Picket Line and Picket Signs

On June 14th I was among a delegation of 23 ESWA members and volunteers that delivered another petition (see following web log entry) to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities at South Station in Boston and conducted an informational picket line outside the building afterwards.  Our group,  the Boston Workers Benefit Council, was made up of members from poverty stricken neighborhoods of Dorchester as well as college students, business leaders and the usual mix of ESWA volunteers from all over greater Boston. The BWBC is a forum, to which I am a Roslindale delegate, of ESWA members from which we have a voice how benefits are disseminated and may also develop a way to communicate with the community at large. The petition signed by 852 citizens also representing a cross section of class strata, well-off and poor alike, included demands that the DPU repeal policies that enable unjustified rate increases and other demands to cancel utility shut-offs and depts for low-income households. As we chanted in the picket line, "heating or eating, we need both!" What really had us fired up to bring our issues back to the DPU was an order they put into effect around what the energy companies call "decoupling." Energy companies like National Grid have been offering information how to conserve fuel by such methods as winter weatherization. Now that the DPU has put through the decoupling order National Grid may increase their rates due to loss of profit around customers' fuel conservation. Their ability to raise rates is decoupled from the amount of energy consumed. What makes matters worse for rate-payers is the language of the order is such that their is no burden of proof on National Grid to demonstrate the loss of profit is tied to conservation.

For me it was another in a series of outstanding opportunities to fight poverty at its root, government policy, given me by the EASTERN SERVICE WORKERS ASSOCIATION. I cannot express how impowering in felt not just for me but for all 23 of us. We marched in a circle for three hours straight chanting our slogans. Even though my voice was hoarse and my shins sore for several days following the event it was such a welcome feeling to be on the right track, to actually be doing something about the injustice of poverty in America, no matter how small the scale. In the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

The Call (3/28/10)

As a community-minded citizen and homeowner of Boston, my career in human services since 1984 has been dedicated as an emollient to the human cost of poverty in economically deprived neighborhoods of Boston. I am a political supporter and volunteer for State Senator Angelo Scacia because of his belief and corresponding voting record that “government is here to help people.” As a social worker employed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I have been an active member of local 509 International Service Workers Union organizing committee, working to expand the union to unorganized services such as nursing homes. However, the solace of doing something meaningful was always undermined by good manufacturing jobs in Boston continually being outsourced to parts of the world with lower labor costs; undermined by good service jobs continually allocated to non-union vendors. Despite the best efforts of leaders like Senator Scacia, the government offered little help as more and more Bostonians were falling into poverty. Then the call came I had been waiting for my entire adult life.


After fighting poverty on the losing end for twenty years I had signed up to find out more about the Eastern Service Workers Association of Boston at a literature table in front of a West Roxbury supermarket in late 2004. A few weeks later I received a follow-up telephone call. Rather than asking for money the member on the other end of the line was offering opportunities to “lend a hand in their winter survival campaign.” Since that day I have been involved as a member, a supporter, a volunteer teacher, advocate and administrator, and sat on the ESWA advisory committee. Without exaggeration I can say I have received countless golden opportunities to address the economic injustices that had plagued me for so long. Some of the highlights include delivering a petition signed by over 900 citizens to the Massachusetts Energy & Communications Commission attacking egregious rate-hikes, and a strongly worded attack I delivered on ESWA's behalf at a state house hearing on the disastrous “mandatory health insurance” reform bill. These opportunities in and of themselves do not explain how ESWA has given meaning back to my life that only builds with every day fighting poverty.

What makes Eastern Service Workers Association special is its unique approach designed not to make underpaid service workers and other poverty-stricken folk dependent as do government programs. Rather it provides a means wherein disadvantaged workers and their families may gain control of their lives with ESWA’s budget savings benefits that include weekly fruit and vegetable distributions and city wide clothing distributions. More to the point it provides the people our government has abandoned a way to make their voices heard and grievances addressed. Boston's Eastern Service Workers Association is an organization that has not only been there to support the city's struggling service workers and their families during historically difficult times; not only helping them help themselves keep their heads above water during the economically challenging present; but E.S.W.A. on this day is surging into the future to make itself relevant to the challenges that we all surely will be facing in the years ahead.

