Out of the Shadows

The next time I campaign for a raise, I’m going to start by wearing a red T-shirt.

Then, because I’m a borderline minority, I’m going to get Jesse Jackson involved. We’ll pray on the steps of Times Mirror Square, or whatever it’s called now, and beg the Lord for a pocketful of greenbacks.

Next I’ll ask a couple of politicians if they’d mind getting arrested for me. I really don’t care what they do. The point would be to involve them in a mild, nonthreatening form of civil disobedience that would attract attention.

Then I’ll seek out priests and rabbis who will support my quest from the pulpit and Hare Krishnas who will bang tambourines and nuns who will strew flowers in my path.

Finally, I will ask thousands of other redshirted colleagues to join me in shutting down City Hall during a council session. Nothing in L.A., short of free Evian water, will win more support than a silent City Hall.

And when City Hall is shut down and ol’ Jesse is praying and priests and rabbis are sermonizing and the pols are being booked at Parker Center and the Hare Krishnas are banging and the nuns are strewing, I will approach my main editor, the capo dei capi, and say, “Now about that raise . . . “

I may not get the whole dollar, but it’ll be close.

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My program is based on the masterful strategy of the janitors to both win a raise and publicize their plight. Well, OK, they didn’t get the Hare Krishnas and they didn’t shut down City Hall, but they did get everyone but the pope out there and they did raise hell with a couple of intersections.

It was an impressive materialization of a people who had until then been pretty much invisible. They’re the night workers in L.A., shadows on the outer edge of Fat City.

But three weeks ago they moved into the center of town, and now we know who they are: strong and proud minimum-wage earners in an age of million-dollar jocks and billion-dollar buyouts.

They marched into the sunlight, red shirts gleaming like a biblical tide, and they shouted for justice. They got about a 25% raise, which wasn’t as much as they’d asked for, but in a way they gained more. They won visibility.

What the Service Employees International Union set out to do, says Local 1877 President Mike Garcia, was to create “a crisis in the city” that would attract both the public and those who could intervene on the union’s behalf.

And it worked, he says, beyond all expectation.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, never one to lag very far behind a high-profile cause, said a special Mass for the janitors. Almost simultaneously, Mayor Richard Riordan began hammering at the rich building owners as only another rich man can.

Jesse Jackson, always ready for a public prayer, was next and then all the politicians, like damsels late for the ball, came rushing in. The public began to respond with support and donations. Then the whole thing caught fire.

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Union planners realized it was the right place and the right time for this kind of campaign. The gap between rich and poor has never been more obvious, and L.A. epitomizes the nation’s economic disparity. We came to realize, says Garcia, that the good times had to be shared.

“People were looking for an underdog to root for,” he says, “and the janitors were the underdog. It wasn’t just our cause. It was to win respect across the whole country.”

The union leaders pointed their 8,500 members in the direction of the crisis they were trying to create. But once it began, says Garcia, the campaign assumed a life of its own.

“The press, the community, labor and myself included fed off the will and determination of the janitors. They won the heart and soul of the city. We wouldn’t let them lose.”

He had special praise for the mayor for “leaning” on the building owners to “get this thing done.” But mostly, he says, it was the people “who just decided to do the right thing” in supporting the janitors. “They knew that the future of L.A. was on the line. If the poor were squashed, there was no hope for anyone.”

The union believes that the significance of the drive is the national precedent it sets for a living wage. But there’s more. Garcia nailed it when he said that the janitors will return to work at night, “but they will never live in darkness again.”

That sea of red shirts, that army of shouting, singing, marching workers, proves beyond doubt that there are no invisible people anymore.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.