Crossroads of America: faith, labor, and "right-to-work" in Indiana

Most of the folks that I worked with in Indianapolis went through the day at an absolutely break-neck pace, but that was inside the political vortex that had engulfed the Indiana statehouse for nearly a year. Outside the vortex, I found a different pace and different perspective that perhaps was best encapsulated by a two-minute conversation with a custodian.

When my coworker and I explained our role in organizing faith-based opposition to Indiana’s “right-to-work” bill, the custodian grinned at us and said, “You know, right-to-work sounds really good, but if the politicians want it so badly, it can’t be that good.”

After several weeks of speaking with clergy, labor officials, juridical leaders, and lay members, no quote better voices the popular ambivalence to the so-called “right-to-work” law that the Indiana General Assembly recently passed.

To give just a bit of background, “right-to-work” refers to a kind of state law that bars labor unions from including provisions in their collective bargaining agreements that require their members to pay dues. It originates from section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act, a union-reform bill which was passed in 1947 (and needed Congress to override President Truman’s veto). Since then, 22 states have enacted such laws, most of them in the virulently anti-union South. Indiana is the first state in more than 10 years to pass a right-to-work law, and it is the first Midwestern Rust Belt state to do so.

I think we can confidently say that America is at a crossroads in Indiana, just like the state motto proclaims.

I came to Indiana to help engage faith communities in the opposition effort against “right-to-work”. It can be a hard issue to explain quickly, and given the crisis-level activity in the legislature, including a 5-week walk-out by Democratic representatives in 2011, faith leaders often regard the right-to-work issue as “too partisan” to bring up in their community. The interesting part is that when I talked with “just-folks” Hoosiers, they were always very interested in the subject, even if they disagreed with my politics. However, in our sound-bite news cycle, people couldn’t find a place to talk about right-to-work without shouts or threats from either side.

For this reason, the local interfaith coalition set up several public forums where folks could learn about the right-to-work issue. We always made sure to invite representatives from both sides to participate. I, for one, am confident that in an open, honest debate people will realize how harmful and, as one South Side Indy resident put it, anti-social right-to-work is.

One of the best faith-based analogies goes like this: One day after a worship service, a man greets the pastor and tells her how much he likes the church—the worship service, scripture study, fellowship times, outreach—all of it. In fact, he likes it so much that he wants to be a deacon of the church. The pastor says, “Well, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s sit down later and see how we can make that happen.” But the man interrupts her. “Just one more thing that I think you should know, reverend. I don’t feel that members of church need to tithe, so don’t expect me to give any money.”

It’s an imperfect analogy because faith communities and labor unions obviously operate differently, but it shows the basic conflict that the right-to-work laws introduce. Right-to-work justifies the concept of a free lunch. Labor unions spend a great deal of money in organizing workers and in collective bargaining, money that comes from members’ dues. According to federal law, labor unions still must represent members even if they do not pay dues, and that slowly but surely eats away at the effectiveness of the union.

Proponents claim that right-to-work frees workers from having to financially support a union that they don’t politically support, which is superficially true. Then again, going back to the “tithing-optional” analogy, that is also like refusing to financially support their faith community for that same reason. It’s all well and good—until the building’s roof caves in.

We live in a cynical time, and unions and faith communities alike are suffering materially from that cynicism. The caretaker for one of the venues where we held a public forum was seriously afraid that the participants would “tear the place up” because there were union activists in the audience. In the public forums we held, more than once I heard someone snarkily quip about Jimmy Hoffa’s body.

The folks I worked with in Indianapolis were not all like the former Teamster president. In fact, they were very much like the church folks I worked with—honest, hard-working, compassionate, concerned for the future. Inside and outside the vortex of activity that is the Indiana statehouse, that concern for the future resonates in a most non-partisan way.

Faith communities responded almost always in positive ways when I asked them to act in opposition to the right-to-work bill. People of faith, while not always having a deep understanding of labor law, have an intimate understanding of mutual care, what Christian traditions term loving your neighbor as yourself, and of unity through faith. Right-to-work effectively drives a wedge between workers, weakening all of them. When people of faith understand that, they respond as their faith compels them—to action.

