Since I editorialize so much in every part of the Handful, I might as well use this space to conduct business, even if it seems redundant. It is editorially important, however, because it could ultimately determine whether PJALS will vanish, thrive, or just survive.

If you routinely receive this newsletter, you are probably not affected by the disarray of our database, but other members have missed mailings and other important contacts or have not been credited with contributions. When we addressed the problem, we did not have good results because the system was not just quirky, but corrupted. Undoubtedly, that made matters even worse.

With the deterioration of our database, our computer simply forgot about some of our members. We failed to thank members for contributions and compounded that error by not asking them for money, again. New, old, and some of our most generous members have been neglected through this failure. Even worse, some of these folks contacted us to find out what was happening, had their information re-entered into the computer, and were lost a second time.

Years ago, we determined that we needed an updated system, and one reason we hired Ryan Patterson was that she had the skills and background to bring us up to date. Ryan, however, was loaded with duties in other areas and had only enough time on the database to put out major fires in order to keep abreast of other demands to which we assigned a higher priority.

We have recently made great strides in our office technology, acquiring new equipment, networking our computers and moving to DSL. We added to our program capacity, but didn’t fix our database problem. Along the way, we had several good people volunteer to help with computer issues, and often let them get away before we could figure out what we needed. Letting that happen, we lost track of volunteers in other areas, something no grassroots organization can afford.

It’s as if there are two PJALS. One is a strong organization with an active steering committee and dedicated staff. It has credibility with media, provides excellent program opportunities for the public, acts as a voice for many voiceless people in our community, and has a beneficial

relationship with several outstanding foundations. The other is uncertain of its Editorial cont. from page 2 membership support, has difficulty maintaining staff and attracting members, can’t decide on priorities, is reluctant to ask for money it needs for outreach and advocacy, and loses track of records.

At last, we are taking positive steps with our records process. Carla is working with volunteer Joel Hobson to assess the damage and our specific needs. They will come up with an action plan and have the support and attention of the steering committee. We need your help to find those whose names have evaporated from our computer, whose other contact information is incorrect or obsolete, who want to be part of the solution but feel they’ve been disregarded by PJALS. We want phone calls, emails or letters with current contact information, and we’d love to apologize personally to anyone who has fallen through our patchy network.

A mistake many of us make is assuming certain friends and acquaintances are members, while we have only about 600 member units, and 100 of those live outside the Spokane area. You can help build our movement by asking people you know to be progressive if they belong to PJALS. A good way to bring it up this month is asking about the auction, a fun event with no admission charge. We’ve been a little crowded in the Community Building, but last year at the Unitarian Universalist Church and this year at the YWCA, there’s room for 200 people to be comfortable and have a good time while bidding up a great list of donated items.

The auction brings peacemakers together socially and is a painless fund raising exercise. Maybe it can also help fix our records system. As always, your help is needed.

I should add that our funds have not been abandoned to cyberspace. Lowell Brocklehurst has kept our books in excellent condition for 20 years, without benefit of computer for most of that time, and has forced us to keep a close watch on your money. Gary Proctor, whose service dates even further back, with a few breathers, has also spent much time and energy to keep us in good stead with the authorities and to introduce our financial records to appropriate technology. These tireless volunteers have been, at last, reluctantly released from these labors, thanks to Mike Nuess and Avery Rendon.

Both steering committee members, as Gary and Lowell have been in the past, Mike and Avery are filling big shoes and updating our computer capacity for financial records. Those of us who have trouble balancing puny checkbooks are especially grateful, and all four of these guys deserve your gratitude, as well.

I believe you will all, sooner or later, be grateful for and proud of our Retail Living Wage Ordinance, too. Even if you have doubts about our approach and/or live outside Spokane, you will be able to see benefits for the entire community, especially as the initiative addresses the shameful problem of the working poor.

Right now, we need your help to get this initiative onto the November ballot. If you have reservations, I’d love to talk with you about them, but please sign the petition if you vote in the city, even if you decide to vote against the proposal to introduce a better wage floor for employees of the largest retailers in town.

