But also, we need these moments to place these vvicto these vid campaigns as part of a broad vision and agenda that works for all. The renewed social contract for the 21st century if you will. So thank you, david, for this amazing piece of work that is this book and all that you have led and are continuing to lead in the world and creating this moment and similar moments across the groups to come together and reflect and animate us forward. I also want to thank mark and nikki and diane from new press. A few years ago we began talking about how great it would be to have a series of books about the future of work. Uplifting stories into the values of the activists and changemakers. The first we also launched a few years ago. Weve bee been proud to partnerh you and its exciting to see the second book come into the world and i know that it will indeed and already has been a powerful tool as the Movement Continues to evolve and grow. So because i feel like i in anya room of friends and i think most of you are indeed friends, i can introduce myself. Im from the Ford Foundation and im a Program Officer in the quality work and Economic Security area. And i just want to say i think that they will be up here talking later it is just we are incredibly proud to partner with you and several of the groups that cosponsored the event of the National Employment project and the Roosevelt Institute and i have to say that reading the book i it was like a moment in time. It was something that was very connected and very committed supporting the stories and the voices in the campaigns that have been hard fought and we are thrilled to continue to partner with you as we move forward to make this agenda and beyond. So i hope you did grab a drink and bring it in. You are welcome to go back out and bring it in. The idea is that this is a celebration come a moment to pause and reflect and a discussion to be had here and take it out into the hallways. Without further ado i would love to introduce my co sponsor here to get us into the program. [applause] good evening, everybody and thanks to everybody for bringing us together to celebrate publication. We all know thats the kind of political alliances and personal friendships that we build the kind of gatherings that you host our vital and a lot of what makes the work work. Tonight i have to very eas a vek of introducing david roth the president of the southern 75 which as all of you know organizers. I would like to talk about free elements of who david is. First as a visionary leader leader in the second as a writer and a truth teller and a third is a friend. So the visionary leader part you all know about. He helped the strategy that started at the ten square mile city of 26,000 people so that strategy moved to seattle and now scores of campaigns across the country and the fact that raising the wage to 15 as part of the everyday National Conversation at dinner tables across america and in the 2016 president ial and the fact my mom and dad asked me about i ask mei go home for the holidays that can all be traced back to the guy that we are here to celebrate tonight but this isnt the only thing david has helped us start. Our move to thinking about making the benefits portable, paid leave and sick time and unemployment, the idea that those could follow you when viewing the 21st century economy move, a lo a lot of that which u now hear a dinner tables across america and president obamas speeches, that was also partly david idea. Or a startup Funding Organization called the workers lab that many of you are involved in. That is his brainchild, too. Each of these shows his commitment to finding new solutions to the very old problem of building real power and scale for workers. David is able to do this because he is a thinker and a truth teller. He is rare among the leaders in that hes been able to say our movement is shrinking and by many measures it is dying. We have threats from the outside, technological change is real and we have threats from within so therefore we have to think differently about different allies and Business Models and if we are to actually see the kind where we are working americans and if we want to see working americans, period. David doesnt just talk about this obviously you were holding the fact he writes things down that allows hi them to make connections between the history of the Labor Movement and anyone can ask about the origins. He connects the history of the Labor Movement on where we stand today to where we are headed tomorrow and finally as a friend. I was thinking about this this morning and i think that hes kind of a persuasive rabblerouser work troublemaker and i look forward to getting a call from him because the conversation always starts with Something Like ive got this idea i think that we should come and i never know how that sentence is going to end. Theres probably some work for me at the end of that sentence but you all know that he brings us ideas are goo that are good l of us and all of us together to make those a reality. So without further ado, david. [applause] thank you. You can see now i have to recover from this blushing attack. I dont normally get normile i hear less polite things about me said across the table at the city hall or state capital. Its a little bit of an audit experience for someone that is basically listens and talks for a living to have to read rather than stand here and extend prize that im told now what must happen is i have to read passages from the book. So the heart of the evening is really going to be the Panel Discussion in a few minutes. I selected two passages one from the beginning and one from near the end of my book on the fight for 15 the right wage for working america. Starting from near the beginning of the book i will just ask people since we are in a president ial Election Year to get into the mental time machines and go backwards to a moment in my childhood that i will read from here out. Imagine an alternative history of the president ial election. America is celebrating its bicentennial with fireworks and two men from a republican from michigan and a democrat from dem georgia are campaigning to be president. One was on with one of them hada speech by fellow americans one could imagine him saying this difficult decade will come to an end. Watergate will slowly fade. There will be no more lines for gasoline, no more stagflation. In fact the berlin wall will crumble in our lifetimes, the cold war will end. Cold war will end. The Nuclear Threat will recede into there will be no more military threats to the soil. The last to the full economic participation will fall. China, korea, brazil