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Remarks to the St. Paul Caucus Together, We Brought A Living Wage Ordinance Into Creation I’m Lonnie Ellis with St. Luke’s Catholic Church. Some of you know that we work on and win local issues. Since we last met, a Living Wage Ordinance was voted on and passed in the St. Paul City Council and signed into law by our Mayor. There is a powerful story behind this headline. I am going to retell this story, and at the end I’m going to make a bold claim about what we did. For several years, there was work being done on a living wage ordinance for St. Paul, but the churches in ISAIAH started engaging the issue after we heard the concerns of our parishioners and neighbors about the lack of a living wage at several “table talks” held in the summer of 2005. Raise your hand if you were involved in one of those table talks at your church! From the talks, we met as a St. Paul Caucus and put together a HOLY Ground Agenda for the City of St Paul. This led the churches to work together to organize a Candidate Forum for the Mayor’s race in October of 2005. At our public gathering, 450 people packed into Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. Both of the top candidates, Chris Coleman and Randy Kelly, were asked this question: “Do you support a living wage ordinance which defines an hourly wage as 130% of poverty, covers both subsidies and contracts, and does not exclude non-profit organizations, temporary, under age 18, or part-time workers?” The 450 people witnessed candidate, now mayor, Coleman make a public promise to support this living wage ordinance, and SPNN broadcast the forum for two weeks afterward! This issue and this forum helped to differentiate the candidates during the election. By taking the risk of holding a candidate forum, we moved toward living wages, and we made public officials declare their values in front of real people in a real democratic process. Raise your hand if you were involved the mayoral forum! Raise your other hand if other members of your congregation were present! Chris Coleman got elected, and a couple of our ISAIAH leaders continued with our other partners in the Living Wage Coalition. For almost a year there was a series of negotiation meetings with the city. But NO living wage ordinance. When almost a year had gone by, and negotiations were not moving much, a group of ISAIAH leaders decided to lead the coalition in a new direction, enough was enough. Mayor Coleman had committed to attend our October 1st public gathering and we decided we must ask him to declare support for a living wage ordinance with a deadline. A team of leaders from this room met with Mayor Coleman the Tuesday before our Large Weekend Public Meeting. We talked about many issues and found him receptive as he said “you are a huge component to getting the word out and getting these things done.” And then we talked about the Mayor’s participation in the October 1st public meeting – he was committed to attend and to speak. Connie Wiegel began, ‘We are going to ask you this question: Do you support a strong living wage ordinance signed into law by the end of the year…’ The mayor reacted very negatively: ‘I don’t want you to ask me questions when I’m up there in front of all those people… that would put me in an awkward position in the middle of this thing.’ The tension in the room rose, and then his deputy chief of staff said we can’t go public because, and I quote, “the business community will beat up this mayor.” We didn’t change our position, and the meeting was ended with the issue unresolved. Two days later, the mayor called us and said, ‘OK, here is what I can agree to…’ That Sunday at the ISAIAH St. Paul meeting, the mayor proclaimed his support for a strong living wage ordinance, and received a standing ovation from the crowd of 600 people… as he should have; he made the right decision… he just needed a little help. That’s what we do at ISAIAH, help public officials make the right decision. And for those here who were at the October 1st public gathering at St Pascal’s, raise your hand… No! Stand up! Stand up if you were involved in any of this great work!!! …and the press conference when the mayor singled out the ISAIAH leaders in the room to be recognized! And our work on city council members, and when we packed the public hearing in the city council chambers the week of Christmas along with our allies! Have you told your children and your loved ones and your congregation members about what you did about what we did together?! The political director of Take Action Minnesota said after the ordinance passed, that you cannot underestimate the role of the two public meetings of ISAIAH. Hundreds of workers will get living wages so that they can take care of their families. Companies asking for large amounts of taxpayer dollars including Walmart and Target will no longer be able to pay their workers poverty-level wages AND get a subsidy for it from our city. Many of us in this room know people who will benefit, and we all interact with people in St. Paul who will receive living wages. I want to claim something important. I claim that we co-created this living wage ordinance. We didn’t do it alone, we were glad to have strong allies with us, but we didn’t strive toward a living wage ordinance—it wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for co-creators like us and our allies and our city officials. I claim that together, we brought a living wage ordinance into creation! And I believe we are called by God to do more of the same….but before we move along too quickly to the next task… this is my challenge to you: Make sure that you share this story…at the very least with the people who had some part in making it happen!
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