Articles

WP_Post Object
(
    [ID] => 7357
    [post_author] => 15
    [post_date] => 2024-10-25 17:34:53
    [post_date_gmt] => 2024-10-25 17:34:53
    [post_content] => 
Why you should pay attention to Arizona's Proposition 314 this election.



This article is a part of Down-Ballot, a weeklong series highlighting state measures worth watching in the 2024 United States election.



Emily Sotelo Estrada knows firsthand the ramifications of letting local police departments enforce federal immigration laws.



She was seven years old when her father was supposed to pick her up from school one day but never arrived. Later, she discovered he’d been taken into custody by local law enforcement after a traffic stop. Her father spent almost five months separated from his family before they were eventually reunited. 



“It’s a really hard thing to understand as a child that, because your parents don't have proper documentation, that they’re gone,” says Sotelo Estrada, who grew up in Prescott, Arizona, about an hour and a half north of Phoenix. “It’s something that’s really hard and traumatic for children and because of that, I grew up in fear of law enforcement.”



Sotelo Estrada’s parents are immigrants from Mexico, and her father had been arrested after the 2010 passage of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070—colloquially known as the “show me your papers” law—which allowed local and state law enforcement agencies to ask for proof of citizenship if they suspected someone was in the country without authorized documentation. It was one of the strictest anti-immigration laws in the country, and its passage led to both national and international outcry, including marches and boycotts.



Sotelo Estrada, 20, now attends Arizona State University, and is one of many activists throughout the state speaking out against a new measure—Proposition 314—that will ask voters to once again let the state enforce federal immigration laws. She is currently an Arizona’s Future Fellow with Aliento, a youth-led organization that advocates for undocumented immigrants, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and families with mixed immigration statuses within their household. Through this leadership development program, she’s been working to educate voters on the potential effects of the proposition, hosting voter registration drives, and conducting outreach campaigns within her community and on college campuses.



If passed, Proposition 314 would make it a state crime for migrants to enter the country at any location that’s not a port of entry, allow state and local police to arrest noncitizens who have entered the country illegally, and allow state judges to order deportations. The proposition would also criminalize migrants who knowingly submit false documentation when applying for federal, state, or local public benefits, as well as those who submit false information or documents to an employer to avoid detection of employment eligibility under the E-Verify program. (E-Verify is an online system that allows employers to confirm whether their employees can work in the United States.) If passed, the law would also enact certain penalties, such as an additional five years added to any prison sentence for anyone who knowingly sells fentanyl that was smuggled into the United States and causes the death of another person. 



The Republican-controlled Arizona State Legislature passed a similar law in March during the legislative session, but Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the measure. At the time, Hobbs said the bill would hurt businesses and communities around the state while overburdening law enforcement and potentially attracting lawsuits.



The state legislature referred the measure to the November ballot in June, and in August, the Arizona Supreme Court helped the proposition clear a final hurdle after it rejected a legal challenge from Latino advocacy groups who questioned the constitutionality of the law, allowing it to remain on the ballot.



In the leadup to the election, Proposition 314 has drawn the ire of activists, civic groups, religious leaders, and even some law enforcement personnel, who view the measure as an unfunded mandate that could pack the state’s prisons, overwhelm police and sheriff’s departments, promote racial profiling, and instill fear into immigrant communities throughout the state. 



“It’s a huge overreach in regard to law enforcement overstepping boundaries, leading up to potential racial profiling,” says Alicia Contreras, executive director of Corazón Arizona, an interfaith grassroots organization that has spoken out against the proposition. “It really puts extreme risk and harm in our community, and when we talk about our communities, that’s our Black, brown, [and] indigenous people of color in [our] community.”



Corazón Arizona has worked with a coalition of other groups to conduct voter registration drives, host a press conference, engage the community through town halls and roundtable conversations, and work with faith leaders to help educate their congregations, Contreras says. She believes the work will continue beyond election day.



“Nov. 5 is not the end,” she said. “We’re going to continue to fight with our communities, organize with our communities, and stand up to unjust laws.”



Contreras referred to the proposition as “SB 1070 on steroids,” saying it could cause further division within communities across the state and harm Arizona’s most vulnerable populations.



“It is not going to support us, and, to be clear, it does nothing to improve our immigration system,” says Contreras, who organized and protested against SB 1070 14 years ago.



Arizona recently ranked as the state with the highest number of migrant crossings, although the number of crossings along the Mexico border have plummeted after President Joe Biden enacted asylum restrictions this summer. Biden implemented the restrictions at a time when more Americans, including Democrats, have become more resistant to immigration. 



