I started my life as an activist back in 1996. It was then that I arrived at the University of Tennessee to attend school, and that fall, I volunteered in the re-election campaign of President Clinton.
It was that fall that my mind began to open up to the myriad ways to get involved in your community. One issue that began to impact my conscience was homelessness. That fall, the National Coalition for the Homeless had a presentation at the university that opened my mind. And that spring, I and a group of students formed the Alliance for Hope, a student advocacy group for the homeless.
One of the issues we worked on was the issue of voting rights for homeless people. Because of obstacles in the voting laws with residency and address requirements, many homeless people were unable to exercise their right to vote. Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon from Georgia, introduced a bill that would give homeless people the right to vote. The only thing is that it was missing a senate sponsor.
My mind is a bit fuzzy looking back on when exactly this next event happened, I think probably in the fall of 1997 during our fall break, but student activists from the Alliance and myself traveled to Washington to lobby our legislators on this bill to get cosponsors and a senate sponsor.
We met with many congressmen, most notably Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr, but the highlight of our trip was meeting with Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota.
We had been told that Senator Wellstone would be unable to meet with us because of scheduling conflicts and that we would be meeting with his staff people. Senator Wellstone had been someone I admired for the coalition he had built among unions, farmers, the poor, and environmentalists, among other groups that enabled him to unseat a well-entrenched, well-funded incumbent, I believe in 1990. Wellstone was a champion of working people and was considered one of the most progressive legislators in the Senate.
So I was a bit disappointed when we were told he couldn’t meet with us. We arrived at his Senate office and were escorted into a conference room, where we waited to meet with his staff.
Several minutes went by, and you could feel the energy in the area change as scurrying went on outside the conference room in the adjoining hall. Then, Senator Wellstone entered the room, urging us to come back to his office.
He met with us for a good bit and was incredibly charismatic. He listened to our concerns, shared his, and agreed to be the senate sponsor of the legislation. Wellstone had been rumored to be a candidate for president in 2000, as folks in the media had written stories about similarities between him and the late Senator Robert Kennedy. As we left the room, I shook his hand and told him I hoped he would run in 2000. He gave me a wink and a smile in response.
Senator Wellstone was killed in a plane crash right before the 2002 midterm elections, and one could wonder what American politics would look like if he had lived.
The work of Alliance for Hope continued into 1999 and broadened its focus to include issues of poverty and the living wage. Back then, there was a living wage campaign going on in the city of Knoxville, which Alliance participated in. That effort failed when the city council voted it down. I asked the question- if a living wage campaign could be done for city workers, why couldn’t it be done for University of Tennessee workers?
The summer of 1999 was hot and tiring, but a coalition was being formed in its infancy to do just that- create a campaign to raise University employees’ salaries to a living wage. Several professors and students worked on a wage study at the university to understand how impoverished UT employees were.
The launch of the UT Living Wage Campaign was to occur in March of 2000, with a teach-in on labor and human rights that would last two days, March 3rd and 4th. In the late winter of 2000, David Mcilwaine, a United Food and Commercial Workers Organizer, and I began reaching out to UT employees about the campaign, which was met with much excitement. The group of workers most interested were members of the UT Department of Housing.
I remember one day when we were doing outreach around Melrose Hall, I saw a custodian cleaning the common area. The door was locked, so I knocked on it, and a woman named Sandy Hicks emerged. Sandy became the first UT employee to get involved in the living wage campaign. She talked to us about the backbreaking work they did, the little respect they received from management, and the poor pay. Sandy and I instantly struck up a friendship that continues to this day.
March 3rd of 2000 was a big day, as several hundred UT employees, students, and community members gathered on the plaza at the University Center for a rally that then AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka led.
We marched from the University Center to Circle Park and right up to Andy Holt Tower, where a delegation delivered petitions for a living wage to then-UT President Wade Gilley.
The university initially agreed to meet with the group but used stall tactics and excuses to ignore the pleas. That fall, more workers began to organize on the campus with the help of the Progressive Student Alliance, which had been the Alliance for Hope (the group changed the name). They formed United Campus Workers, which became an independent union. Other issues were taken on besides poverty wages, including two issues the union won on: free hepatitis vaccinations for Department of Housing workers and an end to forced overtime.
I graduated in the spring of 2001 and continued to be involved with the organizing efforts of UCW. After graduating, I decided to work at the university and be a member of the UCW. I was eventually hired to work in the Social Work Office of Research and Public Service (SWORPS) shortly after 9-11.
I worked as a rank-and-file union member building the ranks of UCW for the next several years. UCW eventually became a local of the Communications Workers of America in 2003. In July of that year, I left the university and took a job as an organizer for UCW-CWA, a position I would hold until 2013.
There is much more to this story that I could write, as the struggle took on many different forms and directions over the next decade. I think what is most important, though, is that UCW grew from just a handful of several dozen members in 2003 to surpassing well over 1000 by 2008, and it expanded to every single university and college campus across the state.
Today UCW-CWA still exists, having chapters throughout the southeast and other areas of the country.
I think it illustrates that when a small handful of people come together to work for change, mountains can be moved, eventually. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and the struggle is a process that doesn’t take days, weeks, or years but sometimes decades. The most important thing is for folks to take the first step in the journey and get started.
