WA State JwJ Update and
Local Workers' Rights Victories
May 2008
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When Real Change came to
Jobs with Justice to ask for support to stop the raids on
homeless encampments by the city of Seattle, JwJ activists
jumped on the opportunity.
On March 13th in the pouring rain Jobs with Justice, with
other community activists and groups flyered downtown Seattle
asking the city to stop the raids, went to the rally at City
Hall, and participated in the biggest campout to date in protest
of Mayor Greg Nickels' actions towards the homeless in
Seattle.
Because of the outcry of protest that Jobs with Justice, Real
Change and other community, student and faith organizations
demonstrated on March 13th, the Mayor agreed to give 72 hours
notice before their homes were demolished, conduct an outreach
campaign to try to connect people with services and storage of
some personal belongings, and provide 20 additional shelter
beds. Unfortunately, the Mayor's agreement has no built in
oversight and two big loopholes:
- People just camping, not living in an encampment which
requires three or more structures within 300 feet are not
entitled to the notice and outreach.
- Areas where campsites recur 3 times in 60 days are
permanently posted and excluded from the protections.
This actually is an improvement for the homeless who camp
outside from getting no notice at all.
This victory is
significant for people who live in encampments and Jobs with
Justice will continue to work with Real Change to defend all
workers’ rights to housing. Come and join us on June 8th
at City Hall for another campout!
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Property developers
and Tacoma City Council have stalled trying to shut down and buy out the Martin Luther King
homeless Shelter. Tacoma's low-wage workers, many who are
veterans and undocumented immigrants and who build luxury
condos, make beds at Marriott Courtyard hotel, clean toilets at
Columbia Bank building, wash floors at UW campus, and guard the
Maersk port will have for now an unconditional place to stay
when their poverty wages don't cover rent.
 While protesting and packing a
Council meeting in red, homeless workers and community allies
led by Tacoma Catholic Worker exposed the undemocratic influence
and greedy motives of neighboring luxury condo developers.
JwJ helped to mobilize the community and research the
corruption. Much to the chagrin of specific elected
decision-makers, the disinfectant of daylight forced the Council
to delay putting 117 working poor people back on the street
pending backroom discussions. Suddenly, even the luxury
developer advertiser News Tribune is railing
against the City for its hasty and callous plan to kick
homeless workers to the curb.
This
remarkable feat should spark new voices to challenge
Councilmember Rick Talbert and the Master Builders' unjust scheme. If
homeless workers can overcome invisibility and powerful
adversaries, others seeking justice can take similar risks
too. This potential was not lost on City officials who
dispatched an unusual police dominance at the meeting.
Police admitted that the 6 police inside and 6 police outside
was a reaction to our democratic participation.
Unfortunately, the police intimidated many homeless workers from
speaking. Reminiscent of when Pierce County officials had
police evict organizing janitors while
peacefully speaking with elected County leaders last year, this
pattern more resembles Mississippi in 1963 than our image of
Washington in 2008.
Why would City Council oversee
this police reaction?
We are challenging
the most powerful local developer lobbyists. Tom O'Connor is the
Immediate Past President and a National Director of the 950
developer Master Builders Pierce County (MBA) and is seeking to
buy the shelter property which abuts the luxury condo he is now
building through Labor Ready contracting. Bill Riley is a
top lobbyist and VP for the Washington Association of Realtors
and a prolific Pierce County developer within the MBA and owns
another parcel abutting the shelter.
Why are Council members excluding homeless
workers and community allies from negotiations to resolve this
sudden shelter crisis?
It's embarrassing
that developers manufactured the City of Tacoma crisis to clear
out view property for elite profit-making on the backs of
Tacoma's low-wage workers. These developers have gotten an
assist from MLKHDA (which runs the shelter) Board member Kevin Phelps advocating to quit the
operation. JwJ activists might remember Mr. Phelps as the
poverty-wage paying developer and former Scrooge-of-the-Year contest winner who left City Council office suddenly in an ethics
cloud.
(Back to the top)
 Jobs with Justice has been working
in coalition with the Tenants Union on their STOP campaign
(Section 8 Tenants Organizing Project).
Over the past several years the TU has heard of individuals
and families with Section 8 housing being terminated which often
resulted in homelessness. Residents documented stories of unfair
hearings where tenants' evidence in their own defense was
dismissed, or where tenants came prepared to defend one charge
but were charged for something completely different and weren't
able to adequately defend themselves. Ninety six percent of
Section 8 hearings rule in favor of the Seattle Housing
Authority.
