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Every (Working) Woman

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 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.

Minimum Wage, Maximum Win!

The project team behind the national video blog I helped work on with AFL-CIO and ACORN, ‘7 Days @ Minimum Wage,’ sent out this press release to celebrate successfully raising the minimum wage in six states on election day. Woo-hoo!

Jessica’s Story

I had never picked up a video camera in my life before I interviewed Jessica, a low-paid mother of four, for the 7 Days @ Minimum Wage project. Her searing story and her quiet 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. View that story here.

Downgraded

As I begin work on the 7 Days @ Minimum Wage video project, I keenly remember when I first moved to the Windy City in 2003. I moved midwest on the shaky strength of a job offer that shook apart just as I was arriving. 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. I wish it had been that easy.

“7 Days @ Minimum Wage” Begins Monday

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. Here is a list of the people who’ll be telling their own stories–including Jessica, the amazing mother of four whom I had the honor to interview–and whose story is the centerpiece of the week-long event.

Silent Sorrow: Filming “7 Days @ Minimum Wage”

Last week I wrote that I was helping to produce a national video blog kicking off on October 23, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage, highlighting the hardships people go through when they’re stuckat the bottom of the wage ladder. I thought I would just be doing Internet outreach coordination. Instead I was tapped to find and interview participants–one of whom will become the project’s centerpiece.

Can You Live “7 DAYS @ MINIMUM WAGE”?

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 week-long, ACORN/AFL-CIO sponsored Internet campaign to raise the minimum wage in six states. Well, I have been.