#RaiseTheWage4PWD
The Poor People’s Campaign wraps up 40 days of action; the Fair Labor Standards Act turns 80 — but still leaves behind people with disabilities; how painter Jonathan Kent Adams is using art as a tool for LGBTQ activism in rural Mississippi; and the news of the week ICYMI. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.
This week on Off-Kilter, over the past 40 days, more than 2,000 people have been arrested across the country as part of nonviolent civil disobedience through the Poor People’s Campaign. Many of those activists came to DC this past Saturday to mark the completion of the campaign’s first phase as it continues the work that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who founded the original Poor People’s Campaign began 50 years ago. Rebecca talks with Greg Kaufmann, editor in chief of TalkPoverty.org, about the activists fueling this growing movement and where it goes from here.
Next, this week marks the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which put in place the first-ever federal minimum wage and much more. But 80 years later, key parts of the law remain unchanged — including an obscure provision that allows people with disabilities to be paid pennies on the dollar for their labor. For a look at the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act — and how 80 years on, it’s still leaving workers with disabilities behind — Rebecca speaks with Rabia Belt, an assistant professor of law at Stanford Law School.
Later in the show, as June comes to a close, another Pride month is wrapping up. But the celebrations in places like San Francisco and New York look very different from those in places like rural Mississippi. In a state that helped put Mike Pence and his ideology into the White House, people like painter Jonathan Kent Adams are still finding ways to celebrate themselves and their communities. Rebecca (joined by David Ballard, one of Off-Kilter’s producers, in his on-air debut) talk with Jonathan about how he uses art as a tool for LGBTQ activism, what it was like growing up gay in rural Mississippi — and what marking Pride in the era of Trump looks like there.
But first, the Supreme Court continues its all-out assault on workers with the Janus decision; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rides to victory running on a platform of universal health care, abolishing ICE, and more; Michigan Governor Snyder signs a cruel bill putting 700,000 Michiganders’ Medicaid at risk; and in a rare piece of good news, the Clean Slate Act — first-of-its-kind legislation to enable people with minor criminal records to have their records automatically sealed once they’ve remained crime-free — becomes law in Pennsylvania; and more… Jeremy Slevin returns to unpack the news of the week ICYMI.
This week’s guests:
- Greg Kaufmann, editor-in-chief, TalkPoverty.org
- Rabia Belt, assistant professor of law, Stanford Law School
- Jonathan Kent Adams, painter
- David Ballard, producer of Off-Kilter (in his on-air debut!)
- Jeremy Slevin, director of antipoverty advocacy, Center for American Progress (and faithful sidekick)
For more on this week’s topics:
- Read Greg Kaufmann’s article for The Nation profiling three activists helping to lead the Poor People’s Campaign, “The Poor People’s Campaign Is Just Getting Started.”
- For more on how workers with disabilities are legally able to be paid pennies an hour for their labor, check out the recent #RaiseTheWage4PWD conversation on Twitter, plus Rooted in Rights’ documentary on the subminimum wage, Bottom Dollars
- Check out Jonathan Kent Adams’s art — including his tribute to the Pulse victims — and David Ballard’s essay for TalkPoverty, “We Can Choose How We Remember Pulse”
This week’s transcript
REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off Kilter, the show about poverty, inequality and everything they intersect with, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. Over the past 40 days, more than 2,000 people have been arrested across the country as part of non-violent civil disobedience through the Poor People’s Campaign. Many of those activists came to DC this past Saturday to mark the completion of the campaign’s first phase as it continues the work that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who founded the original Poor People’s Campaign began 50 years ago. I talk with Greg Kaufmann, editor-in-chief of TalkPoverty.org about the activists making up this growing movement and where it goes from here. Next as we say happy 80th birthday to the Fair Labor Standards Act, we must not forget that the watershed law that created the first ever federal minimum wage is still leaving one huge group of workers behind — people with disabilities. I speak with Rabia Belt, assistant professor of law at Stanford Law School. Later in the show we continue to mark pride month, well everyone but Trump anyway; I speak with Jonathan Kent Adams, a painter in Oxford, Mississippi about how he is using art as a tool for LGBT activism and what marking pride in the era of Trump looks like in rural Mississippi. Spoiler; behind the scenes producer David Ballard also makes his debut on Off Kilter as part of that segment.
But first, Jeremy Slevin, the Slevs is back. Jeremy, this is a dark, dark –
JEREMY SLEVIN: It’s a dark day but the bright spot is sitting here with you at the end of it.
VALLAS: Wait, are you, oh I thought —
SLEVIN: This is the brightest spot of the day.
VALLAS: To be clear when you said that I thought that you were referring to yourself as the bright spot and you were like but the bright spot is sitting right here and I was like wow.
SLEVIN: But I am the bright spot.
VALLAS: Wow, but I’m the bright spot and I’ve shown up in your office.
SLEVIN: This conversation.
VALLAS: Uh, wow, so with that out of the way, it’s a dark week for a number of reasons. We also brought some good news, which we can get to but we have to start with the Supreme Court.
SLEVIN: Yeah, two major developments just happened while we’re recording today on Wednesday. The latest is that Justice Anthony Kennedy as I’m sure all of our listeners by the time they’re listening to this know announced his retirement, addressing the president as “My dear Mr. President”, which is the creepiest thing about all of this. This now assuming Trump nominates a conservative justice, which he’s likely to do, makes John Roberts the man who overturned parts of the voting rights act not years ago, the swing vote on the Supreme Court, it will radically alter the policy direction of the country for decades.
