(Photo: What a difference–in downgraded hope–two years can make.)

During Election 2006, I had the good fortune to participate in 7 Days @ Minimum Wage, a video diary of working Americans struggling to keep their families afloat on minimum-wage pay.  I interviewed Jessica, a single mom in Chicago.  Her searing answers and barely contained sorrow made her, much to my surprise, the centerpiece of the entire project.

I’ve thought about her lately. I wonder whether if we had spoken during Election 2008, the current economy would have removed even what little hope she expressed back then for her children’s future. Take a look at her interview, below (the second part will break your heart), and decide for yourself whether it’s worth it for the government to make sure we don’t enter a second Depression.

The 7 Days project was co-sponsored by the national offices of the AFL-CIO and (the lately unfairly-maligned) ACORN, from an idea germinated by my D.C.-based fellow social-justice media maven, Sarah Massey.  It’s the interview of Jessica’s life and mine–this guerilla project helped win minimum-wage increases in six states and my work on it unexpectedly catapulted me into a career as a communications strategist.

But watch it for Jessica. Her everywoman story is every bit as legitimate today as it was in 2006.  Sadly.

Jessica’s Story Part One (alternate YouTube link)

Jessica’s Story Part Two (alternate YouTube link)

As I sit here in Newark Airport waiting to head back to Hogtown from a whirlwind visit to my hometown, I think the official 7 Days @ Minimum Wage press release says it all

Press Release: November 7, 2006–Election Day

AFL-CIO/ACORN Minimum Wage Campaign Celebrates Resounding Success With Ballot Initiative Wins in AZ, CO, MO, MT, NV and OH

(Washington, DC) – By overwhelming margins, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio today approved measures raising state minimum wage levels by $1 to $1.70 an hour and indexing them to inflation. The ballot wins culminate multi-year struggles to collect signatures and place the initiatives on statewide ballots and mobilize public opinion in favor of them.

“We did the job Congress refused to do,” said Maude Hurd, President of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). “Millions of families across the country will benefit, and it proves most Americans believe hard work deserves fair pay.”

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said the union-community coalition driving the minimum wage movement will use the momentum generated by the six wins to insist that Congress raise the federal minimum wage when it reconvenes in January.

“All workers in all states need a raise,” he said, noting that the federal minimum wage hasn’t been increased in 10 years. “Once we got on the ballots in each state, it didn’t take much to convince voters that paying someone $5.15 an hour is just immoral.”

With the addition of the six states, 28 states and the District of Columbia have now passed legislation or approved ballot initiatives raising their state minimums above the federal minimum.

In Arizona, passage of Proposition 202 will give an estimated 345,000 workers, about 13 percent of the private sector work force, a raise to $6.75 an hour. More than one million Arizonans (workers ands family members) will benefit.

Amendment 42 in Colorado raises the minimum wage to $6.85 an hour for 138,000 workers. Issue 2 in Ohio also boosts the state minimum wage to $6.85 an hour and will benefit 720,000 workers. In Missouri, Proposition B will create a wage hike from $5.15 to $6.50 an hour for an estimated 256,000 workers.

ACORN and the AFL-CIO joined forces in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Ohio, leading coalitions that included allies like Jobs With Justice, Let Justice Roll, state affiliates of the National Education Association, the Brennan Center for Justice, 9to5/National Association of Working Women and unions including AFSCME, SEIU, UFCW and the Teamsters. In Montana and Nevada, coalitions were led by the AFL-CIO.

A unique ACORN/AFL-CIO video blog hosted by actor-comic Roseanne Barr — 7Days@Minimum Wage — drew more than 50,000 viewers through YouTube to witness full-time workers telling what it’s like to live on the minimum wage.

# # #

She can tell it better than I can. Watch one of the most courageous women I’ve ever met tell her story of life with four kids at an unfair wage today, on day four of 7 Days @ Minimum Wage.

I had never picked up a video camera in my life before I interviewed Jessica. Her story and her eloquence, both of which emerged absolutely spontaneously, blew me and the ACORN/AFL-CIO project team in D.C. away–so much so that her interview is being shown in its 13-minute entirety, with one small edit to protect her privacy.

