Thank god for San Francisco. Now, fifteen thanks to seattle and then california and new york and localities across the country, but also we need these moments for an agenda that works for all, contracts for the 21st century, so thank you, david, for this amazing piece of work, this book and all that you have led in our continuing to lead in the world that has been captured in the book and for creating this moment and Similar Movement to groups across the country to come together to reflect and animate us. I also want to thank mark and nikki and all the colleagues. A few years ago we began talking to have a series of books, uplifting powerful stories, the voices in the agendas of leading activists and change makers that rules will change. We also launched a few years ago , Domestic Workers alliance and ford has been proud to partner with you and super excite to go see this second book and the series come into the world and i know david will, indeed, has been a powerful tool as the Movement Continues to evolve and grow. Because i feel like im in a room of friends and i think most of you are indeed, i didnt introduce myself. My name is laine romero alston. I just want to say that ford will be talking later. Its just really incredibly proud to partner with you and to partner with several of the groups who also cosponsor this event. The national Domestic Workers alliance, the National Employment law project. Sciu and sciu7. 75 and reading the book, it was like a moment in time that ford has felt connected to, committed to supporting the stories and the voices and the campaigns that have been hard fought and ip incredibly across country and look forward to to make this agenda beyond a reality. So i hope you did grab a drink and bring it in, youre more than welcome to go out back out and bring it in. The idea is that this is really a celebration, a moment to pause and reflect and a discussion to be had here but to be taken into the hallways, into our work and world beyond. So without further due, i would love to introduce my cosponsor. Good evening, everyone. Thanks, laine, to bringing us together. You know, we all know but sometimes i dont think we say it enough, but we all know that the kinds of both political alliances and personal friendship that is we build through the kinds of gathering that you host at ford are really vital and theyre a lot of what makes our work work. So thanks to all of you here at the Ford Foundation and special shotout to everyone behind the scenes. So a special shotout to corey, davids colleague. Tonight i have the very, very easy to introduce david, organizes 400 workers, mostly longterm care providers in seattle. I like to talk about three elements of who david is. First david as a visionary labor leader, secondly david as a writer and truth teller and thirdly, david as a friend. So the visionary labor leader part you all know about. You know david. You read the book. Seattle ten square mile airport city of 26,000 people. That strategy moved to seattle and now to scores of campaigns across the country. And the fact that raising the wage to 15 is now part of the everyday National Conversation at dinner tables across america and 2016 president ial and the fact that my mom and dad asked me about it when i go home for the holidays, that can all be traced to the guy we are here to celebrate tonight. But this isnt the only thing that david has helped to start. You know, our move to thinking about making worker benefits portable, paid leave, the idea that those can follow you when you a worker of the 21st century economy move from gig to gig, a lot of that which you now hear across america and president obamas speeches that was also partly davids idea or a startup Funding Organization called the workers lab. Thats david brainchild too. And each of these shows davids commitments to finding new solutions to the very old problem of building real power at scale f for workers. David is able to do this because hes a truth teller. Hes been ready to say our movement is shrinking and be my measures it is dying. We have threats from the outside, technological change is real and we have threats from within all thinking. Therefore, we really have to think differently, we have to think about different business models. If we are to actually see the kinds of lives for working americans that we all hoped for and, in fact, if we want to see working americans, period. Now, david doesnt just talk about this obviously, youre all holding in your hands proof of the fact that he writes things down which allows him to make connection between history of the Labor Movement. Anyone can ask him about the origins over qok cocktails. And finally, david as a friend. I was thinking about this this morning and i think hes kind of a persuasive rattle rouser or inventive trouble maker and i look toward from getting a call from david because the conversation always starts with hey, felicia, i have this idea 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 david brings all of us ideas that are good for all of us and brings all of us to bring them a reality. Without further due, david ross. [applause] thank you, felicia, you can see i have to recover from the blushing attack. I dont normally get normally i hear less polite things said about me across the bargaining table or city hall or state capitol. So its a little bit of an odd experience for someone who basically listens and talks for a living to have to read rather than instead of stand up here in the mic but since im now an author that what must happen i have to read passages from the book. Heart of the evening is really going to be the Panel Discussion in a few minutes, but to get it started i collected two passengers, from near the beginning and one from near the end of my book the fight for fifteen, the right wage for working america. Starting from the