In brooklyn, new york. Plus, a look at the lessons u. S. President s learn during their first year in office, how new york city was helpful and hurtful to the union during the civil war and the positive and negative aspects of studying abroad. Now, thats just a few of the programs youll see this weekend on booktv. For a complete television schedule, go to booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. Next, a look at the fight for 15 Wage Movement with Service EmployeesInternational UnionVice President david rolf. Hello, everybody, welcome. I am so, so happy to see you. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, good evening. I know. Hopefully, everyone has enjoyed some wine and some food x this is a lovely, lovely room this evening. So its not every day that we get these kinds of moments to pause, to ten back and reflect to step back and reflect on our gains and actually celebrate, because we need to and we should celebrate the amazing victories for working people that have been snow pooling across the country snowballing across the country as part of fight for 15. Just to think only several years ago, 9 . 25 was considered 9. 25 was considered ambitious and only possible in places like San Francisco. Thank god for San Francisco. [laughter] but now 15, thanks to seattle, and then california and new york and localities across the country. But also we need these moments to place these victories in campaigns as part of a broader vision, an agenda for an economy that works for all, for a 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 that has been captured in this book. And for creating this moment for us and similar moments for groups across the country to come together, to reflect and to animate us forward. I also want to thank mark and nick can key and nicki and diane and all the colleagues at 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 and a just economy. Uplifting the powerful stories, the voices in the agendas of leading activists and changemakers that can serve as tools for change. The first of the series we also launched here a few years ago was by [inaudible] from cross generations and National Domestic worksers Alliance Workers alliance, and fords been really proud to partner with you at new press x its super exciting to see this second book in the series come into the world. And i know, david, it will indeed already has been a powerful tool as the Movement Continues to evolve and grow. So because actually i feel like im many a room of friends here and i think most of you are, indeed, friends i didnt introduce myself. [laughter] my name is lani romero alston, and im a Program Officer in in the quality Economic Security work area. I think ford and xav will be up here talking later. Were just really incredibly proud to partner with you and to partner with several of the groups who also cosponsored this event, the National Domestic workers alliance, the National Employment law process, sciu and the Roosevelt Institute here. And ill have to say, david, reading the book it was like, it was like a moment in time. I feel like for something ford has felt very connected to, very committed to supporting the stories and the voices in the campaigns that have been hardfought and incredibly won across the country, and were really thrilled to continue to partner with you all as we move forward to make this agenda of 15 but beyond of an inclusive economy a reality. So i hope you did grab a drink and bring it in. Youre more than welcome to go back out and bring it in. The idea is this is really a celebration, a moment to the pause and reflect and actually a discussion to be had here but to be taken out into the hallways, into our work and world beyond. So without further ado, i would love to introduce felicia wong, my cosponsor here at roosevelt, to get us into the program. [applause] good evening, everybody. And thanks, laine. Thanks to everybody at ford for bringing us together to celebrate the publication of the fight for 15. 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 friendships that we build through the kinds of gatherings 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 a special shout out to everyone behind the scenes, especially corey waterson bryan. I dont think corey is here, but for those of you who know, corey does everything to make both books and book launches happen. So a special shout out to corey, davids colleague. Tonight i have the very, very easy task of introducing david rolf, the president of sciu 775 which, as all of you know, organizes 400,000 workers, mostly longterm care providers in seattle. So id like to talk about three elements of who david is. First, david as a visionary labor leader, secondly, david as a writer and a 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, he helped to craft the strategy that started at ctac, seattles 10squaremile airport city of 26,000 people. So 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 in the 2016 president ial and the fact that my mom and dad ask me about it when i go home for the holidays, that can all be traced to the guy were 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 and sick time and unemployment the idea that those could follow you when you, a worker in the 21st century economy, move from gig to gig, a lot of that which you now hear at dinner tables across america and president obamas speeches, you know, that was also partly davids idea. Or a startup Funding Organization called the workers lab which many of you are involved in. Thats davids brain child too. And each of these shows davids commitment to finding few Solutions New solutions to the very old problem of building real power at scale for workers. And davids able to do this, as i said, because he is a thinker, and hes a truth teller. David is rare among labor leaders in that hes been willing 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 old, calcified thinking. And, therefore, we really have to think differently, think about allies, different business modelswe are to actually see the kinds of lives for working americans that we all hope 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 connections between the history of the Labor Movement. Anyone can ask him about the origins of tafthartley over cocktails. He connects the history of the labor be movement to where we stand today and to where were headed tomorrow. And finally, david is a friend. I was thinking about this this morning, and i think hes kind of a persuasive rabblerouser or maybe an inventive troublemaker, and i always really look forward to getting a call from david because the conversation always starts with something like, hey, felicia, ive got this idea. I really think we should and i never know how that sentence is going to end. [laughter] 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 he brings all of us together to make those ideas a reality. So without further ado, david rolf. [applause] thank you, felicia. You can see now i have to recover from this blushing attack. [laughter] i dont normally get the normally i hear less polite things said about me across the bargaining table or in city hall, the state capitol. But sometimes even a union hall. 