The challenge

Nebraska has the highest percentage of women in the workforce in the nation. It also has one of the lowest average wages for working women. "It is sad when you have to choose between paying rent and daycare or feeding your child,” says one mother interviewed for a Nebraska Appleseed report, "Voices of Nebraska's Poor: Family Health and Well Being After Welfare Reform." For these parents and children, welfare reform means fewer options, not more. Indeed, the face of the plains is changing. “Latino immigrants have flooded into Nebraska to work in dangerous, sub-poverty jobs at the giant beef and pork slaughterhouses,” says Milo Mumgaard. “Like all immigrants before them, they have dreams of owning a home, sending their children to safe schools, and living in clean and safer communities. Yet they are, simply put, some of the most exploited workers in the country. The dreams of these families are slipping away as well – but not their frozen fingers, locked shoulders, and growing concerns over their health.” One root concern is the inability of workers and low-income Nebraskans to have an effective role in influencing public policy. “Out here on the Great Plains, we have a particularly difficult challenge. On the coasts and in larger urban areas, there are many specialized efforts to redress this imbalance,” he says. “But in low population rural states like Nebraska – despite our political history of William Jennings Bryan, George Norris (a U.S. Senator for Nebraska who fathered rural electrification), and the Farmers’ Union – there has been a great void.”

Roots of commitment

Like many Americans, Mumgaard’s values were formed in the crucible of the 60’s. He remembers the morning after Bobby Kennedy's assassination. “Out in rural Nebraska, my parents woke us kids up, put us in front of the TV. ‘ Look,’ they said, ‘a leader who wanted to make things better for people – and had the ability to do something about it – is gone,’” he recalls. “Looking back, I realize I knew I was going to do this work a long time ago. I knew I had the will to help people, along with the intellect, the skills, the compassion. ‘Go do what you like, what's right,’ I told myself. ‘And if you don't do it, who will?’ So here I am.” Today, he has two posters on his office wall (in addition to his kids' kindergarten art projects); both feature Woody Guthrie's words. On one poster, Guthrie says, "I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing." In those words, Mumgaard says, is the source of his inspiration: “How some people are told they can't come in…that they won't see a better life for themselves and their families no matter how hard they try.” But doors can be opened when these people can affect the public policies that shape their lives.


Accomplishments

In 1995, after a federally funded legal office providing services for the poor was closed, Mumgaard contacted the national Appleseed Foundation in Washington D.C.. The Appleseed Foundation’s goal is to build a national network of locally based law centers. Rather than provide individual legal services, these centers address the systemic causes of public problems. With the Foundation’s help, Mumgaard founded Nebraska Appleseed, which works on behalf of low-income Nebraskans. He soon moved the operation from his basement to a storefront office in downtown Lincoln, where the Center now employs a dozen people. Because of the Nebraska Appleseed’s leadership, the state’s largest city, Omaha enacted a living wage ordinance in the spring of 2000. A living wage is currently defined as $8.49 an hour, with health insurance; $9.49 without insurance for city employees, contractors with the city, and receivers of city financial assistance. “Ordinary people came to realize they had a shot – and could win,” he says. “In Omaha, hundreds of janitors, street cleaners, tree trimmers, clerical workers, and parks employees received a long overdue raise.” This same coalition is now fighting to prevent repeal of the Omaha ordinance, and for state legislation to establish a living wage across Nebraska.

Mumgaard led efforts to expose working conditions in Nebraska's meatpacking plants where a third of workers suffer life-changing injuries and almost all are paid below poverty level wages. As a result, Nebraska's governor signed a Meatpacking Workers Bill of Rights. And when the Immigration and Naturalization Service targeted Nebraska's Latino meatpacking workers for a dragnet enforcement operation against undocumented workers, Nebraska Appleseed galvanized a new immigrant rights network across Nebraska and Iowa. The network includes immigrant workers, priests, community organizers, labor union members, church members, educators, social service providers and lawyers. As a result, a governor’s task force recommended the end of I.N.S. dragnets and the use of the Nebraska experience for national policy reform.

Another issue for Nebraska Appleseed: toxic hydrogen sulfide, produced by the waste lagoons at giant meatpacking plants, renders some rural communities almost unlivable, particularly for the new immigrant populations who live in inferior housing near the plants. For years, community groups had called for regulation, but did not have the legal capacity to make it happen. The Appleseed Center helped community groups throughout the state to develop and obtain passage for new state regulations and standards to increase the quality of the air in these communities. Mumgaard also appeared before the Nebraska Supreme Court to successfully argue the right of Nebraska’s welfare families to participate in educational programs.



How he leads

Litigation is an important tool for Appleseed, but not the only tool. Rather, Mumgaard views litigation as part of an overall action plan arrived at through collaboration with other parts of the advocacy community. In other words, litigation is not a substitute for organizing and initiating public policy. “Litigation is used to amplify people's voices and bring them to the negotiating table,” he says. Appleseed has created remarkable alliances among cattlemen, union leaders, church groups, sociologists, the state's bar leadership and dozens of advocacy groups. Mumgaard promotes collaboration by creating Advisory Councils made up of representatives from the served communities. In this way, Nebraska Appleseed turns community members into leaders. Mumgaard views media as part of the solution. “For example, I introduced a local newspaper writer to injured and scared packing house workers, as well as to health workers willing to share their stories,” he says. “The writer's series of articles in the Lincoln Journal Star rocked the local political establishment. Both U.S. Senators and the local congressman called for immediate action, even shutdown of the industry.” The newly elected Governor also responded, ordering an investigation that resulted in the Meatpacking Workers Bill of Rights. Employers are now voluntarily giving a copy of this Bill of Rights to every packing worker (approximately 30,000 total) in Nebraska. “My goal is to make compliance with this Workers' Bill of Rights a bottom line requirement for all packing industry employers,” Mumgaard says.


The future

Because of his vision and the long-term mission of Appleseed, Milo Mumgaard’s work has the potential to expand and be replicated. In this regard, the community of immigrant advocates he has established will plant seeds of leadership throughout the Great Plains. In addition, he continues to work with rural legal aid advocates in Texas to extend the network. He operates an internship program at Appleseed, transforming college students into capable advocates. He believes the future of America is in the ideal of “home” in the broadest sense. One supporter refers to Nebraska Appleseed as “part of the landscape.” Mumgaard says, “There is something about growing up here, on the plains. What some people refer to as progressive, I see as traditional. For example, all the immigrant newcomer advocacy we do is a welcoming – this is a place we want to be; it is our home, and so we want to do neighborly things, to welcome people home.”

More about Milo Mumgaard

“Mumgaard zigged and zagged en route to where he is now. He earned a political science degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 1983. He then moved to San Jose, Calif., where he worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to get mental patients out of long-term care facilities and into the community. After that, he studied law at New York University. When he graduated from law school in 1988, he didn't follow his peers into prestigious law firms. He set out for the fields of west Texas, representing migrant workers as an attorney for Texas Rural Legal Aid. He returned to Lincoln in 1992.”
– Omaha World Herald, September 30, 1999
“On a macro level, Milo has changed the way I.N.S. does business.”
– Lourdes Bouveia, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska
“He is not a man who wants or is accustomed to luxury. He has deliberately chosen to dedicate his life to the poor. He lives in a small humble home, dresses simply…He’s genuine.”
– Jim Wolf, a cattleman and banker from Albion, Nebraska