We closed out 2011 by embarking on a major ramp-up of the Human Rights Zone Campaign. This past December 10th marked the two-year anniversary of the day that harbor workers mailed letters GGP and Cordish, the developers that control the Inner Harbor. After two years of silence and inaction despite repeated attempts for dialogue, low-wage workers announced an escalation in the fight for fair development by staging “letter drops” at GGP malls this holiday season.
Here’s a media round-up from this holiday’s actions
In our letter to GGP, sent in 2009, we requested face to face talks with them before Christmas of that year, as a first step towards making progress on our demands. And yet another Christmas has passed that GGP has failed to come to the table with workers. But with a new year comes a resurgence of hope and energy towards the possibility for change. Our New Year’s resolution is to continue to escalating our demands for justice and human rights at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. From Baltimore to GGP’s headquarters in Chicago, we will carry out letter drops and actions calling on GGP to act now. We hope that GGP has made a New Year’s resolution as well to be truer to their statements of sustaining “a work environment founded on dignity and respect for all employees.”
So here’s to a new year of intensifying the fight for Fair Development in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor! Stay tuned for next steps!
On December 10, Christmas shoppers at the Gallery Mall in Baltimore were interrupted by chanting and thousands of fliers fluttering from balconies of higher floors, where a banner was also unfurled.
The fliers called on one of the country’s largest mall-development companies, Gallery Mall owner General Growth Properties (GGP), to provide stable jobs, better wages, benefits and decent conditions for thousands of workers at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Harborplace mall, a tourist magnet across the street.
Early in the new year the group plans to again travel to GGP’s headquarters in Chicago, where the company owns the famous Water Tower Place mall. Along the way, they’ll be visiting GGP-owned malls for flier drops and actions in many locations.
Read the Towson Patch’s article announcing Thursday’s letter drop at the Towson Town Center mall.
The tents may not be coming, but a workers group wants to bring the spirit of the Occupy movement to Towson, with a side of the Christmas spirit.
The Baltimore group United Workers plans to drop letters at a to-be-decided location in Towson Town Center on Thursday.
The group will meet at 4:30 p.m. at the mall entrance at Fairmount Avenue and Towson Gate Drive, where protestors will sing Christmas carols before heading inside to unfurl a banner and release their flyers and letters.
The letter, dated Dec. 10, 2009, calls out the leadership of Chicago-based General Growth Properties, the mall’s owner, for not doing enough to encourage better working conditions at The Gallery at Harborplace, which the company also owns.
The Baltimore Brew was present for yesterday’s “letter drop” at the Gallery Mall across from the harbor. Here’s an excerpt from the article.
The “letter drop” was not a merchandising gimmick, but instead marked the start of a renewed campaign by Baltimore-based United Workers to draw attention to what they call human rights violations tolerated by mall owner General Growth Properties (GGP).
Pick up this week’s Baltimore City Paper or go online to read their article on the United Workers upcoming Fair Development Conference. In other news, the United Workers appeared on the Marc Steiner show with the Marian Kramer of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and Sarah Weintraub of the Vermont Worker Center. The two media pieces draw connections between Fair Development, the Occupy Movements and the nature of a system built on poverty and poverty-zone development. If you missed the Steiner show you can have a listen here.
Here’s an excerpt from the City Paper article:
From February’s labor protests in Wisconsin to the 99 percenters currently camping out in New York’s Zuccotti Park, populist protest is suddenly all the rage. But movements for social change are nothing new. Take, for example, the United Workers, a Baltimore-based coalition of low-wage workers formed in 2002. In 2007, the United Workers lobbied for “living wages” at Camden Yards—and got them. Since then, the group has been campaigning on behalf of workers at the Inner Harbor, trying to institutionalize rights to health care and education.
To raise awareness of these efforts, the group has a history of putting on political events that go beyond the strictly political. In the past, that has resulted in street-side theatrical performances, a community fair, and, in true activist tradition, plenty of marches. This weekend, Oct. 28-30, UW hosts the Fair Development Conference, a gathering of grassroots organizations, political activists, community organizers, and other interested parties from as far as Brazil and as near as Baltimore . . .
