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Last
Friday* I'm working my way down
an ever-expanding to-do list when I get a call
from Joe Szakos, director of the Virginia
Organizing Project, with the news that 17 students
are sitting in at a University of Virginia
administrative building, demanding a living wage
for all UVa employees. The fight over wages at UVa
has been going on for about 15 years, but no one
expected something like this on the staid campus
whose founder is still referred as "Mr.
Jefferson," as if he might come ambling
around the lawn at any moment.
My
assignment from Joe -- to call one of the
sitters-in and express my support -- moves right
to the top of the to-do list. Lauren, the woman
whose cell phone I'm assigned to call, sounds a
little breathless and distracted. Or maybe she's
just light-headed from hunger, because, as she
explains, the university administration has
spitefully blocked food deliveries to the
protestors.
I
tell her I live in the community and I'm thrilled
with what she's doing. Charlottesville doesn't
look like a town where 25 percent of the residents
live in poverty, but that's only because the poor
people's housing is cunningly hidden off the main
roads, so the UVa alumni who pour in every fall
for Cavalier games don't have to see it. If you
shop at the upscale Barracks Road Shopping Center
instead of Sam's Club, if you drive instead of
taking the buses, you could live here indefinitely
thinking everything is just fine, thank you, ma'am
-- unaware of the desperation going on within a
two-mile radius.
But
I know the true state of things in this lovely
Blue Ridge mountain town, because I've been
hanging out with the Virginia Organizing Project
folks ever since I moved here in 2001 -- agitating
for a living wage in the local hotels as well as
the university, which is the largest local
employer. Another one of my informants is a lady
who works behind the deli counter at Whole Foods,
and the fact that she does so tells you a lot
about wages at UVa: She has another full-time job
there as a housekeeper.
Saturday
I get a call from Victoria Young, a student member
of the Living Wage Campaign at UVa: Can I speak at
a rally Monday? Sure, and I point out that this is
Dogwood Festival day in Charlottesville. I'm going
to the festival with my family and will pass out
flyers if they have any. We talk a long time --
about momentum, morale, and the arrogance of the
administration, which found $2 million to upgrade
the football stadium this year but can't manage to
pay its workers decently. Victoria tells me that
she's learned more in the last week than she has
in her three years at UVa, and I wonder if the
university understands what it's teaching her.
The
Dogwood Festival turns out to be a pretty funky
affair -- a few kiddy rides and booths selling
toxic treats like funnel cakes. It's beastly hot
-- 88 degrees -- even with the sugary shaved ice
my granddaughter is eating dripping on my legs.
After 20 minutes of mounting stickiness my cell
rings and I make my connection with Jessie,
another UVa student, at the green dragon ride.
They're not exactly flyers that she hands me, more
like pamphlets of stapled, photocopied pages.
Whatever.
It's time to peel off from the family and wade
into the crowd. "Hi, do you know that
students are sitting in at UVa for a living wage
for campus workers?" Amazingly, most people
do; they've seen the local TV coverage. And almost
everyone is supportive, even eager to listen.
I
talk to a Hispanic woman who translates everything
I say to her husband. He listens carefully then
grins and shakes my hand like I'm welcoming him to
America. An African-American woman wants to know
if this is for a living wage for everyone, because
she wants one too. My only rejection is from a
yuppie white guy who tells me he's here to enjoy
the festival, "not for politics." I can
think of a lot of responses involving the concepts
of neighborliness and community but they all seem
to contain the word "dickhead," which is
not how we talk here in the south.
Sunday
morning I sign on at AOL and find, displayed as a
"top story" that the 17 student
protestors were arrested last night. How could the
administration be so bone-headed? UVa's president
could have defused the protest with time-honored
delaying tactics, like promising to form a
committee. Or he could have done the honorable
thing and agreed to go with the students to the
state legislature to demand more funds for wages.
But no, he had to go and make national news by
treating his most idealistic, morally responsible,
students like common criminals.
I
talk to Victoria about the need to pack the
courtroom on Monday. It's a rainy Monday and, yes,
the courtroom is packed, in fact, standing room
only. There are maybe 60 students, a pretty
straight-looking bunch by my ancient sixties'
standards, plus some faculty, campus workers, and
local activists like Joe. I'm here in a sort of in
loco parentis capacity because I want the judge to
see that there are grown-ups who care and because
the protestors have begun, in some mystical way,
to seem like my very own children.
Good
news, or at least not bad news: The 17 students
are to be released from jail, where they've been
for two nights, on $500 personal recognizance
bonds. We spill out onto the sidewalk for the
hugging and hand-shaking phase. For the first
time, Charlottesville feels like home. I see a
true community in formation, a place where
students think about the person who cleans their
classrooms at night and wonder how she feeds her
children, where poverty isn't hidden any more, but
is out on the table as problem we've all got to
solve.
I
meet Victoria face to face and remind her to give
me a statement I can read to the students at
Washington and Lee, where I'll be speaking
tomorrow, because this is a national movement --
from Georgetown to Stanford -- and I want to
spread the word. Now I'm off to the rally.
--
May 1, 2006
*
This story was originally date-lined April 17,
2006.
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