and south africa will join the Global Economic community and lift hundreds of people out of lifethreatening poverty. Americans will invent or reinvent and create wealth that has been created in the entire history of humankind. Technology will dramatically improve the lives of all americans and most around the globe and america will continue to be the wealthiest nation of its productive workers. That would have been an astounding set of predictions all of which as it turns out would have come true. But imagine if it continued, my fellow americans of all the wealth or country produces 95 for go to the top 1 of income earners. Earners. A few hundred will amass more wealth than the bottom 50 combined. The bottom 80 to 90 wont see a sign of increased pay into the bottom 50 will have to take a pay cut. We will export manufacturing can import wages, divest from the infrastructure, deregulated globalized, privatize, break the unions, bankrupt the system, shred the funding for their mobile and urban public education, make debtfree college a thing of the past. Turn our backs on the middle class and with the economic apartheid for black and brown americans and the Economic Impact doubling the Work Force Participation between 1977 to 2012 will be 0 in takehome pay at the bottom 90 o of families and the one that can reasonably afford a comfortable middleclass life on a single persons paycheck today will need to dream comes to live the same life a generation from now. His party probably would have been out of power for three years. No one would have voted for such and get just like the optimistic first part, the second part of the president ial speech would also turn out to be true and it became true not because of a historical accident but because the Economic System was intentionally rigged in favor of large corporations and wealthy americans over everyone else. Trickledown economics as if it were written into the founding documents of the country. 200 years of struggle and progress had been reversed over the course of the last 40 years. If a foreign power had announced that was it wasnt planned for e america we would have gone to war. So that is how large measure of things. Was the 27th of january so you will notice in this passage just how fast the events have occurred since then because already some of what im about to read is a little out of date. Its become ever clearer that americans are ready for a change. January 2015 poll showed 63 of americans support a 15dollar minimum wage. April 15, 2015 strikes for 15 helped organize were joined not just by fast food workers but also home care aides, child care can adjunct faculty and retail workers. They took place in an astounding 236 u. S. Cities. Workers in 40 other countries joined solidarity actions. Chicago raised its minimum wage to 13, los angeles train to seattle and San Francisco raising to 15. California raised its minimum wage to 16. The mayors of boston and new york, st. Louis and kansas city proposed minimumwage increases to 15 activists in washington, d. C. Are organizing, is what i read in january 2315 othe 15doe on june 2016 municipal ballot. In congress from 2010 through 2014, proposals for considered extreme. 9 was a more centrist than the while conservatives wanted no change. In the spring of 2015, senators callesenatorscall for a popularl minimum wage, blowing past years of the capitol hill politics. In the summer of 2015, another group o of senators and representatives introduced a bill to give 15. In 2014, thousands of the workers at Johns Hopkins hospital when a Union Contract that included a 15dollar minimum wage for the longtime employees while tens of thousands of long teaching workers in los angeles bargained a 15dollar minimum wage in their Union Contract. In the spring of 2015 the hospital workers in minnesota did the same. Workers in massachusetts pardoned a contract in june 2015 that would raise the starting wages to 15 by 2018. Washington state saw the highest two above 15 in the contract and one Retirement Benefits for the first time. The major proposed a 15dollar minimum wage that would require the state of change and a city law change. Governor dismissed the figure is unrealistic and in early 2015 when the Assembly Proposed raising the minimum wage of 15, he said god bless them, shoot for the stars. He put forward his own plan to raise it to 11. 50 and 10. 50 elsewhere in the state. But the 15dollar movement moved him as well and quickly by the middle of 2015 he had appointed for the fast Food Industry that recommended the raising wages to 15 fast food workers were sent to make 15 by 2018 and 2021 and the rest of the state. Sensing the change in the political whim he went even further to september 2015 announcing a proposal to increase the minimum wage to 15. 15 an hour will be the highest in the nation and will herald a new economic contract with america and its about time nine months later. By november he put his money where his mouth was and established a 15 over minimum wage the highest such in the nation. That is a long way for a politician to travel in less than a year. The New York Times editors blog ran a headline that summed up what seemed to be on the be e nations mind a starting wage of 15 an hour, the new normal and this all happened months before the election got underway in iowa and new hampshire. Every great moment for justice in history has begun with a seemingly implausible demand the abolition of slavery when the entire economy was built on slavery and the constitution was written to ensure its political survival and one in five workers those under 16, when in suffrage at the time when the political machines in a major religious states and powerful industries fear of losing power or income if they gained the right to vote in an eight hour day with fulltime manufacturing and construction with an average of 100 hours a week into th the eno the passage of the federal civil rights and Voting Rights laws medicare, medicaid and eventually obamacare to dramatically expand coverage and now equality for all gdt americans. Impossible . The fight has been called impossible and even meaner insane and an economic death wish. It established a fair work week, expand the rights and all produced powerful policy victories that created a more just society in the generation. As weve seen only a fewyearsold its already won major victories. The challenges of poverty come , income and poverty and slow Economic Growth with only becoming more acute. They need high wages and although wall street fight it its been a poor steward of the american economy. This isnt going to fix itself. In other words, us. Now is the time for the people and the representatives, candidates and members of congress, state houses and counsel to see the opportunities presented to them and the chance to be part of the Significant National movement to do something both popular and is eligible for the American Workers. 