No Justice, No Peace
September 5, 2004


Elizabeth Rosita works just around the corner from the City Council chambers where the decision about a Living Wage Ordinance will be made. She cleans toilets, mops floors, re-stocks toilet paper, and buzzes people in and out of the restroom from a tiny stall that's squeezed in between the men's and the women's restrooms.

A member of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice interviewed her and said, "When I first met Elizabeth, she greeted me with a wide smile. She welcomed me into her stall which she had decorated with plastic flowers, a prayer card, and a calendar marking off the days. She offered me her seat. She not only works 37.5 hours per week including the night-time, graveyard shift for the city as a public restroom attendant, but also works another 25 hours for MacDonald's. Both jobs pay minimum wage and offer no benefits.

Elizabeth's multigenerational family struggles just to pay the rent for the small, one-bedroom apartment they share. Their twenty- year-old son Jeff also works as a public bathroom attendant, has a second job at Albertson's while his wife Esperanza takes care of their baby son. Elizabeth spends the night on the couch in the living room while her son's family sleeps in the bedroom. Everyone is on MediCal. They've been approved for Section 8 Housing, but are still on the waiting list.

Each month, she explains, she worries about paying rent and often has to ask family and friends for small loans just to scrape by. "Perhaps I would be able to work fewer hours," she said, "and spend some time with my grandson."

Elizabeth Rosita's story is one of thousands in San Diego. I don't know how many of you saw the story in the Union Tribune this week. The census shows more people living below poverty level, an increase of 1.3 million people from a year ago. And a worse and troubling statistic, even more troubling than that, the number of children living in poverty reached 17.6 percent, the highest level since 1993.

The proportion living below poverty is even worse in San Diego 11.3 percent nationally, and 14.5 percent here. Ant those of us who live here know all about the high cost of housing. You know about the high cost of gasoline, which are only two factors.

Many of these people live without any health insurance at all.. The same article said that corporate profits were up 62 percent in the last three years. Over the same period private sector wages, excluding benefits, actually fell when adjusted for inflation. Wages are not even keeping up with inflation, and they're certainly not keeping up with corporate profits. Many working people are falling further and further behind.

The majority of new jobs in San Diego are in the hospitality industry, and for most of you who have been looking around this area, it doesn't take much to know that they are minimum-skill, low-paying jobs. There are thousands of Elizabeth Rosita's out there.

Now some would say it's the way our economic system is designed. There's nothing we can do about it. There are others who don't think that's good enough. We certainly don't know exactly how we can totally redesign our economic system, but we know we have to speak up to try to secure some kind of better deal for those folks working at the bottom level of our wage system.

Which is one of the reasons I joined the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice some six years ago, and why some of you have joined me and others in protest lines where we have often shouted, "No Justice, No Peace! No Justice, No Peace!" You have been with us at the Westfield Malls to try to get a better deal for janitors, and in fact we did succeed in that, and the Westfield Mall owners have negotiated a much better contract for their janitors. That was a three- year struggle.

Or with the downtown and suburban office building janitors: the downtown offices have a decent agreement, the suburban offices less so. Or at the Hotel del Coronado, picketing with housekeepers and dining room and kitchen workers. Or LaCosta Resort and Spa, neither of which in our view is doing anything like a just and fair thing for the people who are making their business succeed. Or Neighborhood Association-Headstart workers. Neighborhood House Association recently declared an impasse and instituted a grossly unfair contract and is now before the National Labor Relations Board to try to see if they in fact jumped the gun in reaching that conclusion.

"No Justice, No Peace." In some ways it sounds like a threat if you are an employer who is not working to improve the wages and benefits of the people who are working for you. There will be no peace from the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice or unions or others who believe that working people deserve better than poverty wages. "No Justice, No Peace" is more accurately--at least from the standpoint of the religious tradition in which I stand--a description of what is fundamentally the nature of being human. We were made for peace and harmony and collaboration. As human beings we are bound together in love. That is our destiny; all else is diversion. And without justice there can never be genuine peace.

That is, in fact, the significance of the word shalom in Hebrew. It is not just a greeting, "hi." It is not just a description of inner calm and serenity for an individual person. It is about right relationship among human beings; it is about right relationship in the human order. It is about right relationships with one another.