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 sort of stand up here at a mic and extemporize. But since im now an author, im told that 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, but to get us started i have selected two passages, one from near the beginning and one from near the end of my book, the fight for 15 the right wage for working america. Starting from near the beginning of the book, ill just ask people since were in a president ial Election Year to really get into our mental time machines and go backwards to a moment that occurred in my childhood, but ill read from here on out. Imagine an alternative history of the 1976 president ial election. Americas celebrating its bicentennial with fireworks, and two men a republican from michigan and a democrat from georgia are campaigning to be president. One if one of what if one of them had given a speech that predicted the future . My fellow americans, one could imagine him saying, this difficult decade will soon come to an end. The National Hangover from vietnam and 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, 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. Americans will invent or reinvent industries that will create more wealth in the next 30 years than has been created in the entire history of humankind. Technology will dramatically improve the lives of all americans and most people around the globe. And america will continue to be the worlds wealthiest nation with its most productive workers. Now, that would have been a truly incredible, truly astounding set of predictions all of which, as it turns out, would have come true. But imagine if the speech continued. My fellow americans, of all the new wealth our country produces, 95 will go to the top 1 of income earners. A few hundred wealthy families will amass more wealth than the bottom 50 of us combined. The bottom 8090 wont see a dime of increased pay, and the bottom 50 will have to take a pay cut. Were going to export manufacturing, import third world wages, divest from our infrastructure, detax, deregulate, globalize, privatize, were going to break the unions, shred the funding for rural and public education, make debtfree college a thing of the past. Were going to turn our backs on the middle class. The net Economic Impact of women doubling their Work Force Participation between 1977 and 2012 will be zero dollars in takehome pay for the bottom 90 of incomeearning families, and the family that can reasonably afford a comfortable middle class life on a single persons paycheck today will need two or even three incomes to live the same life a generation from now. Obviously, giving such a speech would have doomed anyones president ial candidacy. [laughter] his party probably would have been out of power for years. No one in america would have voted for such a vision. And yet just like the optimistic first part, the second part of our fictional president ial speech would also turn out to be true k and it became true not because of some historical accident, but because our Economic System was intentionally rigged in favor of large corporations and wealthy americans over everyone else. Trickle down economics was woven into the National Consciousness as if it were written into the founding documents of our country. Two hundred years of struggle and progress be had been intentionally reverse ared 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 heres how the book closes. And ill just note that in the following passage, you know, at some point i actually had to send the final, final, final manuscript with the final, final, final edits to the folks at the new press, and that day was actually, i think, the 27th of january. So you will notice in this passage just how fast events have occurred since then, because already some of what im about to read is, in fact, sounding a little out of date. Its becoming ever clearer that americans are ready for a change. A january 2015 poll showed that 63 of americans support a 15 minimum wage. The april 15th, 2015, strikes for [inaudible] that sciu helped organize were joined not just by fast food workers, by childcare aides and retail workers. These strikes took place in an astounding 236 u. S. Cities. Workers in 40 other countries joined solitarity actions. Chicago raised its minimum wage to 13. Los angeles joined seattle and San Francisco in raising the minimum wage to 15. Emeryville, california, raised its minimum wage to 16. The mayors of boston, new york, st. Louis and kansas city all proposed minimum wage increases to 15. Activists in washington, d. C. Are organizing this is what i wrote in january to put a 15 wage on the june 2016 municipal ballot. In congress from 2010 through 2014, proposals for a 10. 10 wage were considered extreme. 9 was the more centrist number while conservatives wanted no change. But in the spring, a group of senators blew past years of tepid capitol Hill Politics on wages. In the summer of 2015, another group of senators and representatives finally introduce a bill to go to 15. In 2014, thousands of Service Workers at Johns Hopkins hospital won a contract that included a 5 minimum 15 minimum wage. In the spring of 2015, Union Hospital workers in minnesota did the same, home care workers in massachusetts in june 2015 that will raise starting wages to 15 by 2018. And won Retirement Benefits for the first time. In new york, mayor bill de blasio proposed a 15 minimum wage in 2014 which would require a state and city law change. Governor cuomo initially dismissed the figure as unrealistic. In early 2015 when the state Assembly Cuomo scoffed, god bless them, shoot for the stars. He then put forward his own plan to slowly raise the minimum wage to 11. 50 in new york city and 10. 50 elsewhere in the state. But the 15 movement moved cuomo as well and quickly. By the middle of 2015, he had appointed a board whether recommended raising wages to 15, and fast food workers were set to make 15 by 2018 in new york. Sensing the change in the political winds, cuomo then went even further. In september 2015 announcing a proposal to increase the state minimum wage to 15 for all workers. That will be the highest statewide rate in the nation, he said, and its about time. Nine months later. By november he put his money where his mouth was and unilaterally established a 15 minimum wage for all State Government workers. 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 june 2015 that summed up what seemed to be on the nations mind. Starting wage of 15, the new normal. And this all happened months before the 2016 president ial election got really underway in iowa and new hampshire. Every great moment for justice in American History has begun with a seemingly implausible demand. The abolition of slavery when the entire economy of south was built on slavery and the u. S. Constitution was written to insure its political survival. An end to child labor when one in five American Workers was under 16. Womens suffrage at a time when urban political machines, major religious faiths and powerful industries all feared losing power or income if women gained the right to vote. An eighthour day when full time manufacturing and employees worked an average of 100 hours a week, an end of jim crow laws and the passage of civil rights and Voting Rights laws, eventually obamacare to dramatically expand Health Care Coverage and now Marriage Equality for lgbt americans. Impossible . The fight for 15 has been called impossible, even, quoteunquote, near insane. Quoteunquote, killing flies with a shotgun, an economic death wish. Yet the movements to establish a fair workweek, end child labor, expand civil and human rights all produced powerful policy victories and created a more just society within a generation. As weve seen the fight for 15 movement, while only a few years old, has already won major victories for workers. The challenges of poverty, income inequality and slow Economic Growth are only becoming more acute. Main street needs higher wages, and although wall street fights it, it has proven itself a poor steward of the american economy. This issue is not going to fix itself. Thats the job of government and those who own it.