The workshops, lectures, and presentations planned for the conference will take on much more than just the struggle for the soul of the harbor. And although fair development is the organizing principle behind the conference, the topic is interpreted broadly enough to include discussions on universal health care, permaculture design, and lessons drawn from the 19th-century movement to abolish slavery. One workshop will explore Johns Hopkins Hospital’s fraught relationship with the Middle East neighborhood, where it displaced hundreds of residents to build a controversial—and moribund—biotech park; another will spotlight worker-led organizations that have successfully lobbied for Taco Bell, Whole Foods, and other food-industry giants to raise wages for the people who pick their tomatoes.
The Media Mobilizing Project recently followed Tavis Smiley and Cornel West on a national Poverty Tour to make visible the plight and fight of the poor in the U.S. Last week, the Tavis Smiley show aired a five part series created by the Media Mobilizing Project encapsulating the stories, lessons, and struggles shared along this eye-opening journey. Ending on a truly inspiring note, the last segment focuses on groups and communities organizing to build a movement to end poverty. It includes interviews and discussion with The Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, Domestic Workers United in New York, Direct Action Welfare Group in West Virginia and Iraq Veterans Against the War, The Vermont Workers Center, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and yours truly, the United Workers. Need a dose of inspiration? Check it out.
The Sun has invited participants at the Occupy Baltimore protest in the Inner Harbor to contribute articles about their experience, views and goals. This entry is written by Clayton Conn, a photo/multimedia freelance journalist from Baltimore.
Members of the United Workers, a Baltimore based human rights organization leading the fight for fair development — which respects human rights, maximizes public benefits and is sustainable — gave a workshop on Tuesday at the site of Occupy Baltimore.
The organization which is in the midst of a campaign for Fair Development in the Inner Harbor, spoke on the themes of jobs, privatization and economic human rights.
As critics continue to ask questions on the specific demands and goals of the Occupy Protests, the United Workers are among many groups locally and nationally providing concrete answers and strategies for solutions. In developing these answers, they will be hosting a Fair Development Conference at the end of this month (Fri. Oct 28-Sun. Oct. 30), with participants attending from around the world. The goals of this conference are to increase greater understanding of these challenging times, connect various fronts of struggle, share movement-building strategies and develop a collective vision for “fair development.”
Audio of the United Workers event is available here.
Like cities across the country, Baltimore has joined the Occupy Movement to highlight the growing inequality in this country and to rally the 99% to call for economic human rights for all. In Baltimore, the occupiers have chosen McKeldin Square at the Inner Harbor, the site where, on October 25, 2008, low-wage workers declared the Inner Harbor a “Human Rights Zone.” On the one week mark of the occupation, United Workers did a teach-in about the Human Rights Zone Campaign, connecting the Occupy Movement to the fight for Fair Development. Below is a video of Luis Larin with the United Workers speaking with those gathered before the General Assembly.
To see the video posted on Huffington Post, go here.
This summer, members of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) joined PBS broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor, Dr. Cornel West along a US Poverty Tour that made stops in 18 cities across 11 states.
Starting today, October 10th and running through Friday, October 14th PBS’ Tavis Smiley will broadcast the results of this journey, a 5 part documentary called “Understanding Our Struggles and Changing Our Conditions: A Poverty Tour Documentary.”
The United Workers took part in this tour and this 5 part documentary by sharing our stories of the human cost of Poverty-zone development on low-wage workers at the Inner Harbor and how this connects to the growing ranks of the poor across the country.
As an organization committed to building a movement led by the poor united across color lines, MMP sees media and communications as a vital tool in exposing the hidden stories of poverty and developing movement leaders. This groundbreaking documentary will show viewers the real-life effects of the ever widening divide between the rich and the poor in this country–and more importantly, how different organizations and individuals across the nation are fighting back.
Although the Tavis Smiley Show does not air in Baltimore, you can watch it online. It does air in Washington D.C. and eight other major cities. To see if the Smiley Show is airing in your area, go here.
The United Workers stopped by the Steiner Show studios today to discuss our recent Fair Development protest at the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) office, where we called attention to Cordish and the BDC’s closed-door meeting around a proposed 3 million dollar rent break for the harbor developer. As always, it was an engaging conversation ranging from BDC’s lack of transparency to Dr.King’s Poor People’s Campaign.
The Marc Steiner Show invited Cordish, the BDC, and the Mayor’s office on the show, but none of them accepted the invitation. Too bad because we would have loved the opportunity to ask the BDC in person whether they’d be open to a transparent process involving workers at the table to determine real improvements to the harbor that benefit all. Their declining to be on the show demonstrated yet again an unwillingness to engage workers and the public in a real dialogue around Fair Development. We might not have gotten a response to our question today, but they can’t hide behind closed-doors forever.
