“We don’t take the possibility of a strike lightly but the workers who make Boston and New England strong are ready to do what it takes to protect their families,” said Roxana Rivera, vice president of 32BJ SEIU.

Eugenio H. Villasante, an organizer with 32BJ SEIU said there are about 500 SEIU janitors in Rhode Island – Fidelity: 60+; Providence College: 60; TF Green: 32; CVS: 25; Bank of America Center (100 Westminster St., owned by Joe Paolino): 19; Bank of America: 10; One Financial Plaza building (downtown Providence): 16.

“These workers clean key pillars of the Rhode Island economy,” said the news release. “The mostly immigrant workforce has a long history of fighting for good jobs in the area.”

Today I declined a cost of living adjustment increase to my legislative salary, and committed that I will not take a raise until Rhode Island raises the minimum wage for all low-income workers.

I recognize this is an entirely symbolic move, and in fact that it is a particularly tiny symbol, considering how minuscule this legislative salary increase is (it’s real, real small). And I support the COLA on principle – in fact, I think that the (comparatively) low compensation for state legislators in Rhode Island is a significant barrier keeping a lot of Rhode Islanders from serving in elected office, particularly low-income Rhode Islanders whose voices we desperately need in the General Assembly. But as a legislator, I do not personally feel comfortable taking any cost of living adjustment knowing that Rhode Island’s lowest-paid workers have not received any adjustment.

“Who am I paying this week?” Lomba said, explaining her economic plight in a new video produced by SEIU 1199, her labor union that is advocating she be paid a living wage. “Am I going to choose to buy food or I am going to choose to pay my gas or my electric.

Rhode Island, by 75 percent, favors a $15 minimum wage for nursing care workers, according to a recent Fleming & Associates poll. Rep. Scott Salter and Sen. Gayle Goldin, both Providence legislators, have sponsored similar bills that would direct more state funding to pay caregivers like Lomba.  “The legislation is similar to policies enacted by Rhode Island lawmakers in 2000 in order to address a staffing shortage in nursing homes,” according to a news release from SEIU 1199.

This is the third video SEIU 1199 has released of employees telling their own stories. Previously profiled were:

Vicky Mitchell

And Aggie Clark

A similar poll last year found 69 percent of Rhode Islanders favored a $15 minimum wage for care providers.

“It’s dignity,” said Vicky Mitchell, a certified nurse assistant in a video released with the poll question. “You don’t wanna get sick and old, and nobody’s there to take care of you.”

The poll showed 63 percent of Republicans surveyed supported raising the minimum wage for nursing care providers to $15 an hour with 26 percent opposing. It’s unclear how many Republicans were polled. 350 Rhode Islanders were polled.

The poll was question was released to coincide with a House Finance Committee hearing on a bill that would raise wages for nursing care providers. It’s sponsored by Providence Rep. Scott Slater and Sen. Gayle Goldin.

The video is the second the SEIU has produced as it fights for a $15 minimum wage in Rhode Island.

Rhode Island doesn’t have too few rich people, we have too many poor people.

That’s why the SEIU is organizing a rally at the State House tomorrow to renew the local fight for a $15 minimum wage.

“Caregivers, legislators and allies will hold a rally and day of action at State House in support of raising wages and getting nursing home workers on a path to a $15 per hour minimum wage,” according to a news release from the SEIU, which also created the video. “The event comes a week after workers from California to Long Island won a phased in $15 minimum wage and 5,000 nursing home workers in Pennsylvania won a $15 starting rate.”

The event is Wednesday, April 13 at 3:30 pm in the State House rotunda.

“Frontline nursing home caregivers in Rhode Island who do vital work helping families care for their elderly loved ones are underpaid and struggle to support their own families at home,” according to the news release. “In order to attract and retain a qualified nursing home workforce as our economy improves, Rhode Island will need to enact policies ensuring nursing home caregivers earn a living wage — just as several states, including Massachusetts, have done.”

Frances Fox Piven is a legend. Her work was instrumental in the creation of the welfare rights movement and the war on poverty.  Last night, Piven gave a talk entitled Strategic Voter Disenfranchisement: How Political Party Competition Shrinks the Electorate at the RI Center for Justice (in collaboration with the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown.)

With Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton neck and neck in the polls, said Piven, starting her talk, “I thought, I’ll talk about voter disenfranchisement, but I want to talk about that in the context of this election… I actually think this is an important election.

