Boosters promoted Atlanta as the "Jewel
of the South," "City of the Twenty-First
Century," and "Black Mecca." Sociologist Robert Bullard explains
that these titles have been misleading. "Atlanta,"
Bullard wrote in 1989, "is not a Mecca for thousands of low-income persons
who call the city home."
46 Despite the
increasing quantity and circulation of money in Atlanta, low-wage workers
struggled to survive in a rapidly changing economic, social, and political
milieu. Atlanta's low wage workers did not reap the economic and political
rewards accorded more skilled workers during Atlanta's transformation to
a global city in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Many day laborers,
particularly African American men, worked at or just above minimum wage and
lived in
penurious conditions. In the early 1980s, day laborers had little political
power. By 2005, even though day laborers had found the attention of attorneys,
legislators, activists, and workplace justice advocates, effective solutions
for
their most pressing concerns (low wages, hazardous working conditions, and
employer abuse) remained elusive. Viewed through a day laboring lens, Atlanta's
growth and development at the cusp of the twenty-first century was impressive
but profoundly uneven.
47
Social movement theorists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward contend that
to be poor means to command none of the resources ordinarily considered requisites
for social change: money, organizational skill and professional expertise, and
personal relations with officials.
48 They also argue that the instability of poor people's lives generally prevents sustained efforts for social change. Despite day laborers' general lack of stability and resources, some of their grievances have been addressed through the passage of labor pool legislation, the formation of a union, legal assistance for wage and hour violations, and the development of informational outreach and worker-safety programs.
Day laborers' working lives were formed through employment relations rooted in marginalization, and were often defined by the production of a comfortable lifestyle for middle- and upper-class Americans.
Work should be, in Studs Terkel's words, a search "for daily meaning as well
as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than
torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort
of dying."
50
A fifty-year-old African American day laborer echoes Terkel's sentiments: "I
feel like if America would start paying these guys better money, better salaries,
and let 'em live more decent than what they're livin', then they will see a
better America."
51 A Latino day laborer observes, "even though we're
immigrants we're still human beings."
52
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Labor pool reform advocate Ed Loring talks about religion as protest,
(4:04 min.)
Audio interview with Terry Easton, February 19, 2006, Atlanta, Georgia.
RealMedia
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Media | QuickTime
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Eric Kocher, an attorney for homeless workers, talks about labor pool workers' waiting, travel, and work time, (2:48 min.)
Audio interview with Terry Easton, December 4, 2002, Atlanta, Georgia.
RealMedia
| Windows
Media | QuickTime |
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Union member John Mosley talks about the Atlanta Labor Pool Workers' Union, (4:56 min.)
Audio interview with Terry Easton, November 7, 2002, Conyers, Georgia.
RealMedia
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Media | QuickTime |
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Civil Rights attorney Tisha Tallman talks about community outreach and intervention, (4:16 min.)
Audio interview with Terry Easton, February 15, 2006, Atlanta, Georgia.
RealMedia
| Windows
Media | QuickTime |
Published: 21 December 2007
© 2007 Terry Easton and
Southern
Spaces 
