Originally published in Real Change May 25, 2011, Vol: 18, No: 20.
I’m a security officer in the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. I’m proud to be part of the team that works everyday to keep the people who work and visit the Columbia Center, one of Seattle’s landmarks, safe and secure.
I’ve lived in King County for 28 years. It’s a beautiful, wonderful place. But I’m getting worried about whether there will be a place for my family and me in this community in the future.
My concern is that the King County of the future will be divided between a working class that’s falling behind and a rich elite who don’t see many common ties to the rest of us anymore.
This shouldn’t be happening here. There was a time when our community provided a model to the rest of the world for how to build a strong middle class.
We funded our schools and built a world-class university that ordinary families could afford to send their kids to. Washington companies led the way in technology and innovation and they shared their success with their workers. Middle-class families could count on good health care and a secure retirement.
That system is dying across America. Over just the past 10 years, the elite 1 percent in the U.S. saw their incomes go up 18 percent. Middle- and working-class families’ incomes declined.
That imbalance of income and wealth is making it all too easy for politicians to put the priorities of the rich ahead of everyone else.
Today, lawmakers in Olympia are choosing to reduce access to the University of Washington for Washington students — even high school seniors with 4.0 grade point averages — instead of closing tax loopholes for corporate special interests.
Access to affordable higher education has been an essential part of how families help their kids move ahead in our society. Just a few years ago, Washington paid for 72 percent of the cost of a state resident to attend one of our state universities. That support has been radically cut in the last few budgets. In the proposed current budget, Washington would pay just 28 percent of a state resident’s costs.
Washington is taking Basic Health coverage away from working families instead of taking away a tax giveaway for the owners of corporate jets.
Basic Health has been a lifeline to people who work at a small business that doesn’t provide coverage, are self-employed, or work for a company that doesn’t provide affordable coverage. Just two years ago, 106,000 Washingtonians got access to affordable care through Basic Health. Now just 41,200 do.
I hear and read media reports about the economy getting better, but it hasn’t trickled down to where I live yet.
In neighborhoods like mine, and through much of King County, foreclosures are plentiful and quality jobs are scarce.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and depressed about this problem. But we should all remember that better times for working people — times we fear are disappearing — didn’t happen by accident.
Working people across the Pacific Northwest joined together to stand up for something better. It wasn’t easy, but they did it. It won’t be easy for us either, but we can do it again.
Here’s what you can do, starting today:
1. Call your legislators about the budget. Already called them? Do it again. They need to hear from us over and over again that communities need good jobs, families need health care, and kids need schools more than rich people need tax breaks on corporate jets or cosmetic surgery.
Urge the people who speak for you in Olympia to fund education, health care and basic services.
2. Support workers when they stand up together. One of the reasons that the economy is imbalanced is that most workers don’t have a strong, united voice about issues that affect our lives. A generation ago, far more workers were united by a union.
Now corporate special interests want to silence the last powerful voices among the working class: public service workers such as firefighters, nurses and teachers.
Thousands of Washingtonians have spoken out and attended rallies to support public service workers in Wisconsin and Ohio whose freedom to speak with a united voice has come under attack.
A few years ago, workers in my own industry — private security services — formed a union. Today we no longer have anyone earning minimum wage in our shops. And we have negotiated for good wage increases.
3. Join together with fellow Washingtonians. I’m getting involved with a new organization called Working Washington. Our goal is to build a network of people in neighborhoods across King County to speak out for the kind of good jobs that make a strong community possible.
On April 14, more than a hundred Working Washington supporters protested outside of the Weyerhaeuser corporation’s shareholder meeting in Federal Way to shine a spotlight on the fact that this large, profitable Washington company didn’t pay any taxes in our state in 2010.
A few days later, people from Federal Way and other nearby communities gathered at a library to discuss the issues we’re dealing with in this long recession and our goal of turning Washington around.
We need more ideas. We need more voices. We need you. You can join us at workingwa.org.
David Miles lives in Greenwood and is a member of Service Employees International Union Local 6.