“The strangeness of this election. It’s really kind of amazing… Things are happening that can’t be explained by the truisms that political scientists repeat to each other.”

For instance, asked Piven, who has served on the board of the Democratic Socialists of America, how can Bernie Sanders get away with calling himself a socialist? What has changed?

For Piven, the answer is that America today is a land of broken promises. “People rise up when the promises that have been made… have been broken. Life is very uncertain and insecure. You’re earning less money, your pension may be at risk. There is soaring inequality. Some people are getting so rich.”

The system is rigged and not in our favor. A very few are very rich and the rest of us are doomed to live lives in poorer and meaner circumstances than our parents. Yet there is a counter to this, said Piven, and that counter is electoral democracy.

“Many activists are skeptical of electoral democracy,” said Piven, yet, “political institutions nevertheless create a realm of equality. At least in principle, everyone has one vote. Those votes, when aggregated, can depose rulers. You can kick the sons of bitches out!”

Since it is well known that “when electoral rights expand people do better,” said Piven, democracy becomes a threat to the status quo. Therefore, it behooves the rich and powerful to fight back. “The threat of democracy is met by manipulating electoral procedures.”

Some of the manipulations of electoral procedures were built into the country’s structure by the Founding Fathers, said Piven. The Senate, for instance, guarantees two Senators from every state, even if no one lives in the state. The Supreme Court is another example. The Court is only marginally influenced by voters, being nominated by the President to lifelong positions. “Walling off certain parts of the government and saying this part of the government is not exposed to the electorate” circumvents the power of democracy said Piven.

And of course the final way of challenging the power of electoral democracy is by “suppressing votes and voters.”

“In Political Science we have a ‘faith’ and one of the axioms is that competing parties expand voter engagement,” said Piven, but, “Competing parties exert themselves to make it hard for voters that may vote for their opponents. That’s just as logical, but you won’t find that in any textbooks, but it has happened in American history.

“At the turn of the 20th Century, immigrants became the constituency of the machine bosses. These machines traded voter allegiance and voter loyalty for favors. Businessmen had a problem with that arrangement because they wanted efficient services. [Political] machines are not good at providing the kinds of services that lead to business expansion. Municipal reform organizations were business organizations,” said Piven. The machines used voter registration, literacy tests, poll taxes and other methods of voter suppression to drive down immigrant voter turnout significantly.

And this is happening today, with voter suppression laws being enacted across the country.

“Every presidential election turns out to be the most expensive in history because of the concentration of wealth spilling over” into the political arena, said Piven. “There is no wall” between money and politics. “Inequalities outside the electoral arena spillover.” Today we conduct polls to see how voters are thinking but we also track political contributions. Dollars and votes seem to be equally important.

This money, and the voter suppression we are seeing in politics, is aimed squarely at the “new electorate.” This rising block of voters tend to be more progressive. Black voter turnout has increased, immigrant groups continue to expand, the youth vote jumped in 2008 and 2012 and there’s been a “shift in the women’s vote since 1980 and the Reagan elections,” said Piven.

Given the shift in voters, “Conservatives shouldn’t be able to get elected,” said Piven. But through the manipulation of voter eligibility, they do.

And it isn’t ending, said Piven. Right now there’s an effort underway to change the formula for representation from the number of members in the population to the number of active voters. This is a vicious circle, and it’s by design.

Taking away “our ability to influence government” is another broken promise.

“Broken Promises in the economy and politics probably accounts for the surge in movements over the last few years,” said Piven. “This was the beginning of a new movement era.”

She noted three in particular:

“First there was Occupy, the press mocked them at the beginning. Then everyone started using Occupy’s slogans and language. Then there was the Fight for $15. SEIU had a significant role in promoting $15 as the goal. They wanted to build the union. That didn’t happen. What happened instead was that a movement took off that has been affecting local politics,” and then of course there’s Black Lives Matter.

There are also movements on the right, but these are “not among low wage workers or immigrants. [These movements] are occurring among middle class people, a little older, above the median income. Donald Trump is speaking to those people and their imaginary past…” There are “strong currents of religious fundamentalism and macho culture, gun culture, imaginary pioneers… We’ve got to live with that.”

“Movements are not majorities,” said Piven, “movements are spearheads…

“Movements have played a key role in shaping the United States since the revolutionary period.” Piven mentioned three movements in particular that had gigantic political implications.