It’s urgent that we retrieve signatures collected and that we get thousands more before the end of June. Then we can have a debate about whether Spokane can handle being the first city to institute a wage standard for these huge corporations that demand so much of consumers and governments all over the country.

Please consider gathering signatures at Bloomsday registration and/or for a couple of hours during Bloomsday. If 10 of you will get a hundred signatures each, the rest of us can come up with 10 or 20, and we won’t have to be nervous as June slips away. Of course we have talking points, handouts, and voter registrations for you to take with your petitions. - RN

---

Now, we have a debate within the local living wage movement. It was uncovered at our kickoff event for Initiative 2006-1 on April 17, and it’s reminiscent of the Lite Beer tv commercials that were so unavoidable a few years ago.

We didn’t go looking for controversy. In fact, we saw no need for any devil’s advocate in our program. Our speakers, Doug Orr, Karin Hilgersom, and Brenda Tudor, and our moderator Bart Haggin are all firm believers that our initiative is a good thing for the entire community, not just the underpaid workers, the managers who have to scramble to hold a store together with high employee turnover and absenteeism, or those who need consumers in Spokane with a little more discretionary cash. Dr. Hilgersom spoke first. As a community college dean and teacher, she constantly encounters the problem of workers with associate degrees being unable to improve their incomes, whether they are young and single or heads of households who have been told education is the key to success. She also has a loved one who was caught for years in the cycle of poverty in spite of a long record of hard work and reliability. Karin said the proposal for the Big Box Living Wage presents a moral choice, demands a moral decision for Spokane voters.

Dr. Orr made it clear that he was having none of that, simply because he’s an economist. He insists that economists do not make choices based upon what is morally right, and he expects voters to support the initiative for the same reason he does. It makes sense economically, it’s good business and good economics. Doug went so far as to imply that economists might not have souls, but we’ll take that as academic hyperbole and try to make something of this morality v. economics thing.

Rev. Tudor, peacemaker that she is, tried to say that they were both right, that the living wage is the right choice both morally and economically or scientifically. Don’t let that get out. Just choose sides and take on all comers. Miller Brewing made Madison Avenue history out of the “taste better v. less filling” debate, and I can’t wait to take on Wal-Mart apologists in this one. I’m even willing to let them pick which side to argue.

Think carefully. Does Spokane need this retail wage ordinance because it represents good morals or because it represents good economics? Ask anyone. - RN

---

Remember Virginia Tech

Everybody has an image of Virginia Tech, now. Even in Spokane, the media found people who feel very connected to the university in Blacksburg. We’ve seen pictures of the campus and the students and been reminded that the great Nikki Giovanni teaches there. And our hearts ache for the incredible and tragic loss for an academic community.

Before the awful shootings, many Americans had come to know of Virginia Tech as an emerging giant in NCAA athletics. The Hokies made some serious noise in college basketball this past season after having become a major football power a few years ago with a quarterback named Michael Vick.

I remember something else about that school. It used to be called VPI (Va. Polytechnic Institute); the nickname was the “fighting gobblers;” and it has a greater commitment to military tradition than to engineering excellence.

That’s right. Va. Tech is a military school, the only civilian college besides Texas A&M to have a Corps of Cadets. A late cousin was there when Hollywood came by to play up the romance of the cadet corps at VPI. This was no war movie. Pat Boone starred along with the West Point style uniforms, but my cousin took his commission in the Marine Corps.

The cadet corps is less dominant and less visible at Va. Tech than it was in the pre-coed days at VPI, but I still wonder how it affected Seung-Hui Cho. As an alien, did he participate in ROTC? Military activities haven’t been required of all students since 1923. Did he long to, or did he hate the cadets as he did other students he considered to be elite brats? As an English major, did he ever hear any discussion about alternatives to violent solutions to personal and global problems? As a South Korean, was he affected by the U.S. militarization of his home country which began long before he was born?

