I’m delighted to be here tonight at the Jewish Labor Committee’s 47th Human Rights Awards Dinner.
Not long ago I visited a library. Among their collection were books on the history of New York, and books on the United States. There were books about Immigration; about the experiences of the Jews, and the Italians, and the Irish, and African Americans; about the rise of the Middle Class, and about the spread of democracy.
All those books had one chapter in common—the story of the Labor Movement, and particularly the Labor Movement in New York.
All of those threads are braided together in the story of men and women who came to a New Land that promised freedom and equality for everyone, and who made their place.
Because it was true—America did offer that promise.
What went unsaid is that those people would have to fight to make sure that promise was kept.
They would have to fight for themselves.
And they would have to fight for one another.
They would have to fight the owners of industry who felt free to treat workers as a disposable commodity. And they would have to fight political movements that used anti-Semitism, and racism, and xenophobia, to gain and hold power by creating fear of the other and pitting “us” against “them.”
They fought. And they prevailed.
Today, the 40-hour work week, a safe workplace, the minimum wage and other basic rights that many Americans now take for granted were in fact hard-won victories. They were won on the picket lines by union men and women who were willing to risk their lives and livelihoods. And they were won in voting booths by union voters who elected progressive leaders to fight for their cause.
Much of what we treasure about the American way of life is owed to the labor movement. Yes, our Founders were brilliant. Yes, our inventors and our entrepreneurs and our rugged individualists made tremendous contributions. But the shared prosperity, the shared empowerment, the shared optimism, were not ideals articulated by an elite, but were the hopes and dreams of the huddled masses who believed that in America, everyone could have a place.
But all that they won is in jeopardy.
And all the old fights are back again.
Union power has been curtailed.
Worker rights have been cut back.
Defined benefit pensions belong to the age of the black and white TV. Job security died with disco.
Powerful corporate interests have regained the upper hand. Regulations that once protected workers and consumers—the little guy—have disappeared. Monopolies are making a comeback. Rapid technological change, a new era of globalization, concentrations of political power have tilted the economic playing field.
Ninety percent of the children born in 1940 earned more than their parents. Only half of the children born in 1984 can say the same.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, middle class income rose 28 percent in real terms from 1979 to 2014. The income of the top 20 percent rose by 95 percent over the same period.
So workers have suffered. They’ve lost ground. And they have grown angry.
In 2016, Donald Trump addressed that anger. He promised to speak up for the forgotten American. He pledged to look out for the little guy.
But he lied.
Instead, he has deepened the exploitation of the working class.
He spent much of his first year in a misbegotten effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a landmark program that was built on the principle that health care is not a commodity but a basic human right.
And he used his second year to pass a massive tax cut that overwhelmingly benefitted wealthy people and corporations, and did almost nothing for ordinary workers. And he is paying for that tax cut for the wealthy on the backs of taxpayers in New York and other Blue States.
And now his agent in chief Mitch McConnell says he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
In order to get away with this, the president has resorted to the oldest, the shabbiest, the most shameless trick in the book: divide and conquer.
The fast food worker, the health-care worker, the factory worker, the office worker—whatever their color is, whatever their race, or faith, or sexual orientation, or political party—they all want the same thing. They want a fair opportunity, a living wage, the chance to make a home and to raise a family in peace and freedom.
But instead of working to help those people achieve their shared American dream, the president protects entrenched interests by trafficking in insults and stereotypes and bigotry. He stifles real change by pitting us against one another; to divide and conquer.
I’ll give him credit for one thing: he targets everyone equally: women, handicapped people, prisoners of war, Muslims, everyone except dictators and investors. Currently he is targeting some of the saddest people on earth, desperate people trying to escape the drug wars that are destroying their homes, and are hoping to find refuge in the land of the free. Them, he is tear-gassing.
Today, America is governed by a modern Pandora who casually and cruelly speaks the forbidden code words that lift the lid and release the animosities and ugly attitudes that we have fought so long to contain.
And the furies and demons have escaped. They are out of the box.
In the year following the president’s election, anti-Semitic incidents in the US surged 57%. That was the largest year-on-year increase since the Anti-Defamation League began collecting data in 1979.
And according to a study conducted at California State University, while violent crime overall slightly fell in 2017, hate crimes reported to police in America’s ten largest cities rose 12.5 percent.
And here’s a stunning statistic: with the massacre of eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh—which was targeted by the gunman because the congregation hosted the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, whose wonderful work is also being recognized tonight–there have been more people killed in the United States during Trump’s presidency in violent acts perpetrated by people embracing anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic or far-right political ideologies, than by terrorists acting on behalf of groups like the Islamic State.
The Jewish Labor Committee understands this as well as anybody. This group was formed in the 1930s, when its founders saw the catastrophe that was unfolding in Europe, and launched a campaign to warn the labor movement about the threat of Nazism and the danger of isolationism.
But of course, this extremism they feared was not limited to Germany. Something similar was happening here. As America staggered out of the Depression, American Firsters marched on the streets of New York, and American Nazis rallied at Madison Square Garden. They goose-stepped around the arena while singing patriotic songs.
There was one song they wouldn’t sing `God Bless America.’
Because it was written by a Jew.
So the old fights are the new fights. We must still fight for economic justice and opportunity for all. We must still fight against hatred. We must still condemn the tactics of divide and conquer. We must never forget the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., who said: “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’’
We are all in this together.
But if the bad news is that we are once again fighting old battles, the good news is that the old weapons still get the job done. And chief among those weapons in the battle against hate and injustice is organized labor.
Back in 2012, a group of fast food workers in New York got tired of the meager wages they were being paid. They got tired of working full time, and still failing to earn enough to rise out of poverty. They got tired of working full time and having to apply for food stamps in order to feed their families.
So they decided to do something about it. About 200 fast food workers protested on New York streets rather than go to work.
But they were not alone. They were supported by the SEIU and others in the Labor movement, and they were supported by the progressive government of New York State.
From their protest emerged The Fight for 15, a campaign to increase the minimum wage, and to increase it not by a quarter, or a dollar, but to increase it by a meaningful amount—to make the minimum wage a living wage.
Working together with union leaders like Mary Kay Henry, we campaigned across this state to raise the minimum wage to $15. Progressive government and a united labor movement together improving the lives of millions of New Yorkers.
On December 31, I am proud to say, the minimum wage will rise to $15 for many workers in New York City as we phase in the increase across the state.
Now that’s a real change. That’s a living wage. That’s work with dignity.
A $15 an hour minimum wage was more than an economic policy. It was a demonstration of the way we renew America. And the work done by the Service Employees International Union in fighting for that cause, and for so many others, is so much more than a mere labor action. It was truly an act of patriotism, truly an example of the real way we make America great.
For their courage, for their determination, and for their idealism, I am honored tonight to present the Jewish Labor Committee’s Human Rights Award to the Service Employees International Union. To accept this award, let’s welcome the SEIU’s forceful, dynamic, indomitable president, my friend Mary Kay Henry.