I remember a man at one of the public forums we held—the same guy who was afraid that the union folks would “tear the place up”. When my colleagues and I went to leave for the night, Thomas held us up, sharing with us how his view of unions and the right-to-work bill had changed. He linked his new understanding  to his own testimony as a Christian and to his conviction that God empowers the weak to do awesome things.

Amen, brother Thomas. Nobody inside the Indiana political vortex could say it better.

Just Jobs

I have a friend named Bob. I know him primarily from the worship band at First Trinity Lutheran where I go to church, and all of us that play with Bob on Sundays will quickly admit that he's the glue that keeps the band together. Bob also plays sousaphone at various protests in Chicagoland with his anarchist marching band, and he organizes concerts at the church's community for the nicest punks you could ever hope to meet. On a personal level, I know Bob as a guy who just plain cares for people. That point was driven home when he stayed all night at Grant Park and then the police station on 18th and State until I came out with fellow Chicago Occupiers early in the morning.

 And Bob is officially unemployed.

At this point there shouldn't be any shame at that fact when so many millions of Americans are in the same boat. While Department of Labor statistics showed that the unemployment rate went under 9 percent for the first time in few years, the announcement was accompanied with the clarification that unemployment was down because so many people have officially stopped looking for jobs. Whether young people just entering the job market or overqualified veterans who fetch salaries that companies are looking to shed, the workers of the United States are in the middle of the toughest times since at least when my parents were getting their undergraduate degrees, and perhaps not since my grandparents were growing up.

With the incredible advances of technology in the second half of the 20th century and the deregulation of global trade, the United States has lost the manufacturing jobs that gave us the mid-century economic boom. We now have a service-based economy, and only 8% of private-sector jobs come with the protection of labor unions. Global capital moves as quickly as a high-speed internet connection, and a missed keystroke can mean a drop of nearly a thousand points in markets.

All that is to say that we live in very unstable times.

That was why a year ago Interfaith Worker Justice, the organization I work for as a 2-year missionary and organizer, started the Faith Advocates for Jobs campaign. The campaign has three basic goals: create a national network of faith communities that directly serve unemployed workers, use that network to advocate for public policies that assist the unemployed, and develop a speakers' bureau that can educate the public about the jobs crisis in the United States. I have personally been helping to organize Chicago faith communities to serve, advocate for, and minister with unemployed workers in and around the City of Big Shoulders. As I've worked, I've found just how daunting the task is.

On the South Side of Chicago where I live, the unemployment crisis is especially crushing. So many former factories and warehouses stand empty, eerily reminding us of a not-quite-forgotten past. In my neighborhood, the most stable jobs used to be city jobs, but as companies kept moving their business further and further away from Chicago, the tax revenue dried up. And let's face it--Chicago, the Windy City, isn't exactly known for dealing with money in a fair way to begin with.

Which brings me back to my friend, Bob. He was a music teacher in the Chicago Public Schools system, but he was laid off along with hundreds of other teachers. I saw what Bob can do with kids and instruments and the most minimal of resources. They had an amazing concert back in August. All I could think as I watched and listened to these kids from the West Side was, "how the hell does CPS  not have a place for this man?"

Friends, we, as citizens of this country, must ask that same question of our entire nation. How is it that we don't have jobs for so many of our neighbors? We must re-evaluate our current government policies. What are our tax-dollars doing? Are we funding infrastructure projects, or funding both sides of the war in Afghanistan? Are we promoting nutrition and health through local education programs and grocery stores, or are we helping agribusiness to flood foreign markets with unimaginably cheap grains? And can it be a just a strange coincidence that as we have deregulated  trade, income inequality has sky-rocketed?