The abolitionists freed the slaves, FDR became a radical due to the rise of the labor movement, which brought social security, labor rights, welfare policy, and public housing policy, and the civil rights movement which finally did emancipate blacks, shattered Jim Crow in the South.

“The troubles caused by movements become troubles for politicians and governments,” said Piven, “Movements communicate issues politicians wanted to avoid – showing people they could become defiant and shut things down.”

Too often “activists dismiss elections but there’s an interplay,” said Piven, but, “movements nourish electoral politics. Sanders couldn’t have run without Occupy.”

“Movements made Sanders possible,” said Piven, wrapping up her talk, “I think Sanders could win the nomination. But I don’t know what will happen in a general election. It’s amazing. There’s no precedent…

“What really worries me is Sanders as President. He would be in the White House surrounded by politicians determined to block him at every move. Movements at that juncture will become very essential to a Sanders presidency because movements can shut things down. That is the kind of popular weapon that could be equal to the gridlock Sanders could be facing.”

Fast food employees, restaurant workers and labor allies rallied outside the Wendy’s restaurant at 771 Warwick Ave in Warwick around noon as part of a national effort to kick off a year-long $15 minimum wage campaign ahead of next year’s presidential elections. Nearly 100 people gathered in the parking lot of Wendy’s, where the management had locked the doors ahead of the protests and only served meals through the drive-thru window.

Led by outgoing Rhode-Island Jobs with Justice executive director Jesse Strecker, workers chanted and marched around the building, finally settling in front for a series of speeches from various workers and advocates “all the way down the food chain.”

Long time Wendy’s worker and minimum wage advocate Jo-Ann Gesterling spoke not only about fair wages, but about wages stolen when management forces workers to work through their breaks, lack of accountability in the management structure, and other issues fast food workers deal with on a daily basis.

Demonstrators were not only demanding $15 an hour, fair treatment and a union, they were also demanding that Wendy’s join the the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program (FFP). Attentive readers will remember that the Brown Student Labor Alliance lead a protest in October around the FFP, described as a “ground-breaking model for worker-led social responsibility based on a unique collaboration among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers and 14 participating buyers.” It is “the first comprehensive, verifiable and sustainable approach to ensuring better wages and working conditions in America’s agricultural fields.”

Emelio Garcia, a former employee of Teriyaki House Restaurant in downtown Providence spoke about not having been paid for work he did at the restaurant. Wage theft is a story sadly common in Rhode Island, as more and more employees stand up and demand the wages that have been stolen from them by employers. Garcia says that he was docked for two hours of pay a day for breaks he was never actually allowed to take.

Flor Salazar, who worked at Café Atlantic and was owed thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, was allegedly assaulted by owner Juan Noboa with a baseball bat when she and a group of workers confronted Noboa at his home Halloween morning. “We are tired of having our work stolen, we are tired of being disrespected in our workplace,” said Salazar, “It’s enough.”

The final speaker was a not a restaurant worker but Magdalene Smith, a CNA working at a Pawtucket nursing home. “This is not a fight for just restaurants, but for everybody,” said Smith. “Everybody deserves $15. We work hard.”

In addition to Jobs With Justice and the Brown Student/Labor Alliance the event was sponsored by 1199 SEIU Rhode Island, Fuerza Laboral/Power of Workers and Restaurant Opportunities Center of Rhode Island.

More than 50 staff, union reps, and concerned families chanted and picketed Thursday afternoon at The Groden Center in Providence. The gathered participants were making their concerns public in their struggle for fair wages and safe staffing practices.

“At one time the Groden Center was considered an excellent school for autism,” said Cory Lafleur a staff member and key figure in negotiations with the Groden management, “and I want to help it get there.”

According to Lafleur the staff has been negotiating with Groden management since October with no changes and are now going public with their fight. Lafleur, who has worked at Groden for ten years, says he’s “seen things deteriorate,” and that the school is “loosely run,” with an emphasis on a “high turnover” rather than taking care of employees. Lafleur has accused Groden of walking away in the middle of negotiations and wasting the staff’s time while not budging on any point.

Among those in attendance were reps like Chas Walker from Service Employees International United (SEIU) Local 1199, who was running the event, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 328, Teamsters Local 251, among a plethora of other local reps. All supporting the cause of Groden staff members including Rep. Patricia Serpa (D-West Warwick) and Rep. J. Aaron Regunberg (D-Providence).

