Up is Good- An Overview

Charleston, SC, USA- Low country Up is Good, Inc. is a Political Action Committee currently being reactivated for the 2018 election cycle. It focuses on four issues with which the SC Lowcountry is currently engaged in a frustrating struggle: affordable housing, functional public transit, a living wage and maintaining a trained cadre of change makers.

How We Got Started 2016

In the 2016 election cycle a group of activists working with the Bernie Sanders campaign concluded that working for effective change in the local political environment required an organization which dealt with a group of systemic issues: poor transit, low wages, lack of affordable housing and the need for a new type of local activist leader operating independently of the established party system. This organization would work energetically through free speech activity, economic activism such as boycotts and social activism. It has also from time to time stepped up to challenge threats to local democracy like those posed by Moms for Liberty and Unity City. 

Affordable Housing

Our first project was construction of the Tiny House Fit for a King on Martin Luther King Weekend, 2016 which produced an 8 x 12-foot electrified tiny house. After a long struggle with official hostility, cloaked behind a superficial concern about the issue, the Tiny house was briefly opened for occupancy in N. Charleston before the city demanded that it be shuttered and the mentally ill woman living there forced back on to the street. It was one of five tiny houses in the cluster which were hauled away by various people for use elsewhere, we hope to provide affordable housing in the large, underground tiny house movement active here.  Records on who got the tiny homes and where they were going were not collected to make tracking them down by government officials or hostile nonprofit homeless service organizations impossible.

Our work on this issue currently continues with a sponsored program in January and support of a group of local activists working towards a tiny house village in the area. A tiny house village for veterans in currently under construction in Savannah and we’re planning a field trip to that village soon.

Transit Complete the Penny

Our second major project was support of the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign in fall 2016 which delivered the margin for victory in the 2016 half penny sales tax referendum. We funded the Lowcountry Commitment to Transit effort which obtained a resolution from County Council that 600 million dollars in transit funding would come out of the half penny sales tax funding (1.5 billion will be spent in a futile effort to resolve rising congestion by building more sprawl inducing roads and 200 million on greenspace preservation).  The Referendum wording and drafting process were deeply flawed, but we pushed for passage even after organizations like the League of Women Voters and Coastal Conservation League came out against the referendum.

We continued our support for two reasons. First, lack of decent transit is deeply oppressive to Charleston’s elderly, disabled, working class and transit dependent people and we could not accept a four year wait to try again.  Second, experience around the country indicated that regardless of what the referendum said an extended on the ground fight to protect the funding and assure that it was spent on transit would be required.  The campaign delievered a narrow margin of victory for the referendum in November 2016, allowing the deeply flawed process of getting better transit for the Lowcountry to move forward.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit was established to sustain the non-electoral elements of the Transit effort and later received a 20-thousand-dollar grant from Transit Center for that work. While post Citizen’s United Federal Court decisions allow great latitude in political activities by non-profits, we continue to pursue the classical separation of partisan electoral politics and issue education and advocacy Federal law long and still (as the statutes are still written) requires.  Up is Good endorses and opposes candidates.  Best Friends educates the public about transit issues and works on making sure the promised Transit improvements are implemented. Each group maintains separate funding with Best Friends Funds being maintained by the Coastal Community Foundation.

The separation between the two groups is expressed symbolically. Up is Good is blue. Best Friends is red, green and gold.  Up is Good can contribute to Best Friends and distribute materials produced by Best Friends. Best Friends can’t contribute funds or work for Up is Good. Staff working for both organizations are paid out of different funds. Some of the gear and equipment used by both organizations (Radios, PA & Computers) are the private property of third parties.

Lowcountry Living Wage

Up is Good supports a living wage of $15 or more in the Lowcountry. Since several other organizations already work on this issue, most of our effort on this issue has been as a supporting partner at their events.

Sharpening the Knife, Preparing Activists to Bring Change

Up is Good’s leadership and advocacy training for its volunteers and staff in cooperation with Americans for Transit, Transit Center, Democracy for America and other organizations.  Our goal is to help develop and maintain a cadre of local activist’s organizers capable of operating independently of the debilitating entanglements and delusions of the Lowcountry’s political culture.  Much of this training is done in national electronic forums, however an annual summer boot camp is planned.
Some events begin by pouring a pitcher of sweet tea into the ground, symbolic of our rejection of the Lowcountry’s culture of failure in the effort for progressive change.

Our activities share characteristics which arise from our values and experience.

We believe that action in the community, face to face and nose to nose is the only activity likely to produce change. While we’re active online, we recognize that most of the progressive noise being blogged in Charleston doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier into reality.