In Arizona, a poll released in September by Noble Predictive Insights showed that Arizona voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 314, with 63% saying they would support it and 16% saying they would vote in opposition to the measure. However, if passed by voters, Proposition 314 wouldn’t become law unless a similar measure in Texas, Senate Bill 4, is deemed constitutional. The Texas law, which was passed by its state legislature in 2023, has been blocked due to legal challenges.



The state’s Republicans have continually described the arrival of migrants as an “invasion,” with Republican State Sen. John Kavanagh saying during a televised debate last month that the proposition would attempt to address problems caused by the “tsunami of illegal immigrants.”



According to Kavanagh, Proposition 314 is supposed to target the “worst of the worst” such as drug smugglers, human smugglers, those on the terrorist watchlist, and others who wouldn’t qualify for asylum.



Kavanagh, who supported SB 1070 and defended the controversial law during the debate, said this measure is supposedly different because of its “laser beam” focus on stopping criminals and smugglers, instead of authorizing law enforcement to conduct roundups of migrants.



Democratic State Rep. Analise Ortiz called the proposition “unconstitutional” and a “waste of your tax dollars” during the debate with Kavanaugh. She also argued that it wouldn't “secure the border” and invoked its similarities to New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy, turning law enforcement and civil servants into immigration agents without the financial backing. 



Sotelo Estrada, meanwhile, only remembers the trauma of not seeing her dad for months, and has expressed fear that children and their families could experience the same hardships if this proposition is approved by voters.



“No matter your immigration status, it’s going to impact so many different families within the state of Arizona,” she says. “Our biggest thing is we don’t want children to grow up in fear.”

    [post_title] => When Local Police Enforce Federal Immigration
    [post_excerpt] => Why you should pay attention to Arizona's Proposition 314 this election.
    [post_status] => publish
    [comment_status] => closed
    [ping_status] => closed
    [post_password] => 
    [post_name] => arizona-proposition-314-immigration-border-control-patrol-law-enforcement-deportation-law-united-states-election-2024
    [to_ping] => 
    [pinged] => 
    [post_modified] => 2024-10-25 17:34:55
    [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-10-25 17:34:55
    [post_content_filtered] => 
    [post_parent] => 0
    [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7357
    [menu_order] => 0
    [post_type] => post
    [post_mime_type] => 
    [comment_count] => 0
    [filter] => raw
)

WP_Post Object
(
    [ID] => 7341
    [post_author] => 15
    [post_date] => 2024-10-24 07:12:28
    [post_date_gmt] => 2024-10-24 07:12:28
    [post_content] => 
Why you should pay attention to Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment this election.



This article is a part of Down-Ballot, a weeklong series highlighting state measures worth watching in the 2024 United States election.



While wind energy production in the Gulf of Mexico is still a nascent industry, Louisiana voters will soon decide whether potential royalties from offshore renewables should be spent on protecting and restoring the state’s sinking coastline.



Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s, in large part because of the construction of levees along the Mississippi River meant to prevent flooding, which have blocked sand and mud carried by the river from replenishing the coast. Canals dredged through the marsh by oil and gas exploration companies and sea level rise have also contributed to the state’s land loss. As the coast has eroded, communities have retreated inland, landmarks have been wiped off the map, and the threat of hurricane storm surge has increased. Native American communities once driven to the coast by white settlers are now among the most vulnerable to storms and sea level rise. Indigenous fishing villages like Grand Bayou, Isle de Jean Charles and Pointe-au-Chien have also been left outside of the federal levee system. Their populations have dwindled as frequent hurricanes have destroyed their homes and saltwater intrusion has made it difficult to grow crops.



“We’re talking about part of the country not being here anymore because of man made environmental change,” says Charles Sutcliffe, a resilience, climate, and coastal policy specialist for the National Wildlife Federation. And energy production in the Gulf of Mexico depends on the people and ports along Louisiana’s coast, he explains. 



As one potential solution, a November 5 ballot measure asks voters, “Do you support an amendment to require that federal revenues received by the state generated from Outer Continental Shelf alternative or renewable energy production be deposited into the Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund?” The Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund at the center of the measure is a trust fund that the state’s constitution says must be spent on projects in line with Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan, a roadmap of projects aimed at protecting residents from flooding and restoring the state’s wetlands. The plan includes a $2.9 billion project to unleash the Mississippi River into degrading wetlands downriver of New Orleans and a $1.9 billion project to elevate thousands of flood-prone homes. Currently, a portion of the royalties from offshore oil and gas production is already directed to the state’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan. If passed, the measure would also direct royalties from alternative energy production towards the same efforts. 



