I live in a small town, Eureka California. It has about 26,000 residents and is the seat of Humboldt County. I have lived here for a little over a decade and would not want to live anywhere else. Mild winters, cool summers, although global warming has started to change that. The surrounding countryside is some of the most spectacular you will ever see anywhere in the world.
Sounds Idyllic but here is the problem, our little town is being crushed under the weight of poverty. I will not get into the environmental exploitation that killed off the Salmon and most of the other fishing while clear cutting the forests killed the timber industry right along with the streams. The problem we face today is like many small communities, big box retail, Target and most recently Walmart have come to town and devastated our local business districts. Their low wage go to the food bank pay scales are impoverishing everyone in our community. We are at a 19% poverty rate compared to California's state wide average of 15%.
The people of Eureka have come up with an alternative to simply allowing the retailers to ship what is left of the money in town to Bentonville or Minneapolis. It is called the Eureka The Eureka Fair Wage Act. It raises the minimum wage that larger employers will be required to pay. 25 or more workers in a company and they will pay the higher wage. $12 an hour minimum wage. That level of compensation leaves a single adult raising a child just above the poverty line. That is a typical low wage worker.
65% are women and the average age is 27 with 1/3 having at least 1 child.
We exempted the small mom and pop stores. We also gave non profits a year and half to comply. We tailored it to Eureka to provide maximum stimulus and minimum job compression. You can read the whole act here.
We collected 2400 signatures and got the initiative certified and we are on the ballot November 4th. We have done this on a shoestring budget and donated labor. Now we are coming into the home stretch of a project that began over 2 and a half years ago.
The opposition has created a PAC We call it “Protect the Rich” and they have raised over $13,000 with $10,000 of that from anonymous contributors. The city of Eureka has a weird little campaign finance rulethat requires all contributions $25 or more be reported The link is to a pdf.
We also have to deal with Ballot improprieties, They printed an argument against our initiative in violation ofCalifornia campaign law. While we were gathering signatures the county conducted a purge of the voting rolls throwing 775 voters off the city rolls of 14,000. The power structure is not going to allow us to uplift from the bottom as they are committed to pissing on the poor with more trickle down.
We are an initiative certified by sufficient signatures.
From the election code
9282. (a) For measures placed on the ballot by petition, the
persons filing an initiative petition pursuant to this article may
file a written argument in favor of the ordinance, and the
legislative body may submit an argument against the ordinance.
(b) For measures placed on the ballot by the legislative body, the
legislative body, or any member or members of the legislative body
authorized by that body, or any individual voter who is eligible to
vote on the measure, or bona fide association of citizens, or any
combination of voters and associations, may file a written argument
for or against any city measure.
(c) No argument shall exceed 300 words in length.
(d) The city elections official shall include the following
statement on the front cover, or if none, on the heading of the first
page, of the printed arguments:
"Arguments in support or opposition of the proposed laws are the
opinions of the authors."
(e) The city elections official shall enclose a printed copy of
both arguments with each sample ballot; provided, that only those
arguments filed pursuant to this section shall be printed and
enclosed with the sample ballot. The printed arguments are "official
matter" within the meaning of Section 13303.
(f) Printed arguments submitted to voters in accordance with this
section shall be titled either "Argument In Favor Of Measure _" or
"Argument Against Measure ___," accordingly, the blank spaces being
filled in only with the letter or number, if any, designating the
measure. At the discretion of the elections official, the word
"Proposition" may be substituted for the word "Measure" in these
titles.
The best antipoverty program is a job but not if that job pays a poverty level wage. Every city that has used this path, raising wages from the bottom up, has seen job growth and increased business activity. It is a win win, working people get paid enough to make rent and move out of their parents houses. Walmart workers can buy groceries with their own money not food stamps and can buy what they want not what the government tells them they can. Eureka gets 4 plus million dollars in stimulus the first year alone.
This is where you come in my fellow Kossacks. We need money to run our radio ad and to run TV advertising.
This our first radio ad:
This link will take you to a littlelocal media coverage
please vote in their poll
And thislink will take you to our donation page. $12 runs a radio ad in drive time. That is one hours work under the new wage. We know that we can't compete with them dollar wise but we hope to prevent the other side from blitzing our little town with a monologue. We are doing the ground work, knocking on doors phone banking, and registering voters, 500 and counting. Your contributions can help us save our little community. I know the midterms are upon us and everyone is asking for help to keep the Senate or flip a district so mine is just one more plea among the thousands you will receive. I only hope that you will decide that the chance to improve the lives of a little more then a thousand working men and women up here behind the Redwood Curtain is a worthy thing.
James Decker
Treasurer of the Fair Wage Folks