VALLAS: It truly, truly terrifying and a conversation we’re going to have in greater detail with Ian Millhiser, our Supreme Court correspondent at some point very soon but it doesn’t stop with the Kennedy news. That actually was right on the heels of the Janus v. AFSCME ruling coming in and that decision was a huge blow to workers.
SLEVIN: Yeah, that’s right. So this is actually been a decades long campaign by the right. They have sought to dismantle unions through any means necessary but one particular means was by creating these so-called ‘right to work’ laws, which it’s a little complex but it basically guts funding for unions, for members who are not officially part of the union but still benefit from collective bargaining. This ruling basically makes all public sector unions, which are the strongest unions now increasingly make up a larger share of union membership, makes them right to work.
VALLAS: Not a phrase we can repeat either because it’s so misleading, just plays right into the other guy’s talking points. It’s anti-union.
SLEVIN: It will gut public unions and it will particularly gut funding for public unions. part of the reason the right has funded a campaign to do this for so long is because unions are traditionally a supporter of the Democratic Party and progressive causes. So this again is not just about Janus v. AFSCME, it is about the political makeup and political power in this country.
VALLAS: And a huge piece of what is often missing in the conversation about what role unions play in that it’s not even just that unions help union workers. Unions help all workers and there’s tremendous evidence finding that unions actually boost all workers’ wages, they’re a really powerful tool for combatting inequality and are associated with strong middle classes. When you actually look at state by state analyses, which is something that some of our colleagues like David Madland have done here at the Center for American Progress. But unions are also associated with just people having a voice on the job, something that maybe doesn’t feel concrete unless you’ve witnessed it or been harmed in some way when you’re on the job. But being able to actually have a voice, being able to collectively bargain, being able to protect yourself and know that you stand shoulder to shoulder with other people is something that is so hugely important for insuring better working conditions, fairer treatment, and particularly of lower wage workers, so a huge blow but one that is not going to be the last chapter that gets written in this book. You can see that from the responses from union workers and workers standing with workers across the country on social media and throughout the news cycle following this horrible news. So I’m sure lots more to come, particularly as we watch the teachers strikes and other amazing bright spots in this movement continue to grow, you’ve not heard the last from workers, that’s for sure.
SLEVIN: Speaking of bright spots —
VALLAS: Are you talking about yourself again, Jeremy?
SLEVIN: I am not this time talking about myself but there was a huge victory for the left last night in New York. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran in a primary in New York’s 14th district against Joseph Crowley, long time member of house, served over ten terms there; was widely rumored to be a successor to democratic leadership. Ocasio-Cortez is 28, was working as a bartender last year and ran on a boldly progressive platform of Medicare expansion, abolishing ICE, a huge progressive platform, she defeated him by double digits. And just a stunning moment and many are comparing it to Cantor, Eric Cantor’s defeat several years ago.
VALLAS: I don’t think that’s a far comparison at all to be totally honest.
SLEVIN: Well, not least to mention they were both corporate backed candidates in this case this is very different.
VALLAS: To give Joe Crowley his due, he’s been a stalwart and a fighter for a lot of progressive causes over the years so I don’t want to sound like we’re picking favorites here but I think what the story of Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise and tremendous win this week really signals is how much people are thirsting for bold economic policies that are going to totally upend the current system that’s allowing tens and hundreds of millions of Americans to struggle to make ends meet. People are hungry for all the policies you just described and more and it’s a giant warning sign I think to Republicans ahead of the midterms because people are finding that even Democrats who have been progressive stalwarts might not be progressive enough for where the appetite currently is.
SLEVIN: I think the only comparison that’s relevant to the Cantor loss to Dave Brat back in I think it was 2014, it was right before a giant wave election. And you only get these kind of big upsets when there’s a huge surge of turnout. In this case it was among a larger female minority district, which only portends to good things come November.
VALLAS: So let’s do a couple of quick updates because we’re running low on time as we always are because we get talking when you get us together, Slevs, it’s something we do, but need folks to know because it’s getting drowned out by a lot else, we’ve covered several times on this show the horrific bill that Michigan Republicans rammed through that legislature to take away Medicaid from jobless workers and workers who can’t get enough hours on their job, that bill unfortunately has now been signed by Governor Snyder and is set to take effect. Hundreds of thousands of Michiganders, as many as 700,000 will be affected and could lose their health insurance. So a little bit of a post script there that’s a return back to the bad news. But Slevs, there’s also a really good piece of news coming out of Pennsylvania that is perhaps the closest to my heart of anything we’ve talked about today.
SLEVIN: Yes, well I’m honored you’re letting me tee it up because this in large thanks to your efforts, this is something you, a policy you created years ago and it’s now come to fruition. This week, the governor of Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf is expected to sign a clean slate bill into law, which will seal minor criminal records after a certain amount of time, will help thousands of people in the state lead a life, a healthy life, a safe life, be able to get work and not be punished because of a past criminal conviction.
VALLAS: Lots to come on this show in the weeks ahead about that bipartisan piece of legislation, which is now becoming a model for other states. We’re watching Michigan, and South Carolina and Colorado all follow in Pennsylvania’s footsteps and we’re able to watch legislation be introduced in congress that would be based on this bill for federal records, a huge deal because currently if you have a federal record, a misdemeanor, you can’t get it sealed, or an arrest record that never even led to a conviction. There’s literally no way to get it sealed. So a really big deal that I’m especially proud of, a huge shoutout to my mentor and big sis Sharon Dietrich who taught me almost everything I know at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia because she’s been my years long partner in crime on this. A lot of people worked on it, lots more to talk about in the weeks ahead but wanted to end on at least one piece of good news in a dark week because as you said, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians with minor criminal records are now going to have a real shot at a second chance. So we’re going to leave it there but don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break.
