Biggest U.S. Mass Protest & Rally Ever Staged for $15 Wage Set for April
Sky Valley Chronicle - April 1, 2015 - According to organizers, it's going to be huge. Fast food workers across the...
Sky Valley Chronicle - April 1, 2015 - According to organizers, it's going to be huge. Fast food workers across the country, evidently unmoved by the Reagan era inspired trickle-down theory of economics plan on striking in hundreds of U.S. cities on April 15, tax day in efforts to secure a $15 an hour wage and the right to form unions without retaliation from employers.They say they'll be joined by more than 60,000 people across the country as well as others in 35 countries around the world and that this time workers from new industries will be standing with them – from home care and child care workers, to adjunct professors, to Walmart employees. One report calls the planned action a "series of global labor strikes with protests on college campuses." According to April15.org "Millions of underpaid workers can’t support their families or make ends meet on hourly wages that haven’t kept pace with the bills – or their employers’ profits. On April 15, fast food cashiers and cooks, retail employees, child care workers, home care providers, airport workers, and all of us who believe they deserve better are showing up in cities across the country to say ENOUGH."The April 15 strike action will include rallies and marches on 170 university campuses. CBS News notes that, "Expanding the labor movement to college campuses hearkens back to successful social movements that included pressure from university students, such as the 1980s divestment campaign against U.S. corporations that invested in apartheid-era South Africa. While college students have long served as a vocal social force in American history, though, there's a growing group on campuses seeking higher wages: adjunct professors."The same report quotes Tiffany Kraft, an adjunct professor in Portland, Oregon as saying, "The universities I work for pay me next to nothing and treat me like I'm expendable. I joined the Fight for $15 to demand higher wages and more respect for our role as educators." CBS reported that adjunct professors typically earn about $20,000 to $25,000 per year and get no health benefits or job security, even though "they hold doctorates or other advanced degrees."In many communities brick layers, construction workers and auto mechanics with no college degrees earn that and more.Terrence Wise, a Burger King worker from Kansas City, Missouri, and a national leader for the Fight for $15 push told the Associated Press "This will be the biggest mobilization America has seen in decades," and will feature some 2,000 groups including Jobs With Justice and the Center for Popular Democracy.
SourceYou can find out here where an event near you will take place.
Many residents stand against Donald Trump
Many residents stand against Donald Trump
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election. “It...
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election.
“It was a rally and a march called together primarily by immigrants rights groups to provide a space for immigrant communities, people that are undocumented to be able to raise up the voices and the perpsectives of immigrant communities,” DRUM — South Asian Organizing Center Executive Director Fahd Ahmed told the Chronicle, adding that Sunday’s march would not be the last that they attend.
According to the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York, more than 15,000 immigrant New Yorkers and their supporters attended the event.
“Well, basically we were marching because we will not tolerate the hate agenda, we’re here to stay and we reject that,” Ozone Park resident Julissa Bisono said. “We want to make sure that New York City continues to be a sanctuary for immigrant families and that’s why we decided to march yesterday, to make sure that President-elect Trump hears our message.”
Kenneth Shelton, a St. John’s University student, organized the march on Saturday from Union Square to Trump Tower with the news outlet BlackMatters US.
“It was just for people to vent their frustration, get out there and protest but also to show that we’re unified,” Shelton said. “We need to organize ourselves into a movement socially, politically and economically.”
“We reject his hate and refuse to live in constant fear under a president who does not regard us as human,” Queens resident Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a prepared statement. “[Sunday’s] rally and march marks our first, though certainly not last, line of resistance against Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant regime.”
Queens is believed to have more unauthorized immigrants than any other borough, nearly 250,000, who could face deportation.
“The immigrant communities here, they’re real hard-working families and they’re scared,” Bisono said.
According to Bisono, there is a serious fear among immigrants that they could be harmed after last week’s election.
“We had kids that came who didn’t even go to school because they were afraid to not come back the next day,” she said. “We shouldn’t be living in fear.”
For people who feel like they may be threatened by the Trump administration, the protests were an opportunity to stand in solidarity with others who are as worried.
Ahmed, whose group is based in Jackson Heights and used to be called Desis Rising Up and Moving, said that the protests are “to get people out of fear, to get them out of isolation and to build with each other.”
Although Trump has urged his supporters to not hurt others and commit hate crimes, those have spiked nationwide in the days following his election victory.
“The large number of people that came to these actions have been black communities, Latino communities — the people explicitly being told that they need to watch out and will be targeted,” Ahmed said.