Golden Opportunities (12/8/09)

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Besides serving on Eastern Service Workers Association Advisory Committee and serving as delegate for my neighborhood to ESWA's Boston Workers Benefit Council and writing for the BWBC's newsletter The Boston Worker, if the gentle reader has been following this web log she or he knows many of my opportunities to help further the aims of ESWA have come from the fact that I have a car. One of the greatest opportunities ESWA has provided me was to deliver some formula and pampers one night to a member who had too much week at the end of the check. The apartment if spare was spotless. Instead of a bed there was a mattress on the floor but the sheets and blankets were neatly tucked in. The baby was sleeping blissfully on it with her own blankies. From her third story window the member was watching for me. One of the full-time volunteers earlier had attempted to deliver the emergency request but the member had dozed off. Having with my wife raised three babies of our own I know how it goes: you get sleep when you can. All I can say is to walk into such a tender situation was my good luck. And it was thanks to ESWA. If I had gone into that situation as a licensed social worker I would have had to report them to Child Services for the fact that the ESWA member was taking care of an infant and had run out of money. It was obviously a great home for the baby. It was not the member's fault she found herself in that predicament. There is something very wrong about a society that refuses to allow our working communities to martial their own resources. That is what creates such an unfair predicament.


The other night ESWA gave me another opportunity that, --although it did not surpass the pampers and formula delivery, --came pretty close. ESWA has organized an oil-filled space-heater and winter blanket for members whose heat was cut off by the energy company while advocates work on getting it turned back on. One such member who got to use the heater and blanket after her heat was on again, agreed to drop it off for another member on the front end of the same situation. However, she was unable to find the apartment so dropped off the heater to the office. I was there taking a labor class and afterwards agreed to make the delivery since I was fairly familiar with the neighborhood (central Dorchester). It was not as easy as it looked on ESWA's street map, but in Boston it never is. When I finally found the right street there were odd and even buildings on the same side. I thought to myself, "only in Dorchester."

When the member buzzed me in, she was overjoyed to see someone with heater and blanket in hand. She had just finished a prayer that they would arrive because she was so cold. "You are my angel!" she exclaimed. I told her that I could not even count how many times ESWA had saved my life, to which she responded, "I know." What she did not know was that the delivery was itself for me one of those times. The Eastern Service Workers Association has saved my life because economic injustice bothers me; because one of seven children in my state going to bed hungry bothers me; because my city has arguably the best hospitals in the world whose workers being denied their care bothers me; and ESWA gives me something to do about it. In a very real sense ESWA has given me a lease on life because before they reached out to me at my neighborhood grocery store I was dying little by little every day stymied to find a way to tip the scales towards economic justice.

Enough is Enough (11/20/09)

The other day I was overseeing various projects going on at the Eastern Service Workers Association office and answering the telephone while the full-time volunteers were out in the community. At the same time I was working on the lead article for the Boston Workers Benefit Council's newsletter. The article is reporting on a public hearing in which the BWBC participated given in August of this year. The hearing given in City Hall Plaza was concerning a change the state wanted to make in their Health Reform Act. It seems the law is not paying for itself and officials are scrambling to cut costs any way they can. There is a provision in the legislation that calls for automatic enrollment into the state's health insurance program once someone previously denied becomes eligible. The cost cutting motion under discussion in this public hearing was to discontinue automatic enrollment.

The BWBC was there because they realized the motion was no more than another in a series of state actions that saddle the working poor with any burden that falls the way of the private sector. The Boston Workers Benefit Council was there to say "enough is enough!" Members and volunteers and supporters and business owners spoke one after the other how the new law is failing in fulfilling its intent: to make healthcare more accessible to residents. The officials continually attempted to cut off the speakers with typical bureaucratic speech," this is not the time and place for this discussion." Each time the BWBC delegation answered with a rousing chorus, ''let 'em finish!" The officials would relent. The authentic accounts continued, how hard it is to get enrolled in the state health insurance plan and even if they do, how difficult it is to get an appointment with a doctor.