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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Over the past 40 days, more than 2,000 people have been arrested across the country as they demanded a right to adequate food, housing, healthcare, education, fair wages and other basic necessities. They stopped traffic, petitioned state legislators and engaged in other organizing and non-violent direct action in 40 states and the nation’s capital. Many of these activists were on hand on Saturday to mark the completion of the campaign’s first phase as it continues the work that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who founded the original Poor People’s Campaign began in 1968. With me to share the stories of some of those activists and to share what it was like to be at that culminating event on Saturday is my colleague and friend Greg Kaufmann, the editor-in-chief of TalkPoverty.org. Greg thanks so much for coming back on the show.
GREG KAUFMANN: Great to be with you Rebecca.
VALLAS: It’s been too long.
KAUFMANN: It has been too long.
VALLAS: That’s on me.
KAUFMANN: I guess it is, thanks for finally inviting me back.
[LAUGHTER]
VALLAS: Hope you didn’t read into that in any way that it was not intended.
KAUFMANN: No, I didn’t until this moment, now I’m sitting here thinking about it.
VALLAS: A great way to start this conversation. [LAUGHTER] Shaking your confidence in me and what I think about you.
KAUFMANN: Exactly.
VALLAS: On a serious note, it has been truly amazing to watch the engagement with the Poor People’s Campaign and not just how many people have been getting involved and we’ll talk a little bit about some of who those people are but the amazing media attention that this campaign has gotten so that there actually are headlines almost every single day in mainstream media outlets about poverty, not something you can say in most weeks outside of this 40 days.
KAUFMANN: Right, we didn’t think we’d see that, we haven’t seen that in a while and a lot of us have been hoping for that. I know you have. Yeah the media attention has been great and I’ll tell you, I think it’s been particularly good, local and state coverage because you’ve got campaigns going on now in 40 states and so while there have been New York Times and L.A. Times and Washington Post stories, I think the local coverage is really key to bring the experiences of so many people that are just losing in this economy to the forefront.
VALLAS: I spoke a few weeks back with Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, one of the co-coordinators of the campaign. She’s perhaps the less visible one because everyone knows the Reverend William Barber who became a household name around the Moral Mondays movement. But I spoke with her a few weeks back about the goals of the campaign and listeners will remember that a big part of it is trying to flip the narrative of poverty in America on its head. Away from something that’s about stigma and shame and demonization of quote, unquote “The Poor”, you have to put it in big capital letters with scare quotes to one that is more about the injustice of living in a society as rich as ours where we have 140 million people in this country struggling to make ends meet while we not just watch the rich get richer but actually watch our leaders make the rich richer with their policies. Of course the tax plan is just part of that. Greg, you spoke with several of the activists who have gotten involved in this movement and I feel like some of those conversations, which you’ve actually written up for Talk Poverty and for The Nation, really helped to illustrate how diverse this movement is and really it busts a lot of the myths about who are the quote, “The Poor” and who comes to mind when people think about who might be involved with the Poor People’s Campaign.
KAUFMANN: Yeah, for this piece I wrote recently in the wake of the gathering on the national mall this past Saturday, I spoke with an 83 year old activists from Charleston, South Carolina, I spoke with a mom who is in I believe in her, I’d say mid-40s from West Virginia and I spoke with a woman who’s homeless in New York and simply been priced out of housing. There was no precipitating event, it’s just the housing has gotten too damn expensive and it’s hard to find a place that folks can afford. So it was very interesting because they do, as you mentioned, come from such diverse backgrounds. The woman, Louise Brown, 83 years old in Charleston, she’s actually sort of a bridge, and I write about this in the piece in the original Poor People’s Campaign, because she was one of twelve women, one of twelve African-American women in 1968 who led a strike at a Charleston hospital. And there ended up being 140 days, so they’d gone to the hospital director to talk about wages and the treatment of African-Americans and the director fired them. And soon enough, all their colleagues said we’re not going to work unless you bring them back. And so 140 days, diverse movement and strike and she’s here today in this Poor People’s Campaign saying hey, I’m seeing the same thing now but even worse. It’s not about just people of color now, which is still obviously a real issue, but everybody is overworked and underpaid. How can you do it on $7.25 an hour? So she got involved in the Fight for 15 and the Poor People’s Campaign and was actually arrested in Columbia at the governor’s mansion a couple of weeks ago and she said I was arrested in 1968 and I’m arrested in 2018 and I’m going to do whatever it takes and I’m in this until we win. So that’s one of the stories.
VALLAS: You also spoke with a mom who’s building a whole coalition of moms who are all focused on trying to protect programs that help people make ends meet, the very programs that we’re watching under massive assault at this moment in our nation’s history where 140 million Americans are struggling to make ends meet, people in power are making the rich richer, it doesn’t stop there. They’re also trying to dismantle health care and food and housing and basically everything that helps anyone make ends meet and she’s actually on the front lines of trying to stop that from happening.
