and so tonight i was going to start off and kind of try to set the table for this evening is going to come up after me and we're only going to speak for about ten minutes and then we're going to break into just a couple of groups and the whole point is this is around the syrian crisis now the latest if you i mean if you if you haven't heard you know and it hasn't gone away just because putin has intervened and you know we've got this opportunity on the table to have chemical weapons inspected and stored and maintained it's not gone away the latest unless you have something even later than this this thing changes moment by moment is as we gather tonight the crisis is still evolving the latest was assad's comment today that his government will put chemical weapons under international supervision within a month after it signs the u n chemical weapons ban but only if the u s stops its policy of threats and so you know it's not it's not a done deal by any means and we can only hope and in my neck of the woods pray that that will find a peaceful solution to set the table i wanted to start with this something i found somewhere on the internet and i wanted to read it simply because it really makes the point that this is no easy this is no easy issue so i'll read it slowly so you can just pick it up i read this and it's just you know my mind began and i realized why i'm a preacher and i'm not a military strategist syria is really a regional power play one russia once a pipeline to maintain its energy dominance in europe and the naval port of tartus five billion dollars in debt to maintain this port not to mention they sell about one point five billion dollars in weapons annually to syria to american leaders want to unseat assad for various reasons weakens iran weakens hezbollah it's a blow to the russian economy etc three by which iran arms hezbollah for israel benefit simply by having enter arab fighting it is strengthening ties with kurds and the jew is the down side is they don't want islamised next door five saudi arabia is challenging iran as the regional power to be saudi arabia lost the iraq war sunni's lost all power where the shia and the kurds gain dramatically this is an attempt to regain lost power or m i six turkey is likely not keen on islamists festering next door they also do not want the kurds to make any more gains seven other points include levanon is trying to deal with possible conflict with hezbollah jordan is being crushed by refugees and might collapse so is this a strike at iran and directly yes who's motivating it who isn't would be a better question so this is a game of thrones  face of a but will during complex and real time real time moral crisis not something we can think about something that's right right before us in our face this latest episode of war has been framed as a moral crisis because international law has been violated through the use of chemical weapons it's also a moral crisis because the syrian civil war has created over two million refugees and over one hundred thousand deaths those are numbers i can't i don't have an experience will point of view of that but shoot in the face of this real moral crisis president obama has determined that america is the moral agent capable of writing the wrong and restoring balance where the moral agent that can punish the wrongdoer and bring about eventually a greater good in effect obama has argued that a few surgical bombings will act as a deterrent to future chemical use both in syria and other nations as well as their s and as well as hopefully reining in the cruelty of assad again when we break into a conversation you call me on any of this but that's that's how i understand what we're about i don't share our nobel peace prize winning president's morality surgical strikes and syria will be no more effective for peace and justice than a drunken father who beats his son for being kicked out of school actually i think that this war crisis is really just another charade and as i just said i think it's part of a grander plan and a game of thrones that i want to say i don't understand it changes so quick so fast i simply can't know all the p as a citizen i can't know all the pieces on the checkerboard i'm not privy to any behind the scenes information for me the real moral crisis has less to do with syria then with the identity and purpose of us the american people who are we what do we value in life what do we contribute to the advancement of life are we still the country of noble dreams the city on the hill the shining light that says to the world give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free do we still believe that in a firm that want to live up to that idealism are we still the country of democratic checks and balances so that power never accrues to one sphere particularly a king or a dictator or a unitary executive are we still a country ruled by constitutional law complete with a bill of rights and agreements to abide by international law and we still a country that affirms liberty and justice for all are we still this in the face of post nine eleven war against terrorism a war that has brought massive changes to the use of our military and intelligence agencies along with domestic economic austerity in a time of massive corporate profits and a growing suspicion that we the people cannot be trusted and therefore need to be continually surveilled controlled and lied to for our own good syria in my opinion is merely the latest episode in a very long war it's a full spectrum more for money and control in a world of shrinking resources haunted by fears of a coming apocalypse afghanistan iraq libya somalia side trips to yemen and pakistan a partnership with egypt each of these wars are thought of as an episode independent crisis that only american benevolence can solve it's as if we have willfully forgotten that we have been participating in the syrian civil war since at least two thousand and eleven