100 years from now People Living in America Today will be remembered by name. What people will remember is whether we had the courage to stand up for the American Dream when it was at its greatest moment of risk and whether he left a vibrant middle class for those that came after us. Lets hope we give them reason to remember us would appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] thank you david. Weve gotten that call whether its been the literal call with this call that you just left us with. Many would say when he won the campaign and got more than we thought we could you are not done so this is the idea, to have this conversation is okay lets look forward and here weve come out of the several years of thinking big thoughts and talking with many of you helhowdo we take on these bigget issues we take on inequality so in the new agenda it is called for before further. Then when we wanted to have this conversation we thought who could help to have a lively conversation that starts getting at how do we think about the way in which the institutions need to be transformed and how do we think about the Labor Movement, what is the social movement. How do we think about the thoughts and ideas and guessing the house of philanthropy so we all said she would be a wonderful person. I want to ask her to come up. Shes always been an amazing partner on this and as you all know, as if you havent please go check out her website asking some of the most interesting questions and discussions of the time of what is i if what is ite for us to move forward for this kind of economy and agenda and inequality that has put out. We hav we have an amazing panel. Thank you everyone. [applause] lively conversation but you are all drinking wine i see. Lets bring up the panelists. We will be speaking for a little while and also take questions. I will ask you to wait for the microphone to come your way but in the meantime im going to ask the panelists to come up to the stage. I will sit in the far right but its hard left from your point of view and bring up david. [applause] let me introduce who is who. This to my left, Vice President of the Ford Foundation and survivor of this process we will hear more about some of the associate professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and a coworker center organizing at the edge of change as she puts it, david who you just heard from, the president of 775 and the executive director and cofounder of the guestworker alliance among other things. Thank you all. Lets start with the question you put at the very end. The question you put at the end to say what is the improbable and the plausible demand of today im going to pose to you. We were winning the fight for 15. The other demand that the workers had when they walked off for the first time in november of 2012 was the union and i think im probably in the growing minority of labor leaders activists and thinkers that would say that union is unlikely to look like my grandfathers union or my moms Teachers Union that the question of whats new forms of power are going to emerge that combine the power to make the Companies Say yes when they want to say no and with the scale to touch tens of millions of workers with a revenue model that allows resilient even giving the bad economies and political disfavor is the needle that has to be threaded. Whatever that means in the 21st century context which i dont need a set of specific legal responsibilities but the sense of collective power at scale in a Sustainable Way is i think the problem for our time and we are going to solve the problem and give it relatively directly as more and more states find they are starving for job applicants. That is the low hanging fruit. The harder problem to grapple with is what the power looks like in the 21st century economy. If we are looking at what is the working class look like in that phrase white working class, i think it is quickly running out of date. I think that the workers today a lot has changed. On how we are working, the economy is driving towards the workplace. More and more are attending another way to put it to person that writes your paycheck isnt in control of the labor market. So to the point about the difference, the way that they aggregate will have to be different because it isnt a plant to get to collective power so how we are working these changing. The other thing that is changing is how we are not working. There has been a shift in the way that we are employed but also the way unemployment works in facing the long periods of unemployment. That means the social safety net doesnt catch you when you are in that and then the demographics are changing. The working class of the United States will be majority minority class before it will come to the rest of the country so thats a significant change and its happening at the same time that the u. S. Itself is at an extraordinary point and we are being outpaced by technology and globalization so its not just the working class bu but its placement iits theplacement in. I come from a country formerly known as the United Kingdom and watched the vote last week. It seems to me theres much to be said about it but id like you to talk a little because i know you were there as well, what does it mean for the need to address culture there are many people voting, not all but many for the refuge from wall street power and it surely understand the economics but it was the cultural piece around race and immigration that gave the movement its power so what does that mean . We were talking before we started and i came back from the uk from spending a little less than a week on the vote but what is really striking was that in london there was public mourning in a lot of the neighborhoods and very seldom that you so anybody. Outside of london is a very different situation and one of the things that was so striking is i probably visited seven or eight different cities. There are big signs saying thank you to those that voted and i have to say it is the party exit and i feel like theres a temptation to dismiss this as racism and to say this is xenophobia. Its kind of mind blowing and i think there was sort of i got back to my years as a Community Organizer trying to talk to people we didnt agree with to figure out where are the issues we could start to create movement around you do have the common interests but i