KAUFMANN: Yeah, Mary-Jo Hutchison in Wheeling, West Virginia and she’s a mom of two girls, ages 11 and 14, I’m sorry, Amy-Jo Hutchison, I’m sorry about that. She has a bachelor’s degree, she was a Head Start teacher and now she has a job as an organizer and she’s not needing assistance right now but she said look, there are just times when you need it when times are tough. And certainly in West Virginia where they’ve just hemorrhaged so many jobs and so she’s quite interesting. She’s focused on building a coalition of low-income mothers who can be mobilized to protect these programs that help us get our basic needs met. And so she’s also interesting because she’s talking to a lot of Trump voters and she’s saying look, I get it, he promised that coal was going to come back, he was going to bring it back and you’ve been, she uses the word hoodwinked. And so she says it doesn’t matter who you voted for, we’re all in this together, let’s work together now to protect these things that most of us as you’ve pointed out in this show will need at some point during our lifetime so she’s working in 20 of 55 West Virginia counties and making good headway and it’s really timely and important, obviously.
VALLAS: And then a third person that you spoke with, you mentioned has become recently homeless, not something that has been the story of her life, something that happened when she got priced out of housing in New York.
KAUFMANN: Yes, Gigi Morgan is in Harlem, and she says she’s just watched particularly people of color but low wage workers generally being priced out of communities that they’ve lived in since their childhood in some cases. And so she’s been a shelter for about a year now I believe, she said she’s around 50, she said I’m around the same age as you and I’m around 50 but Gigi is working with a group with the Poor People’s Campaign, also with this group called Vocal New York that’s focused on trying to address this affordable housing crisis and so they’re lobbying hard to try to get the carried interest loophole, which obviously a lot of people at the federal level have been working on, trying to close that. That benefits millionaires and billionaires fairly exclusively I think. She’s trying to get something, I believe it’s called the Home Support Grant which is a lot of state politicians have signed onto it, a lot of local New York advocacy groups that would just help people make rent, but she’s very interesting because she is trying, well not trying, she is organizing homeless people and saying look, you have a voice and you have a vote. And I think in this time when we’re seeing the country go in a direction that most, the majority generally clearly doesn’t want, the fact that the Poor People’s Campaign is focused also on voter registration and voter mobilization and that’s what Gigi is doing is really important and critical.
VALLAS: In the last minute or so that I have with you, Greg you before you founded, became the editor-in-chief of TalkPoverty.org, you really were one of the only poverty reporters in the country who that was really your beat, you were the poverty reporter for The Nation. I’m curious to hear you reflect on seeing this much media coverage on poverty and where you think things are going to go from here now that these 40 days have come to a close.
KAUFMANN: That’s a great question. Poverty coverage generally has improved since I became The Nation’s poverty correspondent in 2012 I believe it was. We definitely get a lot better coverage on the working poor and so-called working poor in generally, low wage work, but a lot of these voices that are getting coverage now in the Poor People’s Campaign, whether you’re talking about a homeless person like Gigi, or an elderly person who’s working as an activist, a labor activist or somebody organizing moms to protect the programs that we all need at different times, that’s getting more attention I think. And so I’m cautiously optimistic, I think the campaign’s off to a great start and I think they have the right idea of building these movements in states rather than just trying to say hey, we’re going to have a march in DC, they’re really building up the infrastructure and the people in the states themselves.
VALLAS: And it’s been wonderful to watch, it’s been wonderful to speak with people involved in it and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here but could not be more timely, especially in a week where Supreme Court decisions are yet another series of assaults on workers and we’ll seen what happens in a post-Kennedy Supreme Court as well, lots to talk about there. Greg Kaufmann is the editor-in-chief of TalkPoverty.org, formerly the poverty correspondent at The Nation and a dear friend and colleague of mine who I need to have on this show more often so Greg, I’ll have you back soon.
KAUFMANN: It’s a pleasure being here, Thanks Rebecca.
VALLAS: Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.
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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week marks the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which put in place the first ever federal minimum wage and much more. But 80 years later, key parts of the law remain unchanged, including an obscure provision that allows people with disabilities to be paid pennies on the dollar for their labor. To catch up on the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act and how it’s still leaving workers with disabilities behind 80 years later, I spoke with Rabia Belt, a assistant professor of law at Stanford Law School, let’s take a listen.
Rabia, thanks so much for joining the show.
RABIA BELT: Thank you for having me.
VALLAS: So 80 years since the Fair Labor Standards Act was put into law, so happy birthday FLSA but before we get too much farther along I think it’s helpful for people to even know what that law meant. So what was in FLSA 80 years ago?
BELT: Well the FLSA is one of those laws that governs a lot of what we do but people may not necessarily know about it. So it created the right to a minimum wage, it created the right to time and a half overtime pay when people work over 40 hours a week, it prohibited child labor and [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] who was the president that enacted it say that it was the most important aspect of the New Deal after establishing Social Security.
VALLAS: So now take us closer to present day. It’s been 80 years, a lot has changed and been updated about the law. We’ve seen the minimum wage increase overtime, we’ve also see additional classes of people get protected by the minimum wage in particular, important improvements for home care workers, for agricultural workers. But take us to present day with some of what you think are the important changes that have happened over time.
BELT: Well, there are certainly, as you said, things that have improved with the act since it was enacted 80 years ago. So that for example, the minimum wage has been raised, that we’ve looked to equal pay for equal work, that we extended protection to migrant workers and seasonal agricultural workers. But the big group that is not protected still are people with disabilities, the largest minority group in the country and the reason for that is a particular section of the act, Section 14(c), and what this does is that it excludes disabled people from a provision requiring the payment of minimum wages. Which means that employers can employ people who can make as little as $0.22 an hour for their work and not face legal sanctions.