State Rep. Joseph Orgeron introduced the Constitutional amendment in the legislature this spring. He said he’s been asked whether the measure is putting the cart before the horse, since there isn’t a federal law yet that directs the Department of the Treasury to share offshore renewable royalties with states like there is for offshore oil and gas. 



“Louisiana is moving from only oil and gas to any energy,” Orgeron says. “If there are federal revenues to be received from them we would like those to also be dedicated to the Coastal Restoration Fund.”



The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) allocates a portion of the revenue from oil and gas pulled from federal waters of the Gulf to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Before former Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) pushed to get GOMESA passed in 2006, Louisiana lawmakers created state legislation to dedicate revenue from offshore oil and gas to coastal protection and restoration, Orgeron noted. 



“It would have been difficult for her to pass that legislation if it was not for her state legislature the year before making this legislation,” he says. “Mary Landrieu used that to go to Congress and say that we’re not going to use it on splash parks and butterfly museums.”



According to Oregron, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is following Landriue’s footsteps with his efforts to get a slice of the royalties from offshore renewables sent to states. Sen. Cassidy introduced legislation last year that would send 37.5% of offshore wind revenue to states adjacent to offshore wind farms. The bill has bipartisan support and is expected to pass out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee next month, says Molly Block, Senator Bill Cassidy’s Communications Director. As written, the bill would also lift a cap on the amount of revenue states receive through GOMESA.



So far, Louisiana has secured about $21 billion of the $50 billion needed to construct all of the projects in its Coastal Master Plan. Gulf states have received more than $2 billion from offshore oil and gas royalties under GOMESA since 2009. But the $8 billion Louisiana received in legal settlements and fines resulting from BP’s 2010 oil spill in the Gulf has made up the lion’s share of funding for Louisiana’s flood protection and coastal restoration projects. Oil spill settlement payments to the state will end in 2031, leaving Louisiana’s delegation in search of more funds.



Royalties from offshore wind in the Gulf are unlikely to shore up the state’s funding shortfall for coastal projects. There are currently two offshore wind projects planned in Louisiana waters, and a third project further out in federal waters off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The offshore wind industry is expected to create thousands of jobs in Louisiana over the next decade. Proceeds from wind lease sales in federal waters go to the U.S. Treasury General Fund. Wind farm companies also pay the federal government annual rental fees during construction and operating fees once the projects start generating electricity, says John Filostrat, Director Of Public Affairs at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.



But those fees are smaller than the severance fees collected on oil and gas production in the Gulf, Orgeron notes. “There is no severance. It’s not like you’re extracting oil and gas and you’re taking something from the ground. Wind works differently because you're returning the molecules of air on the other side of the blade,” he says. “You’re not severing anything.”



Last year, two million barrels of oil per day were produced from the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, generating $6 billion in federal revenue. At most, wind energy in the Gulf could produce about a tenth of the royalties that Louisiana gets from oil and gas production, Orgeron says. 
Still, Sutcliffe says the state could use every penny it gets to put towards its coast, where nearly two million people call home. “I think it’s too early to know how much it’s going to produce, but right now it’s zero,” he says. “This amendment is just trying to say however that works out those dollars are dedicated to the coast.”





    [post_title] => Paying the Bill for Lousiana's Crumbling Coast
    [post_excerpt] => Why you should pay attention to Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment this election.
    [post_status] => publish
    [comment_status] => closed
    [ping_status] => closed
    [post_password] => 
    [post_name] => louisiana-outer-continental-shelf-revenues-for-coastal-protection-and-restoration-fund-amendment-down-ballot-climate-change-united-states-election-2024
    [to_ping] => 
    [pinged] => 
    [post_modified] => 2024-10-24 07:12:30
    [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-10-24 07:12:30
    [post_content_filtered] => 
    [post_parent] => 0
    [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7341
    [menu_order] => 0
    [post_type] => post
    [post_mime_type] => 
    [comment_count] => 0
    [filter] => raw
)

WP_Post Object
(
    [ID] => 7331
    [post_author] => 15
    [post_date] => 2024-10-23 04:23:19
    [post_date_gmt] => 2024-10-23 04:23:19
    [post_content] => 
Why you should pay attention to the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment this election.



This article is a part of Down-Ballot, a weeklong series highlighting state measures worth watching in the 2024 United States election.



