The Organizing Committee of RESPONSIBLE WEALTH/NEW YORK invites you to Economic Boom...for Whom? An examination of the growing wage gap with: ROBERT FRANK Professor of Economics, Cornell University Author, The Winner-Take-All Society, Luxury Fever JEN KERN Director, National Living Wage Resource Center BERTHA LEWIS Head Organizer, Brooklyn ACORN SCOTT KLINGER Co-Director, Responsible Wealth (Coordinator, Shareholder Initiatives) RICHARD PERL Moderator Tuesday, November 9, 1999 Society for Ethical Culture 2 West 64th Street (at CPW) 6:00 - 8:00 PM Join us for an overview of the decade's staggering growth of wage disparity by one of the most widely read economists examining inequality today, followed by reports from activists applying both leveling-down and leveling-up strategies to combat the rise of CEO salaries and the decline in living standards for wage-earning Americans. ---Light refreshments will be served--- RSVP : 212-598-9169 (Aaron Edison) or rwny@mindspring.com Bring A Friend! RW/NY Organizing Committee Polly Cleveland, Ruth Cowan, Aaron Edison, Tom Haines, Sarah Stranahan, Amy Wagner _____________________________________ Robert H. Frank holds a B.S. in mathematics from Georgia Tech, an M.A. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics from U.C. Berkeley. Currently, he is Professor of Economics at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, as well as the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in its College of Arts and Sciences. A Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal from 1966-8, Frank served as chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board from 1978-80, and as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1992-3. His books include: Choosing the Right Pond, Passions Within Reason, Microeconomics and Behavior, and most recently, Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess (Free Press, 1999). The Winner-Take-All Society (Free Press, 1995), co-authored with Philip Cook, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was on Business Week's list of the ten best books of 1995. Jen Kern has worked in ACORN's National Office in Washington, D.C., since 1993, providing research support for local ACORN organizers nationwide on issues from insurance and banking discrimination to jobs, education and minimum wage. For the last three years, she has worked almost exclusively on the living wage issue and now directs ACORN's National Living Wage Resource Center, which provides campaign materials, research and training to over a dozen local living wage campaigns, in addition to forming coalitions with labor, religious and community groups building the living wage movement. [ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income families, with over 100,000 members in 30 cities across the country.] Bertha Lewis is a theater producer turned housing and public schools activist. In the mid-1980s she ran Manhattan's Theater Off Park, winning a 198 6 Outer Critics Award for her play, "Stardust." Lewis became involved in housing issues as a result of her own housing problems, organizing fellow tenants to form an association to demand improvements, and ultimately buying out their landlord completely. In 1988, she went to work as a tenant organizer for Banana Kelly, a community organization in the Bronx. In 1992, Lewis became director of ACORN's Loan Counseling Program, negotiating landmark agreements with major banks and establishing a mortgage counseling program. Brooklyn ACORN appointed her Head Organizer in 1995. Scott Klinger is Co-Director of Responsible Wealth and coordinates initiatives relating to corporate power and shareholder action. Prior to joining RW, he worked in the field of social investing for more than a decade, first at Franklin Research & Development and then at United States Trust Company, where he managed a small-cap portfolio that invested pro-actively in companies addressing key social problems. He is a graduate of Duke University, where he majored in religion, after which he performed two years of community service in Baltimore and Alaska during the mid-1980s. RESPONSIBLE WEALTH is a network of business people, investors and wealthy individuals in the top 5% of income and assets in the U.S. who are concerned about growing economic inequality and are taking action to promote a fair economy for everyone. RW is a project of United for a Fair Economy, a national organization founded in 1994 in Boston to focus public attention on economic inequality in the United States.