A Living Wage
The people who do some of the most thankless jobs in Baltimore -- those who clean the toilets in downtown offices, those who sweep under the bleachers at the new, publicly subsidized baseball park, those who make the beds in the hotels and those who mop the floors at public schools -- are making economic and urban history.
With the help of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a city-wide church-based community organization, and the American Federation of State, County and Federal Employees, a public employees union, these workers have successfully pushed for an ordinance that will require companies to pay a living wage for all work done under city contracts.
In Baltimore's case that means $6.10 an hour next year, inching up to $7.70 over the next four years. The ramifications of such a measure -- the first of its kind in the nation -- are enormous.
The ordinance takes on even greater significance at a time when Democrats and Republicans are spending most of their time debating how to best force poor people to work, while ignoring the reality that much honest work does not pay a living wage in this country. These same politicians also ignore the fact that most poor families are headed by a low-wage worker rather than a welfare recipient.
Why are "the working poor" of Baltimore leading the way? For Blacka Wright, a part-time hotel housekeeper who earns only $5.25 an hour, for Charles Garrison, who cleans high school cafeterias for $4.25, and for hundreds of other low-wage workers the challenge to reform their work lives came when BUILD approached them and asked if they wanted to organize for power.
Since the late Seventies, when the Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of 45 organizations in 18 states, helped a group of pastors and lay leaders begin their church-based organization, BUILD has enjoyed major political victories.
BUILD has built 300 "Nehemiah" homes for first-time buyers and secured hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in scholarships for Baltimore City high school graduates through the "Commonwealth Agreement."
Even with these major successes, BUILD churches, mostly African-American congregations in the inner city, were becoming increasingly frustrated by the amount of time and energy they were spending feeding and housing low-wage workers through their social service ministries.
Change started two years ago, when the churches asked the-low wage workers if they were interested in a political alliance in addition to another meal at the soup kitchen.
BUILD teamed up with AFSCME, the largest public employee union in the city, to begin organizing the working poor. A new organization was born last May drawing upon the experience of the church, the IAF and progressive labor leaders in AFSCME. The new city-wide workers association is called the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee.
This new organization is being built on tested organizing principles: (1) don't do for people what they can do for themselves; (2) trust that people will make good choices for themselves and their families if given the opportunity, and (3) all change comes from pressure or the threat of pressure.
The enactment of the living wage ordinance by the Baltimore City Council and signed by the mayor is the first victory in what promises to be a tough campaign to hold corporations that receive public subsidy accountable to the public.
SSC, BUILD and AFSCME are saying that the billions of dollars of public subsidy garnered by private developers must be tied to jobs that pay a living wage.
As one pastor put it at a BUILD rally, "Why is it that subsidy for rich corporations is always called an investment, while subsidy for the poor is called welfare?
"Public subsidy is public subsidy and must come tied to public obligation."
The propositions that work must pay, that there is dignity in all work, that economic revitalization of central cities must be tied to living wage jobs, and that the public subsidy lavished upon private corporations must come with public responsibility, are being tested in Baltimore.
In a time of gushing political rhetoric about individual responsibility, often times more tied to hypocrisy and meanness than the reality of the working poor, the members of SSC are taking control of their own lives and pointing the way to significant welfare reform; namely, work that pays a living wage.
Arnie Graf
Rev. Vernon Dobson
Jonathan Lange
Baltimore
7)
The writers represent IAF and BUILD.
Election Blues
I voted for Parris Glendening and now I am mad at myself.
In the primary, I voted for Ellen Sauerbrey. Then I found that I did not agree with her stand on gun control and tax decreases without a way to pay for it.
Mr. Glendening said he was for controls on automatic weapons and said that the state could not afford the tax cuts proposed by Mrs. Sauerbrey.
Even before taking the oath of office, he made a 180-degree turn and now says he will not propose controls on automatic weapons.
Also, now he is for a tax cut and feels the state can afford it. Mr. Glendening is already running for re-election in 1998.
What I learned from this election is that even though I did not like Mrs. Sauerbrey's positions on the issues, she was honest.
If the courts call for a new election, I will pull the lever for the honest candidate.
aniel Remenick
Baltimore
Korean Fiasco
Anyone familiar with military aviation can't help but have serious questions about the Army's thinking in the mission during which Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall found his helicopter over North Korea.
