These words are inspired by all the students at the University of Virginia who are waging the living wage campaign and by all those students who support it.

These words are dedicated to the University of Virginia Seventeen.

These words are about many people at this University and across the country.

They are also sort of about a person who is close to me who earns more than a living hourly wage here, but less than a living wage, for in her position she is not allowed to work more than an average of thirty hours a week and thus she earns less than a take home living wage. She has another small job at the University on many Saturday mornings. She receives no benefits from the University.

Good afternoon to you all.

Race, Class, and Gender.

Race, Gender, and Class, lets get the order right.

Race

Why does racial discrimination exist?
We know.
Because there are racists among us.
Because of history, slavery,
Because African Americans have in history been kept out, excluded.
Because of racial hatred.
Why are so many African Americans poor?
We know.

Gender.

Why does gender discrimination exist?
We know.
Because women in history were not allowed to vote.
Women belonged in the kitchen.
Because women have in history been kept out, excluded.
Because gays and lesbians and transsexuals have been villified, excluded.
Because of hatred.
Why do women earn less than men?
Why are so many poor families headed by women?
We know.

Class

Workers
Labor
Why are so many workers poor in America today?
Why is one out of every four American children today born into poverty?
Why are there so many working poor?
Why do we live with this oxymoron, the working poor?
Why do so many Americans not earn a living wage?
Why do the students have to wage a campaign in favor of an oxymoron, a living wage?

Why are poor people poor?

[A brief, pungent silence]

Many of us don't know.
Many of us do not know how to think about that question.

Let's change the subject, quickly, shall we?

Let's hire a diversity officer at the University to help bring in those that have previously been exluded.
Let's make sure that the university is an equal opportunity and affirmative action institution.
Let's make sure that the university gets race and gender right.
The president speaks eloquently to the university community about racial tolerance and respect at the university, and asks that the faculty take up class time to address these issues.
He asks us all to wear black armbands.

All certainly good things.

We have changed the laws in America to integrate, to include, to bring in African Americans and women. We have a long way to go, still, yet. But we changed the laws. Civil rights laws. Suffrage laws. Equal rights laws.

We actually teach courses at the University about those struggles. People read books about them. We actually ask our students to read books and write papers about these issues.

New forms of discrimination against gays and lesbians are emerging. We still have a long way to go, perhaps longer than we thought.

Americans knew the laws were wrong. Americans knew that in America Americans make the laws. They stood up time and again, for what they believed.

I will introduce you to lawmakers in Richmond, he says, I will teach you about the intricacies of lobbying, I will help you address your issues, he says. Your issues. He says that he will help you take your issues, you the students, to the lawmakers
Your issues. Not his. Not ours?

Why are they not his issues? He says that many of the workers here are paid not enough. He says that. He recognizes that. Not his issue? Not ours? Not of the University of Virginia?

Why?
Why for eight long years has he said, time and again, that it is not his issue?
Why has he run away from a living wage, time and again? Why has he raised his hands in squeamish helplessness, and said, I'm sorry, but the law is the law. The Republican attorney general says…

Americans make the laws. Americans change the laws. Americans, some Americans, stand up for what they believe.

Why not for workers in our community?

Perhaps it is because he does not know how to think about economic discrimination.

Workers, we think, have not been excluded.
They come to work, willingly, at will, voluntarily. Some even sign a contract They know what they will be paid. They can quit, walk away. They are free, we think.

That is how we think about labor.
That is why we do not know how to think about labor.

We are not connected to them, we do not feel connected with them.
They are they; we are we.
They are responsible for themselves; we are for us.
We do not see them when we look at them.
They are invisible to us before our very eyes.
They are not us.

When the president of the university, when many Americans see racial and gender discrimination, they see discrimination against people, against a collective entity, against people who can do nothing about the fact that they were born African-Americans, that their gender was determined before birth, that their sexual orientation came to them.

Americans see in race and gender a form of discrimination that goes beyond the individual, one for which the individual cannot be held responsible.

Thus, we believe that the society has to stand behind those individuals, behind those individuals who are part of that larger collective entity of race and of gender and of gender orientations. Those people have to be helped, they are people for whom we are responsible, whom we have wronged, whom we have to repay.

Workers are seen only as atoms, as individuals. They are simply men and women with two feet who walk to work, make a choice. We can think they are making choices, that they are calculating their life options. Nobody is telling them not to do anything at all.

But their choices are limited. Their choices are in many ways made for them beforehand. They are part of a collective entity that we dare not recognize. They are a class. They are the poor. Their lives are circumscribed by the society in which they live, by us, by the laws, by our laws, our customs, by our beliefs, our prejudices.

It is simple. We need to recover what we have lost in American history.

We need to recover a social conception of labor, of workers, a collective identity of laborers, of human beings who have interests in common. The society is responsible to them. Society is responsible to all of us, for all of us. We live in society. We are not atoms.

We need to make the changes in society that will lessen the extreme inequalites with which we live in America today.

We need to make the changes in society that will help poor people become less poor.

It is the American dream. It is a universal dream. It is our dream.

This is not a struggle merely for a living wage. A living wage is a sign of a larger moral, ethical and political struggle. This is a struggle for the respect for and the dignity of working class Americans, for if some of us are deprived of either, we cannot respect ourselves, and live with dignity.

We all live together in one society.

This is a struggle to make this struggle ours.

I will introduce you to lawmakers in Richmond so that you can address your issues to the lawmakers."

What would Franklin Delano Roosevelt have said of the President of the University of Virginia?

Or, in our own time, what would Governor Tim Kaine say about the President of the University of Virginia?