Recently, I sounded off on the issue of ROTC with a newspaper reporter. Perhaps you saw the story she wrote about Junior ROTC in the Spokane area.

She called me to get a different perspective because students, educators, and military instructors gave glowing reviews of this institution. I gave her a different perspective, but I didn’t make the final edit. Perhaps it’s because I don’t merely oppose ROTC, I hate it.

I never was in JROTC, but I went to college with some young men who had been affected by that experience. Actually, some had thrived and some had almost been destroyed by a wide variety of experiences from public high school to glorious descendants of the Confederacy like Staunton in Virginia and McCallie in Tennessee. And I didn’t understand what I learned in ROTC until I had been in Vietnam, had commanded troops in combat, and had seized my precious civilian life as soon as possible. What I had learned was that I could kill and I could give orders to kill and be killed.

When you hear somebody talking about Muslims teaching their children to kill, ask them how that is different from Christians, Jews, and Unitarians putting their children into JROTC. We don’t really care if those kids learn to march and wear uniforms. What we’re paying for is their learning to take orders, and if they learn to hate and kill, well, that’s what made this country great.

I don’t think we know what Cho thought about living in the U.S. I think we do know what he thought about guns and shooting people. I don’t know how he became a senior at Va. Tech, or how he even graduated from high school without participating in class. But I know he was mentally ill, could acquire guns and considerable marksmanship ability, and was surrounded by military influences that were much greater than opportunities for learning, creating, and healing. - RN

---

Spokane Citizens for a Living Wage:

Now, We’re Taking Names!

It’s time to fill our petitions. We’ve reached out into the community. We’ve established a need, and we’ve identified people who want to help. We’ve been to the Spokane City Council and the Regional Chamber of Commerce. We’ve distributed our petitions, and we need to count some names.

PJALS is on track to place our Big Box Retail Living Wage Ordinance on the city ballot for this November, but this is no cakewalk. We need your help.

Getting signatures from Spokane registered voters is not that tough if you can give your spiel and show how this ordinance benefits the voter, as well as several thousand retail workers and their families. It’s not too hard to explain how the biggest retailers can easily afford to pay this wage and will even benefit by having less turnover and more dedication among employees. Most people already know that taxpayers subsidize big low-wage employers who pay so little that full-time workers need assistance just to meet the most basic needs, that one chain alone costs our state around $9 billion a year for health care and other services the employer should cover, that some executives are paid more in a week than line workers might make in a career. We don’t even have to get into abuses and crimes against employees and communities to make points on basic fairness.

Getting the attention of the voters is difficult, and that’s where you come in. Even if you don’t vote in the city, you know people who do and who will gladly sign our petition if they can have a few questions answered or see that we have considered the needs of families, working people, and small businesses.

There are few sound bites in this campaign, but we will repeat, “Working full time should keep someone out of poverty, not in it.” and, “A fair wage is a living wage.”

Beyond that, there are many details, facts about our economy, family stories, and other compelling reasons to work hard for this ordinance. An outstanding resource is the presentation Doug Orr made at our kickoff event, and we can give you a copy of his remarks.

Joni Brown, Shane Russell, and Rusty Nelson also have background and resources to share with you or with your friends who want more information or feel they have sticking points regarding the campaign.

We always felt we would gather our signatures in plenty of time, and then face a tough campaign in the general election from a few corporations which prefer to spend money on propaganda than on wages. Now, it’s clear that Wal-Mart intends to cool the petition and election process by threatening to sue the city, and that gets the attention of officials and business people although the proposal has been thoroughly vetted for constitutionality and fairness.

Ironically, representatives from the affected businesses have told us they already pay almost everyone the wages we demand.

The only recourse we have for this bluffing and bullying is to do a better job of educating voters, workers, and municipal officials. That means more of you with petitions, which have a copy of the ordinance on the back. We will do what we can to make your work easy and rewarding.

---