Busboys and Poets Books Presents: ONE FAIR WAGE
Date and Time
Feb 8, 2022 6:00 pm
Location
Brookland
625 Monroe St NE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20017
Feb 8, 2022 6:00 pm
Brookland
One of New York magazine's "Influentials" of New York City, one of CNN's Visionary Women in 2014, and a White House Champion of Change in 2014, Saru Jayaraman is a nationally acclaimed restaurant activist and the author of the bestselling Behind the Kitchen Door. In her new book, ONE FAIR WAGE, Jayaraman shines a light on these workers, illustrating how the people left out of the fight for a fair minimum wage are society's most marginalized: people of color, many of them immigrants; women, who form the majority of tipped workers; disabled workers; incarcerated workers; and youth workers. Before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the country, more than six million people earned their living as tipped workers in the service industry. They served us in cafes and restaurants, they delivered food to our homes, they drove us wherever we wanted to go, and they worked in nail salons for as little as $2.13 an hour--the federal tipped minimum wage since 1991--leaving them with next to nothing to get by. These workers, unsurprisingly, were among the most vulnerable workers during the pandemic. As businesses across the country closed down or drastically scaled back their services, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. As in many other areas, the pandemic exposed the inadequacies of the nation's social safety net and minimum-wage standards. Jayaraman shows us how they epitomize the direction of our whole economy, reflecting the precariousness and instability that is increasingly the lot of American labor. Saru is joined by ANDY SHALLAL, activist and founder of Busboys and Poets!
This event is free and open to all, accessible through our Facebook and Youtube pages (@busboysandpoets).
The program will begin at 6 PM with an introduction from a member of our team, before Saru and Andy will take it away! There will be time for Q&A with the audience before the end of the program, and you can purchase a SIGNED COPY of ONE FAIR WAGE.
We recommend that viewers RSVP in order to receive direct links to the event from Busboy and Poets Books
Saru Jayaraman is the President of One Fair Wage, a national organization of over 200,000 service workers, over 800 restaurant employers, and dozens of organizations nationwide, and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. After 9/11, together with displaced World Trade Center workers, she co-founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. She then launched One Fair Wage. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, was 1010 Wins’ “Newsmaker of the Year” and New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015, and the SF Chronicle ‘Visionary of the Year’ in 2019. Saru is also the author of four books including her latest, One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America (The New Press, November 2021). Additional publications include Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning, (UC Press, 2020).
Andy Shallal is an artist, social entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Busboys and Poets, a restaurant group in the Washington Metropolitan area where art, culture and politics intentionally collide over mindfully sourced food, drinks, books and event programming. With six, soon to be seven locations in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, Busboys and Poets has become a home for progressives, artists, creatives and intellectuals, including such notables as Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Alice Walker, Angela Davis and the late Howard Zinn. Under Shallal’s leadership, Busboys has received numerous awards including the Mayor’s Arts Award, Employer of the Year from the Employment Justice Center and the Mayor’s Environmental Award.Shallal received his B.S. in biology from Catholic University of American and attended Howard Medical School and Robert Smith’s University of Maryland School of Business. Shallal is a 2018 Frederick Douglass 200 award winner, TedX speaker and founder of several peace and justice organizations. He is on the board of trustees for the Institute for Policy Studies, Race Forward, the Anacostia CoordinatingCouncil and a founding member of Think Local First DC, a local business association serving in advisory and leadership roles to advance progressive business and labor practices. Shallal recently was chairman of DC’s Workforce Investment Council and ran for Mayor of Washington, DC in 2014. He continues to strive to make his hometown of Washington, DC a more livable community. He is a husband and father of four, and his favorite hobby is painting.
