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JSRI Upcoming Events
February 21
Fr. Kammer will address parishioners at St. Gabriel Parish in New Orleans on Catholic Social Thought.
February 28 & March 21
Fr. Kammer will provide two sessions on the social implications of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius for the Ignatian Spirituality Institute at Montserrat Retreat House in Lake Dallas, TX.
March 6
Fr. Kammer will address participants in the AJCU Honors Conference on the intersection of honors and social justice.
JSRI Recent Activities
February 5
Fr. Kammer, Mr. Bustamante, Ms. Baudouin, and Dr. Weishar helped lead the Catholic Teach-In on Migration for Young Catholics. Students from Dr. Lisbeth Philip’s Certificate Program in Translation and Interpreting provided interpreting services. Students from Loyola Immigration Advocates, the Honors Program,  Spanish majors, and Service Learning students facilitated small groups.
February 1
Dr. Weishar provided an orientation and training to ten Loyola Service Learning students who have volunteered to teach English to adult immigrant students with Café con Ingles.
January 30-31
Dr. Mikulich co-facilitated an anti-racism workshop for Pax Christi USA.
January 29
Dr. Weishar toured the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes County, TX, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  began detaining women and children fleeing Central America in August 2014.
January 27
Dr. Sue Weishar spoke to students at The Academy of Our Lady in Marrero about the child migrant crisis and the Church’s teachings on migration.
January 20
Dr. Mikulich served on a panel discussion about Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream at Dillard University as a part of the MLK Week of Peace.
January 14
Dr. Weishar attended a meeting in New York City of Langeloth Foundation grantees working on prison reform issues.

Number 44                                                                  February 2015
Honor Our Sacred Obligation
Raise the Minimum Wage
by Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
The question of the “State of the Dream” is often raised at annual celebrations of the Martin Luther King Holiday.  I heard the question yet again at a recent panel discussion held at Dillard University.  Dominant U.S. society, I responded, has never embraced Dr. King’s “Dream” or the goals of the March on Washington. 
The opportunity to enact the “Dream” still stands before us. There are many ways we can enact the Dream, one of which is raising the minimum wage to the level demanded by the March on Washington on March 28, 1963.
Dr. King began his speech to marchers by marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, citing the great promises made in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  This is the promise that all people would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. King stated:
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far   as her citizens of color are concerned.  Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check: a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
152 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, have we, as a nation, honored our sacred obligations to the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?    
While we celebrate equal access to public accommodations, laws against racial discrimination in employment, and Black voting rights attained through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (although these are under assault today), the key economic, housing, and education goals of the 1963 March on Washington remain unrealized (see Unfinished March).    
Consider: The March on Washington demanded a national minimum wage of $2 per hour--which is $13 per hour in today’s dollars. The federal minimum wage was last changed to $7.25 per hour in 2009. Since Dr. King was assassinated, the median income gap of $12,000 between Blacks and Whites has narrowed by only 3 cents on the dollar.  At this rate of progress, income equality will not be achieved for 537 years.[1]   
In his Special Report, “Too Much for Too Many: What does it cost families to live in Louisiana?” Alí Bustamante shows that 228,000 Louisiana families do not make enough wages to achieve a minimally decent living.[2]  In 2013, over 39 percent of Louisiana workers made less than $13 per hour.  That is more than 772,000 of 1.9 million employed workers in Louisiana.  The March on Washington demand of $13 per hour would give these workers an automatic raise, lift them to a more decent living and help grow our economy.  
One concrete way we can enact Dr. King’s dream is to raise the minimum wage to the level demanded by the 1963 March on Washington.  That would be a real way we could honor our sacred obligation to all Americans and truly celebrate Black History month!
[1]Dedrick Muhammad, 40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 2008), p. 5.  
[2]Alí Bustamante, “Too Much for Too Many: What does it cost families to live in Louisiana?” JustSouth Quarterly (Winter 2014), 
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Published by the Jesuit Social Research Institute
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