VALLAS: So make that a little bit more concrete. People may be listening right now and hearing, wait a second, what? It’s 2018 and people with disabilities can legally be paid something like a quarter or even less an hour for their work? How can that, for all the people at home listening and wondering this question, how can that possibly be legal?
BELT: Well initially it was for benevolent reasons. There was this idea that we wanted to get people with disabilities working and to get them into the labor force, but their assumptions that people with disabilities were not as productive as non-disabled people. So they wanted to make sure that in order for people with disabilities to be employed, that they did price them out of the labor force. So they allowed employers to set really low wage markers. The problem is though that these assumptions about the productivity of people with disabilities are really overstated based on stereotypes and poor standards. So people with disabilities, even though they are working, even though we now have the idea based on the disability rights movement that people with disabilities should be full-fledged participants in American society, there’s still left out of employment the way that their non-disabled neighbors are.
VALLAS: So a lot of the people who are workers with disabilities who are paid the sub-minimum wage are people with intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, but it’s actually even more diverse, the array of folks who are legal still paid cents on the hour for their labor and then estimates range wildly for how many people this may currently apply to, somewhere between 200 to 400 some thousand Americans paid sub-minimum wages in recent years. But it’s now just their wages that are often criticized and duly and justifiably for all the reasons you just described. It’s also in some cases the types of working conditions that they face in places that are often referred to as sheltered workshops.
BELT: Right, so the sheltered workshop program is a program where there are supervised, or at least they’re supposed to be supervised workplaces designed for people with disabilities. And they are supposed to be in particular designed for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. The problem is though that there’s not a lot of oversight of these sheltered workshops. The methods used to determine the wages can be easily manipulated, it can be really hard for people who are within these workshops to exit the workshops and go into the regular labor force and receive training and they’re often either make work programs where people are doing things that aren’t really real labor, or they are being exploited and underpaid for labor where they should receive more wages but they’re unable to obtain that just because of their disability status.
VALLAS: Now there’s been a growing movement to move past paying people sub-minimum wages just because they are people with disabilities. It’s taken a lot of time. We’re talking about 80 years now that this has been the law of the land here in the United States of America. Now it’s 2018 and we’re to a place where both the Democratic Party platform and notably the Repulican Party platform includes nods to phasing out the sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities. This is something with bipartisan momentum that we’ve started to see in congress. Where do you see things heading from here and what are the solutions that you would focus our listeners on for moving past this unfair and discriminatory practice?
BELT: Well hopefully we’re moving to the point where 14(c) is abolished wholesale. The rationale for its inclusion in the law is outdated and we should be moving much more towards full inclusion, participation of people with disabilities in the work force. It could be difficult though because there might be some push back. So for one thing, sheltered workshops can be big business. It could be pretty good for an employer to be able to employ people and not pay them a lot of money. And then on the other hand there is some people in the disability community who wish to see sheltered workshops continue. They are often family members of people with disabilities that appreciate the fact that their loved ones can go to a workshop during the day and argue that they’re able to do something that makes them feel good about themselves. There’s a real issue here. So we don’t have in this country adequate enough respite care or day care for people who need that type of support. And sometimes family members use sheltered workshops as a way to have that breathing room. But there’s other ways that we can do that other than a sheltered workshop and we should think more in terms of supporting people and giving that type of care taking as opposed to using labor law to receive that type of benefit or resource. That push by family members is receding. So people who are family members of younger people with disabilities are less likely to support the sheltered workshop programs and 14(c) in generally. So hopefully we’re moving to a place where the next birthday that we have for the FLSA will not include 14(c)
VALLAS: Well here’s hoping 81 certainly rings that in. Rabia Belt is an assistant professor at law at Stanford Law School. Rabia, thank you so much for taking the time to bring us up to speed on 80 years of labor law and where people with disabilities are still left out.
BELT: Thank you.
VALLAS: Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.
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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. As June comes to a close, another Pride Month is rapping up. But those celebrations in places like San Francisco or New York are very different from a vast majority of towns and cities in the country, places like rural Mississippi. In a state that helped put Mike Pence and his ideology in the White House, people like painter Jonathan Kent Adams are still finding ways to celebrate themselves and their communities. As we wrap up Pride Month I’m thrilled to have Jonathan on the show to talk about his art and activism in the Trump era. Growing up gay in rural Mississippi and why chose to stay. I’m also thrilled to have David Ballard, one of the producers who makes Off Kilter happen week to week behind the scenes join us for this conversation as a gay man who also grew up in the south and who most recently authored an essay for Talk Poverty titled “We Can Choose How We Remember Pulse”. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining the show.
JONATHAN KENT ADAMS: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.
VALLAS: And David, thank you so much for joining the show on air.
DAVID BALLARD: It’s very strange but I’m happy to be here.
VALLAS: Strange it may be but an exciting radio debut, I’m so thrilled to be able to witness and be part of. So Jonathan, to go over to you first, you’re an artist today and I want to talk very much about your art and your activism but I also want to back up and ask you to tell a little bit of your experience growing up in rural Mississippi as a gay man, what that was ike.