As we come to grips with the answers to these questions, consider these actions. First, check out and join Faith Advocates for Jobs. Next, call or visit your congressperson, and tell them to extend unemployment benefits. You can find out who your congressperson is by following this link. Lastly, pray, preferably with other people, for guidance and strength, especially during the Advent season, which is both liturgically and realistically a season of stress and anxiety.

My friend, Bob, has said that he doesn't really like talking about unemployment because he doesn't enjoy receiving people's sympathy. And he doesn't consider himself a music teacher; he's a music enabler. Bob still looks to help other people, even when times are tough.

We can all learn a lot from Bob, and it's just not just about music.

A Carwashero Takes the People's Mic

The power of the Occupy movements all over the country and across the world is that the microphone is taken away from the 1% plutocrats and then given to the folks who have such little means to tell their story. The beauty of the “people’s microphone”, the method of sound amplification via dozens of people repeating what the speakers is saying, is that the crowd recognizes everyone’s right to their voice. That power and that beauty is humbling yet empowering.

Now let’s give the people’s mic to a carwashero.

On Tuesday afternoon car wash workers in the Chicago Southwest Side neighborhood of Little Village took that people’s mic and told their story. They worked for 12-hour days in all sorts of Chicago weather with little or no safety equipment, receiving abuse after indignity from their boss.

And then they didn’t even receive actual wages for their work. Their employer distributed only the tips that the workers received for their labor, resulting in some days of only $40 for a 12-hour day. That, dear friends, is the story of wage theft.

This story isn’t only true because it happened to these car wash workers. It’s true because it happens every day all over the United States, in urban landscapes and rural communities alike. In a landmark study of wage theft in America’s three largest cities, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, researchers showed that workers lost more than $56.4 million per week.[i] This money is taken from the most vulnerable workers in our country, where the difference between making rent, putting food on the table, and providing medicine for one’s children is a matter of hours of pay.

Worker advocates call wage theft the crime epidemic that no one talks about, and that falls right into the Occupy narrative. The rich, powerful, and connected in our society try very hard to make sure that the vast majority of people not only accept these abuses but are thankful that folks have degrading, subsistence-level jobs. However, low-wage workers are finding a way to tell their side of the story.

Workers’ centers and their union allies act as a sort of people’s mic for low-wage and immigrant workers to make sure people hear about they experience every day. While the 1% tries to divide and demonize the lower strata of workers, workers’ centers unite and affirm the humanity carwarsheros and other low-wage workers.

I personally had the privilege of acting as a person’s mic at the protest on Tuesday, translating for a worker named Martín. Just like other workers I’ve met while serving as a missionary with the national group Interfaith Worker Justice, Martín understood how powerful his voice can be when other workers and advocates stand with him and amplify his voice for the world to hear.

So, on a day when Occupy movements affirm their power to speak with a prophet’s voice, let’s give that people’s mic to a carwashero and occupy together.

---

[i] Berhardt, A., Milkman, R., Theodor, N., et al. 2010. Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations in Employment and Labor Law in America’s Cities. Chicago: Center for Urban Economic Development, Uinveristy of Illinois at Chicago, New York: National Employment Law Project, Los Angeles: UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

He's Just a Boss: Ministry With Low-wage Workers

It was a chilly day in Chicago—nothing that would compare to true Windy City winter, but still. The group of 30-40 people was a mixed bunch. We were union members, clergy, community organizers, journalists, and most importantly, low wage workers. We made a picket line outside the carwash on Broadway and made our presence felt. Luckily, the owner got word pretty quickly, and he invited us—all of us—into the waiting room, out of the November chill.

We stayed there for about an hour and a half, waiting for the owner to negotiate some sort of settlement with a Methodist minister, the Arise Chicago workers’ center director, and, most importantly, the carwash worker who was owed several thousand dollars in back wages. Finally, the trio came out of the office, announced that they had reached an agreement, and we filed out of the waiting room.

The carwash worker left with a $1,000 check in his hand. And a warning to never come back. The worker stood with us outside the carwash and thanked the group for accompanying him. He told us proudly that as long as we stay together, there is no reason to be afraid of unethical employers. “Es solamente un patrón.” He’s just a boss.

