I am very glad that I got back from my vacation in time for the ceremony yesterday at Sharon Baptist Church to celebrate Governor Rendell’s signing of the minimum wage bill. The Governor spoke passionately about helping the working poor. The sponsors of the bill Senator Tina Tartaglione and Representative Mark Cohen spoke as did Bill George the head of the state AFL-CIO and John Dodds, the leader of the Minimum Wage Coalition.
There is an important lesson for all of us in this tremendous achievement.
When I joined the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition at one of its first meetings in April 2005¸ very few people outside of the room thought we had much chance of getting an increase in the minimum wage through a Republican General Assembly in 2006. Indeed, at the time, Governor Rendell did not even support an increase in the minimum wage. Many people thought that the best we could hope for was to put the issue on the agenda and give the Governor, and Democrat State Representatives and Senators, an important issue on which to run in November 2006.
Things changed rapidly. And they did so because we adopted what Lance Haver calls the inside-outside strategy—the same strategy, by the way, we used when we won transit funding a year and a half ago. To be effective in a legislative campaign, we need both important supporters inside the political establishment and a powerful movement outside of it. We don’t in fact initially need a majority inside the political system, whether it is the Pennsylvania General Assembly or the City Council of Philadelphia. We can win even when the majority is against us because, for all its flaws and limitations, in our form of government some power that still remains in the hands of the people, and that power can be magnified and brought to bear on the legislative process by activists who are smart and aggressive and patient.
The work of the insiders—Senators Tartaglione and Vincent Hughes and Representatives Mark Cohen and Dwight Evans—were important to our effort. But it was the outsiders, lead by John Dodds, who finally made the difference.
In a subsequent post, I am going to write more about what we did, so that people interested in political activism can learn from the details. But I want to conclude here with three final remarks.
First, we can replicate this success on other issues—gun control and health insurance, for example. These are issues where the majority of the people are on our side. If we can mobilize them, we can win. And we will aslso have to do this with transit funding before the end of the year.
Second, the strategy we used does not ignore electoral politics. As I will describe in a subsequent post, building the movement to increase the minimum wage helped defeat Republican legislators in the primary and can help Democrats in the general election. Anytime we raise progressive issues that the people support and anytime we build an activist base in support of progressive positions on those issues, we make it more likely that progressive Democrats will be elected.
And, third, it is time that our elected officials help build these activist movements. I am constantly disappointed by the unwillingness of elected officials to use their position, their staff, and their access to money to help us help them. Hubert Humphrey was doing this in the US Senate in the 1950s. Why exactly can’t our City Council members people, our State Representatives and Senators, and our Governor do the same?
In this campaign one State Representative, Mark Cohen, did this. He came to the meetings of the Minimum Wage Coalition. He gave us advice. As I’ve pointed out, he sometimes disagreed with us. But he was here. It’s time more legislators join us.