Most of The Groden Center staff receive as little as $11.25 an hour, with very few making above $12.00 an hour. Allison Peterson, who has worked at The Groden Center in Coventry for three years, claims to have only received one raise in that time and only because of new hiring practices. Rep. Serpa called the treatment of the staff “morally repugnant” and “incomprehensible.”

According to Peterson during emergencies the staff are able to make “support calls” and have additional staff from nearby facilities intervene to ensure student safety. But even at times that’s not enough.

The chanting rang out in the Eastside neighborhood as Fil Eden lead the calls through a megaphone, various chants of “Can’t survive on eleven twenty-five!” and “What do we want? Safe Staffing. When do we want it? Now!”

Safe staffing means hiring more guides to take care of the children, with current student to staff ratios being nearly 1 to 2, or a 1 to 1. It would seem this number should mean each student is properly cared for but many students need near constant care as well as emergency cases where more 2, or even 3, staff members need to stop a student from hurting themselves or others. Leaving other students unattended.

“I’m passionate about it, I love the kids, I love what this institution is built on, but I don’t see them caring as much as I care. And that’s a problem,” said Lafleur.

Lafleur, Peterson, and many other staff spoke at length about the quality of care they provide and the love they have for the children under their care. As well as having the right kind of staff and people work at the school. The job coming with many difficulties, from the above mentioned emergencies to the slow progress of many of the students who are on somewhere on the autism scale.

“Not everybody is cut out for this job, so when you have people that are willing to work here, that enjoy working here, understand that they’re not gonna get rich working here, and don’t want to leave,” Lafleur said through a megaphone to the gathered crowd. “You need to recognize those people and pay them what they deserve.”

“It’s time for Congress to take action to ensure that high quality, affordable child care is accessible for every American family,” said Cicilline. “And that the childcare workforce can access the training and wages they need to make a living.”

Cicilline joined a forum of 11 child care workers, state representatives, and local parents to discuss House Resolution 386, which recognizes the need for better child care for the working parents.

Among possible solutions identified by the participants on Wednesday, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for child care workers was the most popular.

“They want us to better ourselves, but we need help,” said Nichole Ward, a certified nursing assistant and mother of two. Ward spoke of the difficulties finding care for her two children while working and going to school at the same time.

Ultimately she had to ask her family to watch her children as childcare proved too expensive, a common solution for working families. Ward explained that her children had “fallen behind.” in their educations. Her mother and sister “aren’t teachers,” unlike the child care providers, and cannot provide the vital early childhood development.

“Between 2007 and 2015, funding for Rhode Island’s subsidized child care program shrank by 30 percent (from $71 million to $51 million),” said Rachel Flum, senior policy analyst at the Economic Progress Institute. “The reduction was primarily in state support for the program which was accomplished by reducing eligibility – causing hundreds of families to lose coverage.”

Cicilline cited a University of California, Berkeley study that found child care workers are paid less than $10 an hour and wages have stagnated with no real increase since 1997 while at the same time child care costs have doubled.

“Pay the workers like their work matters,” said Marti Murphy with Fight for 15, an advocacy group currently celebrating victories big and small across the nation.

Cicilline expanded that childcare is becoming the “biggest number, bigger than rent, bigger than food.”

“Things are different now than 25-years-ago,” he said, talking about the need for Congressional action. “We can’t pretend it’s 1950…and recognize the reality that both parents are working.”

Added Chas Walker of 1199 SEIU New England, “From 1-5-years-old are the most important years in a child’s life. We have to value the people providing the care for them.”

“I don’t want to live beyond my means,” Sulham said. “I just want to be able to make a payment on time, to go grocery shopping and maybe luncheon meat would be nice … instead of peanut butter and jelly. I’d be able to live better if I could have $15.”

It can be too easy to forget that real Rhode Islanders have to live on the low wages that some of us only know about in abstract political terms. But Sulham now has a way to tell us about her plight.

SEIU 1199NE, the union that represents Sulham and about 4,000 other health care workers in Rhode Island, is producing video testimonials of local workers who are struggling to get by on their current incomes. Sulham’s is the first:

The videos coincide with state leaders considering making huge cuts to the state Medicaid program. “Our view is that Medicaid investments should be directed towards high-quality frontline care and towards ensuring that no health care worker is living in poverty,” said SEIU 1199NE Executive Vice-President Patrick J. Quinn. “It’s time that our society shows that we truly value the work that our caregivers do each day.”