feel like its the opposite and i remember being taught okay we will raise people one to four. We are focusing on those that are leaning towards us and thats part of the problem and the way that we are talking about the electoral map now similarly theres a lot of Trump Supporters as somebody that has lots of Muslim Students and latino students theres lots of reasons he gives me horrible shivers. He looked at me and said did you ever see a poor man give jobs away fa so its this moment we e in and we need to go back to understanding the organizing work and i think that is affecting the labor party right now and in some ways the aflcio have never been more pro migrant worker. Theyve never been less able to deliver a. What are you going to do to make sure. People were really mad about feeling like there were reasons they felt that. I think it is also about the subject to the new rules and they lost their place in the labor market. How in light of this do you bring together the next generation of movement that will for sure center class and the traditional demands of the collective bargaining and childcare wages but also to include some of the demands of their Racial Justice movement into the Voting Rights and Justice Reform etc. . Is a really important question. It is a universal policy with disproportional benefits. Whoever is on the bottom of the economy. There is another part to the question. It hurts us all not just the disadvantaged. Raising the floor, rebuilding labor standards and the contract or more broadly its good for the economy as a whole it benefits us all. It doesnt just benefit the lowest paid workers so thats important. Its the politics of common interest that helps us get through the politics of divide and conquer. We do know from our history here and in europe that it is a beautiful thing for xenophobia because it makes it so easy to scapegoat. We have to have a come back and organize in an inclusive way to make sure everyone understands this is their conversation, too. So do we need to be able to do that to create that institution . On the one hand i think we are seeing. Theres new ideas and new leaders and tactics and includes things like reaching out broadly in the communities not just negotiating the terms of work as important as that is that over a variety of community benefits. Caring about things Like Health Care and infrastructure more broadly, public goods, again the broader Public Interest that we think or observed working with Many Movement organizations and partners as bob thats very important because it makes us this inclusive agenda literally more broadbased and it makes the Different Actors in that agenda more mutually reinforcing not saying anything fancy but just the basics of finding ways to Work Together and not to sort of just work in your lane. Theres other things, too that have to deal with reforming institutions so in his first comment he talked about the room to organize and build the next generation of collective Power Organization and likewise, i think the reform agenda needs to be a broad one and go into how we agree to pay for the infrastructure that we need. Thats institutional reform. Weve been told that the government cant do anything right and we shouldnt be taxed to pay for the infrastructure we need to. Again, weve been told to turn on each other rather than to figure out some of these agendas. Coming back to you, are their stories in case we havent read every page of the book yet are there stories you would want to lift up that perhaps speak to some of this or to the possibility some of this might be happening already . You come out of a campaign with a ton of stories and people that youve collected and accumulated on all parts of the movement and debate. There was a woman that walked off her job at taco bell in the city in seattle and without knowing yet whether her coworkers were going to follow her and shut down which is the first to shut down in 2013 and a wave of strikes and i think in one part its the courage, you could have all the pr people and organizers in the world to call a strike and no one walks off the job, all of the press will not help you. It doesnt matter at that point so first of all those that have the courage to actually demand 15 are the stories i want everyone to learn about and how so if you want to jump to the beginning if you havent had a chance to read and want to jump to chapter five where i profile in number of the workers not only fast food with home care and retail and any number of places who were making somewhere in a lowwage econom the low wai think its important. We did two things differently than what happened in the minimum wage campaign. We picked a big aspirational number by those here in new york that were working on the initial fast food strike in november of 2012. I wont say who it was with someone important came to a meeting with the group about two weeks before that and was asked should it be 9 or 10. 10 and said that would harm the recovery and hurt Small Business so we dont want to do that, an Important Party in the democratic party. Of course its wrong. Second, we didnt see the job killer argument. We didnt say this is about doing more good than harm. We said that it would help everyone even for rich and a few are a business that wants customers from 70 as consumer demand driven. And its true that giving billionaires tax breaks does have some job creation impact and produces for every dollar you spend on regulatory taxes produces 80 cents worth of jobs that you give that to a lowwage worker and none of it gets sent to a swiss bank account, could be in tax shelter or shell turn on wall street it goes to create the demand for goods and services some of which happened to be made in china but have to be sold or delivered in person by someone working in the United States. So we didnt see the inspirational demand or the job killer argument. Number three we changed the value of the fast food worker through the narrative into that persons value as a neighbor, family member, customer and human being and not the value of the product because the more the workers were able to tell their own stories the more it became difficult. Those are some of the things we learned in seattle. After katrina, in that moment, guestworkers, the people you were working with were seen as the job killers in the community. You have shifted that. Do you have stories of how that has happened . Talking about the big bold aspirational demands, i think that its often the workers who are lowest, closest to the floor, lois to the bottom, most vulnerable who when they form an a organization built the political confidence to make bold