The next month the state announced a motion to amend the reform law to make Community Health Centers available to those on the lowest tier of state health insurance who previously were restricted from all health-care except emergency rooms. Coincidence? I shall let the gentle reader decide.

Out of the Cocoon (9/28/09)

Last night I went to the ESWA Labor Class which is given there on Sunday afternoons. I left the TV with Tiger Woods driving for the golf championship, the Red Sox driving to avoid a sweep by their dreaded baseball rivals, theYankees, and the Patriots driving to get off the snide and their first win of the football season. Instead I found myself driving to Dorchester. And it felt so good! I am a sports fan. I root for the home team. But ESWA has awakened in me something so basic and profound it is as if I have come out of a deep sedation. Whether it is channel surfing on TV, web browsing on the computer, texting in wireless chat-rooms, or reading the local newspapers before I got the call from ESWA I was numbing myself into a cocoon with outside stimulation. Awake is good. Awake is realizing that throughout history progress has been made on the blood, sweat and tears of the working poor. Awake is understanding you are perpetuating it if you are not organizing to reverse this injustice.


Now-a-days everywhere you look their are "self-improvement" trainings, "self-actualization" seminars and "leadership" symposiums. People are encouraged to hand over their hard earned dollars for the "valuable information" these how to operations tell you they are ready to impart. However, when you stop to think about it, how actualized can you become as long as everybody is not able to afford these programs. Even if you could improve yourself, what value would it have when the mass of your country-folk are still caught up in the struggle just to keep themselves and their families alive? I have witnessed many would-be volunteers, myself included, coming through the doors of ESWA with low to middling stages of self-awareness, paying nothing but their time and energy, only to find themselves in the various opportunities of social action provided them by the association.

It serves the powers that be for as many people as possible to be isolated in individual cocoons. Of course the working poor do not have the luxury of numbing themselves to sleep in harmless ways which is why drugs are so prevalent in their sector of society. People say there was a man who said, "religion is the opium of the people." Personally I think he is misquoted. He must have said "opium is the opium of the people." This is just my opinion but if the government really wants to wage a war on drugs all it has to do is protect the rights of the working poor instead of perpetrating policies that allow the business community to drain their resources on a daily basis.

It is time for everybody in all economic sectors to put away the instruments of self-destruction. Whether it is an MP3 player or a needle our cocoons have served their purpose long enough. It is time to wake up. It is time to become conscious of the terrible injustice going on right here in the most affluent nation of all time. Together we can make it right, and only together. Awake is good.

Win, Win (9/12/09)

Today I picked up dinner for the full and part-time volunteers of E.S.W.A. I had stopped by at the office to bring in some research I had done. While I was there a full-time volunteer asked if I had time to pick up the meal. It was cooked by a member. When I arrived at the member's house there was a casserole made with a lot of the vegetables I had picked up on Friday at the Produce Market and some Honeydew melon all peeled and cubed that I had picked up on Friday at the Produce Market and there was corn-on-the-cob I had picked up on Friday at the Produce Market. Suddenly I got a strong sense that this is how it works. Volunteers pick up donated fruits and vegetables (which are primarily distributed to members) which are made into a meal by members and delivered to the office by volunteers for all the members and volunteers working on various projects (such as telephoning and filing) past dinner-time. People who could be described as working poor engaging themselves in coordination with people who could be described as middle class working towards the same end: focusing on ending poverty at the root, --misguided government policy that keeps service employee wages low, --while at the same time addressing in a material way the symptoms of poverty in the community.


