Amisha Patel

Going For The Gold: Organizing For Community Power In Chicago’s Olympics Bid

Amisha Patel — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:21:58 -0700

Community benefits for community residents – a straightforward concept, right? It’s the idea that large-scale development projects must actually meet the needs of local communities. Vancouver Winter Olympics planners understand this, and have been negotiating with community stakeholders to protect local residents’ needs in advance of the 2010 games. In the U.S., however, no Olympic host city has ever entered into a legally-binding agreement with community members aimed at negating the detrimental impact of the event.

The result of that neglect is clear. In 1996, the homeless got one-way bus tickets out of Atlanta. In 1984, jobs in Los Angeles communities consisted of two-week gigs as street sweepers. Folks in Chicago know that if we do end up hosting the summer games eight years from now, there must be a community-driven effort to ensure that low-income areas and residents of color gain real benefits from this monumental event.

Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 (CEO 2016) is a newly-formed coalition of community and labor organizations, working together to win enforceable community benefits in conjunction with Chicago’s Olympics bid. The Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of organizations dedicated to issues of economic and racial justice, has joined with organizations such as the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), Centers for New Horizons, and MAGIC, to form a broad and deep coalition of South Side and city-wide groups organizing for justice.

One major area of concern is Chicago’s plan to build the Olympic Village at the site of Michael Reese Hospital. Mere minutes from downtown, the 37-acre plot represents a potential bonanza for the city and developers and the prospect of hosting the games provides the city with an excuse to secure the prime lakefront property. Just as the dismantling of public housing led to the immediate creation of half-million dollar homes across the street from Cabrini Green, the plans for Michael Reese set the stage for a land grab that will push out low-income residents and seniors in the area. The city plans on building over 7,000 units of housing at the site -- regardless of whether we win the bid for the games -- sending local property taxes and rents skyrocketing. With all that’s at stake, we know that it will take a broad and deep coalition to move our efforts forward -- to ensure that South Side communities not only survive in the coming years, but thrive.

Members of CEO 2016 have been intensively organizing and strategizing around the core platform of our campaign, which stipulates that affordable housing, transportation, public subsidy accountability, employment and workers’ rights, public space, education, and public safety are among the issues that the city and Chicago 2016 need to address. To do this effectively, the community must be at the table.

The Grassroots Collaborative is focused on two particular aspects of the campaign. The first is developing a “Living Wage Olympics,” one that leads to long-term, sustainable economic opportunities that lift low-income families out of poverty. The second area of attention involves accountability and transparency around public financing. The city has a little habit of promising that projects will be fully privately funded, only to later extract hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by raiding Tax Increment Financing (TIF) accounts. The risk of cost overruns surrounding Chicago’s bid leaves already neglected communities vulnerable to the siphoning off of much-needed tax dollars intended for local schools, parks, and libraries.

In the last two weeks, over 500 community residents organized by CEO 2016 have come out in support of a process that incorporates the voices of the communities that will be directly impacted by the games. And that number will continue to grow if Chicago insists on developing billion-dollar plans for the South and West Sides without any real input from grassroots leaders themselves. Black and brown communities have been underserved for way too long. As KOCO organizer Jitu Brown recently stated, “We support Chicago getting the bid, but not on our backs.”

Chicago’s residents just won’t stand for it.

Amisha Patel is the director of the Grassroots Collaborative, whose members include: Action Now, American Friends Service Committee, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Illinois Hunger Coalition, Metro Seniors in Action, Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations, Service Employees International Union Healthcare IL/IN, and SEIU Local 73.

Previous columns by Patel:

A Living Wage Is A Right -- Not A Luxury

A Living Wage Is A Right -- Not A Luxury

Amisha Patel — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:41:50 -0700

Decent wages. Filling a prescription for your sick child. Not having to choose between paying the rent and buying groceries. Sound like luxuries to you? Well, they don’t to a majority of Chicagoans. Nonetheless, retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Lowe’s apparently think that their employees can go without. And thousands of retail workers do go without, at great cost to themselves, their families, and neighborhoods across the city.

The Big Box Living Wage Ordinance sought to improve this situation. But despite a supermajority of residents supporting the ordinance, and despite a majority of alderman voting to pass it, Mayor Daley issued his first veto in 19 years in office against this legislation in September 2006. Today, that veto and the resulting lack of living wages in Chicago continue to reverberate across the city.