As voters around the United States prepare for a tight presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, they will also have to make pivotal decisions on ballot referendums in their respective states. In Wisconsin, one of the questions this year revolves around noncitizen voting. 



Noncitizen voting is illegal at the state and federal level in the U.S. On voter registration forms, people must sign under the penalty of perjury that they are a citizen, facing punishment of fines, imprisonment, or deportation if they are not. But on a local scale, noncitizen voting is allowed in some cities and towns in Vermont, California, and Maryland, allowing residents to cast a vote in school board and city council elections. 



At this time, there are no elections in Wisconsin that allow for noncitizen voting. Wisconsin previously allowed noncitizen voting in 1848, but that was disallowed by 1912. In a ballot initiative on deck for Nov. 5, however, a coalition of Wisconsin Republicans are seeking to change language in the state’s constitution around citizen voting, making it as explicit as possible that noncitizens cannot vote in any election in Wisconsin. 



Currently, the state’s constitution reads “every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district who may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum.” The referendum, however, would change the language to “only a United States citizen age 18 or older who resides in an election district may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum.”



A yes vote for the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment would allow the language change and a no vote would prevent any changes to the constitution. 



Behind the bill



There are 14 Wisconsin state senators and 41 state representatives behind the push to pass this referendum, an effort which began in September of 2023. 



While several members of the Wisconsin Legislature did not reply to requests for interviews, Sen. Julian Bradley, a Republican among the coalition that introduced the ballot measure, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that their goal is to make it extremely difficult for noncitizens to ever have an opportunity to vote in Wisconsin. He also said he wants less room for interpretation around the law. 



"If you want to vote in elections, then you have to declare your citizenship, and you have to go through the process," he told the Sentinel.



However, Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, says the initiative is unnecessary and could foster misinformation. The league was one of 30 organizations that has endorsed a no-vote on the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment and also released a toolkit with information about the ballot. 



“It creates an opportunity to suggest, imply, whatever word you want to insert there, that this is a problem. This is not a problem. That's been documented time and time again,” she says. “It makes me wonder, is the real motivation here not to change the constitution to prohibit noncitizens from voting in municipal races, but is it to fuel a conversation that is more about us and them, who should have the rights and who shouldn't have the rights.”



Cronmiller compared the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment to a 2011 push by Republicans in Wisconsin to require voter IDs during elections. She said that on its surface, both sound good: ensuring that only citizens of Wisconsin are voting in elections. But she also pointed out the unintended consequences of these policies. In the case of voter IDs, not everyone has a driver's license or works for the state or is a member of a tribal community. And in 2017, the Associated Press reported that the law ultimately turned eligible voters away as a result. 



“There's too many people who were unnecessarily disenfranchised because of what sounded like a good idea,” she says. “We suspect [the same] in this instance, where only a citizen should vote sounds good, but the constitution actually already guarantees that.”



The Wisconsin Elections Commission, a six-member board created in 2015 to oversee election processes, reported 30 potential cases of fraud from July 1, 2023 through September 12, 2024. However, none of the cases were related to citizenship, and most were related to people voting twice or involved people with felonies. 



In October of 2023, a woman in Wisconsin was charged with election fraud for voting in an April school board election, despite not being a citizen. But she admitted to the act, saying that it was a misunderstanding and that her daughter-in-law completed the paperwork due to an English language barrier, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has since entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and the charges will be dismissed. 



Anti-immigrant concerns



Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a Wisconsin organization that works with the civil rights of immigrants, says the drive behind the ballot initiative is anti-immigration sentiment and disinformation.



“My greatest concern is that this is being used to create a narrative that is intended to motivate part of Trump’s MAGA base to turn out on election day and based on how people look, and if they’re not English dominant, they will try to intimidate and harass U.S. citizen voters to try to steal the elections,” she says. 



Neumann-Ortiz is also concerned that the ballot initiative is part of a longer-term strategy of voter suppression.



“It’s been a very calculated agenda by the right wing,” she says. “There’s been a relentless attack on eroding voting rights.”



She pointed to a lawsuit, Cerny v Wisconsin Elections Commission, filed by a citizen in Wisconsin in August. In the case, Ardis Cerny, a resident of Pewaukee, sued the commission and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to challenge how the state verifies the citizenship status of voters with drivers licenses. Cerny alleges that the commission does not check the registration of applicants with the Department of Motor Vehicles list of driver’s licenses and identification cards to ensure they have citizenship. The lawsuit is still ongoing. 



