A note from Rev. Rich Lang
This week, I give my column over to Rev. John Helmiere, who serves as the Minister of Listening at Valley & Mountain in Hillman City. I’ll be back on Dec. 17. Until then, enjoy what my brother has to say.
On Nov. 19, two airport workers named Socrates Bravo and Kadra Osman, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and I were handcuffed and crammed into the backs of police cruisers. I watched as the officer typed into his laptop “DISORDERLY CONDUCT.” Everything looks more menacing in capital letters.
A throng of exploited airport workers had just marched to Alaska Airlines headquarters and presented an invoice for stolen wages. Alaska runs more than 50 percent of flights from Sea-Tac International Airport. Alaska and other airlines have tied up SeaTac’s $15-an-hour minimum wage law in court for almost a year, first arguing that the city of SeaTac cannot regulate the airport and now arguing that the Port of Seattle Commission has no regulatory authority on this matter either.
Before the demonstration, some workers calculated what their lost, or stolen, wages were so far this year. The workers currently make $19,000 to $25,000 annually, and many have lost $10,000 or more this year alone. “If I had this money,” said a middle-aged Somali worker with gentle eyes, “I would use it to have a wedding and save the rest.”
So this unmarried man hunches over in the dark underbelly of airplanes (one of my fellow arrestees told me it’s called “the pit”) throughout the year to stack our checked suitcases. He did his part to help Alaska Airlines make well over $400 million in profit last year and its CEO, Brad Tilden, to earn more than $2 million. But even so, this Alaska employee cannot afford to get married.
I have walked alongside airport workers for three years now in their struggle for organized power and fair pay. The airlines have blocked every pathway to justice and refused to move. So we blocked the highway to their building for a few minutes, and we refused to move.
The irony of the charge of disorderly conduct dawned slowly upon me.
In “The Power of Nonviolence,” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote, “There are some things in our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted.” He saw Jesus as someone who operated outside the boundaries of an unjust social order. Jesus and King believed that the social orders of their time were so effective at masking cruelty, that even good people saw the state of affairs as acceptable, inevitable — even desirable. Unlike many with a strong social critique, however, the two paragons of nonviolence had faith in the Creator’s work, and therefore in the inherent goodness of people. They taught that the fight was against systems of injustice, not individuals. I, too, believe that nonviolent social disruption should aim to awaken the slumbering goodness that dwells deep in the human heart, hibernating through the long winter of immoral social conditions.
As Socrates and I were ushered into our jail cell last week, the officer who took my clergy collar and gave me the black-and-white striped prison clothes asked me if I was really a pastor. “Yes,” I answered. He raised his eyebrows and asked, “Then what are you doing here?” I only had a moment before he shut the door in my face to explain that as a disciple of Jesus and student of King, I knew that you had to get uncomfortable to wake people up. In a society that defines 100-to-1 pay ratios and wage theft as “orderly conduct,” some disciplined disorderly conduct becomes necessary.