Viewing Time 4 Minutes
Fekkak Mamdouh, co-director of Roc-United, and Nataki Rhodes of Roc-United Chicago, are the principal speak-truth-to-power activists in this second Q&A video snippet. They both were featured in the documentary,
Fekkak Mamdouh told the audience:
“I just want to say that’s it’s all start from the ashes of 9/11. I used to work at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center and yes, it was a big tragedy that we lost 73 of my brothers and sister. Close to 3,000 people were lost on 9/11 but it’s just created this fabulous organization that this is what the people that we lost want us to do, and we are doing it. It’s all over the country now. We’re going to keep fighting. We’re going to win One Fair Wage and after One Fair Wage, we are going to go and fight for living wage because even One Fair Wage is not enough in this city.
“In big cities, you cannot survive. I have two kids now that they are in college, they are working in restaurants and it’s the same. You cannot survive. My son is all the way in the back [inaudible 00:08:44] as a career. You know, he cannot survive on $15 or $20 or $25 in New York.”
Nataki Rhodes said:
“I live in Chicago and ROC gave me my voice that I didn’t know I had. I didn’t know I was a low wage worker. I didn’t know I was a little wage temp worker. I was just trying to figure out why am I not making money like, “What’s wrong with me?”
“Right now, I’m so honored to even fight for a living wage in Chicago. Right right now we’re in a campaign with the new mayor asking her to be progressive, asking her to raise the minimum wage. Saru has just visited Thursday, and so we’re imploring her [Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot] right now to raise the minimum wage and she has … Chicago has an opportunity, a huge opportunity to end sub-minimum wage and so we’re hoping that we can do that and convincing Governor Cuomo and everybody, like it’s the progressive, it’s the right thing to do.”
“You [audience] saw my grandson, I do this for my grandson, I do this for the future of Chicago and the future of women because we are the leaders in this industry, and so I’m so happy. I’m so proud to be here in this moment to share when all my true friends, my family, colleagues, the people that I love and Abby, I love, and Woong [Chang] definitely.”
Gregg W. Morris can be reached at gmorris@hunter.cuny.edu