The logic here is: there is strength in numbers. Before I came through the doors of ESWA, for many years I had been attempting to make the fragmented emergency services "safety net" work for my fellow Bostonians victimized by severe poverty. Some of my jobs included: street outreach worker; emergency shelter psychiatric clinician; and case worker helping the formerly homeless stay that way. I became pretty good at it but in the end I was just burned out trying to fight poverty within the same system that was creating it. Eastern Service Workers Association helps working people unite from all walks of life by teaching their unique method of organizing how to address with one voice the economic injustices of our society from outside the system. In this way there can be no failure because any response to their demands is a victory.

It is a myth that the system can be changed from within. A system will always maintain itself. This something even an amoeba knows. It took me twenty-five years of knocking my head against the proverbial wall to accept this basic truth. I am asking the gentle reader simply to think about it. If you that the system needs to be changed which is driving more and more people into severe poverty every day, I can save you a enormous head-ache. Check out Eastern Service Workers Association. It is the ultimate Win, Win.

My Name is Luta (9/10/09)

On Tuesday I took on the role of advocate for the Eastern Service Workers Association dental benefit. The member was a woman originally from Cape Verde, an island nation off the Atlantic coast of Africa. She had not seen a dentist in the four years she had resided in the United States, and in her country of origin had only been seen a few times. Suffice it to say there were a lot of decay and gum issues. The member, --let us call her Luta (which means 'struggle' in Portuguese), works as a housekeeper in a nursing home. They offer no dental insurance benefit. I doubt they even offered Luta a salary that is adequate to meet family expenses. And yet she does the work most Americans born in the U.S. would not do. She cleans the floor beneath the feet of American seniors, whose own children look down on the work.


If a city is not growing in its population, it is slowly dying. Since Massachusetts is an entry point for many immigrants our cities are in the growing category. Folks from around the world (Africa, Asia, United Kingdom, Canada, South America, the Caribbean, you name it), come willing to do hard work so that their children may get educated and receive work for the highly skilled. And Boston and other Massachusetts' cities are growing. Except they are not. Since the newly arrived immigrants do not find work that pays a living wage, no matter how important it is, --like mopping nursing home floors with disinfectant, --many are relocating to southern climes where the cost of living is considerably less. Some observers of this population shift say it is likely Massachusetts will lose a seat in the House of Representatives after the 2010 census is taken.

I call this the race to the bottom. Since nursing homes and other businesses that depend on the immigrant workforce believe they can cut costs by offering inadequate salaries and benefits, this same workforce is breaking camp and heading south. Massachusetts is shrinking and once again her cities will be put on the endangered species list. But at least executives can boast a huge quarter. As they plant the seeds of destruction.

Last night the President of the United States made a stirring speech to joint session of Congress and the nation. It reminded me of George W. Bush making a similar kind of address after the attacks on 9/11/2001. There had been reports from around the country that folks who even resembled those of West Asian descent were being dragged from their autos and beaten to death by angry mobs. President Bush said to the joint session of Congress and the nation, "that is not the best of America, that is the worst of America." And the incidents stopped. President Obama said last night that reforming the nation's uncoordinated healthcare system was "a moral issue that tested its character." We shall see what happens. But if people like Luta are forced to pay for health insurance with premiums so high she will not be able to afford the co pays, then healthcare would have been made not one bit more accessible; and if she is fined for not opting into a plan than she will have been made a criminal for doing the important work that no one else wants to do; and the only thing national healthcare reform will have achieved is to bring us one step closer to the bottom.

Shine and Rise (9/5/09)

Yesterday morning I woke up in my town of Roslindale shortly after six in the morning. I had promised to be at the Eastern Service Workers Association office in Dorchester by seven o'clock. Roslindale and Dorchester are both neighborhoods in Boston. The call came on Thursday night at home. I was watching "Slum Dog Millionaire" (for the first time, --I prefer to watch a movie after it is first released so all the spin and buzz will not pollute my perceptions) with my wife and my mother, who was visiting. The full-time volunteers were reluctant to ask me to go down to the Chelsea (another Boston neighborhood) produce market to pick up donations for our weekly fruit and vegetable distribution, because I had developed a little heart failure earlier this year. But they were desperate. I was something like the fiftieth volunteer with a car they called. (Actually, Jinpa Kangri means "volunteer with a car" in Tibetan, --kidding!) ESWA was down to one car and they needed it for several other tactics on Friday. The full-time volunteer who called me was overjoyed when I said 'yes,' insisting that I do none of the heavy lifting.

