Maria Versus the Volcano

If it were up to Maria Elena Durazo, every third person in the U.S. would be taking turns fasting in order to bring the University of Southern California to its senses. That would include you, me, Ricky Martin, Jay Leno, Gray Davis, Julia Roberts and the entire cast and crew of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

She does not think small, this woman, but she does think clearly. I see her as a combination of Cesar Chavez and the Terminator in terms of her desire to get things done. Her goal these days is job security for the 360 janitors and cafeteria workers at USC. And she feels that the best way to the university’s heart is through our stomachs.

Durazo is president of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 11. It has been in a fight with the self-proclaimed “University of the 21st Century” for the past four years of the 20th century over job protection for its members. It wants the university to pledge in writing that it won’t hire an outside contractor to do the work now performed by them.

Last May, to call attention to their plight, Durazo fasted for 11 days. Then she began “bringing in the bystanders” with a rolling hunger fast that included others. Since then, celebrities, politicians, Latino icons, labor reps and religious leaders have taken turns fasting for short periods to indicate their moral support for the workers. Four members of the L.A. City Council even went without lunch for a day to show their commitment, hoo boy.

The fast has increased community interest in the fight to the extent that any day now Martin Sheen, who is one of the fasters, will probably take the protest a step further by throwing himself into the path of the Trojan Marching Band, suffering the footfalls of the piccolo players and bassoonists for the sake of his strong moral message.

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Those unfamiliar with Maria Elena Durazo should know that she was the one who seven years ago threatened to trash the tourist industry in L.A. unless certain hotels settled their contract. What she did was create a video that warned of the dangers in the city and was going to send it across the U.S.

That came soon after the riots of ‘92, and the message was not lost on the holdout hotels. They realized that this was not a woman to be taken lightly and decided they’d better settle before she shut down tourism.

In addition to the current rolling hunger campaign, Durazo is lobbying the City Council to amend an existing ordinance to require companies doing big business with the city to guarantee job security for the union’s workers. She is saying in so many words that simply missing lunch is very nice, but a council vote on the union’s behalf would probably be more effective. USC, by the way, is L.A.’s biggest private employer.

The union is taking this quieter route because Durazo feels it just isn’t big enough or strong enough to go head-on with an organization like USC. True, some union members have been arrested during other demonstrations, but they weren’t violent. “We were taken in,” Durazo says, “for sitting and singing.”

I’m sure it wasn’t the Trojan fight song.

At any rate, she has opted for a campaign of surrounding SC with hungry people staring in at the administration like starving children peering through the window of a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, watching the rich people eat.

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I’m not trying to demonize the university and neither is Durazo. Various spokesmen for SC have correctly pointed out that its employees enjoy wages and benefits that exceed industry standards. They vow that they have no intention of replacing anyone with outside contractors, but want the option of doing so if economic conditions require it.

Like used car dealers asking for a buyer to “trust me,” they want Durazo to accept their word without a signed paper, and she’s not about to do that.

“We’ll keep going,” she says, “if it takes forever.”

She’s already reaching out to Sacramento, where various legislators are joining the fast, and is organizing feminists and students to participate on Labor Day. I don’t doubt that many will give up the day’s traditional picnics and barbecues just to see if hunger is as effective today as it was in Cesar Chavez’s time. When Durazo says skip dinner, you skip dinner.

In terms of size and determination, this is sort of Maria Versus the Volcano, and if I were you I wouldn’t be putting my money on the volcano.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at [email protected]