that we were ok with the egyptian massacres that we have left libya in shambles we've illegally invaded iraq and we have utterly destroyed its life as a nation we have rained robotic death down against countless civilians children and essence in pakistan in yemen afghanistan it's as if we really think that we care about those we kill the moral hypocrisy of our rulers is staggering as the gullibility in the silence of our people even one of the counsellors of those who rules a big new burzynski has said that there will be no solutions to any single crisis in the middle east without the big solutions in the whole region including our ongoing crisis with iran and the resolution of the israeli palestinian conflict now perhaps what he actually means by that is the draining of the swamp what he actually might mean is that is what was really clarke said way back right after nine eleven when he said that while at the pentagon he saw a blueprint that planned the destruction of seven islamic the moral crisis is not about syria i don't think i think it's about us or more to the point it really is about the war of the executive branch that military industrial congressional alliance that i warned us about back in the one nine hundred sixty the war of the executive branch against democracy and when i say executive branch i don't mean the president i mean the whole bureaucracy around the executive branch the military industrial congressional alliance our nation is in big trouble because we no longer are the america of our idealism but are merely yet another predator bullying and raping for the gain of a relatively few if we actually cared about syrians and syria we would not have been arming and participating in its civil war for the last couple years nor would we have become such a disruptive presence throughout the middle east we would not be so deeply involved in the selling of arms not only to nations but to insurgents within the nations who continually keep chaos alive rather we would take seriously pope francis's words echoing jesus violence begets violence and yes that means we would redirect the billions and trillions used for war and turn towards the plow shares that make for peace we would be far more focused on building infrastructure so that indigenous people can prosper we would focus more on hospitals and education than the building of military bases we would focus more on food than we do on tanks and bombers and drones we would in other words wage peace with as much strength creativity imagination political will and technological innovation as we are currently waging war we would promote faith in the future rather than fear in the present and of course merely to say this shows that i am naive and impractical and not living in the real world i would agree with  this the world the real world as it is is dying it is being destroyed nation by nation river by river person by person or political choices are being framed only within the terms of winner and loser dominance and submission i am arguing for a different consciousness and it is a way that begins with the word repentance which means to turn completely around to turn away to turn around at some point the alcoholic needs to submit to a power greater than the addictions that has brought about so much pain both politically and spiritually this nation i think needs to be called into repentance turning away from the economic pillage of others through international theft and debt a turning away from a mafia mentality that what you've got i want and because i'm bigger and stronger i'm going to take it and although putin is just putting his own political spin on things he is nevertheless right that america is no exception to history just ask the massacred children of afghanistan iraq yemen and libya how exceptional we are asked the vietnam new vietnamese people about our use of chemical weapons in their nation and how the lingering effects taking place and second generation go to iraq and visit the homes of disfigured children go to veterans hospitals in this country or for that matter just ask the growing poor and unemployed about our own benevolence to ourselves ask the native americans how truthful our treaties are ask african americans how liberty and justice plays out in the prisons in the context of the world today the highest form of patriotism that is patriotism with the most integrity will first say to ourselves we need to repent and get our house in order without repentance from violence without repentance from trusting our security to unaccountable powers our only future is spiritual death and finally if you think of a puzzle piece as a puzzle piece if all you can see is one piece of the puzzle chemical weapons that have been used in syria which we're still not quite sure who all use them we need to remember that the u n was already over there investigating other chemical claims that many believe were were from the insurgents but if we only look at the issue before us chemical weapons used in syria yet refused to see the other pieces financial manipulation by too big to fail institutions or military dreams of clean sweep plans to drain the swamp then we will never grasp what is happening to them over there or to us over here all we will be are victims powerless voiceless and in the end choiceless as the government will tell us to jump the media will tell us how high to jump and our neighbors will make sure that we jump squadron seventh u s calvary with third infantry division and then went back for what is considered a standard rotation in two thousand and five for a year i want to begin tonight by just covering two really quick things and the first thing is as somebody who has lived through a war themselves i just want to remind everyone and i'm sure that i don't need to but i just want to point out that as we sit here and we debate and discuss what is best for our country with our military and other people it's important to