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Sr. Simone Campbell visits Pullman, talks income inequality

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By Elizabeth Backstrom

PULLMAN — It’s not often scotch tape is used to start a presentation on global economics and income inequality. But Sister Simone Campbell is used to using unorthodox ways to get her message across.

The executive director of Catholic advocacy organization NETWORK doesn’t sit in an office in Washington, D.C. She knows what life is like outside the Beltway because she travels the country with the ‘Nuns on the Bus’ tour, listening to people’s stories. Her goal is to get beyond data and statistics and connect with real people affected by things like income inequality and immigration gridlock.

‘”She advocates for all people,” said the Rev. Jessica Stokes of the Common Ministry at Washington State University. “She helps us use our faith as a catalyst to get involved.”

On Oct. 4, Campbell made a stop in Pullman as a speaker at the 36th Roger Williams Symposium. Named after Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, who was known for his views on religious liberty, tolerance and separation of church and state, the symposium features speakers and scholars from different faiths and religions.

Campbell handed out pieces of colored construction paper to volunteers as the room in Pullman’s Gladish Community Center filled up to, then past, the 200 chairs set out for the crowd.

Dylan Larkin, a WSU student, waited with a group of his friends for the talk to begin. He’s not Catholic — he attends Simpson United Methodist in Pullman, he said, but Campbell’s message interested him anyway. Her call to apply faith to the real world, to address practical social issues, drew him in.

The crowd quieted as Campbell began her talk.

“Everyone thinks they’re middle class,” she said. “Regardless of what they make in income. I met an attorney making $200,000 a year who thought he was middle class.”

Campbell motioned for her volunteers to stand up — giving them the paper. Each represented a U.S. income bracket — top 5 percent, bottom 20 percent. They had to walk a certain number of steps forward to measure how their income had changed between 1980 and 2013.

The girl with the ‘top 20 percent’ made it to the back of the room — her income had increased 49 percent. The woman with the ‘bottom 20 percent’ sign got the short straw. Her income had decreased 7 percent in the 33 years, Campbell said. The real kicker was the guy holding the ‘top 1 percent’ sign. His income went up 224 percent from 1980 to 2013. He had to walk out of the room and down the hall. The crowd gasped.

“The 1 percent ends up so far away from 80 to 90 percent of our people that they don’t know what the lived reality is, and they’re driven by fear,” Campbell said. “They’ve lost sight of this,” she said, pointing at the woman with the ‘bottom 20 percent’ sign.

The average CEO salary is $10 million a year, or about $5,000 an hour, Campbell said. She attended a meeting recently in Chicago with a group of CEOs who were arguing in favor of a salary increase, and she asked them why they wanted it.

“Are you not getting by with $10 million? Is that it?” she quipped.

The crowd laughed. Their response – the salaries weren’t about money. They viewed salaries as a competitive tool to attract the best talent.

In contrast, there are people like Jennifer.

Jennifer works two jobs as a home health care worker, and another on weekends. Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act, her state didn’t enact the Medicaid provision that would have qualified her for health care, Campbell said.

“Last year, she got hospitalized for an emergency situation, and it was the first day off she’d had in a year and a half. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Or Robin – Robin works full-time at a clothing store in the Washington, D.C. area. Campbell met her when they attended a dinner together at the White House. As they got to talking, Robin revealed that she lived at a homeless shelter, despite working full-time, because she couldn’t afford an apartment in the city on her salary, which was about $16,000 a year.

“What we’ve always said about our nation is if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get by,” Campbell said. “It isn’t true anymore.”

What’s changed? Campbell blames several factors, including changes in tax policy that happened in the 1980s, increased privatization of retirement plans and the decline of labor unions. She also cited a globalized economy, which she said drives down prices – the Wal-Mart effect — and the rise of credit cards.

“By having credit cards available, people hid what was happening to them; they didn’t notice income was flat,” she said.

What can we do? Campbell advocates a surprisingly simple solution — conversation. She calls it ‘holy curiosity and sacred gossip.’

“We’re all siloed,” she said. “There is no common place where the conversations of our time get raised up.”

People are passionate about things like economic inequality, wage gaps, immigration reform and health care, she said. They may feel differently about how to fix them, but most people care about these issues. We just don’t talk to each other anymore.

What’s more, we get our news and information from different sources, so there is no common conversation, she said. That increases the feeling of a divided and polarized nation, when in fact many of us want the same things.

She called on the audience to focus their passion, to find a calling — to resist being overwhelmed by the number of problems the world has to offer.

“What often happens to me in the face of that is that I don’t do any of them,” she said. “We are only called to do our part.”

She also cautioned against stepping out of the game.

“The hard work of democracy requires us to be engaged,” she said.

Elizabeth Backstrom
Elizabeth Backstrom
Elizabeth Backstrom majored in journalism at Western Washington University and currently works as remotely as a grant writer. Her background is in news writing and features, but if an overabundance of caffeine is consumed, she has been known to write a humor piece or two. Backstrom attended various Christian churches growing up in Washington State and in her free time enjoys reading about history, religion and politics.

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