We work in a culture these days where we have good reason to be afraid of our bosses. 10% unemployment is reality all across the United States. Wages aren’t even worth what they were back in the 1970’s. And for folks who work for the lowest wages, missing work for a week means not eating. Or not making rent. Or not buying medication for your children. But workers’ centers are fighting the fear.

Workers’ centers make up a movement of low wage-earning, mostly immigrant, often undocumented workers who stand up out of the shadows imposed by irrational laws and unscrupulous bosses and demand respect. They often work in industries that are intentionally excluded from labor laws—domestic workers, farmworkers, restaurant workers, day laborers—and far too often ignored by labor unions. They endure abuses that make your stomach turn, your eyes water, your fists clench.

But members of workers’ centers are far from powerless. They have made national networks that wield growing influence (NDLON, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, ROC United, and Interfaith Worker Justice) in local, state and even federal policy. Workers’ centers are on the front lines in the struggle for comprehensive immigration reform, fighting against the scourge of wage theft, and supporting their sisters and brothers in formal labor unions. These often invisible workers leave the margins that dominant culture has left for them and then take center stage.

I am very blessed to work with the workers centers in the national network of Interfaith Worker Justice. The organizers and the worker-members of the workers’ centers continually inspire me with their creativity, courage, and perseverance.

 One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible comes from the first epistle of John, "There is no fear in love, because perfect love drives out all fear..." (1 John 4:18). Surely it is love - love of their families, love of their friends, love of their neighbors - that drives low-wage workers to support one another in their struggles for a life of respect and dignity. After all, I saw no fear in the "carwashero" on that chilly November day.

I pray that we all minister with no fear as we minister with our all of our neighbors.

Courage, Coalitions, and an Ethic of Love

For several months now I've wanted to write a blog post about alliances and solidarity with regards to LGBTQ issues. For those not familiar with the acronym, LGBTQ stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/gender, and queer, and because of the controversy that goes with the discussion of LGBTQ rights, I have avoided making public stands on the topic. I am prayerfully changing my policy on that issue today.

Let me now be very clear about this. On this blog, "Red Poppy Fields", I express my own views, and they do not necessarily represent the views of either the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church nor Interfaith Worker Justice. These are my own musings and meditations, and I invite you to join me in musing and meditating in the Red Poppy Fields.

I both accept and affirm LGBTQ lifestyles, and as a heterosexual ally, I do whatever I can to support my LGBTQ sisters and brothers in the love of Christ. I did not always take this stance, but then again I also did not always knowingly work and live with LGBTQ folks either. My experiences working, residing, and sharing life with folks who do not self-identify as heterosexual has only edified my faith as a Christian and my passion for godly justice.

However, as a missionary and an organizer, I do not only represent myself. I was commissioned as a US-2 missionary last fall to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, so I do represent the United Methodist Church. I also work for the national worker rights group Interfaith Worker Justice, so I represent its efforts to organize and mobilize folks for living wages, good benefits and dignified workplaces. Neither of these bodies officially takes the same stance that I take on LGBTQ issues, which naturally disappoints and frustrates me as an ally.

Recently I read a blog post at Sojourners that helped me to understand why these two institutions may not share my own views on LGBTQ issues. Brian McClaren, a well known progressive Christian leader, wrote about how Sojourners does not advocate for LGBTQ rights in order to preserve the delicate coalition of mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and evangelicals to fight against poverty and promote economic justice. The stance is difficult for Sojourners because it does alienate some folks who are invested heavily in the struggle for equality for LGBTQ people.

For IWJ, the question is even more difficult. IWJ is a network of people of faith, and it coordinates a national network of affiliated organizations. Recently a few organizations have lost funding due to the crackdown by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development on organizations that hold views that are not in line with official Roman Catholic doctrine. These issues are primarily LGBTQ rights and abortion. CCHD has long financially supported worker rights groups, but with the shift to a more conservative Vatican and greater influence by conservative Catholic groups, it has forced many organizations to make the painful decision to cut ties with LGBTQ-affirming and pro-choice groups. Or be cut off from your CCHD funding.