remember that presently those people are living in a war zone and as we sit comfortably discussing this there are options to sit comfortably and even discuss what we're discussing are not there presently the other thing that i want to bring forward is that i am not here advocating for war as a whole i am not one to say that war is a good thing if we are to debate whether or not war is good or bad i can save us the debate by saying that it is bad the question or not is whether war is necessary when a mother has somebody break into her home and she shoots that individual who broke into her home in self defense that is not a good act it simply is not that is a human life that irrevocably taken from the world and that is a human life that is scarred by the act of taking it however is it necessary and that tonight is what i'm hoping to bring about and discuss  and this quick math thing really quickly because i want to because it was pointed out the reference to the bottom with the u s chemical weapons stockpile that is in reference only to chemical weapons classified in the treaty so that you mean there is a discussion be had about depleted uranium and phosphorus as chemical weapons however that these numbers are based off of what is traditional chemical weapons the v series the sarah gases mustard gas things like that so i just wanted to clarify those  numbers so i want to take us to april two thousand and eleven really quickly and discuss what happens when a protests goes violent after so many months the protests in syria began actually this is an interesting fact i didn't know i had always assumed that syria was actually a dictatorship and that the right to protest was not present in the country and truth that's not actually always been true in fact there were protests in syria against the us invasion of iraq they were allowed to peacefully assemble they were allowed to march in the street and they even previously had been allowed to march against government oppression around the time of the arab spring though if things began to change and after several months of peaceful civil protesting assad issued military orders and mid april he put tanks on the street and he sent military officials to begin arresting the protesters now imagine for a moment for all of the horribleness that happened to our friends and family who are in the occupy movement we're not talking about actual tanks on the street we're not talking about actual round ups and executions it's one step farther it's not an excuse for the u s behavior in any way shape or form but think about how angry we were when we saw people being pepper spray for sitting down and how upset we were when we realized that we couldn't protests because it might interfere with some ice traffic plans now imagine what would happen if your own government instead of just putting police on the street militarized police i will not debate militarized police but put actual no it's harry on the street actual tanks actual infantry carriers now much like what happened in egypt many of these soldiers the soldiers are not soldiers they're human beings and many of these soldiers said i will not follow these orders i will not arrest the civilians i will not harm them those soldiers were rounded up and executed for taking that stand how would we react if our friends at wesley park had been rounded up and summarily executed if the few good s p d officers who said no this is wrong had been executed for saying that and that is when the arm think that it's completely apt because if you pay attention to the game of thrones or the books of the shows all of the characters believe that they are in control that they're the ones who's the master chess player moving the pieces when in reality the game is so quick that no one is in control and we have a perfect example of that with what's going on presently john secretary kerry did not intend to offer the the offer that he gave it was a slip of the tongue in fact this the state department came out immediately after saying that and said it was not a real offer russia jumped at the chance because russia is not interested in a military conflict with the united states it cannot let go of its economic opportunity there right now russia's military is in of itself in an effort to recover its had its own decade with conflicts that it was not successful and it's had its own protests against the dictators that are moving into position in russia it's not in the same position that it was in the cold war it's not scary it's not a cold war standoff between two powers it's a regional conflict of which multiple powers are trying to be the one in control and that unfortunately is not that is not how war works and that is why we see that for two years these these conflict has been going on it's been very stagnant there's been some progress either from the regime or from the rebels but it's been a very static battlefield that is never a good situation and the only way to transition a static battlefield is for an outside player that an outside influence peaceful or military and in fact if you look at the original intent of war unfortunately the u s learned its were fair from europe and europe had this crazy idea that you're supposed to line up people on a field and you're supposed to march them out each other until whoever has the last man standing wins that isn't hot that is not true warfare that idiocracy unfortunately any time the us has acted in such a way it has experience that ocracy the two thousand and three invasion of iraq was a conventional war it is an example of what military refer to as fighting the previous war we went in there with the same idea of afghanistan and in fact we were to rush to baghdad in the same way that they rushed to the capital in afghanistan that left a lot of lebanon's a lot of battlefield armaments on the field because we had a destination same thing as afghanistan that leads to this war of attrition that