. Telling stories are important because stories are your experiences you had throughout your life. Stories also inform people of the many problems we face. One of the problems we face is homelessness. Homelessness is a big problem all over the world. Poverty is another problem we face in the world, including Harlem Park. Storytelling is a way to make people more aware of these problems so they can help stop these problems. Telling stories with our media will help people see the truth instead of the many lies we can find in the news and media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and many more." -Michele Coleman, United Workers Youth Leader
"I really enjoyed building a shed and garden beds. I learned about the different parts of a drill and how to help people build. I planted potatoes and carrots with Ms. Vern. Ms. Vern taught me how to take care of the plants. Also each Tuesday we paint our history and future. So if you like to build and paint and garden, come to the Hope Garden."- Marquis Coleman, United Workers Youth Leader