The question is also very live in the United Methodist Church. While many congregations join the "reconciling" movement, many others, particularly in the American South and outside the United States, hold a hard line in a conservative interpretation of scripture regarding LGBTQ issues. Especially as we approach the 2012 General Conference, the only body that can change the content of the Book of Discipline which governs the United Methodist Church, there is much anxiety that the United Methodist Church could suffer a split similar to that which the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Episcopal church recently experienced. No one wants the United Methodist Church to go down that path.

At the same time, the Methodist Church has experienced this before--over the question of the rights of non-Whites, especially African Americans. Methodists split between North and South, just as the entire nation did during the American Civil War, a violent, 4-year long conflict that resulted in more than 600,000 lives lost. Praise be to God, we are nowhere near that magnitude of violence, but even one life forever altered or lost due to bigotry and oppression should move anyone who follows the path of Christ. When oppression is institutionalized, prophets appear.

 I have read that one of the great challenges that progressives face is that the front is plural. Worker justice, gender equality, environmentalism, the peace movement, racial equity, LGBTQ rights...the list goes on. Some groups are "multi-issue", but usually folks organize around one set of issues and then make coalitions when the opportunity arises. Organizing for social change does involve seizing opportunities when the present themselves, but I feel that people should also work based on a system of ethics. For Christians this system of ethics is based on the teachings from the Bible and the wisdom of the saints. It is an ethic of love. 

Here is the problem that I see now. Do we compromise that ethic of love due to the risk of fracturing the coalition and losing our funding? Or will we have the moral courage to integrate our ethic of love into our institutions as well as our personal lives?

Dear friends, as I write this a sister in Christ is facing a trial in Wisconsin in which she could suffer defrocking, that is, losing her ordination as a United Methodist minister, because she married a lesbian couple and then got married to her woman partner of 15 years. Will we, as Christians, follow a legalistic road in which we condemn courageous people like Rev. Amy DeLong or will we embrace an ethic of love in which we are all truly one in Christ (Gal. 3:28)?

I pray that you will join me in the Red Poppy Fields as we sow love and reap justice.

Workers' centers and labor unions

I was sitting in the top floor “Governor’s Lounge” of a hotel just a block away from the Capitol, sipping coffee in between furiously writing notes from the meeting with other SEIU organizers. The view was spectacular, and breakfast and hors d’oeuvres were complementary. That is, if you can find time to get up there in the heat of battle.

I was sitting in a classroom at the School of Public Health in the Near West Side with 30 Spanish-speaking construction workers, mostly day laborers (or jornaleros) who had gathered to learn about how to avoid injury at work and what rights they have with OSHA. We worked in small groups answering questions about specific cases and then gave demonstrations of proper safety equipment. Lunch was typical Mexican fare: rice, beans, salsa.

These are two recent experiences, taken vastly out of context, to explain two branches of the 21^st century labor movement. The first took place almost daily in Madison, Wisconsin as my coworkers from IWJ and I worked to organize faith communities around the worker rights struggle there. Because of some connections my one coworker has, we worked primarily with SEIU, or the Service Employee International Union, which is one of the most powerful and strategic labor unions in North America. The international organizers that I worked with were incredibly smart, diligent, and constantly plugged in. For the first time I came to see why a smart phone is useful in the real world. I cannot imagine the amount of money SEIU has spent to support workers in Wisconsin.

The second was a 10-hour OSHA training held at UIC that was sponsored by two Chicago workers’ centers, the Latino Union and Arise Chicago. Latinos disproportionately get injured and die on the job in the United States, usually because they are not properly trained for the job they do, are not given adequate tools and safety equipment, and won’t complain if injured or robbed of wages. The facilitators, who were members of Arise Chicago and were jornaleros themselves, stressed that they were not going to teach the men and women but that they would all teach each other. We wrote answers on pieces of butcher paper and then taped them up on the walls. It was modeled off of the popular education model of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and the funding came from a NIOSH grant.