What she needs is a full-time, entry-level office job with benefits somewhere in Chicagoland that can be flexible with hours for a mom with four kids. You tell me about an available job like that, I’ll tell Jessica.

And if you haven’t viewed 7 Days yet, trust me on this. Watch today. This unexpected everywoman speaks for millions of others.

As for Chicago Carless, I’ll be back blogging more about life in downtown Chicago very soon. You can quote me on that

* * *

Watch Jessica’s story in two parts–and trust me, do NOT miss part two, and have LOTS of hankies ready when you view it):

Jessica, Part One (RSS subscribers, watch on YouTube here):

(Photo: Who’s heading home from work here, and who’s just starting their commute? Credit: Looper.)

When I first moved to the Windy City, way back in early 2003–eons ago in Internet time–I was soundly kicked down the economic ladder by fate. I moved midwest on the shaky strength of a job offer that shook apart just as I was arriving. Moving from New York as I did, any savings I might have had to cushion that blow had already been blown on other of life’s line items, like outrageous Gotham rent and food costs. Now here I was, with an urban planning masters degree, without an apartment, and with the sinking feeling I was about to return, albeit temporarily, to the crap jobs of my college days.

Temporary came to visit and settled in for two years. In short order I was lucky to find an apartment in Lake View, and a Hogtown friend got me a job as a commission sales associate selling high-end televisions in a low-brow home store.

In Schaumburg.

My cush 20-minute Brooklyn to Manhattan subway ride became a 90-minute transit odyssey into the retail armpit of the Chicago ‘burbs, to have the privilege of dressing in black, eschewing liquids and pee breaks for hours at a time, and running across a highway to grab lunch. What felt peculiar to me, a refugee from the white-collar world, was that my coworkers didn’t find any of this odd.

When three hours a day on the Blue Line and Pace finally became too much to bear, the Christmas rush was a bust, and none of my upladder interviews were panning out, I knew I had to find a way to earn a roof over my head a little closer to home. Thus began my year of ESL hell in Pilsen and Humboldt Park. I had all the qualifications I needed: a month-long, distance-learning “certificate” secured over the Internet, and air of erudition, and the drive of abject desperation to push me along.

My students were as eye-opening as the job requirements. Teaching English as a Second Language for low wages was one thing. I knew I had signed up for that. Being forced to clean classrooms, do administrative work, and attend Moonie-ish weekend “team-building” sabbaticals, all decidedly off the timeclock, were a shock (as I later learned from a teacher at one ESL school, since many employees were illegal, they were too afraid to protest their treatment).

It was hard for me to speak up, either. My students, mostly Mexican, mostly in their 20s, mostly displaying bright eyes but weary faces, would arrive in my evening classes after working 12-hour days in a local factory or restaurant. Or, worse, before they started their 12-hour evening shifts. If they could do that and sit in my class two hours every night to learn how to conjugate English, who was I to complain?

But a part-time ESL salary isn’t enough to pay the bills, even in Chicago (four years here from NYC and I still see this city as a bargain), so out with any free time whatsoever, and in with $8 an hour at a longstanding, highly dysfunctional hardware store in Lake View. If I didn’t have the impetus to keep seeking a degree-requiring job in Hogtown before (and I sure as hell did), my stay in tool land definitely made returning to Yuppiedom a do-or-die endeavor.

Why? Filth, for one thing, throughout the store, and in the fetid, sawdust-covered cubicle where we were required to take our 10-hour days’ 30-minute lunches. And for another, an absence of any perceived iota of respect from the nitwit, twenty-something manager charged by his owner-father with attempting to relate to the ever-changing sea of faces that would appear behind the register, useless degree in one hand, saber saw in the other, only to leave after an addition of the labor laws being violated by the place summed in their heads to a greater cost to bear than the paltry wage that they were earning.

A wage that the store thought was generous for that type of work. Eight dollars an hour for heavy lifting, assembly, cleaning on your hands on knees, breathing in potentially harmful dust and fumes without a legally required mask. And for being treated as somehow less than human because your income was measured in a single-digit wage.

Those days are long gone for me. But though I’m back in the urban-planning, white-collar, Internet-scribe middle class, I can’t forget what I went through. It was that experience tht drew me into working on 7 Days @ Minimum Wage. In all the debates about low wages and poor working conditions, you never hear much about the actual people who are forced to experience them. I wanted to help to change that.

