Q: When is a protest march quiet and subdued?
A: When it's a symbolic funeral procession through downtown Richmond, mourning the death of the minimum wage increase for the state of Virginia.
Yesterday, I took a couple community service hours from work to lend a hand with this event. We walked two-by-two down Broad Street to the State Capitol grounds where a service was held. Since the General Assembly was back in session, we figured that they should hear from their constituents about the all but forgotten working poor in our state. As a Board member for the Virginia Organizing Project, I was asked to speak to the press a couple times. My father-in-law said that he caught a clip of me on the WTVR 6 o'clock news making a convincing argument (although I only remember
being tongue-tied on camera).
A better spokesperson has turned out to be Ray McAllister of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch. Take a peek at his stellar write up.
Let's hope that this minimum rage event turns into maximum results at next year's General Assembly session (or on election day).
ps: We'll get back to all things food in due time. Just had to give voice to my other passion.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
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Thank you for you work and your compassion.
ReplyDeleteClassical economics, Adam Smith, and free market forces – all wonderful concepts and very efficient and practical methods of managing our micro marketplace activities.
Except – except that in this natural world the ultimate progression is that the weak eventually fall by the wayside and the strong ultimately accumulate all the wealth. It is a game of Monopoly played large and as anyone who has played Monopoly knows, it is no fun to play once someone else controls all the hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.
The minimum wage is a contract with ourselves, an agreement within our larger community that anyone who exchanges his/her work for pay should at least get enough to sustain himself/herself above poverty. This is not free market – it is compassionate and Christian values.
When we take the obsession with free markets and free trade to the extreme, we are essentially saying let the raw rules of nature, survival of the fittest, trump human compassion.