Why We (Still) Can't Wait for Economic Justice

By Councilmember Brad Lander and Rabbi Andy Bachman

Forty-three years ago this month, our nation watched the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. The images were seared into our minds, along with the sense that our nation had lost a beacon of hope in the ongoing struggle for racial and economic justice. Though he had lived to see many important advances and constitutional guarantees for all Americans regardless of race or creed, Dr. King was murdered before he had made much progress toward another vitally important goal: economic justice.

King was in Memphis that April to stand with sanitation workers who were on strike demanding recognition of their union, better safety standards and a living wage. To this day, those goals remain unmet for tens of millions of Americans, particularly on the lowest rung of our economic ladder.

With dangerously high rates of unemployment, and budget cuts eroding basic subsistence services for countless poor people in our city, we ought to reflect upon the legacy of Dr. King's death while rededicating ourselves, yet again, to the dream of true equality for which he sacrificed his life. "Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all God's children," Dr. King said on that trip. "Now is the time for City Hall to take a position for that which is just and honest."

For Jews, Dr. King's message was especially resonant. Rabbis like Joachim Prinz and Abraham Joshua Heschel were among the many Jewish leaders who fought in the trenches with Dr. King and the African American civil rights movement, in large part because of our communities' shared values of justice and freedom for all people.

The anniversary of his death comes in-between last week's commemoration of the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (and the struggle of immigrant seamstresses for workplace justice) and the coming celebration of Passover. When we sit down at seder tables across the nation, we will recall our sacred obligation to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt and that none of us are truly free until all people are free.

Our scripture consistently reminds us of these obligations: "Speak up, judge righteously, champion the poor and the needy," King Solomon wrote in Proverbs. In the Torah, Moses echoed God's command to the people, saying, "You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer but you must pay him his wages on the same day, for he is needy and urgently depends on it."

Our understanding of Jewish history and scripture demands that we work to put those values of freedom and justice into action.

That is why we support the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act now being considered by the New York City Council. The idea is simple. It would require businesses that seek voluntary taxpayer subsidies from the City -- primarily for large real-estate development projects like stadiums and shopping malls -- to pay a living wage ($10/hour with benefits, or $11.50/hour without) to all the employees who work there.

Why now? Because more than 25 percent of working New Yorkers are on food stamps. Because income inequality in NYC is staggering. In 1990, the top 1 percent of households took home 25 percent of all NYC income. By 2007, it had nearly doubled, to 44 percent. Because working people are struggling to make ends meet, while tax breaks continue to be bestowed upon large corporations.

Cities across America, from Los Angeles to Boston, have adopted similar legislation, and there is no evidence it has cost jobs. The legislation would not affect neighborhood small-businesses and not-for-profits, just beneficiaries of big economic development subsidies and tax breaks.

Our conscience demands that when we give out tax breaks in the name of "job creation," we make sure those jobs pay at least living wage to the workers, a basic measure of human dignity.

As NYC leaders consider living wage legislation in the coming weeks and months, we ask you to get involved in your local communities -- host and attend community events, learn more and let your voice be heard.

Our Torah teaches that each of us was made in the divine image. This idea is at the center of the Jewish faith tradition's essential commitment to guaranteeing basic human dignity to all people. One undeniable expression of that basic human dignity is a living wage.

May the memory and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King be an enduring blessing.

Andy Bachman is the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope. Brad Lander is a New York City Council member from Brooklyn.

 

Comments

[cayuse]

11:23 AM on 04/08/2011

Living Wage is not just the the bottom of wage earners.

A single family earner brought home more that a double family earners today. If my math serves me that mean I make 1/2 of what I di 20 years ago in 1990.

It also does not take into account all of the Corporate (stock trader) advantage to fair and equitable wages since then as well. Like a Vendor bills me at $250 and I get only $50. For all that cash for a pay check and the Monopolistic, collusive, conspriacy Sole Contract with the Client Firm. So you see. Instead of $100,000 - (30,000 FIT, 18,000 SSA/Med, Property Tax 1800 and Flood insurance 1200) for $49,000 and of course Travel and Living expens for work 250 miles away ($8400). I am at $40,000 for working away from home. You see why the $500,000 I generate from the Client would be nice.

I suppose they could tax me for what I am worth while not paying me that. It seems to be American Injustice these day. So if you count my hgher house and car payments.

We are equally poor then. In the mean time I still live work check to pay check. THE AMERICAN DREAM. Yet, statistically I am in the top 20% of income earners. Think a second on what that means for the few who are making the Billions/millions of tax free wealth here in the land of milk and honey for the rich

[Pratitya]

08:25 PM on 04/06/2011

What words can be brought to bear to address the impracticality of policy that spins an ever tightening gossamer over the civil society? Poverty can never be eliminated through fiat or the imposition of a scheme on other human beings. To address this malignancy in our world requires getting at its root which is inherently bound up in the historical rise of nation states. No, it is not the product of such institutions. It preceded them. But persists because of their emergence. Then to address the condition of poverty requires addressing its bondage to the nation state. But then again to address this bondage is to address our collective history. Perhaps the solution remains outside of this history?

[cayuse]

11:50 AM on 04/08/2011

Yah, but the problem with Profit is not Profit itself. It is that there is no Taxation forcing the profit to be shared with economic growth of capital investment and wage compensation.

Self Motivation and Greed is Man itself. No accepting there has to be laws and those laws enforced is ignoring the problem.

You cannot plan human nature for being human, you can only blame the lack of leadership and public WILL to exercise demcratic and capitalistic principals that have existed since the beginning of America.

A motivation problem being looked at as if it was a Morality Issue. It is not. We know human nature going back to the beginning of recorded history. Not a history problem, a lack of application of existing principals.

Taxation, enforcement of the laws. Amzing how we have collateral damage of women and children for a politcal war, but we cannot have intended consecquences damage for those who have intent to steal homes, money, family and life style of others.