Greetings,

Help us fix the dirty secret in the South Sound high-end construction boom!

A great city is where . . . "no one who works hard all week has to live in poverty and without access to good healthcare" - William Raspberry (found in Tacoma News Tribune 9-14-05)

Jobs with Justice after 14 years is on the verge of our biggest South Sound campaign ever.  Lately, we have made the struggles of low-wage workers a priority.  We have taken on some of the worst cases of corporate greed in the fast growing local low-wage economy and won. This is unique in the South Sound.  We blocked Wal-Mart Supercenter plans in Fircrest.  We provided solidarity to low-wage worker victories at mental health facilities and janitor services and grocery stores.  We did essential organizing with low-income resident victories preventing a Christmas Eve mass eviction and corporate profitization of public housing.  

There are scores of other victories we have reported to you in the last 2 years by email. Victory to victory we are patching together a South Sound movement.  It is now time we take on a more comprehensive campaign.

• We are preparing to take on the most powerful South Sound industry and we need your help and funding

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Developers and banks that benefit from the high-end construction boom won't let us redesign and democratize their system without a major struggle.  But it is worth taking on this struggle because we stand to create a much better community while we continue to defend against real attacks on local workers.  It is worth it because when hundreds of other communities have succeeded, we know we can do it too.  It is worth it because the injustice is too obvious.  It looks like this:

When a fire breaks out in a Tacoma downtown luxury condo, we pay to put it out but not the owner. The same injustice happens if luxury owners have a medical emergency, need the police or to school a child or use many of our other public services funded by property taxes.  We pay far more than our share for these services.  The multi-millionaire developer and owner pay far less than an equal share.

Developers and City officials justify this tax break scheme for high-end projects by claiming that new construction downtown raises Tacoma's living standards and saves our environment.  They either don't know what they are talking about or are stretching the truth, greatly. 

Simply put, the jobs at these projects are expanding the working poor and suburban sprawl.  Most of these jobs do not pay a living wage or provide affordable healthcare.  Even the average Tacoma wage-earner cannot afford to live in these $300-400,000 homes and are pushed from city living. 

These developers do not provide career training or meet usual standards of local hiring found on most government subsidized projects.  Ironically, many graduates of tech college programs such as Bates must pass by the Tacoma cranes on the way to Seattle apprenticeship jobs.

• With your financial support, we will run a series of local exposés and analysis that you won't find in corporate media.  We're talkin' namin' names - scorecards on developers and government officials

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If workers on these projects were to organize, they would face the usual litany of firings, immigration detentions and deportations, and terrorizing union-busting tactics.  This is what organizing residential construction workers face where local governments do not value human rights and labor peace.  Yet in fact, hundreds of towns on the West Coast have figured out how to link these developer incentives to policies that create good jobs, workforce affordable housing, labor peace, and real economic revitalization.

Another irony is that this Tacoma developer scheme is also hatched on the backs of taxpaying residents.  Although Tacoma officials led the pack offering our tax-dollars in unconditional developer incentives for a decade, now other South Sound town officials such as in Lakewood and Puyallup have followed the pattern to compete in this race to the bottom.  Ruston residents are struggling with special zoning requests and Bush-lax EPA "oversight" from a $1 billion dollar luxury home development on the Asarco toxic waste site. And developers working through Tacoma officials continue to introduce new unconditional subsidies such as low interest loans, free environmental clean-up, below-market land sales, waived infrastructure fees, eminent domain, subsidized parking. 

Our taxes have risen, our city services have stretched, and we donate more charity to meet the needs of the working poor thanks to this development policy.  Spontaneous Tacoma resident uproar over this current tax system tells us that our campaign will resonate broadly and passionately. 

• With you support, we can ensure that this revolt will support our jobs and housing demands and not become yet another anti-government crusade

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How did it get this bad and more importantly, what do we do to fix it?
Tacoma City Council members tell us that we make valid points linking developer incentives to labor peace, living wage jobs, apprenticeship, affordable housing.  But how much they act "depends on the push back" from developers and how much we hold them accountable through community organizing.  When corporate developers and low-wage businesses and politicians and media form a block, we face a formidable challenge.  Just in the last week, the News Tribune referred generally to one of these unethical industry-leading developers as "responsible" and "our hero." 

And it is not enough to expose this injustice.  We will take strategic action to confront it and change it. In the South Sound, this block is also the main funder of organizations that care for the poor.  To challenge this injustice, we must rely on organizations that are funded almost entirely from the grassroots. That's why Jobs with Justice is so valuable and so rare in the South Sound.

• With your support, we can take the kind of strategic action for justice that social service agencies are prohibited or handcuffed to take

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More than 15 local groups have coalesced with Jobs with Justice and invited industry-leading developers to join us in a campaign for socially responsible development.  Not surprisingly, 2 major developers Mike Cohen Construction and Prium Companies have dismissed our invitation.  We have also started a dialogue with the Tacoma City Council.  Rather than explore common ground, two Council members have launched their own campaign to defend the current tax, job, and housing scheme with a Tribune article.  To launch a true Council dialogue that engages our entire community will take more democratic sunshine on this issue.

We are poised to help coordinate many allies.  Student volunteers from a number of local higher education institutions are offering their research time and skills but require direction.  Religious leaders in Pierce County have expressed interest in pursuing justice campaigns to end growing local poverty that swells their food banks and shelters.  They need our support to shift from a strong tradition of charity to controversial justice work.  Local residents are suddenly rising to run for elected positions inspired by issues of socially responsible development that we are helping surface such as in Fircrest and Ruston (see the story in the Tacoma News Tribune).

• With your support, we can provide the coordination and training and grassroots organizing to form a real movement

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Before government hands over more of our money to developers, we the public of the South Sound, deserve to see the profit margins on these projects.  A simple viewing of the IRS forms would reveal much.  Then we should get to work linking the government incentives that these wealthy developers now get (and taxpayers provide) to a tax and jobs and housing policy that benefits all of us. 

7 Good Reasons Why We Need Your Support to Reform the Developers' System

• When drugs and crime disappear in the gentrifying Hilltop but spike in East Tacoma, we can thank the developers for shifting the social ills of growing poverty to another place without helping to end these ills.
• When the City fails to fix crumbling roads and sewers in South Tacoma, we can thank developers for making us spend over $60 million to clean up the Thea Foss for their high-rise million-dollar views and an exclusive Downtown playground for the elite. 
• When our schools and fire and police stations are understaffed and over-worked, we can thank developers for getting a tax break so that luxury condo owners can use these necessities virtually for free.
• When we pay higher taxes to remodel a kitchen, we can thank developers for paying no taxes on their land of Olympics to Rainier views and marble staircases. 
• When we curse at traffic jams and car pollution, we can thank developers and city officials for urban planning that houses rich people where they don't work and creates jobs where the working poor can't afford to live.
• When our taxes fund the state Basic Health plan or we donate to local food banks, we can thank the developers for flooding the roles of state services and charities with working poor deprived of earning enough to provide their families' basic necessities. 
• When returning soldiers from Iraq look for good civilian jobs, we can thank developers for dismissing the Helmets to Hardhats program as too deep a cut into healthy profit margins.

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