And yet this is not what we read in the papers each day, not what we see on television news, not what we see as we drive through certain neighborhood of San Diego, and not who we see on the streets of our cities. Through what lens is the killing by violence and starvation in Darfur, Sudan, right relations? Through what lens is that just? Through what lens is the taking of Russian children and teachers and parents hostage, shooting and blowing them up, right relations? Through what lens is that just? Through what lens is using your tax dollars to create jobs that pay poverty wages right relations? Through what lens is that just?

Of course, there are lens-crafters on both sides of most controversial issues making lenses though which these acts are completely justifiable. We human beings are good at playing games with perception and logic. We're good at playing word games with facts, as is evidenced by both political conventions. We're good at "spin." But when all is said and done, a distorting lens doesn't change what we're looking at only our perception of it.

Injustice viewed through a biased lens may appear to some people to be just, but it's not just in God's eyes. Which is what the Hebrew prophets were all about: telling truth to power; calling people, especially powerful people, to account for their actions and for their policies; demanding that those in power use that power for the common good, the good of all, not only for their own self-serving benefit.

"No justice, no peace." The notion of the Biblical shalom is akin to the notion of the Kingdom of God, a realm of universal justice and good will toward all people, where peace is, in fact, possible and real. The prophets proclaimed that such a realm was possible, that such a realm was what God would have us all experience. Jesus said that this realm was not just out there somewhere in some distant future or out there somewhere in some distant place, but that this kingdom was among us, even within us, so that we could and should live as if it were already here among us now.

And especially this meant looking out for and speaking up for the poor, the people at the margins of whatever society we happened to be living in, whether it's first century Palestine or 21st Century America. This is the faith that unites members of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, Rabbi Laurie Coskey, a Reform Jew; Rev. Robert Ard, an African-American pastor of Christ Church in San Diego, (He always says that he's the Associate-Pastor because God is the senior pastor at his church); Rev. Wayne Riggs, minister of Plymouth Congregational Church; Kent Peters, head of the Office of Social Ministry of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego; Madre Patricia Andrews-Collori, episcopal priest in National City; Dr. Jamie Gates, founder of Point Loma Nazarene University's Center for Justice and Reconciliation; other UU colleagues; and on and on.

Members of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice differ on many theological issues. We differ on many political issues. We differ on many social issues, and we differ dramatically. But we agree on the central role that economic justice plays in the Kingdom of God, and we agree that until there is justice, there cannot be genuine peace.

Not that this is a particularly new realization for me or for any of us, I suspect. Let me just share a few biographical vignettes. I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the 1950s. I lived in Lakeview, where all the executives for Kellogg's and the corporate people lived, but you could drive across town into the poorer neighborhoods where the seamstresses lived and the housekeepers, neighborhoods where there were lots of black faces. Small houses, close to one another, many unpainted, not in good repair. No spacious green lawns, no electric garage door openers, no country club just down the street. No dishwashers in the kitchens. Lakeview, where my family lived, was economically a different world than the folks' neighborhood just across town.

While working in the inner-city St. Louis, Missouri, in 1968, I saw big mansions near Forest Park standing in stark contrast to the ramshackle row houses in the Tower District where the church I served was located. No air conditioning in our neighborhood. Families lucky to have one car, much less one per family member. Kids not taking music and ballet lessons, not going to summer camp, not going to the city's best schools. Many one-parent families, single mothers trying to raise their kids in an urban jungle. And I returned there about two years ago and visited that same neighborhood. I was appalled to see that a neighborhood that was in distress in 1968 was in complete collapse in 2002.

I worked in Roxbury, Massachusetts, part of Boston's distressed urban core in the 1970s. Most statistical indicators of prosperity were depressed in that neighborhood: household income, level of education, age and condition of housing structure, quality of school buildings and educational experience. Rates of crime and violence were higher than elsewhere, as I found out when I was attacked and robbed on my way home from an office party in the neighborhood. Drug trafficking was common, a far cry from the prosperous row houses of Beacon Hill or Back Bay, where most of the members of my church lived. Employment opportunities for residents of Roxbury or Dorchester were much more limited than those for young people in Back Bay or most of the Boston suburbs

Or outside of our country, traveling in Negril, Jamaica, in 1980, encountering economic disparities between myself as an American tourist and the native Jamaicans sitting in front of their makeshift houses. One of my favorite experiences was jostling with the Jamaican women at the market on Thursday, competing over the limited shipment of frozen chickens that were the only ones available for sale that week nearly empty shelves in the stores.