aspirational demand. Often those workers are scapegoated as the job steelers, when immigrants arrived in new orleans after katrina they were vilified. Much of the success of organizing after that depended on our understanding that there was a deep valid nest in terms of fear. We cant wipe away fear with facts and figures. You have to actually listen to people. For people who were in a landscape wanting when homes would be rebuilt, they saw workers come in they saw wages fall from 14. Hour down to six in hotels and construction sites. There was a very valid fear that transcended race. At the same time, the story about the fear translated into deep and often violent reaction to immigrant workers. My organization was founded when guest workers trapped in labor camps had a Founding Convention and decided to start a network that would give them a voice. I think its often the case that these workers who were deeply vilified have the most transformational demand. My members wanted to transform not just their conditions but did not want to displace workers that were coming in and working alongside. I do think there is something to what david is saying about how far the debate went, you think about the fact that 15 was unimaginable and then a year later it was the demand. That kind of transformation isnt possible unless workers take it up and believe in it. Its often the workers were most vulnerable who are going to do that. I think unfortunately a lot of workers are like guest workers. They have come to the point where they feel like they have nothing left and nothing left to lose. That can be a dangerous thing or for some bold new imaginative movements. Even if the situation in europe around income and National Wages further advance than it is here, you have been pushing us to think about how the system shifts, where do you think we are without project project and how do we create space to talk about a different kind of Economic System, not just players in it. I want to talk about the players for minute. Whats a little bit funny about sitting here is this audience, if you had the allstar team of the 21st century, most of them have numbers in this room. Most of them would be star players in this room. Its kind of a funny thing to be up here because. [inaudible] to say at a time when the Labor Movement, when people were saying you couldnt organize, whats important to know when it acknowledges that people in this room have built incredible organizations and just to call out some of them because i think its important to acknowledge who is here. Much of the work that has been done by the National Employment law project has been supporting in every possible way this movement. The Chinese Progressive Association is in this room which has been working for 40 years organizing the black workers enter movement which weve seen emerge, there is just incredible talent and accomplishment in this room. At a time when everybody said you cant build organization, its impossible to organize, people have proven that wrong. Whats been really striking to me when i talk to people, i sometimes feel like im in witness protection there, but people say to us we really support raising the minimum wage. Thats great. Theres just this obsession that you have with unions that i dont understand. Its like the idea that you could pass these policies without an organization underneath it. In order to get workers in motion, there had to be a union that without the resources and out without them knowing the endgame it was going to invest heavily, it wouldnt have happens. I want to discuss the need for institution building. Just the idea, the puzzle that david put out at the beginning, this puzzle of how to we institution build in this moment, how do we create these institutions. The right has been very clear that one of the most important installed bases of power is the Labor Movement. There is an attempt to kick it out from under us. I think we need to recognize that sometimes they pit organization and movement against each other and we need to recognize that the fight for 15 has been lifted by these institutions, old and new. This very forwardlooking organization and also all the Community Organizing in this room who made those demands real. I think we have thinking to do about what does it look like to build membership institutions. I think we are at a moment when its fashionable to say we dont need those institutions, were all going to network. We dont need membership based, really, the the bottom line is power. Its the power to make this happen, the power of this institution and the other institutions that have made this work which. This last point is so important. The fan is that we have that we can do it without organization. Perhaps the most, arguably, what weve all been gripped by, the arab spring. Its mobilization at an extreme. A lot of it without organization underlining it. This is a part of why the political transition has been so disappointed. Im not promoting that for america, god for bid, but we cant forget. I think theres no getting around it. At some point i want to bring in business. I want to go there. They were great at demonstrating. It used to be that demonstrations were demonstrating power. Now the just demonstration we all go home. I guess i want to go back for just a second and maybe i can think of a lever segway. How they were able to create an image of themselves. They were able to create a cultural presence. If you go back to looking at your grandfather who came out and chased a seal job and ended up in the auto industry, it tells a story of work. The fast food workers had to create a different kind of story ive been thinking a lot in this lgbt queue pride month about the 49 killed in orlando that weve heard about in so many different ways. Every stuff, a telesales marketer, a bouncer woman and people in sales, a dancer, a choreographer, workers. Weve tended to tell their stories without those descriptors. I guess it does come back, everybody wants a way in. Who are our allies in this movement . Its not just big burly guys who are in the same business that we were in hauling heavy things. Sometimes it is business. Sometimes it is the entrepreneur working in a new sharing situation, but sometimes not. I think we want to be pragmatic about interests, we want to be bold about the agenda, we want to help rewrite a narrative together about the economy and how our fortunes are linked and how raising the floor is in everyones interest, not just in the interest of the lowest paid workers. In the big tent, business has a place. I want to. Guest that for a moment because business has sort of been de facto so