Fall for Liberation: An interview with Step Up Louisiana's Maria Harmon

Step Up Louisiana co-founder and co-director Maria Harmon joined the Southern Labor Studies Association's Working History podcast to talk about the group’s Freedom Summer-inspired voter turnout campaigns and grassroots mobilization efforts in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Jefferson Parish, New Orleans’ proposed Workers Bill of Rights, and the future of economic and education justice organizing in Louisiana. Maria, who is from Lake Charles, has been organizing in Louisiana since she was 16 years old.

I thought we'd start the conversation with you just telling us a little bit about Step Up Louisiana — what the roots of the organization are and your involvement with it. 

I'm one of the co-founders and co-directors of Step Up Louisiana. My organizing partner Ben Zucker and I started meeting in November of 2016. Around that time I had just got laid off from a previous organizing job, and his contract with Fight for $15 was coming to a close. So he called me at a very opportune time. At the moment, I was actually looking into starting an organization of my own that was centered around education, justice, community organizing, and he had a vision of organizing around labor rights and economic justice. And that really did pique my interest, because my dad grew up fighting for rights in his own job and also being a union worker himself. It really resonated with me, with that cause, and actually seeing an opportunity in us marrying ideas together. And that ultimately resulted in us founding Step Up Louisiana in February of 2017. We were connected to folks in New York with the Center for Popular Democracy, and they did a tremendous job of incubating our organization, helping us grow legs, and helping us with capacity. That enabled us to hire staff and grow our organization, and be able to not only reach people in New Orleans, but also in Baton Rouge and Jefferson Parish. So it has definitely been an amazing journey. 

I'm really appreciative of our national partners who really wanted to see us win, like the Center for Popular Democracy and Journey for Justice Alliance. Those two organizations were very involved with the early beginnings of Step Up Louisiana. We first got started in New Orleans, that is where our headquarters and home base is, and in 2019 we expanded to Baton Rouge. In 2022 we launched our Jefferson Parish chapter. Now we have a little under 500 members across all three geographies, and we've been around for about seven years now. These seven years have definitely been a testament to the power that we've been able to build as an organization, the amount of leaders we've been able to help develop—with their own organizing skills and just people getting fired up about good jobs and good schools and healthy environments.

Can you tell us about some of your earlier campaigns and what kind of wins you all have had, what kind of folks you've taken on? 

I love telling this story, especially with how we came to develop our three-point economic justice platform back in 2017. We surveyed over 140 workers and community members throughout New Orleans to determine what three issue areas were most attainable or most desired from people in the area that they would like to see changed, and we had a list of at least eight different topics. The top three that were picked on the survey that we did was $15 minimum wage, the second topic was equal pay for women for doing the same work as men, and then also banning the box or fair chance hiring for those who are formerly incarcerated. That really started a wave of grassroots organizing for us. Many people said, “This platform makes sense. We need this. This is the time to get it,” and I'm very proud to say that all three of those things have been accomplished. 

Locally in New Orleans, we were able to get workers that are contracted with the city and work for the city of New Orleans, having a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour. We were able to establish a commission with the City Council in New Orleans, and able to do research that determines a more fleshed-out vision and data that explains the disparities between men and women and pay wage gaps. And also, we did pass the policy with the New Orleans City Council. It was at least two years ago we got this accomplished with a fair chance in hiring and removing that question of “Have you been convicted or arrested from job applications?” with the city of New Orleans. 

These things, at the very beginning, I didn't know if they were attainable or not, but I knew that we could at least try and see and at least build power amongst people, and get community buy-in for this, and build a coalition of stakeholders that can help us see this through. And we actually did that, and it feels good and so rewarding to see how the work has progressed for us. Now we're at a point in New Orleans of establishing a Workers’ Bill of Rights for workers in New Orleans. This ballot measure is going to be on the ballot for November 5. We've gotten so much support — the Orleans Parish Democratic executive committee endorsed this. A lot of labor unions have endorsed our Workers’ Bill of Rights. So that really speaks to the relationships that we've been able to build with folks from all the different sectors of economic justice, but also it speaks to the reputation that we've been able to build over the past seven years. I'm immensely grateful and proud about our accomplishments so far.

