Caleb Jennings

                                                         

               

                Caleb Jennings is a union organizer that works with people that want to

change working conditions and unfair wage payments. He enjoys working with workers to improve wages and any other issues that they have. By organizing protests, it makes it possible for him to get more people involved. He values the lives of many hard-working people who don’t get paid as they should, and aren’t being paid equally. He has been working as a union organizer now for 13 years, and has seen many changes in the communities and workers he’s helped.

                 In high school he wasn’t as civically engaged as he is now, but during

his time when he got his education at UIC he was more interested in workers that were struggling. He attended a organizing institute, which helped him learn how to become a union organizer, mostly what he knows today he was taught there. Since he joined the institute he never stopped participating in the organization. He stated that, “If people want to change the way they work.. they have to be civically engaged.” He also thinks that students could also be civically engaged, to focus on what is going on in their community, and participate in organizations.

                A person that Caleb found inspiring was a woman named Sonia Acuna.

She has 3 children that she takes care of on her own. She inspired Caleb by showing that anything was possible even during the hard times. During a protest that Caleb organized, he met her because she wanted to be a part of the protest. She had told him that she worked two shifts in two different Mcdonalds, while taking care of her children. It inspired him because she was willing to quit her job and sacrifice not getting paid, in order to protest having better working conditions.

               Other work that he’s done in the community was with people and organ-

izations collaborating together. One such project involved students to create posters for a protest. A recent protest that he organized, was shown on television, and it encouraged people to participate in his organization. He tries to get as many people involved in protests that he does, especially the working class. A new project that he’s working on is called the “Fight for 15,” which is to have minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour rather than $8 an hour.

                To him social justice is when there’s something wrong and people come

together to speak out against it. Some of the examples he used were about people that aren’t able to protest in other countries because they would be killed. An injustice that he thinks is important is income inequality, where people aren’t being paid equally, between the rich and the poor. He has accomplished to have more benefits and healthcare for workers he protested with, which they never had before. He stated that “as individuals we are weak.. but when we pull people together, you have power in numbers”.

By : Andres Solano