Now this is not to say that SEIU does not ever use pop ed to educate workers; I know from experience that in trainings for trainers the pop ed model provides the methodology. However, there are marked differences between a workers’ center and a traditional union. First, workers’ centers exist because certain sectors of low-wage earning workers, like day laborers, restaurant workers, domestic workers, and many others, do not have unions. Workers’ centers help to fill that void. Second, workers’ centers usually are not financially self-sufficient like unions, which are allowed to deduct dues directly from workers’ wages (well, at least in some states). Third, workers’ centers neither have the protection nor the regulation of the NLRA, or the National Labor Relations Act.

However the most interesting difference in my experience is that of culture. Workers’ centers often try to espouse leadership by the rank-and-file. I know of a few workers’ centers that have “flat structures” in which members make the important strategic decisions by consensus. While some processes require technical expertise, such as navigating the legal system to claim back wages, workers’ centers often emphasize direct action because it so often is more effective and creates leadership along the way. It is rare that a traditional rank-and-file worker would think of herself as a “foot soldier”—she is a leader working with other leaders to confront unjust systems of power.

As the Workers’ Center Network Assistant at IWJ I primarily interact with workers’ centers and much less labor unions, but it is vitally important that we maintain both models. When members of a workers’ center understand what a union does, they desperately want to be part of one. They would sacrifice like our ancestors did in the last century to gain that sort of power. But we also desperately need workers’ centers to reach into immigrant communities that are so often ruled by fear of the patron and la migra.

I was filled with pride was I looked out over the crowds in Madison, knowing that I had a role in that show of power. And I was filled with pride again when I saw how I had a role in creating that space where oft-despised day laborers could learn and teach each other. Both ways I felt like I was part of a much larger whole, working for justice in a highly oppressive culture.

Maybe it’s what the cornerstone of the Sears’ Tower feels like.

On Wisconsin: What I Saw in Madison

It will surely be a, if not the, defining moment of my time as a US-2 missionary with the United Methodist Church.

“Hey Joe—would you like to go to Madison?”

Within 3 hours of that initial invitation from the deputy director of Interfaith Worker Justice, my 2-year placement site organization, I was on the Kennedy Expressway leading out of Chicago, past O’Hare, through frozen countryside of Illinois and Wisconsin, toward the capital of Badger State and the revitalized labor movement. I didn’t have a map of Wisconsin with me, and I was driving with the promise that I would have a homestay ready for me when I arrived. I called my parents and a few different close friends that I didn’t know what I would be doing, but I was really, really excited to do it.

The next week was a true whirlwind of religion-labor organizing to support public sector unions in their fight to preserve their right to collectively bargain on behalf of their members. In case you’re not familiar with collective bargaining, it “consists of negotiations between an employer and a group of employees so as to determine the conditions of employment” (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law school), which means that workers negotiate with their boss on things like pay, working conditions, health benefits, worker-management relations, etc. For those United Methodists reading this, the United Methodist Book of Discipline explicitly supports the right of workers to collectively bargain (¶. 163.B of the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church-2008). Most Christian denominations have similar statements of support—mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Roman Catholic.

I saw a lot of things that I will never forget, things that will shape my ideology, philosophy, and theology well past time at IWJ. Here are three things that stand out the most:

1.       Young people were the heart-beat

When I first walked up the hill that is crowned by the St. Peter’s Basilica-mimicking-Capitol, I only knew that I needed to see the place to understand the movement. I was told as much by CJ Hawking, director of Arise Chicago and de facto coordinator of IWJ efforts in Madison. I immediately saw a crowd of hundreds of people, some standing and other marching, in the sleeting darkness just after dusk.  They were mostly people more or less my age—20-somethings, the Millennials, the Echo-Boomers, that generation characterized by our unprecedented acceptance of the Other and our dumbfounding apathy. When I entered the building, the center of the poster-plastered rotunda, what some faith leaders would later call the “people’s cathedral”, there were young people in the center leading the chants, cheers, and songs.

