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Martin Luther King said on April 4, 1967 that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." And he went on to say, "There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such." I start with this quote from King because I think it helps us frame the issue of poverty wages at UVa in a historic continuum of struggle that reaches as far back in time as it will reach forward. The passage calls us to recognition that poverty is a social a relationship that depends upon the immizeration of many for the profit of a few. It calls us to understand that the demand for a living wage here at UVa is tied firmly to events occurring on the global stage. It reminds us that the resources sent to Iraq where they fuel a massive machine of destruction are resources that would be better spent on programs that ensure the good health and quality of life for the unemployed, and those who must work two and three jobs to pay the rent and afford to put food on the table. As a social relationship, poverty means that some people must work many jobs, send their children to inferior schools, suffer the debilitating effects of disease without proper health care. Poverty means that while some of us earn a decent wage, nearly thirty percent of Charlottesville lives under the poverty line. Poverty means that Virginia is a right to work state and unions are prohibited. Poverty means that while John Casteen earns $31,249.00 a month a UVa worker at a wage of $9.37 earns $1,312.00 per month, so Casteen earns 24 times as much as the lowest paid worker here. Hidden behind rhetoric about competitive compensation and market forces, which need to be seen as strategies of obscuration, we loose sight of the reality of low wealth existence and of the sheer struggle to survive. What I want you to recognize is that none of us are innocent bystanders, all of us participate in this social arrangement, and therefore it is up to all of us to use our bodies and our minds to change society, to insist on justice, to demand a living wage as a simple step forward in a very long struggle. Young people are always in the vanguard for movements for social change. Young people have the energy and more importantly the compassion to lead with moral courage. This was true in the civil rights movement and its true of our struggle for a living wage at UVa in 2006. I want to end by asking you to imagine that it is possible to create a world, a nation, a university community that is built on the principles of radical democracy, that takes seriously the notion that in order to thrive human beings must have a decent wage for a days work, a home to dwell in, proper nutrition and health care and a superb education. I want you to imagine that the U.S. makes ending poverty its highest priority and recognizes the moral imperative of sharing and not controlling the earth's resources. Imagine the possibilities for a university community in which the children of workers were being admitted to UVa as students because the education system encouraged them to become critical thinkers and to excel academically. I want you to imagine that we might one day come to understand that the work of maintaining the grounds and cleaning the dorms is as critical as the work of teaching anthropology and that every ones contribution to the life of the university was recognized and everybody was valued and supported. Instituting a living wage is one small step forward. And we need a living wage now. - Wende Elizabeth Marshall
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