attracts the us and keeps us locked in a constant state of war and that i want to take and invite you to not just look at the iraq war as a failure both morally and even spiritually but look at it through the eyes of a soldier and as it's what it is it's a military failure it was an unnecessary war it was fought thinking of it as another country and there was no strategic intent the moment we i was given four different objectives when we were first there was weapons of mass destruction there were no weapons of mass destruction so they switched it to liberation mid jump we were already rolling to baghdad when they told us it was no longer chemicals it was for the people and you know what we did believe it i was eighteen years old i didn't join the army to kill people i didn't join the army to wage war i mean i grew up like any little kid who idolizes you know g i joes and playing war but it wasn't my intention to go and to kill people it was my intention to serve my country and to serve the ideal of freedom as i understood it and yes it led me into the trap that many of us have experienced and felt since september eleventh that trap of our goodness was used against us we had good intent and people use that against this and the today as we talk about syria we're talking very much and similar to this good intent and it's a question between whether or not our intent is really good or whether it's hidden and shady and i have to tell you as somebody who's been on a battlefield it's both it really is there are men who make money on conflicts they have and they always will they made money when we invaded iraq but they also made money in the nineteen tens when we were an isolationist state when they just got to set off to the side and just say contribute to the war without us being involved these people their goal to make money will make money whether it is peace or war the question becomes whether or not the tools of democracy enable us in this case too to put a wedge in that to at least temper what is going on an example of that would be in the mid one nine hundred ninety s the reason when i invaded iraq it was a futile effort was not because there were no chemical weapons in iraq there were repeated usage of chemical weapons throughout the eighty's and ninety's by iraq where did the chemical weapons go that these things don't just magically disappear well if we look into the ninety's we see that bill clinton undertook three military operations against iraq that even included the use of ground troops he had ground troops repeatedly on the kuwaiti iraqi border in preparation for an invasion and it was during those times that many  just the chemical weapons facilities but the military weapons facilities were removed if we look at the war in iraq from a military perspective the reason it did not need to be fought is because of the military actions that had taken place in the previous decade and so now we find herself in a very similar spot there are chemical weapons serious chemical weapons for decades and arguably they have a reason to have chemical weapons syria started their chemical weapons program in response to the not real israeli nuclear program because as you can see on the quick syria engaged in its own nuclear program but was incredibly unsuccessful chemical weapons are oftentimes considered the poor man's alternative in a fact nicknamed by some military analysts as kind of the poor man's neutron bomb it's quick it's deadly it doesn't damage infrastructure it and it's really really cheap to make those weapons are there the question is whether or not they need to be removed and clearly we're not the only ones who think that they need to be removed because russia is negotiating a removal serious talking about them being removed is a question of how effective the russian and syrian plan will be in the removal of those chemical weapons and whether or not it will have the same lasting long standing effects that the military strikes w have for example the numbers that i provide which are not very specific numbers on here for what syria has chemical weapons or from a french intelligence report on the third of september either tomorrow or the beginning of next week russia will release the torrie listings of what syria has were not even one hundred percent positive to the entire extent of what syria has chemically speaking or its ability to deliver some of that obviously is contained in the white house through the classified briefings congressman have been getting at least the white house has claimed that they are familiar with the targets and we do have i mean that's why we're freaked out about the drones flying overhead because we do know that these drones are capable of finding what we want them to find locating them and seemingly being somewhat accurate the drones aren't in use here they rely more on the tomahawk missiles which lead the discussion it's important to remember that as we discuss this propaganda is in fact going on and it's going around propaganda is a part of war false flag operations are a regular thing that we trash and there's a reason that we have problems with false flag operations but it's important to remember that same false flag operation is what enabled the u s allied invasion in norm because they did a false flag invasion strategy where they even were able to convince the nazis that the invasion was happening in an entirely other beach and normandy was a de quoi invasion it's the only reason we were able to take the  yes there is deception and war and it can look that there is deception and war but there is a purpose to that section in war finally when the united states was leaving vietnam  the one conflict that we're all very familiar with because it was the first time that america really really got its butt handed to us but here's a really interesting fact about that we actually never lost a battle in vietnam we never lost a military battle in vietnam that is in