Video: Chicagoan Angrily Mocks City's Minimum Wage Working Group At Their Public Hearing

By Jon Graef in News on Jun 14, 2014 6:00PM

The City of Chicago's Minimum Wage Working Group, a task force charged with just 45 days by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to create a plan for increasing pay for minimum wage workers create a plan, held its first public hearing June 9.

The group, comprised of 18 city legislators and labor representatives, took comments from the public, some of whom aired a litany of grievances, and questioned the very usefulness of the panel itself. [Who could blame them, considering.]

One man in particular had harsh words for the panel, words which were captured on a short YouTube video.

"Walmart can sit up here and talk about 'we appreciate our customers, and our workers, but we won't give them a raise.' So why are ya'll sitting here?", the man asks.

"What's the use of this panel? This is just like the school panels. You're gonna do the same thing ...'We did what Master Rahm wanted us to do, and what Michael Madigan did,' and that's all you're gonna do," the man said.

The man took the group to task for what he saw as panel members leaving less privileged communities behind.

Some of you so coward that you won't even come out into the neighborhoods to try and stop the violence. Yet you sit up there and talk...

You can sit up here and shake your head, but it's a shame that your parents had to die and get bitten by dogs for you to get that $100,000 salary and that suit that you wear, and you just sit there and say, 'I don't care about the next man as long as I got mine.'

Your parents, as well as mine, helped you where you at, and this is how you treat your people? It's a shame

The man also had a warning aimed at the city legislators on the panel. "When the next election comes, I'm gonna make sure each of you aldermen doesn't get back in, " the man said. Someone responds with, "two terms is two terms too long!"

The man's comments only represent a minute of what was ultimately a two-hour hearing. (Which you can watch on CAN-TV's YouTube page.) For many people living in a city with the eighth highest levels of income inequality in the United States, these words no doubt will prove cathartic.

Watch below:

The second meeting of the Minimum Wage Working Group takes place Thursday, June 19, at Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson Ave., from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. For arguments for and against raising the minimum wage, please read our article from last weekend.

[h/t Uptown Uprising]