On March 11, 100 students, faculty, staff and community members from the University of Memphis spent one day of their spring break engaged in an unusual activity-meeting with our representatives in the state legislature in Nashville to encourage them to put the people first.
Most people met in a parking lot in Midtown at 5:30 a.m. to ride a bus. Some of us drove separately, hitting the road by 6 a.m. After a three-hour drive, watching the sun rise over increasingly hilly central Tennessee, we all met at the Capitol in the House Chambers. We sat in the comfortable leather chairs normally reserved for state representatives and were trained on how to effectively lobby our legislators.
Our union, United Campus Workers, had partnered with community organizations like Workers Interfaith Network to organize the lobby day. They had scheduled meetings with state legislators and planned the training. Each person had their own reasons for attending lobby day, but everyone came because they want to make the University a successful institution.
Deborah Holder, a graduate admissions counselor, told me "I'm interested in the well being of the University of Memphis. I came today to show my dedication to the University as well as to the students."
The Tennessee State Legislature has made huge cuts to the University system over the last few years, leaving the promise of higher education out of reach for many young Tennesseans, forcing staff at universities to go without pay raises, and for many, raising families on poverty wages.
Meredith Lones, an undergraduate history major told me that she works three jobs to support herself and pay for school.
"Tuition is interfering with people's ability to go to school without getting massive debt, and it makes it hard to be successful in academics."
After the training, we broke up into small teams to meet with our legislators. Each of us had three or four legislators to meet with. My team's first meeting wasn't until 11:30 a.m. In the meantime, we stopped by Senator Yager's office to see if we could find him. Senator Yager was busy and we hadn't been able to schedule a meeting with him, so we were supposed to track him down. He wasn't in, so we left some materials with his legislative assistant.
Assistant Professor Elana Delavega, in the Department of Social Work, told me that her team visited Representative Hardaway. He "was extremely kind and I believe he really listened to us. I felt he has a real commitment to the people."
After our initial meetings, we got lunch and headed to the South Capitol Steps, where we were rallying at noon. People from other unions and organizations from around the state trickled in, until almost 500 of us crowded the steps. Teachers, students, farm workers, autoworkers and others joined us to send a message to the Governor and the Legislature that we want them to put the people first-our slogan for the day. After a few rousing speeches, we went to the Governor's office.
The governor had declined to meet with this group of constituents, but one of his aides listened to us-after calling security. One little girl wrote in the guest book that a couple years ago, she and her classmates had been able to go on field trips with her school. But now, due to cuts from the state, they couldn't afford to go.
The cuts to the university system are part of broader trends in Tennessee and across the nation, cutting public education and attacking workers. Ms. Holder, the admissions counselor, told me that she's "concerned about growth in Memphis and the direction our city is going. It's losing its history. It's a great city, but it's getting a bad rap because all the jobs have been outsourced. People don't have the income to keep investing in their neighborhoods."
Ms. Jones, the undergraduate history major, told me that "labor unions in the south, and Memphis, have fought hard to win their rights. They're still fighting. The bills (the legislature) are trying to pass are taking away rights unions have already won."
While the little girl who wrote in the guestbook has a wonderful story to tell her classmates and teachers, it's doubtful the Governor will hear her message. And the same is true of the state legislature. While many (though not all) of the legislators we met with were sympathetic to our cause, they do not hold a majority. Our state government is currently run by a group of politicians who appear to lack empathy with the plight of regular people.
We can all understand the difficulty the legislature faces when they have budget shortfalls, but cuts to public schools and universities are mean spirited. Leaving schools to choose between hiring new teachers or forcing current teachers to teach more than one subject isn't a choice schools should face. And students at universities shouldn't be forced to pay increased tuition every year while workers make as little as $7.25 an hour. Such cuts are shortsighted too-well-educated citizens pay more in taxes and are more likely to be unemployed. Dr Delavega believes that "education is not spending money-it's investing in the future."
We heard invocations of the labor and civil rights struggles in Tennessee at the rally and throughout the day. Representative Towns reminded my team that it was in Memphis that those two struggles merged and came to a head with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
When I spoke with Dr. Delavega, she remarked how "Dr. King was in Memphis because of the sanitation strike" and how we all have a similar responsibility to stand with workers.
The same politicians making cuts to public services also like to invoke the imagery of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Governor Haslam spent Martin Luther King Day in Memphis this year, where he visited the Civil Rights Museum and attended a celebration at Monumental Baptist Church. But the truth is, if King were alive today, he would have been lobbying with us, inspiring us with a speech at our rally on the south capitol steps, likely urging us to take more action by sitting-in and marching. It's painfully ironic to hear his words used by politicians who stand in such stark contrast to his legacy.
Our organizing work won't end with lobby day. It took decades of struggle to end segregation and Jim Crow in the South. Workers have always faced poverty wages. Our lobby day was just one more step in that struggle. While voters today may appear to reward the behavior of politicians like Governor Haslam, with his shameful blaming of poor people and workers for the ills of our country, I am confident that history will judge him differently.
By 3 p.m., we had all finished our meetings with legislators and crowded back into the bus or our cars to head back to Memphis. We'll see in the coming weeks what impact our Lobby Day had on the state legislature.
But, in the meantime, the impact it had on all of us was clear. We all left the capitol more excited than ever to organize and keep working together to make our university work for everyone. As Ms. Holder told me, "the union allows everybody to have a voice: faculty, staff and students."