The tenants of STOP have been working for three years to win
a fair, accessible hearing process for Section 8 tenants at SHA.
STOP had many victories last year including changing the
structure of the hearings by instituting a panel of examiners
with legal backgrounds.
Recently there was another victory. SHA (Seattle
Housing Authority) has agreed to a community review committee to
ensure long-term accountability for Section 8 tenants. This
committee will be composed of SHA board and staff, Section 8
tenants, and an array of community partners.
Jobs with Justice will continue to work with STOP to ensure
affordable housing for all workers in Washington State and we
are proud to be partnering with the TU in support of their
Section 8 housing work.
(Back to the top)
The NAACP is one of the oldest Civil Rights organizations
in the country with a rich history of successes and has ample
respect from many sectors of our community. The
participation of JWJ with this organization in demanding justice
for community people whose rights have been violated by law
enforcement members is not necessarily a new activity and has
its roots in the twisting relationships of the social justice
and progressive labor communities.
Participation by JWJ in the Civil Rights
struggle is not to be confused with a struggle against the guild
of the law enforcement members which so amply complain that they
are being targeted is a mixed message. It is true that the
social justice community does at times confuse the issues of
management oversight and the workers themselves (who in this
instance happen to be law enforcement workers). The
management of public safety is and has been a historical problem
for poor, workers and people of color. It is this problem
of management that NAACP has so promptly and judiciously has
protested. Unfortunately the problem of race has so
devastated the perspective of workers that it creates friction
at the base not where it should with the bosses.
The most recent victory of the NAACP can only be
seen as part of a string of victories and struggles that have
roots in the early civil rights movement. However given
that history it is important to look at the issue from the
present struggle and within the context of contemporary
governance. The demonstration by JWJ and the NAACP in
demanding accountability from the Chief of Police gave impetus
to the development of a "special" blue ribbon panel organized
called for by the Mayor. This is important to note because
this string of events have now given rise to the new contract
which makes the local Seattle Police Department one of the
highest paid law enforcement workers in the country.
The ongoing misunderstanding that law
enforcement workers should assume responsibility for their
actions is now being cleared up with extra resources which were
generated by the actions of the NAACP and JWJ. However
money alone will not straighten out the problem of
discrimination and social injustice as a result of disparate
treatment of people of color and abusive use of force.
Hopefully there will be new means so that management can
scrutinize the law enforcement workers better and net out proper
discipline for those abuses. This unfortunately will
not fix the problem of management and its inability to
understand the dynamics of poverty, violence and other social
ills and will insist only on enforcement rather than civil
relationships between the community and the police
department.
(Back to the top)
 WA State JwJ is proud to welcome
as new Statewide Executive Board members
Evette
Jasper from United Autoworkers Local 4121 as Treasurer,
Juan Jose Bocanegra as the Martin Luther King
Jr. County Organizing Committee Representative, Chaim
Eliyah from the Student Labor Action Project at the
University of Washington as At-Large Student/Youth
Representative and Booker T. Stevens as the
Pierce County Organizing Committee Representative. Please
also welcome Freedom Allah Siyam as the new
Martin Luther King Jr. County Organizing Committee
Co-Chair.
We also thank our outgoing elected leaders for
all of your leadership: Treasurer Shelby
Mooney, At-Large Student/Youth Representative
Lila Zucker, At-Large Student/Youth
Representative, Martin Luther King Jr. County Organizing
Committee Representative Ben Freitag, Martin
Luther King Jr. County Organizing Committee Co-Chair
Emily Reilly and Pierce County Organizing
Committee Representative Judy Mogan.
We're so grateful for the time and hard work these committed
individuals have put in to make JwJ stronger and more
effective.
Finally, please welcome new JwJ Staff Organizer
Joy Glanville. Joy is a dedicated staff
person for JwJ's Socially Responsible Developer campaign to
change the system of property development in Pierce County from
one in which corporate developers benefit from local government
subsidies to produce luxury developments on the backs of
low-wage workers, to one that uses these subsidies to bring the
benefits of new investment to the entire community through
worker-affordable housing and local, permanent, living wage jobs
and training. Joy has lived in the Tacoma community for
almost twenty years, is a graduate of the University of
Washington – Tacoma, and comes to JwJ with a wide range of
work and volunteer experiences.
(Back to the top)
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