My name is Maria Svart and I recently joined JMA’s staff because I want a better and safer world for my family. We all deserve clean air and water and a fair chance to support those we love. We all, regardless of our background, deserve dignity and freedom, and that’s the work of JMA.
I’ve felt for many years that the country was going in the wrong direction, expanding important freedoms while still leaving fundamental economic and community needs unmet. Corporate profits were mushrooming, while the benefits from public investment seemed to be concentrated in the hands of the powerful. This began to change recently, but not fast enough. I feared there would be a terrible reckoning.
That moment is now.
Certain politicians are framing our choice as one between the return of jobs to certain Americans and continued pain for others, but is that promise, that choice, real? What attracted me to JMA was the concrete attention to the quality of jobs, the nature of the revival of U.S. manufacturing and the health and prosperity of communities around those factories. We know it is not a zero-sum game, where any job will do if it pays poverty wages, where workers and their communities are sacrificed or given mere crumbs and their collective voice is silenced as the cost of doing business.
It seems to me that our actual choice is between good jobs and a new kind of pain for my generation, a pain that ironically harkens back to our country’s past, when child labor, forced prison labor, and workplace discrimination were imposed with violence and economic chaos and instability was the norm.
The real choice is between democracy and a doubling down on corporate profits at the expense of everyone else.
In this dark time, JMA is using innovative strategies to partner with high-road industrial and clean tech employers and take us toward a stronger, more democratic future. We can make America produce again, and we can do it in a way that addresses the all-too-real threat of climate disaster with a skilled, stable, and diverse workforce. Most importantly, we know the key is community power. Community members and workers must have a direct voice in negotiating win-win agreements rather than being used as pawns between wealthy politicians and companies.
I’m no stranger to the importance of the grassroots in winning changes for the many. As the former National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), I saw regularly that policy changes imposed from above don’t take root and often don’t address the needs of real people. During my time at DSA, we built a national organization based in local chapters because that’s how we knew what resonated and because that was the source of our power. It’s one reason I appreciate that JMA’s offices and staff are all over the country. We create the tools and build the coalitions for communities to negotiate directly with factory owners based on local needs.
My choice to join JMA is in line with my choice to lead DSA, and my choice before that to join the labor movement at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Those choices were perhaps bred into me. My maternal grandmother was an undocumented Mexican housewife raising seven children on her copper miner husband’s income. My grandfather was a union member but couldn’t access the positions Anglos routinely filled at the Arizona mine. I deeply understand the problems with employers exploiting people based on their immigration status and race – a widespread practice in U.S. manufacturing as in other industries.
My paternal grandmother went on strike for a year at her Oregon department store position during the Great Depression. Later, after World War II, she watched my firefighter grandfather depart for each shift to potentially never come home – and still demand, through his union, more safety equipment and greater racial diversity in hiring at the fire department. I see JMA’s Community Benefits Agreements and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace safety trainings as a direct continuation of his vision.
I grew up hearing my family’s stories of the precarity of life before labor, voting rights, and other legal protections. It’s what I think of when I see stories of Selma sixty years ago this week, and I’m glad to be working alongside people like our Southern team, who participated in the Jubilee Bridge Crossing. Our movements have won before, and we refuse to go back. Instead, we continue the fight for a future where our families and communities can thrive.
I would love to meet with you as I travel around the country and visit our campaigns this year, to share what inspires me about JMA’s work.
Maria Svart
Deputy Executive Director
