Changing the Wind: Movements of Faith for Economic Justice

Changing the Wind: Movements of Faith for Economic Justice Presented at the Faith and Progressive Policy: Proud Past, Promising Future Conference, sponsored by the Center for American Progress Wednesday, June 9, 2004 Jim Wallis Convener, Call to Renewal Editor, Sojourners magazine It was one of those warm spring days in the nation’s capital when the fresh promise of new possibilities seems, just for a moment, to defy the entrenched ways of Washington. Surrounded by the impressive vista of monuments and museums on the Mall, I stood behind a rough lectern on a make-shift stage, looking into the eyes of 1000 low-income people—mostly single mothers who had been on welfare. My job was to speak and my topic was hope. In a city where the currency is power, these poor Americans seemed a bit out of place. Not used to having much clout in their political system, you could tell they were feeling the energy that comes from just being together. They had come on buses from urban and rural communities to “lobby” the Congress for a new welfare reform bill—one that would effectively help people like themselves to escape poverty and move to self-sufficiency. I told them a story. I remember another group of people who wanted to change things meeting in a high mountain town in Mexico, 2,000 miles from Washington D.C. Two-hundred fifty Christian leaders from 50 countries (mostly from the Southern Hemisphere) were gathered for a whole week to ask how they could learn to do a new kind of “advocacy.” Having spent years doing service to the poor in their own countries, and now engaged in effective community development projects, they still saw the poor losing ground. So they had come from Latin America, Africa, and Asia to ask how they together might help change the rules of global trade and transform international economic practices enough to give poor countries and their people a fair chance to break the bonds of misery and deprivation. I told them the same story. I’ve also told the story at Harvard University where I teach part-time. In my class at the Kennedy School of Government, the students wrestled with the question of what to do with their lives after graduation—trying to sort out the differences between career and vocation. Harvard graduate students are being groomed to literally run the systems of power that the poor mothers in Washington and the Christian leaders from the global south want to change. But they too are looking for some hope that some transformation might be possible. I’ve told the same story at countless public gatherings and town meetings in hundreds of communities across the length and breadth of the United States, where people of faith, conscience, good will, and fragile hopes want to make a difference but are searching for how to do it. Maybe you are like some of the people I’ve talked to. Here’s the story. I told the Moms on the Mall that I didn’t want them to waste any valuable time while they were in Washington. Instead, I wanted them to be able to quickly recognize the Members of Congress whom they had come to see. They’re the ones, I told them, who walk around town with their fingers held high in the air, having just licked them and put them up to see which way the wind is blowing. It’s quite a sight—men and women walking all around the Capital grounds with their wet index fingers pointed at the sky. The political leaders are really very good at figuring out the direction of the wind, and are quite used to quickly moving in that direction. It’s not a matter of malice for most of them. In fact, I’ve met quite a few politicians, and many came to Washington because they truly wanted to do the right thing. But after a while, they get entrenched in Washington’s ways, and change seems ever more distant. Power and wealth are the real governors here and people adjust to those realities. Even the ones who still really want to make a difference will tell you they can’t without public backing, and they don’t often find it. Many of us believe that by replacing one wet-fingered politician with another, we can change our society. But it never really works, and when it doesn’t we get disillusioned. We then get tempted to just grumble, withdraw, or give up altogether on ever changing anything. But that’s where we make our mistake. 2 The great practitioners of real social change, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, understood something very important. They knew that you don’t change a society by merely replacing one wet-fingered politician with another. You change a society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, re-cast the discussion, alter the context in which political decisions are being made, and you will change the outcomes. Move the conversation around a crucial issue to a whole new place, and you will open up possibilities for change never dreamed of before. And you will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind. I think that’s what people of faith and conscience are supposed to be—“wind changers.” People motivated by spiritual values that give them a real vision for change are not like those with their fingers up in the air. They already know the direction to head in, and they lead by example. Their commitments, skills, sacrifices, creativity and, ultimately, moral authority are what makes all the difference, and changes the wind. They also have the capacity to gather people around the vision and, in the terms that places like Washington can understand, they demonstrate that they have a critical constituency. But what they really demonstrate is a fundamental principle—that history is most changed by social movements with a spiritual foundation. Look at all the social movements that have made the most difference for social justice, and that is what you find. I told the low-income parents that only by uniting together and enlisting the moral authority of the churches could they and we change the wind in the American poverty debate. I told the Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian leaders from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, that they had both the faith and the critical constituencies to alter the discussions of global trade and economic policy—not by mere lobbying, but by changing the wind. I told the Harvard students that they could either run the systems of power, as expected of the best and the brightest, or they could really test themselves by offering their best energy and gifts to the causes that others deem hopeless, but could become successful initiatives. And I tell audiences around the nation and the world, virtually every week, that a real “faith-based initiative” is so much more than providing social services, it is rather to become the prophetic voice and force that can and has moved whole nations to turn in a different direction. Living-wage Campaigns In April 2001, a great moral drama unfolded at the world’s most famous university. Harvard is the second richest non-profit organization in the world; the wealthiest is the Vatican. With a $19 billion endowment, Harvard is arguably the most influential university in the world, priding itself in offering intellectual and moral leadership to the global community. So why wasn’t it paying its poorest workers a living family wage? Nearly forty Harvard students and community supporters conducted a three-week peaceful sit-in to ask that question. They entered the University’s Massachusetts Hall, which houses the offices of the president and provost, with the simple demand that all Harvard workers be paid a living wage of at least $10.25 an hour, with basic health benefits. A city living wage ordnance passed by the Cambridge City Council determined the amount. The Harvard Living Wage Campaign began in the winter of 1999 when I was living in Cambridge for the year, and I talked often with the students involved. They questioned why this powerful academic institution was unwilling to pay its security guards, janitors, and dining-room workers a wage sufficient to support their families. Yet the University continued to outsource 3 jobs to private firms paying poverty-level wages. After several unsuccessful meetings with University administrators, the sit-in began. As the sit-in went on, the support for their campaign grew to include national union leaders, politicians, Harvard alumni, families of the participating students, and similar living wage campaigns at other universities. Nearly 300 Harvard faculty signed a full-page ad in the Boston Globe in support of the student campaign, saying: “We believe Harvard, as a global leader in higher education, has a responsibility to lead by example in promoting economic fairness and human dignity.” I was one who signed, as an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School. Some of my students participated in the sit-in and called me on their cell phones from inside Massachusetts Hall. Finally, three weeks later, the University agreed to create a new committee including students and union representatives to make recommendations on compensation policy, to begin new collective bargaining with the custodian’s union, and to declare a moratorium on outsourcing jobs. With that agreement, the student sit-in peacefully ended with a significant victory. Living wage campaigns are good examples of making the vision practical, and they are one of the fastest growing movements in the United States.

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