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About The Hellgate Lance (Missoula, Montana) 1964-current | View This Issue
The Hellgate Lance (Missoula, Montana), 04 May 2015, located at <http://montananewspapers.org/lccn/TheHellgateLance/2015-05-04/ed-1/seq-4/>, image provided by MONTANA NEWSPAPERS, Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana.
4 Editorials The F i ght for Fifteen Ma i e Shave r OnAprill5, 2015, more than 60,000 minimum wage workers r:- . . across the country walked out on their jobs to rally for a federal Ed1tonals Ed1tor minimum wage of$15 · an hour. Originating in fall of2012, The \Fight for 15\ campaign has challenged income inequality an\d developed into what organizers call the largest mobilization oflow-wage workers in U.S. history. . Perhaps the most common word you'll hear from people who support boosting the mini- mum wage is \fairness.\ The minimum wage, after all, stemmed from the Fair Labor Stan- dards Act of 1938. \If we believe we should have a fair society, that in some sense the benefits of economic growth and technological progress should improve not just the living standards of business owners but of workers as well, then the minimum wage really should have grown more over time,\ said David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. \We've chosen to let workers at the bottom fall farther and farther away from people in the middle . \ Cooper laid out the two goals of a minimum wage increase as helping people pay their bills and to creating a more fair working environment. \The question is: Do those two goals create any economic harm?\ he said. . Conservatives have long portrayed minimum-wage increases as · a harbingers of economic doom with empirical evidence only proving the contrary. San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Wash- ington, n<;, and Seattle were among the first major ~.S. cities to raise their min~um wag~s to what could be considered an adequate \living wage.\ The Center for Economic and Pohcy Research (CEPR) found that the increases had little negative effect on employment rates ip traditionally low-wage sectors of their economies. The even bigger threat to the economy may come from not raising the minimum wage. Wall Street analysts agree that the dangerously wide income gap, continuously growing, threatens to hinder economic growth more than anything . According to the UC-Berkeley Labor Center , taxpayers are compensating for the low federal minimum wage because the government subsidizes the working poor. In addressing arguments against a minimum wage hik e, Cooper said: \ I think a lot of thes e [arguments] are stra w men arguments , and they ' re set up to basically say we shouldn ' t enact this policy , that by all reasonable measures would ~prove the living standards of millions of people , based on the theoretical possibility that it might m'ake things harder for a relativel y small number of people. \ Though a minimum wage increase is s ensical en o ugh from an internal per s p e cti v e , if we take a step back to look at the debate from an international standpoint , the U . S. continues to embarrass itself. The ratio between the United States' minimum wage and its median wage has been slipping for year~-it ' s now far lower than in the rest of the developed world. Even after San Francisco increases its minimum wage to $15 next year, it will still amount to just 46 percent of the median wage, putting the city well within the normal historical range. The majority of the European Union requires a higher minimum wage than the United States, ensuring that full time workers are able to pay the bills. No one working full time deserves to Photo by Cadon Hill live in poverty. Speaking to the rallying of Apri115, Karen Joubert, a Fight for $15 organizer and a vice-president of representation with the northern California chapter of SEIU, said: \When y t m pay someone a decent wage, it helps him to get better healthcare and take care of his family. Many of our members who work at fast - food restaurants are not college students. They've worked there for 12, 15 years. They are working three jobs so that they can raise a family. We want to see them get better wages.\ Yet a federal increase still f a ces s t iff opposition. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Humor v.s Hate: A Respon s e to (1slamaphobia Goes In More Than One Direction\ In a recent article in the Hellgate Lance the internet joke claiming that Zayn Malik of One Direction was slammed as being an example oflslamophobia in mainstream US culture. I have a ~umber of problems with this, and the way in which the joke- and I cannot be more clear on its humorous nature-was mistaken as an example of discrimination. First off, let us begin with the root oflslamophobia in the US (although Malik is British, the article focused singularly on the US, so I will follow suit). Previous to the 9111 attack, Islamophobia was something that flew under the radar of most Americans. However, after the 9111 Al-Qaida attacks, a rash of lslamophobia seemed to grip the nation. Though hate crimes against Muslims · accountfor just 2% of hate crimes in the US, the prejudice aspect is clear, like when the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said ''Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.\ In fact, Muslim terror attacks account for just 7% of those done in the US between 1995 and 2005, with 42% done by Latino groups and 24% done by radical left-wing groups. Anti-abortionists do not account for a significant percentage in the FBI report, con- trary to what the article mentioned earlier may. have claimed. . Now, the main problem with this article (aside from its inaccuracies) is that it dis- tracts from the real Islamophobia, the 100 hate crimes (any crime with added bias) enacted against Muslims each year in America. I find it amusing that a joke about a pop-culture figure somehow ought to rock the nation, when the last time that such an event occurred (9/11 being the largest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor) more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were illegally detained despite not one single act of sedition ever being recorded. In a country where this horrible injustice once occurred , even the Islamophobia we do see can seem quite trivial. However , it is not. We have come a long ways since 1941, and it is important to ensure that it stays that way . It i s why we need to ensure that Muslim Americans-per the 14th amendment-are not denied any civil rights, but it is also why we need to ensure that jokes about teenage girls dream idols joining radical terror groups-per the l st Amendment-can be freely circulated in our society, · as they are obviously far too ridiculous to be true. Though I have had quite a tough time figuring where the joke initiated, it quickly made its way onto islamicanews.com, a site best described as the Muslim equival~nt of The Onion. Islamica News said on the matter, \ We hear [Malik] rejected their initial offer of72 virgins, a Russian SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle and $500 in cash,\ among numerous other comments mocking ISIS, Muslim customs, and the music in- dustry. I, surprisingly, remember when I first saw this joke concerning Malik joining ISIS. It too was located in a highly satirical setting, and coincidentally, right after a story about a group of Muslim girls in Britain who actually left to join ISIS. I laughed out loud upon seeing it. I had no idea of Zayn's race, his religion, or even what he looked like. As the majority of Americans aren't One Direction fans they would have had the same information I did; slim to none. Yet the joke is still funny, because it is not at the expense of Muslims, but ISIS and One Direction, two groups few will cite as oppressed. I can understand something offending another's sensibilities. In . spite of that, I cannot understand ignoring real pro b lems. What this article denouncing the joke as Islamophobia does is marginalize real problems facing the Mus l im American com- munity, while simultaneously masquerading as some sort of white knight crusader, ostensibly d efending a people, yet from their very own satire. If that isn't lslamopho- bia, imperialistically taking Muslim affairs, that are none of anyone else's business, in one's own hands, then I don't know what is. . Koessler Based Tolleson Knee