fact it is so much of a fact that at the at the withdrawal talks between the us and the vietnamese the american general and his american pride that we're all very familiar with he looked across the table at the vietnamese colonel and he said you know you never once beat us on a battlefield and the v it means commander looked at me said you know it didn't really matter and he was right and so as we look at the moral imperative moving forward we must remember that yes our country is engaging in propaganda but so are all the other ones and it is our job citizens with the right to weed through all of these laws that we know i mean when as a politician lied to us about anything we know these laws are here it's about us weeding through the lawyers and holding them to the truth of what we really truly believe  hi good evening i'm so happy to be here with you and i i feel a little naked because i've been on a sixty city book tour with a one year old and this trip was one trip i decided to leave my babies that's my kind of room and i really appreciate being here and i also felt very touched thank you so much heather and everybody for putting the stories of our members on your tables those are stories from the book of our very real members some of whom were in the video and in that video amazing head media was created by a restaurant worker leader of the restaurant opportunities center who is a restaurant worker and also obviously like has a career in videography and all of the people in the video are members of rock and the video was filmed at colors our work or own co operative restaurant in new york city and you know we put it up we put it up to kind of build a buzz around the book and to date it's gotten two hundred thirty five thousand views on you tube it's really made the rounds and it's it's really changed for ask the dialogue about what's happening in this industry but i have to say you know twelve years ago me myself you know i've now kind of dedicated my life i have to this industry but twelve years ago me myself i knew nothing about what was in that video or what's in this book i lived in new york city i had just graduated from law school while i was working as an organizer out in long island new york and i was organizing factory workers and custodial workers  restaurant workers and every evening i would come back into the city i lived in brooklyn so it come back into manhattan or brooklyn and eat out because i was young and that's what you do when you're in new york you eat out sometimes three times a day and i did i ate out a lot i ate out you know at the fanciest restaurants and the hole in the wall restaurants and a vegetarian restaurants and a great asian fusion rash trans and i have to admit even though i was you know working with low wage workers all day and sometimes restaurant workers every evening i would eat and i would hardly if ever think about the people who are touching my food who are preparing it who are serving it who are bringing it to our to my table and in the book i argue that we as americans we actually eat out more frequently than anybody else on earth more frequently and frankly with more with more you know we tend to eat we tend to spend the most amazing special intimate wonderful moments of our lives in restaurants we get married in restaurants i got proposed to in our restaurant many of us can remember birthdays or anniversaries or very very special life moments but if you think for a moment about those special life moments that maybe you had in a restaurant it's very hard for most of us to remember anybody that touched our food in those special life moments anybody at all they're invisible to us and i would argue that that's very very purposeful so that was me twelve years ago people were invisible to me i couldn't see it i didn't know what was happening behind the kitchen door and then nine eleven happened and my life and of course hundreds of thousands of people's lives around the globe changed but for me my dining experience changed as well because on september eleventh there was a restaurant at the top of the world trade center tower one in new york city called windows on the world it was the hundred seventh floor and on that morning when the plane hit at nine eleven nine eleven on nine eleven seventy three workers died and about two hundred fifty workers lost their jobs and about thirteen thousand restaurant workers lost their jobs in the months and weeks following the tragedy and there was a tiny little union inside that restaurant later merge with united to become unite here but it was a small union in new york city because less than point zero zero one percent of all restaurant workers in the united states are unionized and so this little union said we don't have the capacity to provide support to all the workers that have lost their jobs or the families of the victims and they called me and they called one of the lead waiters for windows on the world was actually a shop steward in the restaurant whose name is actually on some of your tables a guy named feck octomom do an immigrant from morocco who worked in the industry for seventeen years before nine eleven happened and they brought us together who started this little organization as a relief center post nine eleven and what started as a little relief center post nine eleven has grown into a national restaurant workers organization that we call rock the rest an opportunity center with now ten thousand members in thirty two cities across the country with one hundred  you now have about one hundred employer partners these are and owners who actually are doing the right thing providing good wages and good working conditions they range from people like tom colicchio start top chef is actually a great lawyer and partner of ours all the way down to small mom and pop restaurants and we've actually organized several thousand consumer members as well and we've won things we've actually want about fifteen