7 Days @ Minimum Wage begins today. For the next week, the ACORN/AFLCIO-sponsored, Roseanne Barr-hosted video blog will tell the story of real people working at really low wages, in their own words. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of anger–but not much hope–expressed by the people we interviewed. Some of the stories are extraordinarily hard to watch.

You should watch them anyway. If for no other reason, than to remind yourself but for the vagaries of fate how close all of us really are to being in the same boat. And how much we all matter on the inside.

No matter how much our paycheck tells us we’re worth.

* * *

Watch the videos: sevendaysatminimumwage.org.

It’s about to happen. On Monday, October 23, the national video blog I was invited to work on for ACORN and AFL-CIO goes live on the Net. And as my life has been going for the past few months, since last Monday I’m in deeper still.

I started out doing media work for the project. Then late last week I was asked to help find and interview the workers (I was lucky to find Jessica and Erin). The subject of one of those interviews, Jessica, told a tale of life on minimum wage so emotionally stark and, frankly, devastating, that her interview has become the centerpiece of the project, and will be shown in its 13-minute entirety on Thursday evening, October 26.

It was the first time in my life I ever used a video camera, much less interviewed somebody with one. I have every belief that God had a hand in the result. Jessica and her four children make it through life on fumes, not money. Her perseverance, her courage, and her tears, all portrayed in the video, will bring you to weep for a country that allows anyone to live like this.

Jessica is not alone in her plight. Beginning Monday at sevendaysatminimumwage.org, these are the people you’ll meet:

Monday 10/23
Susan Windham and Paul Greg Valdez (construction laborers in Denver)

Tuesday 10/24
Erin (a supermarket worker in Northern Indiana)

Wednesday 10/25
Jeffrey Edwards (a fast-food worker in Denver)

Thursday 10/26
Jessica (a clerical worker in Chicago)

Friday 10/27
Chris Peters (a day-laborer in Denver)

Saturday 10/28
Amanda Stewart (a fast-food worker in Cleveland)

Sunday 10/29
Mallory McCarty (a retail clerk in Cleveland)

The interviews are being hosted by ACORN-supporter Roseanne Barr (and from what I hear she did a spectacular job), and we’re further blessed to be able to host a chat with Nickel and Dimed-author Barbara Ehrenreich, scheduled for Sunday, October 29, from 11 a.m. to Noon EST.

This is truly the most just effort I have ever had the good fortune to be involved in. In three short weeks, I am changed, truly. I invite you all to come and watch the seven days of “7 Days…” and find out why.

Jessica and Erin, thank you for saying yes.

* * *

For more information…

Visit the 7 Days @ Minimum Wage blogsite, or read the regularly updated 7 Days Daily Dose news page.

You can also view the project on YouTube.

Browse the AFL-CIO “7 Days…” press release here.

Browse the ACORN press release here.

Press inquiries can be directed to me in Chicago or Sarah Massey in Washington D.C.

Or simply visit your nearest Wal-Mart, diner, or day-laborer staging area…and ask someone who works there about their life.

Just be prepared for their answer.

God knows I’ve wanted to scribe on Carless in the past few days. Especially with juicy tidbits floating around, like Crain’s (and Chicagoist’s) call for the CTA to dump Frank Kruesi, Daley finally wanting to sell off Grant Park’s debt-ridden downtown garages, and Allstate Insurance tossing a car off of Marina City’s west tower in a commercial reshoot of the classic parking-ramp plunge from The Hunter.

But I’ve been preoccupied. Last week I wrote that I was helping to produce a national video blog kicking off on October 23, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage (as in, seven days at minimum wage), highlighting the hardships people go through when they’re stuck–through no fault of their own–at the bottom of the wage ladder. I thought I would just be doing Internet outreach coordination, the occasional pitch call, standard media stuff.

I never thought I’d be called on to interview anyone. But this past week was crunch time and I had a video camera. So I mobilized my friends and colleagues and set out to find a few folks who wanted to tell America their stories of living at a wage that, though legal, is in most cases incapable of allowing anyone to pay rent. Or in the case of one woman I interviewed over the weekend, to buy food for both her and her four children.