far. I want to make it a little more closer. First of all, business is not a model list. There are spokespeople, particularly inside the beltway in washington that adopt a hard line, they dont speak for all business and weve seen some that have been speaking out on the half of entrepreneurs and momandpop shops and they say this stuff about keep wages at a poverty level. Dont modernize the safety net, dont ask government to do anything bold at all. Those people dont speak for us. We are going to give ways to a much wider swap of american business. Point number two, talking about the ways in which labor standards help the economy as a whole to succeed in our collective interest, i also think its a window on the purpose of a corporation. I know thats not what you wrote the book about, but i think it raises important questions about companies obligations to workers, communities, the environment and the dominant corporate shareholder privacy is not so catchy. He puts it in a much more pointed and plainspoken way in the book. He uses the phrase shareholder value above all. He holds that above all. Its deeply problematic. Its not in the long run of business interest either. Its not the way capitalism survives and survives. When theres more more people in the Business World who understand that and are trying to affect change. Do you want to come in on this . Is business your friend . Sometimes, sometimes not. Listen, we can be ignorant with the interest involved. There are different stories in this book about the role business has played and i can enumerate a few of them. It was just say no, sort of reading from the same script if you want the data resistant [inaudible] its going to kill jobs its gonna hurt the people you want to help, theyre gonna move to automation, the people who are going to get hurt are less skilled workers, newer newer workers and workers of color, blah blah. It was completely predictable. This was said at lunch catered with prime rib and a luxury hotel. They went around talking about how they couldnt see their staff shift meals if their wages went 15 not feeling ill they get. It was a character. The greater Seattle Business Community can learn a lesson. Just saying no in a world of binary outcomes was not necessarily their best strategy. We had a very different type of engagement in seattle where they sat across the table from the head of the chamber of commerce, the owner of the hotel and owner of Restaurant Association and bargain for four months to produce an outcome that ultimately was a unanimous vote on city council for the 15dollar wage policy. The major actors in the seattle economy were either accepting that this was the future or perhaps resigned. They were invited in a process where was clear where we were going. They were given an opportunity to impact the nuances and the 15dollar policy and thought that was a better decision than simply saying no which wouldve gone down to a dramatic defeat if this was about yes or no on 15 in seattle. That was our experience locally. In the same medium market and only 15 miles apart. One learned from the other. Nationally we also see two stories that i talk about. Youve got the lobbyists and the beltway crowd and like all associations that trend to the lowest common denominator approach. Im sure we have your trade Association Meetings and whatever philanthropy has the worst Business Investments is the one speaking up for their bad practices be protected. I think trade association tend to work that way. Of course, even when a majority of Business Owners believe in higher minimum wage, all their associations come out against it because they are catering to the squeaky wheels inside those institutions. Then you look in Chapter Seven where i debunk all the myths based on actual information and not fairytale rhymes, or whatever and we look at a number of case studies that really look at how you can be a high wage company in the lowwage market. Its not how amazon can have Software Developers that pay equally to microsoft, thats not a hard problem to solve. Its much harder to say how does a Company Called quiktrip which is a giant convenient chain in the midwest at 20 an hour when there competition is paying 7. 25. How does costco beat others, how do you find these lowwage that are subject within their markets and thats what we talk about where its actually possible to build a successful Business Model if you know youre doing. Let me go to some questions from our audience. We have about ten minutes of conversation. Your with an organization, the restaurant workers who have, in their experience combined labor iced organizing and coop building. Thank you for the invite. I just want to know. [inaudible] the median wages just 8 now. How can we Work Together to make 11 Million People included. Lets take a couple more questions. Great book, i just want to pick up on where they just wear. You mentioned 799 years ago a big Labor Movement bought five and one these changes. Three groups were left out. Tip workers, nanny workers and farmworkers. Im curious what you think, theyre theyre talking about a new set of guest workers. How have they figured into these have you been able to remove some of the racist fights of the 80 years ago and how do you see moving forward. Please introduce yourself. My name is erica im with the domestic fair trade association. The fight for 15 was really popular around fast food workers specifically and im wondering what part did food play in that . Theres a large number of people who are interested in how that food is produced and was that part of the success of fight for 15 in having that be part of the culture . Three questions, one around the tip wage, how do we address that and to the excluded workers from the last labor standards act and the last one, in the fast food piece of this, what role did food policy play in all this. Who wants to go . Ill to say, i think to pick up what john was saying, the last social contract excluded large groups of workers including southern workers, casual laborers, day laborers,. Those workers who were excluded now represent the majority and a large segment of the american working class. As people of color go into industries that are growing like retail and service and care, its not just that the industry, its the human beings who have been devalued are marching into new industries where they are valued dashed devalued and getting a bad deal. I think we have to figure out ways to radically expand the social contract and we have to get to a new labor contract. Just two things on that. I think the idea of exemptions is always one of the dangerous, its always the achilles heel of