ADAMS: Well, growing up, I don’t even think I knew the word ‘gay’ when I was younger. And I think mostly growing up I felt very out of place. I was always looking for a way to belong but always realized the types of molds that people were trying to make me fit into. So when I was younger I didn’t do a lot of sports and I went to a very small school and most of the guys did sports and I always felt like, this disconnect. And then I started realizing that I was attracted to guys too around middle school. And I didn’t tell anybody and I would have girlfriends and do all of these things to mask who I knew that I was because, and it led to me being basically very insecure. But another layer of that was that I was very well liked among a lot of my friends. At school I was the president of my class in high school and all these people who were close to me and felt they knew me but then I was withholding something because I didn’t know how to tell people that I’m attracted to guys, I’m gay. And it didn’t take until, I guess when I came to college I had the opportunity to go to New York and take a painting class. And so I went and I saw gay people for the first time holding hands in parks in New York.
I was going to a Catholic church near Greenwich Village and I saw a gay couple in the church. And growing up, Christianity was a huge part of who I am and it still is. And in my closest groups of friends, they’re Christians as well and I always knew what they thought about gay people and we started talking about it when I was in college. And when I went to New York I just felt this confliction like oh my God, there’s this possibility of this whole world that I’ve never known about and I had to come home and I started reading books about gay Christians. I talked to teachers at the University of Mississippi about that possibility for me. And I went through this whole process of telling all these Christian friends that hey, I’m gay and I want to one day be in a relationship with another man and that was probably the hardest part of coming out in the south for me because I lost a lot of my community. I was part of a group called Young Lives and I got kicked out when I came out for being gay. And so people that I surrounded myself with and that were my family kind of pushed me out. And not to say that some people didn’t try to defend me and be like, Jonathan [INAUDIBLE], but I felt very alienated and I was very depressed that whole summer. That’s what, to give you an idea of what it was like for me to come out in the south was just I never really felt that I had people telling me that it was a possibility. And by the time that I did know that gay people existed it was always something bad, because it would come from the churches I went to or my friend group.
VALLAS: And a big part of what Pride Month is about is about creating and celebrating community for LGBTQ folks. You are describing a situation where you had the opposite of community where you grew up and were actually being pushed out of the community centers that you were part of because you were gay. But a lot of what you’ve done in the years since has been to actually create community and you actually started a non-profit organization called Out Oxford, that was a big part of what you were trying to do. Would you tell a little bit of the story behind founding that organization and what that was all about?
ADAMS: Yes. So knowing all the stuff about not feeling [INAUDIBLE], I just felt it was important to stay here in Mississippi and give people a [INAUDIBLE]. They might hear their family say that we’ll kick you out if you’re gay or hear their church tell people they’re going to hell but maybe by me staying and other queer people staying, younger people or older people can be like hey, there’s more people like me in Mississippi, so my boyfriend and I decided that we would start this organization that would have community events. So we do things like make cards for [INAUDIBLE] and we give them to good friends [INAUDIBLE] cards, give them to nursing homes on Valentine’s Day. We do yoga days in the park and we’ve helped co-host the pride parades in Oxford, Mississippi and this year was the third year that that happened. It’s been really amazing because you hear me being like I felt so alone, I felt alienated and then all these people showed up to the parade. And you’re like crying because you’re like wow, this is in Mississippi and there are 200 to 300 people cheering as you march the streets of Oxford, Mississippi. And I get that Oxford is in a university, that it brings people that are more progressive in the way they see the world. But it’s a huge thing and I think as a kid growing up in Mississippi and not thinking that this is possible.
VALLAS: And staying with you for just a moment and then I want to bring David into this conversation as well, you’ve ended up bringing your sexuality into your art as well. And that’s a big part of the art that you produce and actually a lot of your art has focused around gay life itself. How have you used art to advance this cause as well?
ADAMS: I knew that I [INAUDIBLE] my guts, something that just comes naturally to me, kind of like I’m attracted to guys, it comes naturally. And I knew that if I was going to be in Mississippi and if I was going to make art for a living I needed to use that platform to communicate to the people in this community about being gay, because it’s the most honest way that I have to give people a lense into my life. And so that’s why I really wanted my art to communicate what it’s like to be me. And I think it’s been important for people to see that not all of my work is erotic or is sexual in nature but it’s more about what it’s like for me to be a human, what it’s like for me to feel alienated. Not, I mean the queer community are not the only group of people that feel alienated all the time. You could see that isolation or solitude in my work and connect to it in your own way and it has nothing to do with someone being a queer person but it might. So I’ve tried to just use my art as an avenue for people to see me and maybe see what it’s like for me to grow up here.
VALLAS: Now David, you grew up in Orlando so you also grew up in the south but you had a very different experience and one that caused you to feel from a pretty young age that unlike Jonathan, you needed to get the hell out and that was something you were really determined to do.
BALLARD: Yeah, it’s a different perspective. I feel like of course, the queer community is not a monolith. All kinds of people come from different backgrounds, they come from different families. There’s a lot of people who have great relationships with their family and I love my family, if anybody is listening I love them dearly and they love me and I recognize that.
VALLAS: Mom, if you’re listening.