The Eastern Service Workers Association is a new kind of labor drive. It is a community-based self-help membership organization whose goal is to attack poverty at its root. That is why it is self-help.  That is why it is not charity. "Not-for-profit" charities do important work but you notice whenever their energies begin to get to the point of changing the way things are they somehow lose their government funding. ESWA takes no money from the government so the government has no 'say so' how close or far it gets from changing the status quo.

There are no salaried positions in the association. It is all-volunteer. The full-time volunteers' housing and other living expenses are donated by community supporters and all the meals served in the office are provided by members. Members get an eleven point benefits package from the moment she or he signs an authorization during one of ESWA's bi-weekly neighborhood canvasses. That is the membership/benefits part. All the benefits are designed to put back into the family budget the funds that bad government policy and outrageously low wages are allowing to be drained away. Besides weekly fruits and vegetables (remember the fruits and vegetables? this is a posting about fruit and vegetables) there are clothing distributions across the city at regular intervals, including an upcoming back-to-school distribution of school uniforms, back-packs and other supplies; Preventive medical and dental objectives carried out by volunteer doctors and dentists; "Know-your-law" sessions carried out by volunteer attorneys; An eye-care benefit that includes getting glasses from optometrists donating their resources; etc... etc... The logic of it is that it is well nigh impossible to organize against the forces that are keeping you down if you are struggling twenty-four seven to keep the lights turned on and food on the table for your family. I do not know about the gentle reader, but I find that logic hard to fault.

E.S.W.A. finds volunteers at 'literature tables' in front of universities and coffee shops, supermarkets and health-food stores. I was found by Eastern Service Workers in front of a supermarket (Roche Brothers) in a neighborhood near me (West Roxbury, the most affluent part of Boston). Two weeks later I got the 'phone call I had been waiting for my entire adult life. It was from a member who after receiving some of the ESWA. benefits had shown a willingness to come down to the office and help out. She was checking down from a script that she had practiced but was reading out-loud. I did not mind. I was just hoping and praying she was not going to hit me up for a monetary donation because I was out of work. The member did not disappoint. She asked me if I would like to come down to the office, get a tour, and see if I wanted to go out to the neighborhoods canvassing for new members.

And that is pretty much how the Eastern Service Workers Association's system works. I have gone canvassing, worked on literature tables, worked on the newspaper, "The Boston Worker," advocated for members on preventive dental visits; delivered turkey baskets to members during the holidays; represented Roslindale and neighboring Mattapan at Boston Workers Benefit Council; spoken at hearings on energy company's rate increase requests and state required health insurance legislation change requests; told my ESWA story ay speaking engagements at area colleges; had the honor of being appointed to the ESWA Advisory Committee; and as you know picked up fruits and vegetables for the Friday morning distribution.

The Chelsea Produce Market is nothing like the tables and tents of Haymarket farmer's market in Government Center. These are a series of ware-houses, in neighboring Everett, MA, taking up around a square mile (roughly the size of Charlestown, another Boston neighborhood). It consists of aisles of loading docks and a free-for-all of semi-tractor trailers distributing fruits and vegetables all over greater  Boston from up and down the Eastern Seaboard and across the country. The fun part is after the managers say they are 'light' today, going directly to the workers who always have something set aside for us. We filled up my car till it was bulging at the seems. The distribution at a Roxbury (another Boston neighborhood: the poorest neighborhood per capita in New England) community center, run by members and volunteers under the auspices of the Boston Workers Benefit Council, came off like clockwork. And my ticker did not do so badly, either.