the Labor Movement and the social movement. How we can arrange the politics to be inclusive is a real battle. The second thing is, i know it its a davids book, one of the thing that david mentioned in the earlier presentation is the way that Governor Cuomo is on the wage board to elevate wages, i think thats important. The idea of workers being able to bargain for their interests, standard wages across industries or across an entire labor market is going to be a big next step for innovation in the Labor Movement. Thats one strategy to really get out what they were saying. I think you could imagine a city where the state allows it. You can imagine a citywide wage board that elevates lowwage workers across many, many industries. The Labor Movement and business would have to be stakeholders in that and be at the table, but i think we need to advance an experiment where we work on just that so the day labor and the restaurant worker and the salon worker are not exempt from these standards. I guess whats so striking to me about the new Labor Movement as opposed to the old one, the analysis always was that it was the skilled workers in the middle class. If theres anything to be said about this moment that we are in it is actually lowwage workers that are leading this movement and its an incredibly pathbreaking moment in history. We have to talk about manufacturing workers of the service sector. A lot of what ive been doing lately. One of the things that comes up for strategic enforcement to work, worker organizations and Community Organizations have to be given a formal role in enforcing the law and we have to stop thinking about it as something that government do over here. One of the push backs from local agencies is what do i say to local business. In a word i say you all come. You say we recognize that labor markets are always better off when theyre organized and thats an argument we can win. David showed you can win it, right. A lot of movements have shown that we can when it. We want employers to come because we know when theyre organized and theres a community of employers at the local labor market level, we have somebody we can deal with. Without that we just have chaos. There is a common interest. We know this obviously through lots of labor history, but its no less true today than it ever was. The question of who will lead the movement, its amazing to think it could also be men. To go back to the food issue, whether youre talking restaurant workers, were talking about women and consumers. One of the great organizers out there is the caring across generations model where there is a role for all sorts of stakeholders, consumers, practitioners, we are talking about building a caring economy. Many of these were longterm caregivers. I think what unites everybody in this room is we are longterm care shoulders around this issue and long term caring about this issue. We need a better idea of how to connect and how to keep this conversation going and how to take this implausible demand to the next level. Does anybody want to weigh in on this question. I would love to weigh in on the food question. More more they are adopting a strict stakeholder cost and it will continue to organizing Restaurant Owners and organizing consumers to understand the implications of what they are paying whether theyre stepping or not and how people are treated behind the kitchen door and in the front, et cetera et cetera and it extends, this is maybe where the question is coming from two who picked the crops, who processed the food, the whole chain, i think that one of the things im hearing and taking from this is we also need to be very savvy about cultural power. Think about various high points of the workers movement. Its very, very mixed, but an association of work with the national effort. Its so relatable. Its so universe universal. There are many complicated entrenched interest and theres a long way to go with the treatment of workers but theres tremendous power in this and i appreciate the question. David, last, and then we will go to closing thoughts. So, just to respond to some of the questions, seattle is the kind of city where there are as many farms as there are mcdonalds. That being said i wouldnt say the role of food itself was front and center in the seattle struggle. It was very clear about lowwage work. Expanding out outward to healthcare workers and more. We have many jobs that dont require education past high school and 43 of American Workers work jobs under 15. Hour. That was the issue in seattle that we sought to address. With respect to other workers, Washington State did away with its penalty legislation in 1988. On a single day in 1989, january january 1, every restaurant worker in the state got a 300 raise. Guess what. We still have restaurants despite nearly 30 years of the Restaurant Association putting out a december newsletter every year predicting how many thousands of jobs will be lost with the inflation of minimum wage the following year. Somehow year after year since 1988 we have always grown restaurant jobs. Go figure. Figure. Even in the recession by the way. Its clear that the arguments for the penalty, they dont have any Economic Resilience once you test them because places without tip penalty like San Francisco have among the highest. Capita. Capita so its clear you dont need that stuff to maintain a healthy Restaurant Business climate. It wasnt just farmworkers and domestic workers, those contractors and public sectors and healthcare workers. More those groups continue to be excluded. Eight states dont have a tip credit, et cetera. The public and healthcare workers actually went on strike in the 50s and 60s and one law did not let them go on strike they did anyway and thats how the laws changed. Thank you so what much. [applause] should we stay or go . Stay, remain. We are going to remain. They just gave me this powerful, shes an organizer. This was a great panel, panel, thank you so much. Thank you for writing this book that brings together so much. I have to say, i cant remember exactly what felicia said about the book but i know it was really great and i actually did read the book and it reminded me a lot of marriage, the good, the bad, the ugly, for better or worse or richer or poorer and those of us who come from the workers movement, till death do us part. It was a great read, its very inspiring and i want to thank the Ford Foundation for your support of this amazing work. The fight for 15 is the most important fight for Economic Justice in America Today. I know from our own experiences that the Foundation Supports that work. I also want to give a shout out to some