Some of us here in this room have ventured to the Esperanza school in Tijuana, scanning the surrounding hillsides huts made of salvaged pieces of wood and metal a stark contrast of the suburban streets of San Ysidro, just across the border. Or you can visit any number of neighborhoods in southeast San Diego, homes on my street in La Mesa or places in your own neighborhood, places where janitors and fast-food workers and housekeepers and Headstart teachers and drivers and landscape workers live.

But they're unskilled, some people say. Why should they expect to be well-paid? In our economy, your level of pay reflects the skill required to do the job and the amount of responsibility you have. Right? This seems to me a rationalization we keep repeating. But I would be happy to challenge anyone who would like to claim that ours is a perfectly rational economic system. Look at the disparity of income and benefits between child-care workers and sports figures. Whose work is more crucial to the future of our civilization? Is that a rational way to compensate people?

Or the growing disparity between rich and poor, between extravagantly well-compensated and despicably underpaid workers. This disparity is growing--and it is incompatible with the justice that characterizes the Kingdom of God.

People who work hard for eight hours a day are entitled to earn at least a living wage for their work not a poverty wage that requires them to work additional jobs to try to make ends meet. The ratio between highest and lowest compensation should not astronomical. As a matter of social policy we should be regulating and discouraging the steady increase in the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Our social and economic policies need to pay as much attention to the consequences for those at the bottom of our income/wage scale as for those at the very top which is why the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and other are championing a Living Wage Ordinance for San Diego. This seems like such a small thing, a drop in the bucket.

The death of Councilman Charles Lewis, who was an out- spoken champion of a Living Wage for city workers and workers supported by city contracts, has been catastrophic for us in the city and has underscored the importance of reaching other city councillors including and especially Councilman Maddaffer, who serves the district in which some of you live. If you live in his district, would you please fill out one of those cards that's on your chair and give it to me. And please e-mail or call him to urge his support for the Living Wage Ordinance.

Now some will raise up the lens of "It's too expensive! We taxpayers, we overburdened taxpayers, can't afford it." Others raise up the lens of "It sets a difficult precedence for businesses to meet." Others raise up the lens of "Why pay more if you can get it for less?"

None of these lenses, in my view, are anything more than distorting lenses to the real bottom line. A Living Wage Ordinance is the right, the just thing to do for all the Elizabeth Rosita's in San Diego. Said the prophet Micah 2700 years ago,

"[God] has told you, O Mortal, what is good
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

I conclude with another story. Rabbi Coskey met in March with Jerome. He was reluctant to meet with her because he was ashamed of his living situation, but he agreed to share the details. He works at Qualcomm Stadium and in a local post office in the evenings. He works thirteen hours a day with two jobs. Neither of them pays him benefits, although the job at the post office pays better than his former job. It addition to working at Qualcomm Stadium during 2001 and 2002, he worked at a temporary agency that provided laborers as needed. His salary began at $6.25 an hour and increased with minimum wage to $6.75 an hour over the years. In these temporary jobs for minimum wage, Jerome cleaned up new homes, built trenches, dispose of trash, cleaned streets, flagged traffic, moved furniture, set up stages, tore down tents, and other physically trying endeavors. No medical insurance is provided with any of his jobs.

He's considering moving back to Texas because he can't make ends meet here, in America's finest city. He's able to pay for his car and auto insurance. He pays for a small storage unit for his belongings, he belongs to a gym for $35 a month where he takes care of hygiene on a daily basis. He pays for all his medical services and medications. He does not have a living arrangement other than his vehicle. He would be affected by a Living Wage Ordinance for his work at the stadium. He already knows what he will do with the increase that the living wage would provide him. It will help out with the price of gas. He may be able to get a small place in which to stay, and he will go to the dentist.

This Labor Day weekend may we all stand in solidarity with the lowest paid workers in San Diego and say, "Our wage system isn't right, it isn't fair, it isn't just, we can do better, and we will!"

So may it be. Shalom. Blessed be. Inshah'allah. Aho! Namaste. Amen.

--Rev. Ned Wight
September 5, 2004
(Transcribed by Dolores Moore)