Neumann-Ortiz believes that the amendment would “disenfranchise so many people,” because when residents become naturalized U.S. citizens, they don’t have to go to the DMV to update immigration status, meaning the documentation isn’t always aligned. When they register to vote, however, they have to show evidence of citizenship, she says. 



Immigrants who are working to gain citizenship are not interested in registering to vote illegally and jeopardizing their future, Neumann-Ortiz added. 



“It’s more anti-immigration rhetoric, it’s more disinformation, and it’s voter suppression for all voters,” she says. “It’s an attack on democracy.”



The Wisconsin constitution has been amended 148 times, with the most recent change in April of 2023. In regards to voting, previous amendments have been made to expand rights based on race, gender, and age. It will also not be the only state where noncitizen voting is on the ballot in November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina also have ballot measures regarding noncitizen voting this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislature, a coalition of members of state legislatures around the U.S.



“This question on the ballot sounds pretty good, but what you have to do as a conscientious voter is look behind the question. Why is it being asked? What could be the unintended consequences?” Cronmiller says. “Our elections are fair, they're safe, they're accountable, only the people who should be getting ballots are getting ballots. There's no problem to fix here and I think we're actually potentially creating a future problem by enacting this particular constitutional change.”

    [post_title] => Is Noncitizen Voting Actually a Non-Issue?
    [post_excerpt] => Why you should pay attention to the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment this election.
    [post_status] => publish
    [comment_status] => closed
    [ping_status] => closed
    [post_password] => 
    [post_name] => noncitizen-voting-wisconsin-citizenship-voting-requirement-immigration-local-state-federal-united-states-election-2024
    [to_ping] => 
    [pinged] => 
    [post_modified] => 2024-10-23 04:23:20
    [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-10-23 04:23:20
    [post_content_filtered] => 
    [post_parent] => 0
    [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7331
    [menu_order] => 0
    [post_type] => post
    [post_mime_type] => 
    [comment_count] => 0
    [filter] => raw
)

WP_Post Object
(
    [ID] => 7313
    [post_author] => 15
    [post_date] => 2024-10-22 19:07:12
    [post_date_gmt] => 2024-10-22 19:07:12
    [post_content] => 
Why you should pay attention to Massachusetts's Question 5 this election.



This article is a part of Down-Ballot, a weeklong series highlighting state measures worth watching in the 2024 United States election.



A contentious ballot question has Massachusetts wait and bar staff fearing a dramatic change in their hourly take home pay following this November. For Corri DePatra, a bartender and server since 2001, the potential industry change is maddening.



“They’re trying to pull on heartstrings,” DePatra says. “I just think it is very emotionally manipulative.”



Question 5 on the Massachusetts ballot this election year is an initiative proposed by One Fair Wage, a national nonprofit and NGO. If the measure passes in the state, it would lead to a gradual rise in the minimum wage base pay for tipped workers from its current $6.75 to $15 an hour in the next five years. Eventually, the change would also allow for a shared tip pool between the front and back of the house to be managed by restaurant owners. But many restaurant workers have come out in opposition to its passing, arguing it would likely actually decrease their take home pay. 



“We were all at city hall and I went in to listen to the hearing,” DePatra says, noting that she was particularly outraged by One Fair Wage’s closing arguments, which pointed to discrimination against women as a driving factor for the initiative. As a waitress standing with others at the hearing, DePatra felt they were invalidating her experiences as a woman working as a tipped restaurant worker, and misrepresenting the amount of hard work that goes into being a part of the restaurant industry.



DePatra works at The Kenmore, a Boston pub specializing in fresh pregame eats and draft beers, where signs to “vote no” adorn the walls in hopes of informing customers of how their restaurant workers feel. To learn more, all signs point to a website for a coalition of small and large restaurants known as the Committee to Protect Tips.



The Committee is spearheaded by two of the largest groupings of restaurant leaders in the state: Massachusetts Restaurants United (MRU), a coalition of industry leaders from various sized restaurants and cafes that began after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association (MRA), a not-for-profit lobbyist group. Their joint mission against Question 5 has so far been endorsed by eight local mayors, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and hundreds of Massachusetts restaurant workers.



“A lot of people are going to lose their jobs if this passes,” says Ryan Lotz, president of MRU and leader at Traveler Street Hospitality. “We’re going to see secondary and incurred costs go up for the restaurant operators and owners.”