[LAUGHTER]
BALLARD: But I also recognize, I felt like I recently moved away from home for the first time really permanently and I felt for the first time that there was this real, not only like a literal space between myself and my hometown but there was a psychic space where I could finally feel like ok, there’s not this old life that I was living before that I have to be reminded of everytime I go drive by the school that I went to for 8 years or go by the Publix that I went to, the grocery store that I shopped for my entire life. All those different reminders are gone and it’s created a space for me to be able to experiment and to figure out who I am. And because one thing that I think is very interesting about the queer experience is that people go through an adolescence at different times. My version of the adolescence that people have when they’re 12 and 13 and a lot of straight people are all in middle school and they’re all being very awkward and weird and everybody’s going through these hormonal changes together and they feel this open space to be able to do that, that doesn’t necessarily happen with a lot of gay people. A lot of people feel like Jonathan was talking about, the idea that he was very well liked, he felt still these people don’t really know me as I know I really am and I haven’t accepted and I felt the same way when I was in high school. I didn’t come out until I was, I didn’t come out until after college. It took me a long time to get to that point to be able to be comfortable sharing that part of myself. So I felt that need for real literally space to kind of give myself, my mind some space to think about this and what I can be, what I can’t be, all those kinds of different permutations. I am curious Johanthan thought, because it’s one thing to, there’s a lot of people who are on the surface very OK with the gay community and they’re like oh yeah, I’m fine with them, I’m great with it. But I think it’s another thing to go and see pieces of art and see this very clear and strong perspective that you have in your art that shows gay life and shows what that is like. I’m curious if people have been, what the reaction has been to your art specifically in Mississippi when you’ve been showing it around Oxford or wherever else you can go in Mississippi.
ADAMS: For the most part David, it’s been very well received. I don’t know. I feel like some people maybe say I play it safe in the visual language that I use, but that’s who I am to my core anyway so I’m not going to –
BALLARD: Right.
ADAMS: You know, make some over-sexual charged piece that would offend anyone because it’s just not the way I operate as a person in any area of my life.
BALLARD: Mhm.
ADAMS: And so I’ve never had someone just be like oh my God, I can’t look at your work. There has been, when I did the Pulse tribute at the university, so there was this glass window that had advertisements, posters for it with all these hearts saying you’re loved and there were rainbow flags and I remember there was a time where students, because it was in the student union on campus, and people had flipped a lot of the stuff upside down and I remember a group of guys heckling and I don’t know, saying ‘queers’ to people walking in. But those same people came back the next day and I recognized them and I asked one of the guys to come in and just look. And when they came in, one of the guys was basically crying. I saw him shed a tear. And I don’t know, for me it’s OK when people, I don’t think, as long as people will give art the opportunity to change them and be open-minded to it I think that’s where healing happens. That’s what my hope is for my art. I don’t want to offend people by imagery that I use to, I don’t want to see, I want to subtly lure people in to be changed. And with the Pulse tribute, they had to walk into a room with tons of portraits staring them in the face at eye level, hanging, suspended in the air as the words of the names of the victims were being read aloud, telling you about them and you had to, you turned around through the exhibit you had to read their stories behind each portrait. So it was very emotionally intense.
BALLARD: Mhm.
ADAMS: And so it was hard not to walk in that space and feel the weight of what had happened.
BALLARD: Mhm.
ADAMS: So yeah, I don’t really have a story about someone being offended by what I do. People have reported images online that I’ve posted on my Facebook or Instagram, but to my face I’ve never had anything with my art.
VALLAS: And Jonathan, you’re describing your portrait series that you did of the victims of the Pulse attack, folks will remember the horrible Pulse shooting, it was a shooting at a nightclub in Orlando of course where 49 people were killed. It happened two [years] ago, so June this month is not just marking Pride Month, it is also marking the two year anniversary of that horrific mass shooting that targeted gay people because it was a popular gay nightclub where people could go and actually find some level of community. David, your essay that I referenced up top that you wrote for Talk Poverty about how we can choose how we can remember Pulse pointed out that the memorial that’s been erected in Orlando, to the Pulse victims really is devoid of any references to or images the victims themselves and rises one level above that to be feelings of love and general positivity, which is what a lot of people seem to have been saying they wanted when they were polled quite literally for what the memorial should be. It’s a very different approach to the kind of memorial that Jonathan was just describing that he himself has erected through his art.
BALLARD: Yeah, I think that, if you read the piece I think I make my opinions pretty clear that I’m on the side of Jonathan in this debate. That I just don’t think that public memorials especially when they are memorializing violence against marginalized communities should be comforting. You should not go here and feel good about how the community came together in the attack, I think you should go there and you should mourn the fact that 49 people were murdered. And 49 people who are mostly queer and mostly people of color to communities that especially in the south have a real history of being subjugated to violence. I think that like Jonathan was talking about, when you going through his exhibit, and you have to, like he said, you’re eye level with the faces of the people who were murdered, you’re hearing their stories, you’re hearing their names. It’s focusing on the fact that these people were targeted specifically because they were at a queer club. And I mentioned this in the piece, that this club, I try not to be bitter. I try to be respectful and I do genuinely appreciate the community’s response. It was a lot of people who showed a lot of love and they came together and I appreciate that but I don’t think the public memorial is the place to talk about that. Because this place, I don’t know, it started, it opened in the early to mid 2000s and it’s not downtown. I mentioned this in the piece, it is not downtown. It is on the outskirts, it wasn’t supposed to be downtown because they didn’t want it to be downtown because it was the queer club. And now in the aftermath we see all these people who previously are the ones who pushed it to the outskirts and now talking about how much they love this place and they’re very happy that they all came together and they’re very sad about it and I appreciate that, and I don’t doubt those feelings. But if the goal is to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn’t keep happening, that this violence doesn’t keep getting perpetuated then what you have to do is interrogate yourself and interrogate all of our own roles in this even happening in the first place. And I think a public memorial and art in general like Jonathan’s is a really great way to start that kind of conversation. Like he said, the homophobic men on his campus, they’re sitting in and they’re shedding tears, they’re crying because art does have this very specific way to reach people where logic or facts or some kind of argument maybe won’t reach them.