beginning of the people, i will just ask since we are in a president ial Election Year to really get him to our mental time machines and go backwards to a moment that occurred certainly in my childhood that i will read from here on out. Imagine an alternative history of the 1976 president ial election. America is celebrating with fireworks and two men a republican from michigan and a democrat from georgia are campaigning to be president. What if one of them had given a speech that predicted the future . My fellow americans, wound could imagine them saying, this difficult decade will soon come to an end. The National Hang over from vietnam and watergate will slowly fade. There will be no more lines for gasoline, in more inflation. The cold war will end. The Nuclear Threat will recede and there will be no more Foreign Military threats to our soil. The last of the formal legal barriers to full economic participation by women and people of color will fall. China, korea, brazil, india and south africa will join the Global Economic community and lift hundreds of millions of people out of lifethreatening poverty. America will reinvent industries, technology will dramatically improve the lives of all americans and most people around the globe and america will continue to be the world wealthiest nation with its most productive workers. Now, that would have been a true incredible, astounding set of predictions all of which would have come true. But imagine if the speech continued, fbi fellow americans, of all the new wealth our country produces, 95 will go to top percent of income earners, a few wealthy family will amass more wealth than the bottom 8 to 2090 . The bottom 50 will have to take a pay cut. We are going to export manufacturing, import thirdworld wages, detax, deregulate, privatize, we are going to break the unions, bankrupt our pension system, rural and urban education, make debtfree college a thing in the past, we are going to turn the backs on the middle class, replace old jim crowe laws for black and brown americans. The impact of women between 1977 and 2012 will be zero dollars and take home pay for the bottom 90 and the family that can reasonably afford a comfortable middleclass life on a single persons paycheck today will need two or three income to live the same life if a generation from now. Obviously given such a speech would have doomed anyones president ial candidate. His party would have been out of power for years. No one in america would have voted for such a vision, just like the optimistic first part, the second part of fictional president ial speech would turn out to be true and became true not because of historical accident but Economic System was intentional rigged in favor of large corporations and wealthy americans over anyone else. Trickle down economics was woven into the National Consciousness as if it were written in founding documents in the country. 200 years of struggle and progress has been intentionally reversed over the course of the last 40 years. If a foreign power had announced that was its plan for america, we would have gone to war. So that is how the book in large measure opens and first the book closes, i will note in the following passage, you know, at some point i had to send the final, final manuscript to the folks at the new press and that that day was actually, i think, the 27 to the of january and because some of what about to read is sounding out of date. Its becoming ever clearer that americans are ready for a change. In january 2015 poll showed that 63 of americans support a 15dollar minimum wage. The april 1520 strikes for 15 that helped organization not just by fastfood workers, child care aids, adjunct faculty, airport workers and retail workers. The strikes took place in an astounding u. S. Cities. Chicago raised minimum wage to 13. Los angeles joins seattle and San Francisco in raising minimum wage to 15. Emeryville california raised minimum wage to 16, the mayors of boston, new york, st. Louis and sci kansas city and activists in washington, d. C. Are organizing to put a 15dollar wage on the june 2016 municipal ballot. In congress from 2010 through 2014 proposal for a 10. 10 was extreme. In the spring of 2015 a group of senators called for 12dollar National Minimum page growing last years politics on wages. In the summer of 2015, another group of senators and representatives introduced a bill to go to 15. In 2,014,000s of workers in Johnson Hopkins hospital won a new Union Contract that included a 15dollar minimum wage for longtime employees. In the spring of 2015 Union Hospital workers in minnesota did the same and massachusetts bargain contract in 2015 that will raise starting wage to 15 in 2018. In new york major bill de blasio proposed 15dollar minimum wage in 2014 which would require state law change and a city law change. Governor andrew dismissed the figure as unrealistic, in early 2015 when the state proposed raiding the wage, god bless them, shoot for the stars. He then put forward his own plan to slowly raise to 11. 50 in new york city and 10. 