You can listen to the show by tuning in today, Thursday, August 4th, at 5 PM on 88.9 WEAA or you can listen to the podcast now online, http://www.steinershow.org
Read the Baltimore Brew’s coverage of yesterday’s Fair Development protest at the Baltimore Development Corporation offices. The Baltimore Brew had reported on the initial closed-door meeting between the BDC and Cordish in which the media had been kicked out half-way through.
A group representing low-wage workers staged a protest yesterday outside the offices of the Baltimore Development Corporation, demanding that the agency release details of a closed-door meeting last month in which developer David S. Cordish sought a $3 million rent break for his Inner Harbor properties.
“How is it fair he is asking for such a big break in rent and workers aren’t being paid a living wage and can’t pay their rent,” said Luis Larin, a leadership organizer with United Workers, as about 18 protesters picketed.
At that June 23rd meeting, first reported by Baltimore Brew, Cordish said his two Inner Harbor properties are in financial trouble and pledged to invest $16 million in return for the $3 million bailout. After deputy mayor Kaliope Parthemos ejected the Brew’s Mark Reutter and another reporter from that meeting, Cordish apparently elaborated and outlined his plans for his ailing Inner Harbor tourist properties, the Power Plant and Power Plant Live.
One of the Inner Harbor developers, the Cordish Company, is in the news today. They had a closed door meeting with the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC), to ask the city for a $3 million rent break to “improve” the Power Plant. To read the article in the Baltimore Sun, go to http://www.baltimoresun.com.
Strange that this self-proclaimed “multi-billion dollar global conglomerate” needs a break, since according to their lease agreement, the Cordish Co. has only had to pay $1000 a year to city for the first 10 years and after that $1,000 a year in rent plus 22 percent of net profits. That profit amounted to $9,800, which suggests that the entire facility generated about $40,000 in profit in 2009 according to the BDC and reported by the Baltimore Brew, http://www.baltimorebrew.com.
That’s it really!? Either there is some creative accounting or this continued public investment in the Inner Harbor and the service-sector economy has not produced the type of economic prosperity for the city that developers have promised. Most low-wage workers at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor pay close to $9,800, if not more in rent a year and they’re not even making $40,000 year. I am sure they’d appreciate a break too.
The Cordish Co. claims they need this break to improve the image of the Power Plant to be more attractive. Instead of using public money for superficial and short-sighted “improvements,” how about using public money for the benefit of the public. That’s a novel idea. Perhaps public money should not be used to continue subsidizing poverty-zone developments like the Inner Harbor that simply benefit the developers and corporate vendors. Just maybe public money should be used to create living wage jobs and sustainable economic development for Baltimore.
But the real cost to Baltimore is not the billions in public money that have been invested in the Inner Harbor and the downtown redevelopment. The real cost is a human cost that often doesn’t have a number and is made invisible to the tourists and consumers that visit the harbor. This human cost comes in the form of poverty wages, rampant wage-theft, abusive and disrespectful treatment, lack of healthcare, and barriers to education that get offloaded onto workers and their communities.
It’s true the Inner Harbor is in trouble, but we need real solutions to the real problem. That’s why harbor workers are leading the fight for Fair Development by calling on the developers, the Cordish Co. and General Growth Properties (GGP), to enter into a Fair Development Agreement that would ensure work with dignity, healthcare, and education for all low-wage workers at the harbor. This step towards a new Fair Development model is the real improvement the harbor needs.
An interesting recent feature in Baltimore’s City Paper took a skeptical look at the legacy of the Inner Harbor and other development projects spearheaded by the late William Donald Schaeffer, one time Governor of Maryland and Mayor of Baltimore. Compelled to raise the voices of harbor workers in any discussion regarding the legacy of the Inner Harbor, United Workers ally, Jonathan Rochkind, wrote into the City Paper highlighting the human cost of this poverty-zone for the people who work there and the communities we live in. You can read the response below or visit the City Paper website, http://citypaper.com
In his review of William Donald Schaefer’s legacy (“Saint or Sinner?” Feature, May 11), Edward Ericson Jr. is rightly critical of the limited public benefit from billions invested in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and downtown tourist district. While sold to the public as spearheading an economic revitalization to compensate for lost manufacturing jobs, in fact most of the service jobs at the Inner Harbor are about as terrible as a job can get: extremely low-wage, seasonal, in degrading and humiliating working environments. A report released this month, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Workers at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the Struggle for Fair Development” (Google it!) from the United Workers, a Baltimore human rights organization led by low-wage workers, reveals that many workers at the Inner Harbor are treated with routine disrespect by their employers and are paid rock-bottom wages not sufficient to support a family above the poverty line, without even being able to rely on steady year-round work.