campaigns against large high profile restaurant companies we've won back about seven million dollars in stolen tips and wages we've actually open to work our own restaurant colorist one of your one in detroit soon another one to open in new orleans we've trained thousands of workers about five thousand workers of color to move up the ladder to livable wage jobs in the industry which are fine dining waitstaff and bartending positions we've done lots and lots of research and we've won some policy changes we raised the minimum wage for workers in new york state and we actually actually made it illegal in philadelphia to adopt credit card processing fees from workers tips which unfortunately is legal everywhere else including here which is why you should pay your tips in cash so we won something  god something it's been it's been an incredibly intense twelve years but it's definitely not enough and the most incredible thing for me personally has been just getting to know the stories of thousands and thousands of workers who inspire me daily like jason like so many other workers around the country like the workers who are on your tables the stories of the workers on your tables and who taught me so much because twelve years ago i was a new yorker and i thought wow i was a good new yorker i should temps well i was told when you go to new york twenty percent so i tip twenty percent i had no idea that in new york and in forty three states in the united states the tip that i was leaving was not on top of the wage it actually was the wage itself washington state is different washington has the same minimum wage tipped workers but the tipped minimum wage at the federal level actually is two dollars and thirteen cents an hour which means that people rely on our tips to live i knew something about health and safety in restaurants i grew up in l a where they actually put letter grades and restaurant windows to tell you about sanitation i had no idea that ninety percent of restaurant workers in america don't have paid sick days which means two thirds report cooking preparing and serving our food when they're sick sick with hepatitis a true story stick with sick with h one n one or swine flu true story in my book i just met a worker and florida who worked regularly with typhoid fever these are the kinds of stories you hear daily not because workers want to work when they're sick but because they're forced to there are over ten million restaurant workers in america it is right now the second largest and the absolute fastest growing employer in the united states in fact one in twelve of us one in twelve of us right now in words in the restaurant industry it is the industry that is providing jobs to any new entrants into the economy whether they be immigrants or young people anybody who's looking for a job these are the jobs that are out there and yet they happen to be the absolute lowest paying jobs in america seven of the eleven lowest paying jobs in the u s and the two absolute lowest paying jobs in america according to the s department of labor lower than every other kind of job you can think of lower than farm workers lower than every other job you may think of as a low paying job are the people who touch our food and why how is it that you've got the largest and fastest growing segment of the u s economy proliferating the absolute lowest paying jobs it's not because they have razor thin profit margins as the industry would like you to know it is because of the power of a group you must know about called the national restaurant association which we call the other n r a they are the other and by the way they're the same people who got ketchup declared a vegetable in congress and pizza declared a vegetable in congress they will kill us one way or another back in nineteen ninety six under the leadership of a man named herman cain probably remember her cain back in one nine hundred ninety six herman cain as the leader of the other n r a struck a deal with congress saying that they the n r a would not oppose an increase to the overall minimum wage as long as the minimum wage for tipped workers stayed frozen for ever and so it has been stuck at two dollars and thirteen cents an hour for the last twenty two years this is not the only way that they have done this behind closed door deal it's not just in congress every time in any state there's a minimum wage or paid sick days proposal they show up at the last minute and demand an exemption even here in seattle it happened there was a paid sick days ordinance which was wonderful meaning that lots of workers in seattle got a paid sick day but a lot of people didn't know at the last minute restaurants showed up and said well there should be an exemption for anybody who has a shift they should be able to swap shifts if they're sick so essentially for restaurant workers that meant instead of taking a paid sick day just find somebody else to work or shift it be the same thing as telling a lawyer don't worry if you're sick don't work today just come in on saturday what do you think a worker does if they're sick and they can't afford not to take a day off their work which means they're cooking preparing and serving our food with all kinds of illnesses and they're working at two dollars and thirteen cents an hour seventy percent of those workers working at two dollars and thirteen cents an hour are women they work at red lobster and all of the garden and applebee's and i hop majority they are women they suffer from three times the poverty rate of the rest of the u s workforce and use food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the u s workforce meaning the people who put food on our tables cannot afford to eat themselves so take for example a worker in my book club the i'm with knows who is an immigrant from mexico she's actually a leader of iraq she was a leader in a war lens and then in texas she went on to become a really famous person in the dream