                It would be easy to brush the college students off as simply letting off steam for the cause of the hour, but that’s not what I saw throughout the week. In closed meetings and in the rotunda I continually saw an amazingly strategic organization. Students and TA’s were keeping the grounds incredibly clean, constantly reminding each other that this was a PEACEFUL protest, and the cause was a lot bigger than them. The young people’s energy, dedication, and imagination provided the heartbeat that pumped life-blood into the rest of the movement.

2.       Union organizers were the brain

My head didn’t stop spinning from the time that I met up with CJ to the time that I left Madison the next Monday. My colleague shared the strategy that organizers from the biggest labor unions in the country—AFSCME, SEIU, UFCW, AFT, Teamsters, various trade unions, and others—had formulized in less than a week, and then it was time for work. They had transformed the second floor of a hotel a block away from the Capitol into a sort of mission control of meeting locations, war-rooms, and work spaces. From there the unions organized the mass rallies that numbered in the tens of thousands (up to 100,000 at the climax), the outreach efforts throughout the rest of the state, and media campaigns for public consumptions. I got tired just by taking a tour.

                Say what you may about unions, but I saw that unions work—HARD. Their energy had a singular purpose: to defeat this disastrous bill that would all but eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers and destroy their unions. It was something to see.

                On a personal note, I also saw what I will not be. My call to ministry will surely include organizing, but I will not exclusively put my focus there. I was so exhausted by my time in Madison that it’s taken a good week to recover, which tells me that a career in organizing would not be sustainable for me. May God bless those folks who are lifers; we are in your debt.

3.       Solidarity stitched us all together

On Tuesday, the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin, the local IWJ affiliate in Madison, held a rally that drew at least 50 clergy and faith leaders from the area. We held prayers and declared that our faith traditions compelled us to act in support of these workers. Honestly, we probably talked too much, but hey—what do you expect from a bunch of preachers? What happened next I won’t forget.

                We organized ourselves behind the ICWJ banner and then marched with the chant “Show me what religion should look like! THIS is what religion should look like!” We went straight into the rotunda with various unionists cheering us on, many expressing their thanks for our presence. We slowly filed in and around the “drum circle” that the college students were keeping manned continuously. Then some young woman took up the chant with us, and the rotunda was filled voices united. The crowd quieted as a few religious leaders spoke for a few minutes. And then the firefighters arrived.

                I don’t know if there’s a group that galvanizes folks like firefighters. I remember how in the parades of my childhood we always looked forward to the big fire engines at the end, how we would cheer them on as sirens blared. There were no fire engines in capitol, but there were bagpipes and flags and men and women wearing helmets, suits, and boots. We had similar experiences when the police marched through the building. Yes, the police were part of the protests as well.

                On Sunday night, as a few hundred people waited for the authorities to forcibly clear the Capitol, I saw the clearest picture of solidarity yet. Hundreds of students, union members, professors, and faith leaders were crammed together on the 2^nd floor of the rotunda, waiting to be arrested for deliberate civil disobedience. I was among them, and as the hours ticked by, we began to sing. We sang old standards like “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “We Shall Overcome”, but that wasn’t the best. One student struck up the chorus “Power to the people”, and then changed whose power we celebrated each time we sang the chorus. We celebrated students, teachers, steelworkers, priests, rabbis, firefighters, and police.

                Together.

The fight is far from over in Wisconsin. There are also anti-worker bills in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and a number of other states. I already know that unions have flaws. I’ve worked with them, and I am a member of one currently. However, not since the Great Depression have we as a society needed labor unions more than now. In so many heartbreaking ways, we are a fractured society, grappling at each others’ throats in the midst of our shared pain and fear. This is not the Kingdom that Jesus declared.

                But this is my hope, dream, and promise given to me by my God: that if God can work through as fractured and as scarred an institution as the Church, then surely God can work through unions, community organizations, and even government. After all, they are all just made of people.