This kind of poverty-zone development benefiting only private developers and not Baltimore’s workers is not what Baltimore residents over the past decades were told they’d be getting for their public investment. It’s past time we refuse to stand for it, and instead demand that jobs in our Inner Harbor be dignified and dependable ones that don’t leave workers requiring public assistance to eat and pay their rent. The United Workers are demanding that the Inner Harbor developers—General Growth Properties and the Cordish Companies, recipients of so much public development largesse—guarantee that Inner Harbor jobs come with a living wage and health and education benefits, and that Inner Harbor employers treat workers with respect and dignity. Ericson notes that Schaefer’s harbor tourist development inspired cities across the country to subsidize development of demeaning low-wage service jobs to replace lost dependable manufacturing jobs; it’s time for Baltimore to set a different example and demonstrate a fair development model instead.
To read the feature article, “Saint of Sinner,” that this is in response to, go to http://citypaper.com
Check out this excellent Op-ed in today’s issue of the Baltimore Sun bringing attention to the United Worker’s recent release of “Hidden in Plain Sight.” Counsel to the United Workers, Peter Sabonis, who penned this opinion piece, draws on the many stories of worker abuse to ask, “But were the roughly $2 billion in federal, state and city subsidies for the Inner Harbor designed to create a poverty zone?”
As scheduling determines earnings, workers have little choice but to heed employer demands. Workers recount grim trade-offs between work hours and family, educational and personal exigencies.
To add insult to injury, one restaurant supervisor allegedly runs a side “snack and soda” business, where the quid pro quo for employee snack purchases is choice work hours.
These are not the complaints of workers in an isolated industry sector. Baltimore hitched its wagon to tourism in the 1970s with a foresight and skill unmatched by other fading industrial cities.
The plaudits given the late Mayor William Donald Schaefer for the vision and leadership that created the Inner Harbor are deserved. But were the roughly $2 billion in federal, state and city subsidies for the Inner Harbor designed to create a poverty zone?
The United Workers posits a new “human rights based” economic development model, where publicly backed projects lead to living wages and health care for workers and are characterized by transparency, public participation and accountability.
Unlike most development approaches, which are designed primarily to increase tax revenues through increased commerce, the human rights approach prioritizes worker and community benefits rather than leaving them as hoped-for byproducts of increased commerce.
Indeed, the original public subsidies that created the Inner Harbor could have been tied to living wages and health care for workers. The United Workers is now engaged in a campaign for Inner Harbor developers to require as much, through restaurant leases.
Baltimore’s own alternative media outlet, the Indypendent Reader, covered the recent release of United Workers and NESRI’s report, “Hidden in Plain Sight.” Visit their website to read an article and listen to audio from the release, http://indyreader.org
Below is an excerpt from the Indypendent Reader coverage:
At the press conference, former Inner Harbor workers continously referenced the mirage of the Inner Harbor. Tourists come and only witness the facade of this well-running machine. They never know the true conditions of those who cook/deliver their food, fold their newly bought clothers, or clean the cheering stadiums. It’s all a game that tricks the consumers and the city– and perpetually cycles funds right back into the pockets of the private companies.
In the latest coverage from the Campaign for Fair Development, RT America looks at how the Inner Harbor is part of the problem, not the solution, to growing poverty in Baltimore. Reporter, Kaelyn Ford, poses the question of whether the Inner Harbor and Baltimore can be seen as a microcosm of the problems going on across the country.
When we launched the Campaign for Fair Development, we also sought to pose a question, a simple question, ‘Should public money be used to benefit private developers and corporations or should it be used to create sustainable economic development that respects and benefits everyone?’ As we have taken the Campaign for Fair Development on the road and connected with student, labor, faith, and grassroots groups across the country, we have seen how our struggle is tied to those struggles of communities across the country. We’ve seen how the fight for Fair Development is the fight for work with dignity, education, healthcare, clean and healthy environments, life with dignity. We need development that builds the economies of our cities, towns, and communities in a way that respects human rights, maximizes public benefits and is sustainable. While communities are fighting to hold onto what’s left, we need to put forward a vision of the world we want to see, a vision of Fair Development.