really significant victories. In addition to needing organizing and Building Worker power, this is a shout out to the best Labor Department that we have had since 1938. Theyre not even here. All of you know that we have an amazingly bold new overtime rule and we are fighting to keep this congress from stealing wages that workers have finally won and a few days, i have to say we had an amazing surprising decision out of the Supreme Court yesterday on texas abortion restriction and that was fantastic. Also yesterday, we had, the court decided not to grant review of the care rule which is another fight that has been supportive for 20 or 30 years. Finally home care workers in this country are guaranteed the right to a federal fair minimum wage and overtime pay. 2 million workers went to bed last night knowing for the first time, this goes to your point, for the first time they have the same rights that most other americans take for granted. We would not have this if we did not have Good Government supporting the work that they have been doing to take advantage of this moment. Im discouraged when i look around and when i come from the Labor Movement and when i think about whats happening with respect to the Labor Movement, but im also super excited about the things weve been able to accomplish as a community. I have to admit, we were were among those who thought we wanted to work for fight for 15 and we did that for how many people earn less than 15. Because of this one in five americans lives in a jurisdiction that has a 15dollar minimum wage. Over the course of two or three years, thats ready amazing. I just want to quote, i never thought i would do this, the great andrew cuomo. God bless him, shoot for the stars. I should tell you, after this, mingle, have another drink, the foundation is giving away copies of davids book but we do not want to encourage people to go online and go to powells bookstore and order copies for your families and friends. David will sign it for you. Thank you very much. Richard pryor was born in peoria illinois in december 1940. He grew up in the city Warehouse District and was raised in his grandmothers brothel. He earned stage in television and film. He died in 2000. Peoria erected a statue in his honor. Up next, our cspan city tour on the history. As we learn about the life and writer and feminist activists betty freehand. When the magazine that i wrote for, one after the other turned it down, i knew i would have to write the book. For them, i think the leader for the driving force to start the movement of feminism in this country. She wrote in 1963 and in it, she struck a chord with women all over. In fact we say she left peoria, she, she went out and changed the world with her book, the feminine mystique. Right now we are in front of the tribute for betty for dan. She is born here, raised here, was in a in a class of Peoria High School 1938 which is a very famous class, very distinguished people, i talked with her brother and he contends that betty was definitely a genius. In that case, she was a little bit lonely because she had thoughts that others didnt but he said that was part of her genius was that she was able to take care of herself and be a loner but very brilliant. In high school, she created a literary magazine and wrote pieces for it along with others and i got to read one of them, i went to the archives and it was called i am paper. It was all about paper, how it transfers ideas from one person to another and i thought how poetic, shes a woman who works with words and was a writer but when she was in high school she mustve known that already. I think a big factor in her maturation was her mother. Her mother had a career, she was a writer for the society page of the local paper and she was married to a very successful man and her father was a jeweler. He had his own jewelry store. They were fairly welltodo in that day and age back in their 30s and 40s. He had his own store and he insisted that his wife give up her career. I think the mother was a little disgruntled and the three children they had very much had an influence on her. She came and had some brilliant teachers there that helped her mold and she did that literary magazine. I wish i had a copy here. There were two copies that survived. Its fascinating for a High School Kid to think in the terms that she did. I think theres different opinions. What i took away from the book is that women had been put into roles and they were to stick with them the idea that they should be fulfilled by being mom or being health mate, her thesis was, after talking with her, it all came out of a survey she did with her classmates when they went back to their class reunion, she found there was discontent or something missing. Women should be happy with just being told this is what you get to do. They needed more in their life. They wanted fulfillment just like any of us, they want to aspire like any of us. She was a writer in a magazine, but i think theres much more written about her in magazines than she ever wrote. She was fascinating. She was considered one of the most 100 influential women in the world and she left peoria to go out and change the world. She did come back. She had fans that she really counted on and when she was kicking around ideas for her book, especially the fountain of age, she would talk to her friends to test out her ideas and that was a really close an important friendship that she kept over the years. I heard her say that what she took from peoria was a sense of evenness, a groundedness and she articulated, i wish i could get her exact words. She said i learned that people coming together can really affect change. [inaudible] thats what she did. She swears, or at least she did, that that was something she got from here in peoria because she could see the Community Come together and make changes that were positive changes for this community. She said thats what she learned i think youre peoria, she is becoming more more revered and thats because of the work of Dorothy Sinclair and others. To set the record straight, she was not a hater, she was blonde and opinionated and brilliant, but she loved her children, she had a traditional life, a married woman, i think in peoria now people remember her as being brilliant and gifted. There has been reluctance to embrace her, but she didnt care. Shes not in embraceable type woman. Its hard for me tos say because im so enmeshed with her and my friends, but i think shes being thought of more highly all the time. When i tune in on the weekends, usually its authors sharing their new releases. Watching the nonfiction authors on book tv is the best