Category Archives: Moral Mondays

Economic Justice: A Real Living Wage for all New Yorkers

In 2011, we joined faith coalitions like the Micah Institute in the Living Wage NYC Campaign, and we continue to support the Fight for $15. Still, we know that even a substantial increase in the minimum wage is no substitute for a real living wage.

According to a 2014 report by the Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement titled Overlooked and Uncounted: The Struggle to Make Ends Meet in New York City, over 940,000 New York City households lack enough income to cover the bare necessities of life. Women and people of color with higher levels of education still struggle with income inadequacy. In even our least expensive neighborhoods, the wage a mother needs to support herself and one child without public assistance is several dollars more than $20 per hour. A higher percentage of NYC households survive on an insufficient income than in Mississippi and several other states.

A Faith-Rooted Response 

The Micah Faith Table, a coalition of multi-faith leaders from across New York, is launching the Real Living Wage NYC Campaign to address these and other unjust economic issues. The goal of the campaign is to ensure that all workers in New York City receive at least $20 an hour–the wage required to meet basic needs without government subsidies. In other words, the aim is to trans­form the minimum wage in our city into a Real Living Wage.

Religious communities play a vital role in establishing economic justice for the whole society. Scriptures of every time, place, and faith cry out on behalf of the poor, seeking justice as well as mercy. In a critical sense, houses of faith form a unified moral body in our city, and aim to make that unity manifest by transforming a faith-based vision into reality. That is why the foundation for the Real Living Wage Campaign is being built in the interfaith religious community.

Join in Solidarity

As a secular progressive organization that builds coalitions with faith-based groups on behalf of economic justice, we encourage you to read more about the campaign here. Help make New York City a leader as a Real Living Wage City!

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Money for Schools

money for schools

It’s about fairness–and futures.  

In a recent open letter to Governor Cuomo, seven illustrious New York State Teachers of the Year urged him to look beyond test scores to see why students fail in school. Beyond the “achievement gap,” they noted, is “an income gap, a health-care gap, a housing gap, a family gap and a safety gap, just to name a few.”
The problem is poverty–and its root cause is the failure to allocate resources in communities that most need them. Today, New York State  has the most economically and racially segregated classrooms in the nation. Unless we change the way our money is spent, we’ll continue on the same path.
Money matters for educational outcomes. A study released this week by the Alliance for Quality Education and the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York shows that New York City’s public schools are owed $2.5 billion in funding, or $2,667 per student. That’s huge. That’s smaller classroom sizes, libraries, art programs, special learning programs, safer and more secure spaces. Above all, it’s the future of kids.

The educational needs of our state’s and city’s students will be determined by the budget decided in Albany this March 31st.

We urge you to demand that the governor fully and fairly fund our public schools. #WeCan’tWait. Our kids’ futures can’t wait. At stake are the multiple gaps that begin and end in poverty.
Get engaged. Read the report. Join the campaign. Petition the governor. And join the Moral Mondays commitment to fairness in education.

Remember: The budget is a moral document.