                And it is through people that the Holy Spirit works.

Theater, God, and worker justice

Yesterday was a very busy day. At Interfaith Worker Justice we had coordinated the organization of 30+ events from all over the United States protesting wage theft, the failure to pay workers their legally or contractually promised wages, and they were all to occur on Nov. 18, just a week before Thanksgiving. Naturally, the office was a bit tenser for the past two weeks than normal, but like any large event, the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft happened whether or not we had all of our ducks in order. There was a certain feeling of electricity, even as I went about my day-to-day activities of drafting e-mail updates, putting information on the IWJ website, and transcribing conference call notes. It all reminded me just a bit of my days in high school as an actor on stage.

In the great Elizabethan  comedy, As You Like It, William Shakespeare wrote this about life and theater:

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…”

The entire monologue explains the different stages of a man’s life, but it certainly has greater implications than just that. I literally played many roles in theater, and I even considered studying theater at Bucknell University, though my down-to-earth pragmatism quickly got the best of me (I majored in psychology and Spanish). After all, I had a call to ministry, not to the stage. Or so I thought. As a volunteer youth ministry leader, I found that at times I had to change metaphorical hats rapidly, from jovial teammate in a dodgeball game to deadly serious speak as I gave the “talk” about Jesus at Young Life club. And to be totally truthful, there is a significant amount of theater that occurs in worker justice organizing as well. Sometimes it is literal, as shown by some events yesterday that utilized some street theater dramatizing the act and effects of wage theft. More often it is the subtle changing of tones to push people to action, whether they are Roman Catholic priests or illegally unpaid workers.

My exact “part” in the stage of IWJ and even the greater Chicago area is complicated. As a new arrival to Chicago, I have many opportunities to explain to strangers what I’m doing here. The circumstances of the environment often play a role in my answer. I might tell someone at my church that I am United Methodist missionary and then smile, nod, and escape as the nice church lady tries to express her approval. If I am feeling a bit more spunky and difficult, then I describe myself as a religion-labor organizer who works to involve clergy and laity in the struggle for worker rights. I might even raise a fist in solidarity. The look on my conversation partner’s face is priceless.

Most of the time I say something like the following: “I am a United Methodist missionary who is serving at a workers advocacy group called Interfaith Worker Justice.” It is neutral enough, and it all but guarantees further discussion. How am I missionary and I’m still in the United States? Will I try to convert them? What in God’s name did I study in college? It’s often a great way to talk both about social justice and the Gospel that I’ve dedicated my life to, often a precursor to an awkward silence, often a thought provocateur. It’s not often a great way to engage in small talk with a cute girl at a bar.

I was reminded of all these things yesterday as about thirty worker rights activists gathered to support a worker who had been owed over $4,000 in back wages from his former employer. It was a cold, November morning on Chicago’s North Side only five blocks from Lake Michigan, eventually we were able to move into the car wash waiting room, where we did wait—for almost an hour and a half while negotiations continued between the owner, the worker, two clergy, and the workers’ center director. None of us expected to hang out for that long, but it was a great stage for me to go through the motions of explaining my “part” at Interfaith Worker Justice. What I found was a series of very rich conversations about the role of the Church in social justice, and the role of social justice in various churches, with a reporter, a community organizer, and a Democratic Socialist. Even though I was playing a certain “part”—both representing the United Methodist Church and IWJ—I was surprised and pleased at how comfortable the exchanges were. Most of the folks were people of faith, I found out, and the thought of a “domestic” missionary was as refreshing to them as it had been to me last spring.

Followers of the Abrahamic faiths often refer to God as divine “author”, and like an actor at rehearsal, we spend much time trying to determine what our role really is. If only it were as simple as looking to a book for my lines and stage directions…yet our human experience is so much more profound because we are afforded the opportunity to write at least part of the script ourselves. Therefore, taking hold of the pen, let’s write a world that upraises peace and justice, love for our fellow humans, and a constant embrace with our Creator Mother-Father God.