ANNAPOLIS, Md.–Tia Hamilton’s restaurant specializes in vegan comfort food, but sometimes the Baltimore activist is all about making people uncomfortable.
The co-owner of My Mamas Vegan has been in the state capital this winter, fighting for a higher wage for tipped workers like the ones who work for her.
It’s just one cause that Hamilton is fighting for as she works to help formerly incarcerated people reenter the community and make a better way for themselves.
“I believe in playing fair. It’s only one way to do that,” said Hamilton, “and that’s giving people livable wages.”
The tipped wage bill faces long odds this year, but the rallies and demonstrations are raising public awareness that many tipped restaurant workers make only $3.63 an hour in their paychecks. Hamilton says she pays her team of two $12 and $16 an hour, and that charging prices to cover their wage doesn’t deter customers from leaving tips.
“It’s enough money to give your employees a livable wage,” she said. “In my store they still tip my staff.”
Hamilton knows how hard life can be after spending time behind bars. She spent a few months in jail 16 years ago, when she was 29 years old, but says she made a promise to God after release.
“I said, if you get me out of this I’ma drop everything,” she said. “I’m not gonna sell another pound, another brick, I’m not gonna do that.”
Now she runs her own magazine, State vs. Us Magazine, focusing on high-profile prison cases and success stories of formerly incarcerated people.
She opened Urban Reads Bookstore, using it as a way to sell her magazine after nobody gave her the opportunity. Now she is giving authors who write about the prison system, like herself, a chance.
Recently, she hosted community leaders for a panel conversation about integrating people who have been incarcerated back into the community providing them resources to find the help they need.
She also owns The Maryland Cannabis Equity Collectors, a cannabis organization that fights to give Black people, especially the formerly incarcerated, a stake in that growing business.
People are more likely to “do the right thing” if they are earning a livable wage, she said.
“You can’t pay somebody mad low and get mad when they go out here and sell drugs or do something wrong to get money to take care and provide for their family,” she said.
My Mamas Vegan has been operating inside Hamilton’s bookstore in Baltimore for a year and a half, she told Capital News Service after a rally at the State House this winter. (She says the original owner named the restaurant without an apostrophe, and the two women decided to keep it the same after Hamilton joined as a business partner.)
For Hamilton, being active in politics isn’t always easy.
“I always get backlash, I get harassed, I get stalked,” she said. “I move how I move. I do what I want to do and ain’t nobody gonna stop that.”
But she’s committed to the fight, she said.
“I ended up having a stroke a year and a half ago, so it kind of slowed me down,” she said. “But I still go hard.”