50 elsewhere in the states, but the 15dollar movement moved cuomo as well. Recommended raising wages to 15 and fastwood workers were said to make 15 by 2018 in new york and 2021 in the rest of the state. Sensing the change in political lens,cuomo went further. Fifteen dollars an hour the statewide in the nation and new economic contract to america and its about time. Nine months later. By november he put his money where his mouth was and established 15dollar wage. Thats a long way for a politician to travel in less than a year. The New York Times editorial page, editors blog ran a headline in 2015 that summed up what was in their mind. This all happened 2016 election got underway in iowa and new hampshire. Every great moment for justice in American History has begun with seemingly and plausible demand. The abolition of slavery when the entire economy of the south was built on slavery and the u. S. Constitution was built to ensure survival. End to child labor where one in five were under 16, women suffered when political machines, major relincoln own states and powerful industries feared losing power if women gained the right to vote. Eighthour day when fulltime manufacturing and construction employees worked 100 hours a week, an end to jim crowe laws and the passage of civil rights and Voting Rights law. Medicare, medicaid and even eventually obama care. Killing flies with a shotgun, end quote, an economic death wish. Yet the movement to end child labor establish a fair workweek, expand human rights all produced powerful policy victories and created a more just society within a generation. The challenges of poverty, income inequality and slow Economic Growth are becoming more acute. Mainstream needs higher wages and wall street fights its proven a poor stewart of the american economy. This issue is not going to fix itself. In other words, us. Now is the time for the people and our representatives, president ial candidates and members of congress, state houses and City Councils to seize the easy opportunities presented to them. A chance to be part of a historically Significant National movement to do something popular and valuable for american workers. One hundred years from now a few people will be remembered by name. What people will remember is whether or not our generation had the courage to stand up for the American Dream when it was at its greatest moment of risk and whether we left a vibrant middle class for generation that is came after us. Let us hope we give them a reason to remember us with appreciation. Thank you. [applause] all right. Thank you, david. Something that david always says we have gotten the call from felicia, whether its been the literal call or actually been this call that you just left us with. Many would say we won, we won the campaign, we even got more than what they thought we could but we are not done, right . So this is the idea that we wanted as you all sip your wine to have this conversation of, okay, lets look ford, talking with many of you of whether the moments of our time, how do we actually take on some of the biggest issues. We take on inequality and so in our new agenda its called ford forward and so we are looking forward, and then when we wanted to have this forwardlooking conversation, well, who could help to have a lively conversation that really starts getting at how do we think in the way our institutions that exist need to be transformed, how do we think a Labor Movement in the 21st century looks like, how do we think about the thoughts an ideas and, yes, in the rule of palanthropy. So i want to ask laura to come up. She has always been an amazing partner in this. As you all know, if you havent please go and check out her weeb site asking some of the most provocative and interesting questions of our time of what is it going to take us to move forward for an exclusive environment and the call that david has put out for us, and laura. We have an amazing panel. Thank you, laine, thank you, everyone. Lively conversation but youre all drinking wine. I see that the bar has been raised. Lets bring up our panelists, we are going to be speaking for a little while. We will also take questions. We have the hon o of having cspan in the house. Thank you, cspan, thank you all the media workers behind the scenes here. When it gets to a a session, i will ask you to wait for the microphone to come your way n. The meantime, im going to ask our panelists to come up to the stage. Janice fine, saket soni. [applause] let me briefly introduce so you know who is who. That to my left Vice President of the Ford Foundation, survivor of twoyear process, janice fine, associate prover of rutgers university, writers on the question of worker centers. [laughter] organizing at the edge of change as she puts it and david rolf, who you just heard. President of ciu775 and saket soni, Guest Worker Alliance among other things. Thank you all. Lets start with the question that you put the very end, david, im sure you quibble. To say what is the probable, demands of today im going pose to you, whats the next one . You know, we are winning the fight for 15. We havent won but we are winning. The other twin demand that workers had when they walked off on strike for the first time here in new york was 15 and a union and, you know, i think im probably in the growing minority of labor leaders, activists and thinkers who would say, that union is unlikely to look like my grandfathers Autoworker Union or my moms teachers union, but the question of what new forms of worker power are going to emerge for the 21st century that combined, the power to make the worlds Biggest Companies say yes when they want to say no, the scale to touch tens of millions of workers with revenue model for resilience during bad economies or periods of political disfavor, is really the needle that has to be threaded. We are winning the fight for 15 but the union piece, whatever that means in the 21st century, context, which i dont mean a set of specific 1935 legal responsibility, but the sense of collective power at scale, Sustainable Way is really the problem for our time. We are going to solve the lowwage problem and we are going to do that directly as more states find that they are starting for job applicants when people are flood to go new york and seattle and california. Thats the that is the oh lowhanging fruit. The harder, much harder problem to grapple with is what collective worker power looks like. We are talking about what might a union look like, what might 21st Century Power look like, what does the 21st century working class look like . That phrase working class is quickly running out of date. Well, i thin