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social action
Representatives from the WESTERN SERVICE WORKERS ASSOCIATION (WSWA) will be speaking at our next Social Action Committee meeting on Wednesday, October 17th. (Coincidentally, reform Congregation Beth El in San Diego is heavily involved with their sister effort in that city). Here is their self-description: WSWA is a free and voluntary membership association founded in 1975 by low-income service worker families and other poor residents of Alameda County who banded together to create a self-help organization to address survival needs and longer-term solutions to our poverty conditions. The organization has been in West Oakland on 7th Street for the last 28 years, (and previous to that, 4 years in East Oakland) where they have battled to stop redevelopment efforts to displace the poor, fought with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide aid to victims and owners of damaged homes after the Loma Prieta quake, and on a completely voluntary basis, have operated a 24 hour per day self-help benefit program to deal with the most desperate needs of their membership, involving volunteer professionals, businesses, churches and others from the community. The benefit program delivers basic needs such as supplemental and emergency food, medical and legal assistance, job referrals, Survival English classes, and utility advocacy to prevent utility shut offs. WSWA's membership includes people struggling to survive on low wages that fall short of paying all the bills and keeping food on the table. While WSWA members primarily live throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties (including Richmond, Berkeley, Hayward, and throughout Oakland’s flatlands) the base of the organization has always been in West Oakland. 53% of all workers who live in West Oakland are employed in service work, and 9% work in the construction and maintenance trades. Working as home health aides, childcare workers, maintenance, restaurant, construction, and temporary work, the majority receive no job benefits and have no job stability. Their members are the working poor, whose ranks swell every day in these times of economic downturn. Most of the members live from paycheck to paycheck – over 30% of West Oakland residents struggle to get by on less than $11,339 a year. Because WSWA is all volunteer (100%!), their most important need is people to participate any way they can. Next most important: your support. Especially because they have just purchased a new office building around the corner from their current office in West Oakland (displacing a liquor store), in order to achieve the stability so critical for continued organizational growth and expansion. They will be speaking with us about how we can volunteer and or help support their efforts with this urgent and worthy campaign on October 17, at 8pm, and will be available to answer questions after the meeting. See you at the meeting. MDS
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