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Protest: How the $15 Wage Became Normalized

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In my posts last week about the Chicago Teachers Union strike and the politics of individualism versus the politics of solidarity, an argument came up that is common and which I find curious. That argument is that the only legitimate politics are electoral politics and that protestors working outside the political system are counterproductive and done by hippies who prefer to make a scene than do the hard work of organizing. This to me is utterly bizarre and completely ignores or retells the history of social movements to blame activists, such as this comment making the risible argument of blaming the decline of support for gays in the 1980s to ACT-UP interrupting church services instead of the obvious reason, which was AIDS fear-mongering.

For people uncomfortable with the politics of protest, I present to you the $15 minimum wage movement which has gone from an utter impossibility to implementation in the last three years. That’s happened because SEIU funded and organized protests of fast food workers that raised attention to the plight of the poor and tapped into discontent over economic inequality. Those protests created conditions where political support for specific goals became possible and forced politicians, even those who don’t really care about the plight of the poor like Andrew Cuomo, to move on raising wages for political reasons. And that’s fine–I don’t care what politicians feel inside. I care what they will do to protect themselves politically, which is why I don’t buy into the arguments that we can’t trust Hillary because she doesn’t believe in a given issue. Who cares what people actually believe?

Anyway, this all starts with protest and direct action politics, as it has throughout American history, whether William Lloyd Garrison starting The Liberator or protests against the draft during Vietnam, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or 350.org protesting against the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Fight for $15 is yet another example of protest absolutely needs to be a central part of American politics on the left.

The movement for a $15 floor has been partly fueled by the same frustration over wage stagnation and income inequality that has spurred the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and Bernie Sanders. More than 50 million workers earn less than $15 an hour, and many Americans are upset about the loss of millions of factory jobs and the explosion of low-paying service-sector jobs. Mr. Sanders has championed a $15 minimum, but Mr. Trump has attacked the idea, at one point saying that wages are too high. Hillary Clinton has called for a $12 minimum, leaving states and cities to go to $15 if they like.

The issue has motivated thousands of protesters to join the Fight for $15’s periodic strikes: What started in one city ultimately swelled to protests in 150 American cities. By many measures, it has become the biggest labor protest in decades, with a wide spectrum of supporters, from college students and inner-city workers to janitors and nursing-home aides. The movement helped to get voters in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac to approve a $15 minimum wage, and not long after in Seattle itself and San Francisco, followed by Los Angeles and Pasadena.

“These victories made people believe this wasn’t some crazy demand,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has spent millions of dollars underwriting the Fight for $15. “These incremental victories began to add up, and $15 moved from a demand to a standard. Now the fight is, how fast can you get it.” She added that private employers, including Nationwide Insurance, Facebook and U.P.M.C., Pittsburgh’s largest hospital chain, have increasingly embraced a $15 minimum.

In California, two union groups were pushing for referendums to create a $15 minimum by 2021. Worried about a divisive, expensive fight, Mr. Brown embraced compromise: phase in $15 by 2022, giving businesses time to adjust. Employers with fewer than 26 workers would be granted a one-year delay, and the governor could suspend increases if California’s economy stumbled.

Any liberal (I think all leftists fundamentally see the need for direct action politics outside of the ballot box) who doesn’t see the vitality and success of protest politics might as well cut off their right hand. They are destroying the base of their own policy desires. That doesn’t mean that protest politics are the only politics. I reject those who argue working within the political system is worthless as well. Any historical reading of social movements show that you need politics within party structures and getting out the vote as well as politics of protest and anger and direct action. There is no other reasonable conclusion.

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