That brings us to what I wanted to mostly talk to you about today, which is the Fall for Liberation and some of the electoral organizing that y'all have been doing.

Fall for Liberation, I would say, is an opportunity for us to continue the legacy of fighting for freedom that many of our ancestors and predecessors have been in the long haul with the legacy for civil rights and justice. This is really inspired by the Freedom Summer movement during the Civil Rights Movement. We did cast a wide net of recruiting people to get involved with our organizer-in-training program between New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Jefferson Parish. We hired about 50 organizers-in-training, and this is, I would say, a continuation in legacy with what was accomplished with Freedom Summer, where they had hundreds of students from up North come down South to Mississippi in helping to engage with voters about the elections, and helping people to understand their rights and that they have a right to be able to exercise their civic participation in voting. 

That’s essentially what we're doing now. We have our 50 organizers-in-training, where they're learning about the dynamics of organizing, and they're also recruiting people. Each of them are tasked with recruiting 15 people to recruit community ambassadors while they're learning how to organize themselves and also getting them activated. What we use now is a lot of technology that helps us with our outreach and organizing. So we have this thing called the Empower app that all of our organizers-in-training were trained on. But also, when they recruit their community ambassadors, they have them download this app as well. And this is a great tool for people to engage with one another, let people know about the upcoming elections, giving them information about important dates to remember, like when is the deadline to register to vote, or what are the dates for early voting. All of this helps us to amplify our level of engagement at a higher level, and to see the amount of numbers — whether it's knocking on doors, having one on ones, or just recruiting people to be in a movement as community ambassadors, has just been extremely inspiring. 

So folks are out, and they're turning out votes for the ballot measure, or for candidates, or everything?

It's not just New Orleans, but also Jefferson Parish and Baton Rouge as well. So we're turning out people for the presidential election. We're turning out people for different congressional races that are happening. In Baton Rouge, we have the Congressional District Six race; in New Orleans, it's the Congressional District Two race, and I will say that this Congressional District Six race is very different. There was an outcome out of the redistricting process where Louisiana was able to garner another congressional district that is majority-minority, where the outcome of this race will very well be a person of color. I think that speaks to the grassroots organizing work that we've been doing over the years after the census came out. I'm really excited to see the outcome of this race as well, because of that. 

And another race that we have locally in Baton Rouge is the East Baton Rouge Parish constable race. And also Metro council races. They have a mayor's race as well, and we have a full ballot there. Of course, in New Orleans, we have the ballot measure, and also local school board races are on the ballot in Jefferson Parish. Their main race is the congressional race. But also there's a couple of ballot measures on there too. One is actually looking at changing the classification of certain workers that work for the parish of Jefferson Parish, and if this ballot measure passes, the classified workers would actually be classified as “unclassified.” But that could be very problematic, because it makes them susceptible to be expended easier or fired. Honestly, the morality of changing someone's employment status on that level, I think could lead to bigger problems, especially when you look at the rights of workers being infringed on. I think it makes room for more vulnerability. But we are educating our base about the impact of that ballot measure as well. The AFL-CIO actually put out an endorsement of “no” for that ballot measure. So that definitely gives us something to consider and educate our base about as well.

When your folks are going door to door, organizing, talking to other people in the community, what is the pitch that they're making about this candidate or these races are important for working people in Louisiana?

