Page A6
May 11, 2016
O PINION
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Lifting Communities by Raising the Minimum Wage
The ight for $15
M arc h. M orial
Day in and day out
men and women all
over our country work
hard at their jobs—but
hardly have anything
to show for it.
As the debate over
income
inequality
and narrowing the ever-widening
wealth gap continues to dominate
our national and political conver-
sations, private corporations and
states are taking matters into their
own hands, bridging the dueling
divides of income and opportunity
by increasing the minimum wage.
Target is reportedly raising
employee wages this month to a
$10 minimum. This would be the
by
second wage hike in a year for the
retail giant. Only a few weeks ago,
the governors of New York
and California signed bills
that would gradually in-
crease their states’ minimum
wages to $15—the highest
in the nation.
In the face of the Con-
gress’ refusal to increase
the federal minimum wage,
these gestures from private enter-
prise and legislative ofices relect
a new reality in our post-recession
economy: jobs are coming back,
but, for the most part, they aren’t
the kinds of jobs that pay a living
wage. Very often, they are not the
kinds of jobs that serve as a plat-
form to better paying work. And
they are the kinds of jobs that pre-
dominately employ young people,
minorities and women—the most
vulnerable members of our low-
wage, slow growth recovery econ-
omy.
What was a Franklin Roosevelt
era labor law meant to put a loor
on poverty in America has become
a low ceiling barring millions of
American workers from present
and future prosperity.
For 10 years, the National Ur-
ban League has advocated for a
federal minimum wage hike tied
to the Consumer Price Index,
which tracks inlation by observ-
ing changes over time in consum-
er pricing for a variety of goods.
If prices are going up—and they
are—wages that don’t relect these
hikes in prices translates into
working-class employees never
getting ahead and being forced to
make dificult choices to survive,
provide for themselves and their
family.
The current federal minimum
wage stands at $7.25. President
Barack Obama, during a State of
the Union address, said, “Let’s
declare that in the wealthiest na-
tion on Earth, no one who works
full-time should have to live in
poverty.” Well, on $7.25 an hour,
you can bet they will. In fact, if the
minimum wage kept pace with in-
lation, the current minimum wage
would be $19. We support a $15
minimum wage, tied to inlation.
With more Americans surviv-
ing on minimum wage than at any
other point in our history, to ignore
the issue of wages is to ignore the
problem of income inequality, and
to ignore the struggles of men and
women left behind as the econo-
my recovers. While I applaud the
initiative taken by states and busi-
nesses to provide employees with
living wages, we must put an end to
the “vast, sporadic remedies” con-
demned by President Roosevelt.
The current patchwork of state
minimum wages is not a solution.
Congress needs to do its job. Re-
publicans supported minimum
wage increases under President
George W. Bush, but have blocked
all efforts to raise it since then.
Rather than condemn a generation
to a lifetime of poverty, let’s afford
them the opportunity to earn liv-
ing wages and climb the economic
ladder of opportunity and success.
Marc H. Morial is president
and chief executive oficer of the
National Urban League.
Did the Vatican Just Throw Out Its Just War Doctrine?
A turn toward
nonviolence
e rica c henoweth
Last month, the Vati-
can hosted a conference
on the theme of “Non-
violence and Just Peace:
Contributing to the
Catholic Understanding
of and Commitment to
Nonviolence,” organized by the
Pontiical Council for Justice and
Peace along with the global Cath-
olic peace network Pax Christi In-
ternational.
In their concluding appeal to
Pope Francis, the 80 conference
participants recommended that
he reject Just War Doctrine as
a viable or productive Catholic
tradition. They also recommend-
ed that he write a new encyclical
laying out the Catholic Church’s
commitment to nonviolence in all
of its manifestations—including
nonviolent action as a means of
engaging in conlict, nonviolent
conlict resolution as a way of re-
by
solving conlict, and nonviolence
as the principle doctrine of the
Catholic Church.
If such an encyclical follows,
this is a big deal.
The just war tradi-
tion—which
contains
numerous doctrines mor-
ally justifying violence
and war, as well as dein-
ing appropriate conduct
during war—has served
of violence.
Conference participants ac-
knowledged the main sticking
point for many skeptics of nonvi-
olence—that promoting (or using)
nonviolence can be dificult in the
face of armed aggression.
Marie Dennis, co-president of
Pax Christi International and a par-
ticipant at the conference, claimed
that the group fully considered
this challenge. Yet she argued
there are ive primary reasons for
this—among them the fact that
contemporary weapons of war
render obsolete any positive im-
pacts that war might have; and
what he calls “the compelling,
thrilling saga of nonviolent action
over the 60 years since Gandhi.”
Indeed, among the arguments
Pope Francis used to encourage
the conference participants was
the dramatic rise in the effec-
Because the Catholic Church developed the doctrine between the
4th and 13th centuries, the just war canon has had a monopolistic
inluence on the way people in the West think about war and
violence—whether they know it or not. Consequently, many people
now take for granted concepts like the right to self-defense, the
importance of weighing the goals of war against its potential
human costs, the need to exhaust other options before going to war,
and the necessity of only ighting wars you think you can win.
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for the past 1,500 years as the pri-
mary normative basis politicians
have evoked (correctly or incor-
rectly) to validate their waging of
war.
Because the Catholic Church
developed the doctrine between
the 4th and 13th centuries, the just
war canon has had a monopolis-
tic inluence on the way people
in the West think about war and
violence—whether they know it
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or not. Consequently, many peo-
ple now take for granted concepts
like the right to self-defense, the
importance of weighing the goals
of war against its potential human
costs, the need to exhaust other
options before going to war, and
the necessity of only ighting wars
you think you can win.
Whether you’re the President
of the United States in D.C., a po-
lice oficer on the beat in Denver,
or a student in a self-defense class
in L.A., these moral concepts have
probably had a deep impact on
your thinking and your experience
when it comes to the proper uses
that the international community
hasn’t yet devoted resources to
developing or discovering nonvi-
olent alternatives to armed aggres-
sion because of our relexive turn
to violence as the only possible
response. In her words, “as long
as we keep saying we can do it
with military force, we will not in-
vest the creative energy, the deep
thinking, the inancial and human
resources in creating or identify-
ing the alternatives that actually
could make a difference.”
So—why is the Catholic
Church reconsidering now? Re-
porter Terrence Lynne argues that
tiveness of nonviolent resistance
over the past century—a trend we
hear a lot around the halls of the
Korbel School. In fact, one of the
participants in this landmark con-
ference was my colleague Maria
J. Stephan, whose work on civil
resistance in a variety of struggles
around the world helped to pro-
vide a strong empirical basis for
this conference.
How’s that for engaged schol-
arship?
Erica Chenoweth is professor
and associate dean at the Josef
Korbel School of International
Studies, University of Denver.