The story of Baltimore is the story of much of our country. In the heart of our city, lies the Inner Harbor, where the developers reap the benefits, while turning a blind eye as their vendors exploit workers. On General Growth Properties (GGP) website, GGP boasts to having 1.8 billion consumers visit their malls each year and claims to value workers at their properties, “We know that how we treat our employees and how our vendors provide for their employees touches the lives of hardworking families and impacts the communities where we do business.” You can read more about their community relations here. It’s good that they acknowledge that they have an impact on workers lives, but each time workers have made attempts to share with them the abuses they suffer from their vendors, GGP has chosen to ignore workers. The latest rebuff came last November, when harbor workers paid a visit to the Senior General Manager at Harborplace after having sent him a letter detailing rampant issues of wage theft at the Cheesecake Factory, Tir Na Nog, Five Guys, and Hooter’s. We were told he was not available and have yet to hear back from him. Is it that they know they impact workers lives, but just don’t care?
As one of the leading developers of large-scale urban revitalization projects and a home-grown company, the Cordish Co. must certainly understand the impact they have on Baltimore and communities across the country. But when the ESPN Zone shut-down kicking 160 workers to the curb, Cordish did not interfere. The only interference came from their security when Rev. Roger Scott Powers prayed for justice for the workers at the ESPN Zone. Watch this incredible video here.
At each step, workers have reached out to GGP and Cordish to come to the table and address these harbor-wide human rights abuses. Workers, allies, and even reporters have called on the developers to respond, but they have not responded. Their silence is their way of remaining the invisible force, which controls the harbor without accountability. But the tide is turning and we are not the only people asking questions about whether public money and resources should be used to benefit private developers and corporations, while workers and communities pay high social, economic, and environmental costs. When consumers and the larger public begin to ask these questions, the answers to these questions are not too far behind. So the movement for Fair Development continues to grow and the day will come when GGP and Cordish will not be able to hide from workers, consumers, and the larger public. We will not stop until GGP and Cordish become part of the solution, not the problem.
As part of a mounting effort to hold harbor developers accountable, we’re gearing for the release our Fair Development Report in April. So be on the look-out for this revealing expose of the human cost of this Poverty-Zone Development!
In response to the first anniversary of Citizens United vs F.E.C. US Supreme Court Decision, The Backbone Campaign and Coffee Party USA organized a Movement for the People Rally and and two-day summit rally on January 21 and 22.
Activists, grassroots organizers, academics, and policy experts from across the country came to share their struggles for corporate accountability and strategies for building power. C-SPAN covered the first day of the For the People Summit. That evening a panel of organizers and activists told the story of how they’re fighting back, from the Indigenous Environmental Network’s efforts to highlight the devastation caused by the Alberta Tar Sands to City Life/Vida Urbana’s innovative organizing in Boston around the foreclosure crisis.
In this video, Veronica Dorsey with the United Workers talks about how organizing around transformative human rights values led to our first human rights victory at Camden Yards and how it is key to building a community of leaders that will secure a Fair Development Agreement at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Movement.
As always, we enjoyed another opportunity to see our friends with the Backbone Campaign, forge new relationships, and learn about all the exciting organizing going on across the country. Through these spaces for reflection and sharing, we see how the Campaign for Fair Development connects to so many of these local struggles for human rights standards, public benefits, and sustainability in the face of growing corporate power. To see more videos, photos and coverage from the For the People Summit, visit http://www.backbonecampaign.org
The United Workers is a human rights organization led by low-wage workers. We are leading the fight for fair development, which respects human rights, maximizes public benefits and is sustainable.
We closed out 2011 by embarking on a major ramp-up of the Human Rights Zone Campaign. This past December 10th marked the two-year anniversary of the day that harbor workers mailed letters GGP and Cordish, the developers that control the Inner Harbor. After two years of silence and inaction despite repeated attempts for dialogue, low-wage workers announced an escalation in the fight for fair development by staging “letter drops” at GGP malls this holiday season.
This summer, members of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) joined PBS broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor, Dr. Cornel West along a US Poverty Tour that made stops in 18 cities across 11 states.