We tell people that all of these issues are actually connected. There's a lot of intersectionality between the quality of schools to getting attainment for better opportunities for income, with people being paid what they're worth, also extenuating to where people can live, in their proximity to certain plant companies and their exposure to pollution. All of these things are interconnected in various ways, and we help people to realize that for themselves by just having critical conversations. We ask people probing questions about how do they feel about their community? How do they feel about the quality of housing and jobs and in schools in their area, and also just their quality of life in regards to pollution and climate? And how do they feel about all of these different natural disasters impacting their everyday lives, in some cases? It’s been very eye-opening for many people that we've engaged with on that level, because they say, I didn't think that, you know, my Public Service Commissioner could make decisions regarding our broadband or the type of energy we can produce here, or I didn't know the school board makes all these decisions on things impacting my local school area. It's been very, very inspiring to say the least. There are some points where it gets a bit challenging, but I think hitting that nail on the head for many people, where it's personal for them and they start to see their own lives or their own story within the narrative, I think that is a big shifting piece to get people to move from where they were initially.

Those local races or like ballot measures or electoral races can have so much impact that people may not even be aware that they're having.

That's right. 

You mentioned that you kind of had come into this work from climate organizing and a background in climate organizing. How do you see climate organizing and kind of this economic justice work and labor work tying together?

I honestly see that through the type of jobs that can be afforded for people. It automatically makes me think of my Dad's experience when he was working at a plant in Lake Charles and they got bought out by another company. This company was actually trying to change things around as far as the level of pay that workers were getting, the type of benefits, like healthcare benefits, they were actually trying to take away. This actually led to my dad and other workers who were with the union going on strike. They went on strike for like six months, and there was a lot of negotiation that happened, but the good result of it is that once the strike ended, they were able to maintain a level of dignity and how workers were paid, and then also they were able to maintain a level of care with healthcare benefits and other supports in a benefits package for workers that work there. So that's just one example of how I can see the two can intersect. 

Those are key questions we ask people who do happen to work for different plant companies in our areas—how are you treated as a worker? Because many times, people operate from a place of fear. They're scared to do anything that could put them in a position of losing their job, because that's their livelihood and income. But also it stifles the voice of people actually saying, “Well, this is going on, but maybe we should think about things differently.” And I think making safe spaces for people to come together and unpack these issues would help in that sense of the intersection between labor organizing and also climate justice. The other piece to that too is sources to find ways of renewable energy, because those are opportunities that we can afford good, paying, high quality jobs. But also, I think this would impact the school system as well, because the curriculum we provide for students to learn, especially with STEM technology and how that can contribute to renewable energy and future jobs. We have to cultivate a base of people to be able to be employed to hold these jobs.

One thing that you keep coming back to, that I think is not always kind of centered in labor or economic justice conversations, is this issue of education and schools, and you mentioned that that's an issue that kind of filtered up, I think, from the community survey that you did, am I remembering that right?

Well, the survey that we did in 2017 mainly touched on equal pay for women, $15 minimum wage and then fair chance for hiring. But what we've been able to do is connect everything together for people to realize that if you don't have a good quality education, it could lead you to be employed or have less opportunities for gainful employment in certain places. And I hate that that's the case, but it's unfortunately the reality.

Is that something that folks have been coming together around more in the time that you've been organizing with Step Up?

We have a well rounded base of folks who are heavily passionate about economic justice and education justice. For our economic justice folks, we have a organizing committee called the EJC, which stands for Economic Justice Committee, and then for our education side, we have a Parent Union, which is our name of our organizing committee for that. We have been able to team up together in targeting a certain entity, because many times much of our opposition comes from the same people, which should be no surprise, because the issues are very connected. 

But there is the plight of privatization around our schools, which has heavily impacted the teaching profession, and that is a workers’ issue as well, because teachers are employees. And what we see in New Orleans with the mass takeover of charter schools, we saw the teachers union get busted up immensely, but they've been recovering since then, garnering contracts. But charter schools themselves are naturally anti-union. They don't want to have any type of labor organizing going on. And that in this stuff is extremely challenging, but to see that the teachers union in New Orleans has been able to recover, and how it has, it's extremely impressive, to say the least, because this is a very difficult terrain to organize under. You have to look at how parents are impacted as well, because many of them are working maybe two or three jobs to keep their households afloat, and that has impacted how they can engage at their school, how active they can be as a parent leader for their child in school. 

