Poverty Scholar R.I.P.

by Staff Writer

While swimming in Hawai’i, Larry Lattimore, Father and Grandfather, had a fatal heart attack. Six months earlier he went there to recharge his batteries and his faith in activism and people after 20 unbroken years of working to change the world for the better.

I met Larry 10 years ago, when he’d already co-founded POWER (People Organizing To Win Employment Rights), the first night of the founding of the Living Wage Coalition. I didn’t speak to him then, he looked cranky; I later found out that was his armor against the world, we became good friends.

Intelligent, to almost genius level, he worked for San Francisco General Hospital as a janitor, picking up hazardous waste without proper safety equipment, like gloves. Larry caught an immune difficiency disease doing Workfare for the General Assistance Welfare program, and got SSI benefits after fighting for them until 2005.

We worked together on the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition in 2000, when he was elected Co-Director. I remember the night we got the Living Wage, sitting in the SEIU union’s local office negotiating with SF Mayor Willie Brown. He was in an air-conditioned hotel in New York, we were on the 14th Floor of Fox Plaza: 20 people in a hot room.

Josie Mooney, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU Local 1021 (it was 790), made an unofficial deal this poverty scholar can’t prove, which excluded CalWorks and GA Workfare workers from the receiving the Minimum Compensation Ordinance benefits, including health benefits which would have gone to anyone working or any company accepting city contracts.

In 2005 Larry and I were on the Committee To Get A Minimum Wage, which fought to raise the San Francisco County minimum wage to $10 per hour, enduring 4-hour meetings once a week to get through one agenda item. Larry was patient, this poverty scholar (to be polite) wasn’t.

After petitioning to get the MW on the local ballot, Larry was the happiest person I saw on Election Night. I never had an easier friend and ally to work with. We went to Sacramento often enough, to lobby and to protests that we knew every tree by name.

The night he got his daughter back in his life, we were hanging out in the Living Wage offices. He had an ear-to-ear grin on his face. They lived in a Winnebago until a better place could be found. Larry gave his daughter a home-school education and did a great job. His activist work and his daughter are his legacy to the world.