VALLAS: Jonathan, I want to read some of the incredibly poignant words that you wrote that actually appear on your website with the portrait series so folks can actually look at these pictures and we’ll have a link on our nerdy syllabus page and anyone who wants to take a look but you write, “After the Orlando shooting I was emotionally moved to respond. I wanted to know more able the victims. I kept revisiting the pain so I would not be numb to the challenges the LGBTQ community faces. I also wanted you and me to see their faces and know their names.” And you continue that your hope is that these portraits will do that and will help honor their lives forever. Would love to talk a little bit more about what you were thinking and hoping in pulling this portrait series together and how you see it contrasting with what David just described about the official Pulse memorial in Orlando.
ADAMS: Well for me, one I didn’t know that it would become something that would be displayed in a public space. For me, it has always been about healing for myself, a way that I deal with my own pain. And when this happened, I immediately knew I want to in whatever way I can be able to go to that place of pain that so many people are feeling in our community and I think the hardest part for me was knowing that I was just dealing with art supplies and stories of people but there were real people dealing with actual loss of people that were with them everyday. And just having to go to those stories and get to know that person, I think I remember, one of the victims was named Christopher and him and his boyfriend both died. And I think Christopher did work for the LGBT community for a non-profit and his story resonated with me because of my relationship with my boyfriend. I just remember weeping about doing his portrait and for me I just wanted their stories to be told and I wanted people [INAUDIBLE] the portraits, I posted on Instagram and people could read about them and see their humanity like David was saying and relate to them. And I think that’s what I wanted to happen and then someone at the university reached out and said we should make this something that more people could see on a physical level. So for me, it started out as just something I was doing to help me like I said in that part that you [read] not be numb to what this actually means because there were other shootings prior to this shooting, and there have been shootings since Pulse. And I feel like they’re constantly, especially if you get somewhere like [INAUDIBLE] it’s shooting after shooting and like damn, how long does this have to happen for us to rise up? And I don’t know, the exhibit and the portraits were just my response, I don’t want to just sit back, I want to go to this place of pain and I want other people to be there too.
VALLAS: In the last minute or so that I have with both of you, would just love to offer you both the opportunity to share any closing thoughts about what pride means to you, especially in the era of Trump and what pride is feeling like in places not just like San Francisco and New York and D.C. but in places like rural Mississippi and Jonathan, I’ll go to you first.
ADAMS: I think pride to me is really learning to grow into yourself. And I know that we’re specifically speaking of the queer community right now but I think anyone, most people struggle with growing into themselves. And there lots of privileges that lots of people have. I have a lot of privilege being white, middle class and having a loving family in Mississippi. And I know that a lot of people in Mississippi don’t have that. And that’s one of the reasons that I’ve also [INAUDIBLE] to be here because there are people that don’t have the privileges that I have. And when, I remember we’ve had meetings throughout Oxford, just talking to different friends and they’re like my family kicked me out, not mine but my friends and they should leave. If people don’t have support in places, I think it’s OK to leave places like David has. I have a family that loves me and I have an anchor here to help me be help for someone that might not. And so I think I’m proud to just be here and be who I am and I’m learning to grow into myself. I feel like I’ve been planted here for a reason. And as hard as it may be, there are times when people drive around the square in Oxford and yell “faggots” at me and my boyfriend and it makes me angry, it makes me sad, it makes me sad that most of the churches here are homophobic. It makes me sad that there are people all the time whose families kicked them out of their homes because they’re Christians. All that stuff breaks my heart and that’s why I want to be here, for people to know that there are people fighting for queer people in the south and if we all leave it’s never going to change.
VALLAS: And David, you’re going to get the final word.
BALLARD: Ok, no pressure. Pride to me, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this month in the last year and a half since the election. It’s something that I want to celebrate, and I want to celebrate the fact that there are a lot of people who’ve gone through a lot of stuff to get to the point where they feel comfortable marching in the street with a rainbow flag draped around them. And that’s incredibly brave and courageous and that should be celebrate. And I also think that pride started as a riot, it started as a riot at Stonewall and it was a call for not just acceptable but I think celebration. The idea that I don’t just want you to accept that I exist, I want you to be OK with the fact that I’m going to be vocal about it and I’m going to be happy about my existence. That’s not something I could have said three years ago but I can say that now and I know that there’s so many other people who don’t have that. They haven’t had that growth yet. And there’s so many people who still are in the closet and they’re still too scared to go to a pride parade and so that visibility is fantastic and is good but I think it should be, I guess I don’t know what the word is, my words are leaving me right now, but I think that we have to remember that there’s still a long way to go. And like Jonathan said, part of that is being in these spaces like New York and DC and San Francisco but a big part of it is also staying in Mississippi. And it’s me staying connected to Orlando, and understanding that that’s my hometown, it will always be my hometown and I love that place very much and I want it to change. So pride I think is a call to action to try to be a part of that change so that people don’t have the same experience I did growing up, like Jonathan did growing up and I hope that’s able to happen soon.
VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Jonathan Kent Adams, he is a painter in rural Mississippi, I’ve also been speaking with David Ballard, one of the producers behind the scenes who makes Off Kilter happen week to week, who is the author of an essay on Talk Poverty called “We Can Choose How We Remember Pulse”. You can find that as well as a link to Jonathan Kent Adams’ fantastic art on our nerdy syllabus page as I’m sure you expected. Thanks to both of you for taking the time and for sharing your own personal stories with our listeners.
BALLARD: Thanks for having us.
ADAMS: Thank you so much.
VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.
This program aired on June 28th, 2018
