”
We are speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.
”
That was the theme of this year’s 10th anniversary of the
Legislative Event in Sacramento.
“We are speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
That was the theme of this year’s 10th anniversary of the Legislative Event in Sacramento.
Women from Gilroy and Morgan Hill joined women from throughout northern California to represent those who couldn’t be there or speak for themselves. The women took the message to heart, learning more about helping other women and children overcome poverty.
Speakers included Simone Campbell, executive director of JERICHO, an interfaith justice lobby; and Maria Alegria, executive director of Contra Costa Faith Works, a collaborative of labor and interfaith organizations advocating social, economic and environmental justice.
The speakers addressed the reasons that even hard-working women are often unable to pull themselves out of poverty, showing how impossible it is for women working full-time at minimum wage to make enough to move above the poverty line. Two-thirds of our state’s working poor are women.
The poverty line for the working poor is $15,260 a year for a family of three. A single mom working 40 hours a week at minimum wage will only bring in $14,000 per year.
A proposal to bring the minimum wage up in two stages, eventually enabling people to live at poverty level on minimum wage, is met with cries of “job killer!” by opponents. But the alternative is a “people-killing” minimum wage.
During the dot-com boom for which our county is famous, the media fed the illusion that everyone in California was getting rich. But in a seven year period, it was just the top 5 percent of our population whose income more than doubled.
In fact, 40 percent of Californians did not benefit at all: their income dropped. The working poor actually fared worse during the dot-com boom.
Politics in the capitol have not caught up with this reality. The women meeting in Sacramento learned of upcoming proposals to cut state budget funding for services to the disabled and the poor, while the rich have not been asked to pay one cent more.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed cutting funding for childcare and for in-home care for disabled family members from a replacement program for welfare. The question is, why take from the poor when there are huge corporations paying no taxes at all?
Many of the women at the event had the opportunity to pre-screen a video: Pharis Harvey’s documentary on the 246 million children around the world who are forced into labor.
The good news is that there are activists working to free children from this slow death. They conduct raids and bring the children to rehabilitation centers where many try to reclaim their stolen childhoods.
Rick Schlosser and Elizabeth Sholes of the California Council of Churches asked women at the event to speak to legislators from the heart on issues affecting women and children, and emphasized that each person can make a difference.
At this year’s event, I met a Fijian woman who is living in Sacramento and helping folks back home. Virisila Batiratu collects clothing leftover from church rummage sales and sends it to Fiji to help the families of ministers who have died and those who can’t afford new clothing.
The lesson brought back from Sacramento was that we can make our legislators hear us and we can make a difference in our own communities. We have to educate ourselves, and be willing to change, to compromise and grow with each other – and to tear down the barriers that keep justice from being done for even the least among us.
Kat Teraji’s column is published every other Friday in Gilroy. Life. You can reach her at ka****@ea*******.net.