We believe activism must engage all the senses in reality: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. Music, art, food and culture must be a part of an effective effort for change. Building a tiny house is harder than making paper signs or posting notes on Facebook, but it forces everyone to deal with and change the reality.  Winning 600 million dollars for better transit in an election is hard and fighting politicians to keep it from being wasted on suburban turn lanes and road projects is even harder. However, nobody ever rode to work on a tweet.

We pay people when we can. Though we don’t pay anyone $15 an hour yet, we and other organization managed to pay out over 10k to independent contractor activists since the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign, our executive Director William Hamilton, is not paid at all. His wife Julia does accept pay for her work at the rate of $10 per hour and 0.20 per mile mileage.  The Transit Complete the Penny Campaign did pay $15 per hour for the last two weeks of the campaign.  We’ll begin fundraising this summer with the goal of making payment of $15 per hour to all contractor activists possible within the next year.

We take imperfect people.  Many of our contractor activists are disabled, elderly, homeless, have criminal records or are mentally ill. We hire these people and we fight for them. They fight for us. In a superficial political and social culture like Charleston, we don’t always fit in. We’re not pretty or cute. We don’t really want to go to your parties. We just want affordable housing, better transit and a living wage. If you want to pretend you do too, that’s fine, but please don’t get in our way because we’re serious.

The Lowcountry is a big place. There is plenty of room for the lifelong series of parties a lot of people confuse with real life and what we do. Just don’t attempt to assume your privilege allows you to make decisions for others.  Don’t tell the homeless how they must live and how much their rent should be. Don’t plan transit systems you don’t expect to ride or a nice one for you and your friends and the same old crappy one for the working class. Don’t control an economy where people don’t earn enough to survive here. That’s when we have problems.

We don’t want to intrude on your garden party. We don’t want you diverting our transit funding to build your highway.  We helped you win 1.5 billion dollars for your roads. Build 526 with that if you want, or not. We still want a bus to the beach (won after seven years of activism) and a decent ride to work. If you invite us to your event, we’re going to participate (loud and out of turn if necessary). That includes “public” events advertised as community forums or meetings and all government sponsored meetings and meetings and activities held in publicly funded spaces.

If you want to hold a fundraiser for your do nothing non-profit about one of the issues we care about that spends all its money on salary for your relatives, that’s your right if the IRS is OK with it. Just don’t interfere in our ability to hold meetings, raise funds or make friends.

We’re not out to change Charleston. We recognize the futility of attempting to fix a superficial culture of self-indulgence in a city which has fifty years left before its streets go under the ocean twice a day. We understand that most people here choose to believe the version of reality synthesized for tourism and real estate marketing. We doubt anyone can save the Holy City from gentrifying itself out of existence.

Porgy packed up and left. Most of us have too. None of us live in 29401 any longer.  Some of us used to live South of Calhoun street. It was nice. We miss it. We know we can't get that back and whatever we build in the future will have to be different, faster and fairer.

Saving Downtown Charleston

We just want four things: decent transit, affordable housing, a living wage and people equipped with the ability to raise hell until those things are available within the region, joined by a fast, dignified transit ride. We see downtown, historic Charleston as an employment and revenue center most local people should visit and many people need to work. We regard N. Charleston, Lincolnville, Congaree, Summerville, West Ashley, James Island, Folly Beach, Mount Pleasant, Awendaw, Red Top and other areas outside of Charleston as the locations where a decent, affordable quality of life is going to be possible for ordinary people. We’re not trying to save Kiawah Island either for the same reason.

We’ll leave saving downtown Charleston to the City, Historic Charleston Foundation and Preservation Society. We just want to run some fast buses through parts of it on a frequent, regular and reliable schedule so people can reach jobs which pay a living wage from decent communities they can afford to live in with their children and neighbors. That includes being sure the so called “Low Line Park” doesn’t waste the only functional transit corridor into the city on a park to walk dogs in.

That’s it downtown: a quick ride in, the occasional visit for cultural purposes or leisure, a living wage while people work there and a quick ride home after. You can pedal from your overpriced apartment to your artisan craft beer festival where you pretend to care about the issues we’re working on to your hearts content. We won’t mind.

Contact Us

What we do isn’t for everybody here. It’s not supposed to be. Lots of people disagree with us. However, if you want this type of change before the ocean covers most of the Lowcountry contact us

Lowcountry Up is Good
C/O W. J. Hamilton, III
Mt. Pleasant, SC
(843) 870-5299
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/lowcountry.up.is.good.PAC/

Revised- June 2, 2024