Dear George,

Rey Barry is right to challenge our candidates to be more specific, to go beyond reiterating the general principles to which we already subscribe. I would like to add one item to Rey's list -- a living wage for all Charlottesville workers.

City council played an important leadership role in requiring that all who work for the city, whether directly or by contract, be paid a living wage. But the living wage movement stalled there. The Mariott resistance epitomizes the free enterprise belief that the public has no right to require private employers to pay a living wage. Forty years ago the same people argued that the public had no right to require them to admit African Americans to their hotels and restaurants. Free enterprise, they argued, allowed them to be segregationists if they wanted to, a desire virtually all of them shared. In Charlottesville that belief was not challenged by City Council. It was challenged here as elsewhere by nonviolent direct action, such as sit-ins. The civil rights movement's grass roots protests led eventually to the national legislation in 1964 which outlawed the segregation free enterprise advocates believed was their right to practice and preserve.

The Living Wage Movement has the potential to become the civil rights movement of the early 21st century. It raises fundamental questions about how we value not just work, but how we value human beings. Properly understood and advanced it could bring us to a better understanding of our society and a more fulfilling life for all of our citizens. It could go a long way toward providing the material base to make possible the realization of the goals of a democratic society. We are a very long way from reaching those goals. Martin King understood this. After the Jim Crow debris was swept aside, he wrote, "we must recognize that we can't solve our problems until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power." What was required was "a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society."

City Council could help the Living Wage Movement take a step in that direction. The specific step it could take, to answer Rey's call, would be to develop a policy that looked toward prohibiting city-sponsored events or the housing of city guests at dining and lodging establishments that did not pay a living wage. One would have to discover which establishments met Council's requirements and then perhaps give those that did not some time to come into line before inaugurating the policy. I hope that those who seek our votes for nomination on February 23 will take up the call for action of this sort.

Paul Gaston (electronic mail, February 4, 2002)