Earlier this year, an MRU poll about industry crises noted that 85% of restaurant leaders said they are one surprise expense away from having to close. According to Lotz, restaurants are going to see an increase of over $18,000 per year per employee if the initiative is fully deployed, something most simply can’t afford. Restaurants will be forced to shift to models with fewer servers but quicker service, he argues, implementing functions like QR code menus or counters. And for guests, it will also mean higher menu prices and more fees on their checks when it comes to processing service. 



“I think that people don't really understand the restaurant industry, and don't really understand how slim the margins are,” Lotz says.



These profit margins typically fall in the 0-15% range, with the bulk of restaurants falling around the 3-5% mark, according to national restaurant system Toast. Most of those restaurants are only able to stay open, Lotz argues, because of tips.



Currently, Massachusetts, like the majority of the United States, operates on a tip credit across the restaurant industry. This translates to every server or bartender making a base pay and tips filling in the rest of the minimum wage and more. Server Adam Dougherty has been in the industry for seven years and currently works at Fenway sports bar Cask ‘N Flagon. Even on a slow day, he says he already surpasses the $15 bar.



“People will probably tip less,” says Dougherty. “I’m going to be voting no.”



Advocates for the ballot question, meanwhile, argue that tipped wages need to become a thing of the past, and allege that the tip credit model is particularly harmful for women and people of color across the industry. This is because it can allow restaurants to get away with paying staff less than a livable wage without consequence, while putting the burden on customers to make up the difference. 



One Fair Wage, which is headquartered in California, champions the initiative across the country via satellite organizing heads which advocate for tipped worker payment changes state-by-state. According to Grace McGovern, one of two Massachusetts full-time state organizers working for One Fair Wage, who has been a tipped worker herself, combating misinformation has been difficult. 



“So many people are just so surprised that a subminimum wage is still in place,” says McGovern.



She adds opposition from the Committee to Protect Tips has also weaponized their research.



“Even if 90% of the 300 people that they had completed their survey answered that they want things to stay the same, there are still 124,700 tipped workers in Massachusetts—at least—without their voices heard,” McGovern says.



Massachusetts is one of six active campaign efforts targeted at raising the minimum wage this year, with other states including Rhode Island, Arizona, and Missouri. But in total, One Fair Wage has initiated 16 total targeted campaigns in states or territories, according to their website. 



One place where the campaign has been successful is Washington, D.C., where according to McGovern, there has been a positive increase in the earnings of workers. Lotz, on the other hand, sees it as a tragedy.



“This passed recently, and when it did, we saw approximately 6,000 jobs lost and restaurants closing,” Lotz says.



Another hotly debated aspect of the Massachusetts ballot question is the change to the shared tip pool. Currently, Massachusetts does not have comprehensive shared tips legislation. According to McGovern, the initiative would eventually allow for tip sharing with front and back of house, but it is not immediately required. Its ultimate purpose, however, is to move us away from tipping culture as a whole, and instead make a higher minimum wage the norm. 



Jay Zagorsky, professor of public policy and law at the Questrom School of Business, agrees that tips should be eliminated, but thinks Question 5 is not the answer.



“Question 5 is poorly written and poorly thought out,” he says. 



According to Zagorsky, one of the biggest indicators of Question 5’s failure comes in the form of the legislative committee’s comments in the ballot guide, which states in all capital letters that it "OUGHT NOT TO BE ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE AT THIS TIME."



So if Question 5 is not the answer, what is? Those voting no are not quite sure.



“Eliminating the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers on a state-by-state basis is not the right way to go,” says Zagorsky, pointing out how rising labor costs will directly lead to fewer jobs and those that remain will be “worse off.”



For Lotz, fighting the current initiative remains his first priority. He can’t quite think of anything else before that’s resolved.



“I would be more than happy to start working on that if this doesn’t pass,” Lotz says. “What keeps me awake at night is that people are going into the voting booth in November with a lack of knowledge. We need to get as many people to understand the gravity of this question before November.”

    [post_title] => The Tipping Point
    [post_excerpt] => Why you should pay attention to Massachusetts's Question 5 this election.
    [post_status] => publish
    [comment_status] => closed
    [ping_status] => closed
    [post_password] => 
    [post_name] => massachusetts-question-5-minimum-wage-tips-restaurant-workers-initiative-one-fair-wage-state-election-2024
    [to_ping] => 
    [pinged] => 
    [post_modified] => 2024-10-22 19:08:26
    [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-10-22 19:08:26
    [post_content_filtered] => 
    [post_parent] => 0
    [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7313
    [menu_order] => 0
    [post_type] => post
    [post_mime_type] => 
    [comment_count] => 0
    [filter] => raw
)