Who was the dolt who authorized a familiarization flight over the Demilitarized Zone during a snow storm with a pilot who had less than 10 hours flying experience in the area and a co-pilot who had not flown in Korea before?
Then there's the matter of Global Positioning System equipment on the helicopter; was it installed and was it used? Obviously it wasn't.
If it had been, there probably would have been no dead pilot, no hostage situation and no international incident.
The GPS allows its user to pinpoint his position within 100 meters anywhere on earth by querying one of several stationary, geosynchronous satellites.
The receiver, used routinely by many private aviators and yachtsmen and all commercial aircraft, costs around $500 and is about the size of a compact disc player. I understand the military has a version that is even more accurate.
Chuck Frainie
Baltimore
Kids At Heart
Over the holidays, my son and I made our annual trek to the fire station on Cross Country Boulevard to see their train garden.
It is difficult to determine who enjoyed it more, the young kid or the old kid.
We have been doing this together for a number of years. Despite all the stresses of modern living, a few minutes at the display can bring nothing but happiness and joy.
I want to thank the members of the Fire Department units who give of their time and efforts to create this world of fantasy every year.
Each time it is different and contains new and current items. This year, visitors were treated to the action of the Power Rangers.
Given the amount of unsung efforts required by the men and women of this station to fulfill their fire fighting, rescue and medic efforts, their creation of this marvelous train city should not go unappreciated.
In the case of a six-year-old and his dad, it sincerely does not.
John Philip Miller
Baltimore
Culture Tax
Just a few days after the big shock of the liberals' losing control of passing out the pork, you started your crusade about the dire consequences of the Republicans' budget cutting.
First you bemoaned that Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Sen. Paul Sarbanes would lose their committee power and would no longer be able to bring home all of the money Baltimore city and Maryland had been getting.
In case you didn't realize it, that's exactly why so many Democrats, myself included, voted with the Republicans.
The next assault came with a lengthy article complaining about the Republicans cutting the funding for the special interest House caucuses. Primarily the focus was on the Black, Hispanic and Women's caucuses, although you did manage to mention there were 27 others.
Again I must tell you this is why the people voted the way we did. Why should the government confiscate my money and give it to someone else to push an agenda that I may not agree with?
If I wanted to support their views, I would contribute my money voluntarily.
The latest mourning came with the Dec. 25 story by Amy Bernstein. She described how Maryland will suffer if Congress destroys the National Endowment for the Arts.
I am sure there are many projects that deserve support -- but not at taxpayers' expense. I have never seen a performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and probably never will, but I can assure you that if I wanted to, I would buy a ticket or send a contribution.
The fact remains that my tax dollars should be used to support government, not organizations that don't have enough support to make it on their own.
red M. Glazier
Laurel
Postal Disservice
I just left a large group of people at the Glen Burnie Post Office milling around the stamp dispensing machines.
Most were holding letters already bearing a 29-cent stamp, foolishly thinking that the Postal Service management would have known about the increase in postal rates and provided a means for their customers to avoid standing in line to make a 3-cent purchase.
Either they don't care about their customers' time or their recently well-publicized morale-building junket would have failed if providing service to their clients was placed on the agenda.
Of course they have unique problems. It's not easy have the per unit handling cost increase as the volume increases. Few, if any, businesses can duplicate that.
erry Feinstein
Glen Burnie
Irrelevant Fact
I want to bring to your attention what is probably an unintentional slip on your part, but a very important one to the thousands of adoptive parents and children among your readership.
The Dec. 30 article regarding Gov. William Donald Schaefer commuting the sentence of Linda Sue Glazier, references the fact that she was adopted in the first sentence.
I continued to read to see what role, if any, her adoption played in her collaborating to kill her parents. The answer is none.
She was just one of too-numerous disturbed teens who resort to violence to solve their problems, and she just happened to be adopted.
My point is that unless her adoption has some factual bearing on the story, it is irrelevant.
The Sun and other major media outlets, by continuing to perpetuate myths and negative stereotypes about adoption, adoptees and adoptive parents, are doing a great disservice to the overwhelming number of people who successfully form families through legal adoption.
Implying that adoption somehow leads to either child abuse or murder is entirely false.
Adoptive parents and adoptees are no more or no less likely to engage in these activities than people who are related by birth.
In fact, the extensive preparation, background, health, safety and legal checks that prospective adoptive parents are required by law to go through makes them much more likely to seek the necessary professional help at an earlier stage to better ward off adverse behavior.