You mentioned that that it's often the same folks that you're coming up against or having to push against, or maybe who are coming at you, who are some of those groups or people?

Mainly the business community, to be honest. Whenever I see either the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce or the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, I get a little nervous, including Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce. I get nervous, especially in the education justice spaces, because I know that there's probably going to be some privatization, or there's going to be some school closures. Last year in Jefferson Parish, the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce proposed a plan called an efficiency facilities plan, And what they did is they targeted schools that they felt were not being utilized as 100% of the building. They're looking at the school enrollments but completely dismissing the performance of the school. And we had at least five schools got closed because of them not having the level of enrollment that they desired, even though the schools were higher performing, like a B level school or an A school for that matter. To see those kids get impacted in such a way was heartbreaking. To see the parents be upset in dealing with that inconvenience of transitions and changes and impacting their children. It was hard to watch. But on the other hand, because of the school consolidations, it did cause the school district to save some money, and they were able to do a one time stipend for the teachers. Though this was a benefit for the teachers in that sense, it wasn't a continuous raise, it was a one time stipend. And I have a feeling — and we're going to be there to support the teachers in this, of course — but we're going to be back at the drawing board with the school board to revisit that conversation about compensation and pay and having an increase in wages that's sustainable for people to live their lives. 

The Chamber of Commerce here is showing up in these education spaces, but they're also showing up in the labor spaces as well, being a constant adversary as far as increasing pay or benefits for workers. It's always them showing up trying to cast doubt or shoot down our initiatives that makes things better for workers, everyday people. Another common interest is LABI [Louisiana Association of Business and Industry]. They're the Louisiana business industry lobbyists, and we've had them on our radar for years. Another entity is, I would say, Lane Grigsby. He is an adversary, a common adversary, because he's the person that they like to call like a “kingmaker.” That makes sense, because he's funneling money into different campaigns, and many of these people that get elected and have been supported by him tend to push policies that harm the work that we're doing. 

As you look towards the election, what do you hope for working people after this election, and looking down the line for the next two or four years?

Yes, so what we're looking for with this election is an increase in voter turnout. Our voter turnout rate has been very low the past few election seasons. And so our hope is with this program that we're doing now, with Fall for Liberation, that we're inspiring enough people and mobilizing enough people to turn out in so many numbers that our opposition can't pull any type of games on us. 

And we're hopeful that this Workers’ Bill of Rights ballot measure is successful. We've gotten a lot of support, even from some business owners who support our Workers’ Bill of Rights. And that in itself speaks to how everybody wins when workers win, right? Everyday people win in that regard, and we want to see an improvement in our own quality of lives, where we don't have to stress about what will happen to my employment if I have to take off from work because I'm sick or my family member is sick, and I can take care of them. We don't have to worry about people stressing about making ends meet every month because they're living paycheck to paycheck. We want to be able to afford an environment for our communities to thrive, where we start to see a decrease in crime, because we actually have opportunities for youth and everyone to improve their own lives or actually serve in purpose for their lives. All of these things are very attainable. We just have to mobilize ourselves and organize ourselves to get there.

What I see in the next two years for us, or two to four years, is a major mayor race happening in New Orleans next year, in city council, we're going through those changes in Baton Rouge now, but I'm excited for next year in New Orleans, because a change is coming in leadership. But I just hope that we're impactful, we have the ear of people who do gain elected office, and we're able to push forward with the changes we need to make. I'm hopeful that we actually have an implementation committee next year in regards to the Workers’ Bill of Rights, because we won this election this November. I'm really hoping and praying for that, but if it fails, I mean, we're back at the drawing board, and we're trying again. We just can't give up. We have to keep pushing.