When someone not much different than you, about your age, sitting five feet away, begins to cry uncontrollably because she tells you–and maybe you’re the first person she’s ever admitted it to–that she can’t figure out anymore how to feed her family on a consistent basis and doesn’t feel like she has a future, it’s hard not to put down the camera you’ve got pointed in her face and reach out to hug her. Pretty much all you can do is cry with her too, trying to keep the picture from shaking around too badly or your own sobbing from being picked up on the mic.

This was my experience more than once in the past few days. In Chicago. In Hammond. Different people with different backgrounds, all united by the burning desire to get the hell out of poverty. And all uttering the words, through unexpected, bitter tears, “I hate it.”

I didn’t know what I was bargaining for when I came on board with 7 Days. The press releases say Roseanne Barr is our celebrity host. Barbara Ehrenreich (of Nickel and Dimed fame) may host a chat. Those aren’t bad things. They’ll help get the word out.

But, funny thing. When you say you’re going to tell people’s life stories, then you get to hear people’s life stories. Real people. Just like you and me. Except at the end of their rope–for reasons that could just as easily put you and me there. Chance. Accident. Bad choices. Bad luck.

I knew the people we’d interview wouldn’t be happy. I knew talking about their situations would be difficult for them. I knew they would be in pain.

I just never thought I’d feel it, too.

This summer, when I jumped head-first into Chicago’s big-box wage debate, I repeatedly said that the best way to promote a wage increase was at the state level. Little did I suspect that, three months later, I would be selected for the national publicity team of a weeklong, ACORN/AFL-CIO sponsored Internet campaign to raise the minimum wage in six states.

But, amazingly enough, I was. (I kid you not.) And 7 Days @ Minimum Wage is set to be one incredibly awesome web event.

In November, voters in six states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio) will go to the polls to decide whether $5.15 an hour is enough for their fellow citizens to live on.

It’s not.

That’s been the combined message of ACORN and the AFL-CIO for a long time (and certainly was the gist of Chicago’s recent big-box wage controversy). To drive that message home for the modern masses, the two organizations have teamed up to host a weeklong YouTube-based video blog to let America’s most hardworking wage earners speak for themselves.

Beginning Monday, October 23, and for the next seven days, the website, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage (that’s sevendaysatminimumwage.org), will offer seven video diaries from seven hardworking people, struggling against all odds–and failing–to make ends meet on $5.15 an hour. Each day a different person will tell their story, perhaps a neighbor, friend, or coworker of someone reading these words right now.

The diaries will be hosted by TV personality Roseanne Barr–as it turns out, a big fan of ACORN and a steadfast supporter of community activism. (You did know she started a foundation to help rebuild the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, didn’t you?)

But celebrity aside, the point is simple. Dead simple:

$5.15 an hour x 40 hours = poverty

Kind of hard to argue with that. Or try this: how many of you out there, sometime in the past nine years, toiled away at $5.15 an hour? Do you remember how far it went? More importantly, do you remember what year it was?

The $5.15 federal minimum wage hit the scene in 1997. It’s 2006 now, how can it not be time for a change? (And anyway, if approved the minimum wages in the six states would only rise to between $6.15 and $6.85 an hour–not far different from the current $6.50 minimum in Illinois–so it’s not like these everyday breadwinners are asking for the moon.)

Thanks to my friend and former colleague, Washington D.C.-based progressive communications consultant Sarah Massey, for helping to bring me on board. This is one team effort I’m proud to be a part of.

To learn more…

Visit sevendaysatminimumwage.org the week of October 23 and witness for yourself why the time for change is now. As the kickoff date draws closer, more and more interactive content will be added to the site.

Download the blogger press release (in PDF format).

Browse lots of background information about the national minimum-wage fight at the AFL-CIO site America Needs a Raise, and at ACORN’s Raise Wages webpage.

And read continually updated Net coverage here…

Ecorazzi: Roseanne to Host 7 Days @ Min. Wage
BlogHer: Seven Days at Minimum Wage
ACORN News Blog
AFL-CIO: AZ Blog

…and you thought I was on Wal-Mart’s side, didn’t you?