act world but when she was with us she told us the story about her own experience working at the i hop in houston texas where she earned two dollars and thirteen cents an hour and when you are two dollars and thirteen cents an hour you get a pay stub that says this is not a paycheck and it's a zero because your wages go entirely to taxes and you live on your tips and cloudier would live on her tips sometimes four sometimes three sometimes zero dollars an hour and she was hungry she says sorry i'm ashamed to admit it but i would go to the restaurant and flirt with the managers or the cooks to get extra food to eat because i was so hungry and one night i worked a full night shift at the i hop in houston texas and at the end of the night a couple walked out without paying the bill and i hop international corporation though it is that even though it is illegal said we are not going to pay for this bill you have to pay for this bill from the tips you earned all night and the bill happened to be twenty dollars more than everything she had earned meaning that clothing l f that night paying twenty dollars for the luxury of having worked at the i hop that he in texas and it's so funny i've heard this story so many times and i repeat is it so many times i was not i i was i and i've said it all over the country and every time i say it somebody comes up to me and says that was my story in fact i was speaking in northwest arkansas and those of you in the food movement should know something about northwest arkansas it is the home of the poultry processing world of america it is the home of smithfield and cargill and tyson it's also the home of mart it is the belly of the beast and it is a pretty conservative place so i was asked to go speak there and i thought i was going to be killed and a state legislator was going to speak right after me and i told clearly a story and i sure he was going to get up and after me and say she doesn't know what she's talking about raising the wage would kill jobs which is what they always say where it would make prices go way up he got up there and he said thank you very much i just want to say to what she said that happened to me every night i worked in the restaurant that guy worked in a bar all growing up and every night they would ask him to pay for customer walkouts i bet so many of you in this room have worked in the restaurant industry at some point in your life but let me tell you something whether you stay in the industry for your lifetimes which most people who work in the industry do they don't actually move on to something better as the n r a likes to say find it the most hilarious argument they say it's ok that we treat these people this way they're just passing through to something better which means everything else in the world is better than their industry right now that's what they say but the truth is it's majority of adults who stay there but even if you worked in the industry and you moved on to something else keep this in mind when herman cain and his affairs at the n r a became public m s n b c reported that all those seven percent of american women work in the industry thirty seven percent of all sexual harassment claims to the e e o c come from restaurants which means that for any of us who have daughters and i have to we have to care because this is the job our daughters will probably take when they go through high school college or maybe stay in for their lifetimes and this is the job that exposes them to the world of work a world in which they can be paid two dollars and thirteen cents an hour a world in which they can be touched and grab it appropriately and on my book tour i swear every time i say that somebody some woman comes up to me afterwards and says you told my story i work now as an i b m executive and i've been sexually harassed but i never complained because it was never as bad as what i experienced in the restaurant every time i speak a woman says that to me we have to care thankfully there is good news on the horizon of good news is that we're coming to seattle we're starting a rock here in seattle you are opening our doors we're starting to survey restaurant workers across the city across the region and we are building a membership we are offering free training programs for workers to move from fast food into fine dining or from bus or positions into waiter positions like you saw in the film but the other piece of good news at the federal level is that finally after years and years of fighting congressional leadership has introduced a bill in congress that would finally overcome the legacy of herman does call the fair minimum wage act of twenty thirteen it proposes to raise the tipped minimum wage to seventy percent of the regular a tripling three hundred percent increase for workers who earn two dollars and thirteen cents an it would be huge and it actually has a chance to win introduced and when it was introduced the congress member who introduced to told us look the truth is to overcome the power of the national restaurant association we will need to see a groundswell of public support crazy right to listen to not listen to these trade lobbyists we would need to see a groundswell of people who support the minimum and increase in the minimum wage while we thought about that we have actually seen a groundswell in the restaurant industry over the last decade of york city i remember a restaurant say we could never afford locally sourced organic food and those same restaurants now jumping over themselves to say we provide locally sourced organic food whether or not they do  you know it and that was because consumers read a book and decided to do something about it so we looked at this growing food movement and we said how can we replicate that success and how can we partner with this movement to expand the definition of sustainable food to include sustainable working conditions for the people who touched our food how can we