The Big Box Living Wage Ordinance would have required certain-sized billion-dollar retailers to pay their workers a wage of $10 per hour, with an additional $3 per hour worth of benefits. The wages and benefits were to reach that mark in 2010, and thereafter increase by the cost of living. Community organizations and labor unions organized for its passage in an effort to hold these wealthy corporations accountable to their low-wage employees.

The Living Wage Ordinance worked to address the lack of quality jobs in communities of color. The crisis of unemployment, especially in the African-American community, exists and is an issue many are familiar with. Much less talked about, but just as devastating, is the crisis of job quality – the jobs that are available to black workers are disproportionately low-wage and without benefits, and do little to resolve the crisis of poverty with which many working black families struggle on a daily basis.

Jhatyn Travis, Executive Director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, has seen the impact of this lack of opportunity in the South Side communities in which she organizes. She explains that “not having living wage salaries means people can’t afford a place to live. The city as a whole is seeing an outflux of working people who can’t afford to live here anymore. The issues go hand in hand.” Jamiko Rose, Executive Director of Organization of the NorthEast, states that “when the formerly incarcerated return to our communities, trying to start their lives over and reintegrate, the biggest barrier they face is the lack of living wage jobs. This increases recidivism, because people aren’t given the opportunity to make an honest living.” Bryan Echols of MAGIC, puts it pretty simply: “The necessity for a living wage exists so parents can parent, and families can be families. Nowadays, teens are working out of necessity, not for independence.” What’s clear is that poverty-wage jobs work to perpetuate the struggles of many Chicago families.

Let’s be real: The fact that mega-retailers are now clamoring to get into urban America is not because they suddenly care about poor black and brown folk – it is because there is huge untapped buying power in the inner-city that they previously because they could. Any portrayal of these poverty-wage stores or their backers in Chicago as being fighters for racial justice is a slick attempt to pull an “okey doke” on communities of color. The stores are coming now because they have no choice – Wal-Mart stock has been sluggish over the last two years because the company has not reached their targeted expansion in the U.S. Those who run the company, however, continue to make some of the highest salaries in the world – at stark contrast to their workers who struggle to make ends meet.

The idea that “any job is better than no job” has been advanced among the working poor for centuries. But it’s a false choice – one that only serves to keep those on the edges of social margins grateful for whatever those in power decide to hand out. It is an argument that the vast majority of Chicagoans rejected in 2006, with over 80 percent voting in support of referenda on the living wage in 300 precincts across the city.

The campaign to secure a living wage for big box workers exemplified Chicago-style community-labor collaboration. The Living Wage Coalition, consisting of 35 community, labor, academic, policy, and faith-based organizations, was spearheaded by the Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition whose mission is to organize around the issue. The Collaborative unites diverse constituencies to work across barriers to fight for systemic change that benefits everyone. Our member organizations are our strength – Action Now, American Friends Service Committee, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Illinois Hunger Coalition, Metro Seniors in Action, Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Locals 73 and 880. Key labor partners in the Living Wage Coalition included the SEIU State Council, Chicago Federation of Labor, United Food and Commercial Workers 881, and Chicago Jobs with Justice. Key partners in the faith community included Protestants for the Common Good, St. Sabina, Trinity United Church of Christ, and Chicago Interfaith Committee.

Despite Daley’s veto, our organizing has resulted in tremendous change, both statewide and in Chicago. The campaign to win a living wage for big box employees ignited the successful effort to increase the statewide minimum wage. Passed shortly after our veto, the minimum wage increase had huge economic impact for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers in Illinois. In Chicago, our organizing sparked an electoral change in the City Council not seen in years, with nine new alderman taking office in 2007, many of whom had campaigned in support of the living wage against anti-living wage incumbents.

The lack of living wage jobs in Chicago impacts education, housing, and crime. Poverty touches every part of family life. By not demanding quality jobs with decent wages from those who can provide them, we continue to privilege oppressive politics by saying that those who can don't have to, and in so doing, telling ourselves and each other that we should be happy for the crumbs we got.

Medicine. Rent. Groceries. Being able to provide for family with the wages earned from a full-time job is a right, not a luxury.

Amisha Patel is the Director of the Grassroots Collaborative.