"I write as a committed living wage activist, as a student of the University of Virginia, and as one of the four people arrested at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel for demanding that Omni pay a living wage. Yet the chains that shackled us to Omni's elevators are nothing compared with the shackles of poverty that ensnare so many of the working poor in Charlottesville and across the nation. We feel called to take whatever action may be necessary in order to achieve a more just social order.

Any business that does not pay a living wage is actively creating poverty within a community.

The ability to run a successful business even as the employees who make such 'success' possible live in poverty is an elite privilege that must be abolished. Our demand is simple: that people who work hard every day be treated with dignity and respect.

It is time our society remembers one of the fundamental truths which govern human activity: People do not live in order to work, rather they work in order to live comfortably. Yet when businesses pay poverty wages in order to maximize profits, this maxim is turned on its head.

These are the reasons why I support a living wage.

I am sick of hearing the cliché argument that 'if you give a person a fish they eat for a day, but if you teach a person to fish, they eat for a lifetime.' I'm sick of hearing it because these low-wage workers already know 'how to fish'; they prove it every day when they go in to work. The problem is that their bosses do not allow them to keep their own catch. If a job is worth doing, it is worth a living wage, and any employer who pays poverty wages must be ready to accept responsibility for that decision.

It is a matter of human dignity - when someone spends forty hours or more per week away from their family, they need to feel that that time is well spent and significant. The living wage is a fundamental human right."

(Nicholas Graber-Grace, from page A6 in the Opinion section of the August 2, 2001 edition of the Daily Progress)