‘Occupation’

A documentary narrated by Ben Affleck on a sit-in at Harvard explores the living-wage issue.   [Unrated]

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   Good news about the working poor is in short supply these days, which is all the more reason to get excited by Occupation, a documentary that packs more thrills than Hollywood’s latest comic-book caper.
   The story of a successful sit-in waged by Harvard students in 2001, Occupation is a bit of an anachronism. That’s partly because we so rarely see coverage of student activism these days and partly because of the movie’s style, which the Boston Phoenix characterized as "unabashed agit prop."
   Occupation will be screened by the Global Cinema Café in Princeton March 9.
   Co-director Maple Razsa, one of the participants in the occupation of the university’s administration building, Massachusetts Hall, documented the sit-in with a handheld camera. The movie intercuts Razsa’s footage, which captures the nervous excitement of the first few hours and the changing moods of the next three weeks, with other scenes that flesh out the story.

"Ben
Ben Affleck, whose father once worked as a janitor at Harvard, narrates Maple Razsa’s Occupation.


   The students’ main demand was a minimum "living wage" of $10.25 an hour for the university’s cafeteria, janitorial and other service workers. As the movie explains, Massachusetts has the third-highest cost of living of any state. As a result, its minimum wage was 30 percent higher than the national floor of $5.15 an hour in 2001. Harvard’s hometown of Cambridge, one of the state’s priciest areas, had gone even further, passing a living-wage ordinance that required city workers to be paid at least $10.25 an hour.
   Meanwhile, Harvard was moving in the opposite direction, lowering wages and reducing benefits for all of its lowest-paid workers, while outsourcing many jobs to nonunion workers for considerably less pay. In 1994, according to a flyer posted by a student protester, 58 percent of the university’s security guards earned more than $14 an hour. By 2001, 58 percent earned less than $10 an hour, and none earned as much as $14. During that time, the average rent in Boston had doubled.
   Harvard workers in Occupation talk about how hard it is to support themselves, let alone their children, on their reduced wages. Their testimonials are condensed into potent nuggets, sound bites with real bite. Janitor Consuelo Tizon, who works 14 hours on weekdays and sometimes on Saturdays, says she had to raise her daughter "by phone" because she couldn’t afford a babysitter. A custodian describes how he gets home from one job at 11:30 p.m., only to wake up before 4 a.m. for the next and then says: "It’s just a rhythm, that working… Happiness, I know, it’s got to stem from something outside this working. But there’s only 24 hours in the day."
   Another custodian, Frank Morley, wryly notes: "You don’t need a degree to know you’re getting screwed."
   The movie underscores Morley’s point by noting each speaker’s annual salary along with his or her name — not just for workers who make $18,000 or so, but for Harvard officials like Provost Harvey Fineberg ($245,000), President Neil Rudenstine ($360,000), and an Enron director who sits on the university’s governing board ($8 million).
   We learn little about the student protesters, but it’s safe to assume that most are the children of privilege. Savvy and articulate, they’re anything but isolated inside the building. Armed with cell phones and wireless Internet connections, they place calls to sympathetic reporters and university officials, monitor media coverage of the sit-in as it spreads from the local to the national news, and refuse to leave the building until they see their agreed-on terms posted on the university’s Web site. And, of course, they made this movie — and got Ben Affleck, whose father once worked as a janitor at Harvard, to narrate. It’s an impressive display of power: class warfare as practiced by the ruling class.
   But the university they challenge is even more powerful. Affleck’s narration notes that Harvard is "the second-largest nonprofit in the world after the Vatican," with real estate and an endowment worth almost $20 billion. To raise wages for all workers making less than $10.25 an hour to that amount, the movie adds, would cost an estimated $10 a million a year, or one half of one percent of the annual interest on its endowment.
   Questioned about those numbers on a local talk show, a Harvard spokesman admits that "affordability isn’t the issue." We never hear what he thinks the issue is, but the narration suggests that the administration is simply unwilling to be seen as "giving in." Harvard President Rudenstine gives credence to that theory when he angrily tells the protesting students that he’ll resign before agreeing to their demands. But whatever its reasons, the university puts up a strong resistance.
   The students enlist powerful allies to push back. The movie doesn’t spell out whether the unions involved started the movement or just joined in, but they clearly play a key role, shaping strategic planning and lending a seasoned negotiator to represent the students in their final go-round with the university. Leaders like Sen. Ted Kennedy voice their support as the issue gains visibility. Dozens of students set up a colorful Tent City outside Massachusetts Hall in Harvard Yard, and 300 professors signed a statement backing the movement.
   As the pressure on the university increases, so does the tension in the movie, which builds to a crescendo when the university gives in and the triumphant students emerge from Massachusetts Hall.
   As a result of the sit-in, Harvard’s janitors became entitled to vacation days, sick days and free health care; starting wages were increased for all of the university’s lowest-paid workers; and matching pay and benefits were extended to contract workers. "It’s one of those movies that really inspire you," says Bruce Harland, a third-year law student at Rutgers who will be one of the guest speakers at the March 9 screening. "You see what happens when people from all walks of life get thrown into a situation, the amazing accomplishments they can have."
   Mr. Harland, who helped the Service Employees International Union organize janitors at Rutgers last year in a campaign that also called for a living wage, first saw Occupation when a group of Harvard students and janitors visited Rutgers to show it to his group and talk about the story behind it. "I definitely think that the Harvard outcome motivated students," he says. "Something like that really gets people’s attention. Administrators at schools, their ears perked up, and student activists got interested. And it also has the double effect of telling the janitors, ‘Hey, you’ve got a whole university community behind you.’"
   But there’s a sobering subtext to the story, as well. Even with all that support, even at an institution where affordability was not an issue, and even after a campaign that had lasted for years before the sit-in, the agreement at Harvard left service workers making less than they had 10 years before and included no annual adjustments to keep up with inflation.
   It’s enough to make you wish Affleck could come out from behind his mike, put on that silly Daredevil suit and swoop in to save the day.
Occupation will be shown at the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding (formerly the Third World Center), Olden Street and Prospect Avenue, Princeton, March 9, 4 p.m. No admission charge, but donations are gratefully accepted; includes coffee, tea, cookies and discussion with guest speakers Bruce Harland and Sarah Rivlin. For information, call (609) 924-0455. Global Cinema on the Web: www.globalcinema.org