The American Rescue/Jobs Plan (that was already passed), the Infrastructure Bill (for roads, bridges, wifi), and the Build Back Better Bill will be the largest investment in what our communities need in our lifetimes. We need to promote this and advance this work–especially because we know the opposition is mobilizing to undermine its impact. We must be ready to do all it takes to move this package over the finish line. We are on the threshold of a generational opportunity to invest in our communities, creating jobs through climate and a caring economy, universal child-care, and making the wealthiest pay their fair share.

At the time we are sending out this newsletter, we do not know all the details of what will be in the final bill. Many important issues are still being negotiated. This is not about left versus right or moderate versus progressive. This is about competitiveness versus complacency and opportunity versus decay. We cannot afford to lag behind while other countries invest in the future of our planet & children. President Biden’s plans cost $0 without raising the national debt. This is a choice between continuing tax giveaways to big corporations or tax cuts for working families. We still continue the struggle of paid family and medical leave, addressing college debt, immigration, and more. And we will achieve so much when we Build Back Better.

“President Biden’s Build Back Better framework released today fully repudiates the bankrupt “trickle-down” economics of tax cuts for the rich and corporations and service cuts for the rest of us that’s dominated national politics since the Reagan years. It instead pursues a progressive agenda of bold investments in working families and the environment paid for with fairer taxes on the wealthy and corporations.”

“Timuel Black, who mobilized the political power of the predominantly Black South Side of Chicago, taught others — including a young Barack Obama — how to do the same, and in his final decades compiled oral histories giving voice to his community’s Black working class, died on Wednesday at his home on the South Side. He was 102.” Read full NYT obituary here

One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America uplifts the stories of subminimum wages workers across many sectors — including tipped restaurant, nail salon, parking attendant and airport wheelchair attendant workers, gig workers, workers with disabilities, incarcerated workers, and youth workers. These stories, paired with facts from years of research, advance the narrative of racial capitalism and the idea that all of the subminimum wages in different sectors are a reflection of America’s devaluation of people of color, workers with disabilities, youth, and immigrants as subhuman. The book also reveals the solution to addressing racial capitalism which is paying everyone a full minimum wage.

As the President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley, Saru Jayaraman has spent the last 20 years organizing and advocating for raising wages and working conditions for restaurant and other service workers.

Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015, and the San Francisco Chronicle ‘Visionary of the Year’ in 2019.

Saru authored Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), a national bestseller, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016), Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning (UC Press, 2020), and most recently launched her new book One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America and has appeared on MSNBC, HBO, PBS, CBS, and CNN. She attended the Golden Globes in January 2018 with Amy Poehler as part of the Times Up action to address sexual harassment. Read more here