The Radical Cleric's First Protest Post

Aww, they're so cute when they're young... So its not my first protest, it just the first protest I've been involved in since I had this blog. It only took 72 hours for me to get up in somebody's grill. Listen, you don't get to be a Radical Cleric by pleasantly toeing the party line. They should just be glad I'm not Muktada Al-Sadr or Pat Robertson.

So EBASE and the Progressive Jewish Alliance are locked in a battle with the Woodfin Hotel in Emeryville, CA, just across the bridge in the East Bay, over a Living Wage ordinance. The city of Emeryville passed a law requiring local hotels to pay their workers a living wage, with an exception for unionized businesses. The Woodfin, after much legal wrangling and kvetching, is finally paying their workers a living wage, but still owes them back wages for the months and months they were breaking the law.

Not only that, they ratted out the workers who were in dialogue with the city over the illegal activities to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ICE sent out the dreaded 'no-match letters' on 12 of them, who were promptly fired. Speak up for justice, lose your job. Yes, the workers were illegal, but it's also illegal to get ICE involved during a labor dispute.

So 13 local rabbis signed on to a letter protesting these action, and yesterday I descended into the belly of the beast to meet our foe, the dreaded GM of the Woodfin. I pictured being led into a dusty back office where a slick businessman in a nice suit and a team of lawyers would deny, threaten and cajole us into giving up our quest for labor justice. But it was just the ten of us; PJA staff, Jewish community leaders, and rabbis, and Hugh Macintosh, the Sitra Achra himself.

OK, the devil, he wasn't. He's a small, polite Irish-Canadian, who brought bottled water for everyone and was quite pleasant. Of course, that was all the more infuriating. To fire low-paid immigrants and then turn around and defend it to a bunch a clergy? That was pretty ballsy, I gotta admit.

Our demands were:
1) Pay the back wages.
2) Rehire the workers.
3) Stop using ICE to intimidate workers

Mr. MacIntosh's response?
1) It's in court on appeal.
2) They were illegal. Illegals are taking jobs from good American citizens.
3) No.

The Woodfin spends more in lawyers fees, lost hotel revenue during pickets and bad PR than the $160,000 the hotel owes, but they refuse to yield. Nor does it matter that workers who take on phony Social Security numbers to get a job are paying into a retirement system they will never draw out of. Although I don't prefer illegal immigration, illegal immigrants themselves actually pay taxes they can never receive benefits from.

Hopefully he'll tell the owner that the Jewish community doesn't like him much and isn't happy. I can't say I have a much power to exert, other than the force of words and my theoretical moral authority. But it was the first time I got to walk into a room and swing the word 'Rabbi' around like it meant something, so I say score one for our side.