do that well the first thing that we did is we created an alliance called the food chain workers alliance alliance of worker organizations from farm workers to meat and poultry processing workers to food retail and distribution workers to restaurant workers and today the alliance represents over one hundred fifty thousand workers and fifteen organizations across the country it's exciting and it's beginning to change the definition and in fact after put do creating the alliance we actually created a smartphone app and diners guy so that it acts you can download it on your smartphone app for free it's called the are o c national diners guide and it tells you how restaurants around you are faring on issues of wages and benefits and it's funny mark bittman famous food writer for the new york times when we created the alliance we made the smartphone app he paid attention he wrote an article called the twenty million about the twenty million people in our food system and he said foodies wake up if you've thought about the cows on the pigs why haven't you thought about the people and on that day one hundred thousand people visited our web site to download our guide on our app and somebody actually wrote in unsaid i never thought about the people i thought about the cows and the pigs i never thought about the people it seems like you're on the cusp of something big and it really felt that way except we felt like we hadn't reached our michael pollan moment which is why we wrote the book behind the kitchen door so we're asking three things  everybody who eats out or everybody who eats or everybody who has a conscience or everybody who's just alive three days first read the book please get the book read the book tell other people you know because it was on the words dilemma and fast food nation that created help to seed our help to grow a movement that was already there but really exploded it and helped it reach a much wider audience of people who are suddenly turned on to the idea of local and organic we can suddenly turn people on to the idea of people in the food system by getting the education that they need great danny covers movie company literature films has created a series of beautiful short film portraits about the workers and employers profiled in the book all of that can be seen in number two the second thing i'm going to ask which is to visit the web site the welcome table dot net website we've created for consumers to over time and i know you want to eat and you don't want to i want to forget about the stories i told to number three last i'm going to say in the same way that over the last ten years consumers have asked is this locally sourced is this organic you know where did this come from and that created change we're asking every single person to eat when you eat out wherever you eat out eat out wherever it's the end of your meal to go up to the matador the owner not your server the magic or the owner and say i love the food i love the service i would love to see you provide paid sick days i would love to see you provide a livable wage these things are important to me as a consumer i would love to see you promote people of color to front of house positions and i'll give you one quick example of how i did and then i promise i'll sit down which is that when my first baby was born i went and had one of those amazing special wonderful moments at a restaurant her first outing to a restaurant and we went there was a great locally sourcing organic vegetarian restaurant was really popular took pictures of the baby had a great time and i happened to notice as i'm sure is true all over seattle all the servers were white and all the busters were people of color and if you picked in the kitchen all the people in the kitchen were people of color so at the end of my meal you know we paid the bill my husband left the baby i walked up to the owner and i said i love the food i love the service but i happened to notice all the servers are white all the busters are people of color i think they'd make great servers what kind of training and promotion opportunities have you given them and they said oh i don't know i don't think they want to be servers nobody's ever asked me to be so you know which you know you laugh but you know it may be true we didn't match pairs tucked in study and in new york city we don't know what that is we sent two hundred pairs of white and people of color africans into fine dining restaurants and people of color having a better resume and found that the white applicants had twice the chance of a person of color getting one of these rez and then we gave them accents because the industry's always saying oh it's isn't it because they're illegal or they can't speak english so we gave the white any kind of accent was the detractors so i'm you know part of the issue is that people of color will not ask for a server job if they've never seen anybody who looks like them in the server positions so i said i appreciate that but i just want you to know it's so important to me as a customer to see diversity in the workplace and because it important to me as a mother that my little brown daughter sees people like her every position in this restaurant and he said ok thank you very much you know i was going to do is going to spit at me or slap me i know i sometimes i go around the country and say i hear this with my ever do that i could never say something but if you know we say things about so many other things i don't like this food take it back it is this local areas what's what's in this is their pitch is their pork here but we're not willing to say do you provide a livable wage or do you provide paid sick days or can you please promote people of color to a server position these things are just as important and if we don't say it we're going to end up with an industry that impacts our health of our economy our future we need this for workers for employers for every one of us who eats