I would even venture to say that if birth parents had to undergo the preparation that prospective adoptive parents do, there would be far fewer problems in families today.
With all of the negative stereotypes on adoption in the national media, it would be great to see a well-researched piece of responsible journalism on the subject.
Robb MacKie
Laurel
Why the $100 Million Federal Empowerment Grant Will Help Baltimore
Robert C. Gumbs presented arguments (letter, Dec. 31) as to why $100 million will not save Baltimore. His letter was well worth reading, but his conclusions were not correct.
The empowerment zone award, properly implemented, will go a long way toward saving Baltimore. It should result in new optimism toward the future of our city.
First, the announcement that Mathias DeVito accepted the challenge to implement the grant is very exciting.
His skills and ability are precisely those needed for the management of this major project. He appreciates the needs of the people in the empowerment zones.
Mr. DeVito's mentor was James Rouse, perhaps the most gifted appreciator of human needs this area has ever produced.
Harborplace, a DeVito-managed undertaking that could have been a honky-tonk commercial marketplace, reflects a sensitivity human interaction and a sense of community that has resulted in significant job creation and profitable business activity.
Michael Seipp, who masterminded the empowerment zone grant submission, will manage the East Baltimore effort in the general area of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
He is a super performer, with a long history of an appreciation of human needs. This leaps out from everything he touches, including the grant proposal. In addition, Dr. James A. Block, chief executive of Johns Hopkins Hospital, is determined to upgrade the Hopkins neighborhood.
The western anchor of the empowerment zones is Sandtown-Winchester, masterminded by the people in that BTC community and none other than Jim Rouse and his Enterprise Corporation.
Mr. Gumbs stated that the problems of Baltimore cannot be solved by throwing money at them. I agree that $100 million and an anticipated supportive $800 million will not by themselves assure solutions. Without massive amounts of money, however, the solutions are far more difficult, if not impossible.
On the other hand this money, judiciously used by extremely able leadership with resident participation, can make deep dents in the problems in the foreseeable future.
How many of your readers remember the birth of Charles Center, the precursor to Baltimore's downtown renaissance?
When the Greater Baltimore Committee's $150,000 planning instrument was unveiled, there were able leaders who said, "Our grandchildren will never live to see this plan carried out." Only 30 years later, we have Charles Center, the Inner Harbor and dramatic developments all the way to Canton in one direction and beyond the B&O; Museum in the other.
Benefits include a brand new tourist industry, downtown residences, new medical facilities, jobs and a huge increase in the tax base that helps all of us.
One result is an inflow of dignitaries from all over the world who have come to Baltimore to see how it was done.
There are hundreds of programs in place to address the real difficulties to which Mr. Gumbs refers. These programs have already benefited people, but they are hopelessly under-funded.
They include more than 200 business-school partnerships engineered by the Greater Baltimore Committee, two dozen programs administered by Commonwealth and the Office of Employment Development that touch a wide variety of lives of people with a wide variety of economic, social and educational needs.
The Commonwealth Futures Program alone reaches 1,200 students who have been retained in at least one grade and whose financial status falls within the poverty definition.
Our RAISE Inc. effort has involved over 1,000 students and more than 400 mentors. Both of these programs have increased graduation rates dramatically.
Some programs are better funded than others, some are more effective than others, but a base has been established.
Adding money to expand the effective efforts and improve them is not throwing good money after bad. It is investing in activities that have already proved their worth.
The same principle applies to housing, job creation and social problems.
Mr. DeVito and his associates understand the bedrock role a job plays. They also realize the deterioration of family structure and associated ills were not created overnight and will not be solved over a weekend.
Education, training and encouraging the creation of businesses in the city with adequate housing for its people are the way up. A $900 million pot to help do this is better than a poke in the eye with a carrot.
Finally, and most important, the empowerment zone proposal was not written by a single individual but, in part, by over 500 authors involved in the empowerment zones.
The purpose of the zone grant is to empower individuals in communities to help make their efforts more successful. Many of these individuals, through input, have already taken a degree of ownership of the proposal.
This $900 million will not only help, it will trigger millions more in contributions and investments, just as public money in Charles Center triggered far more in private money that brought about the downtown renaissance.
This is an exciting time to be in Baltimore. Have no doubt, our grandchildren will live to see this plan carried out.
Robert O. Bonnell Jr.
Baltimore
6* The writer is vice chair of RAISE Inc.