By Ryan Brady
Source
Flake confronted by women on Kavanaugh, then calls for FBI investigation
Flake confronted by women on Kavanaugh, then calls for FBI investigation
Sen. Jeff Flake was confronted by two women on the nature of sexual assault allegations, and Donald Trump’s Supreme...
Sen. Jeff Flake was confronted by two women on the nature of sexual assault allegations, and Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Then Flake called for an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh before the vote. Joy Reid is joined by one of those women, Ana Maria Archila.
Read the full article here.
Epic Charter School Fail Exposed
Capital & Main - October 2, 2014, by David Cohen - A $300,000 plane; $861,000 to pay off personal debts and keep...
Capital & Main - October 2, 2014, by David Cohen - A $300,000 plane; $861,000 to pay off personal debts and keep open a struggling restaurant. A down payment on a house and an office flush with flat-screen televisions, executive bathrooms and granite counter tops. This isn’t a list of expenditures from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, this represents a small slice of the more than $30 million of taxpayer funds that have been wasted through fraud and abuse in Pennsylvania’s charter schools since they first opened in 1997.
A new report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and Action United is blowing the lid off the lack of public oversight at Pennsylvania’s 186 charter schools.
Inadequate audit techniques, insufficient oversight staff and a lack of basic transparency have created a charter system that is ripe for abuse in the Keystone State. But there is hope. The report provides a detailed roadmap for Pennsylvania to create an effective oversight structure and provide meaningful protections that can curtail endemic fraud and waste.
The report calls for an immediate moratorium on new charters until the inadequate oversight system can be replaced with rigorous and transparent oversight. That’s the right first step.
According to the authors, charter school enrollment in the state has doubled three times since 2000 and Pennsylvania’s students, their families and taxpayers cannot afford to lose another $30 million. Pennsylvania’s students and taxpayers deserve better.
Source
The Health-Care Industry Is Sick
The Health-Care Industry Is Sick
I have ALS, a deadly, incurable neurological disease that is paralyzing my whole body, including my diaphragm. This...
I have ALS, a deadly, incurable neurological disease that is paralyzing my whole body, including my diaphragm. This makes it difficult for me to breathe while lying flat in bed. This month, my doctor prescribed me a Trilogy breathing-assistance machine, which would solve the problem (at least for now). Yet my insurance, Health Net, denied coverage, calling it “experimental.”
Read the full article here.
Rivera and Camara Put Up Immigration Bill They Admit Won’t Pass This Session
New York Observer - June 16, 2014, by Will Bredderman - Four days before the legislative session in Albany ends for the...
New York Observer - June 16, 2014, by Will Bredderman - Four days before the legislative session in Albany ends for the summer, Bronx State Senator Gustavo Rivera and Brooklyn Assemblyman Karim Camara have proposed sweeping legislation granting full citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants living in New York state–legislation which even they admit will not get passed this session.
The bill that Mr. Rivera and Mr. Camara have sponsored will grant the right to vote in state and local elections, college financial aid, access to Medicare, drivers’ licenses, medical and chiropractic licenses and full civil rights protections to the three million-odd foreign nationals currently living in New York State without proper paperwork. The immigrants would be required to show proof of identity, proof they have lived in the state for three years, proof they have paid state taxes for three years, proof they have and will continue to obey state laws and a willingness to do jury duty.
“This is a bold idea. And we do not expect anything to pass quickly. But this sets things in motion,” Mr. Rivera, comparing the legislation to the push to legalize same-sex marriage, said at a press conference in Battery Park.
“The defeat of Cantor has made it clear we have to act quickly to protect the rights and privileges of all people living in this state,” Mr. Rivera said.
The bill would only pertain to the undocumented immigrants’ interactions in New York State, and would do nothing to alter federal recognition of citizenship, federal border security, or federal deportation policies.
Source
Lacker to Tell Congress the Fed Doesn’t Need an Overhaul
Lacker to Tell Congress the Fed Doesn’t Need an Overhaul
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker is set to tell a congressional panel Wednesday the U.S....
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker is set to tell a congressional panel Wednesday the U.S. central bank’s structure is effective, and that he is reluctant to see it altered in any major way.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lacker said the U.S. central bank—with its Washington-based board of governors and 12 quasiprivate, quasigovernmental regional banks across the country—“works well.”
The Federal Reserve, created more than a century ago, might seem like “an archaic structure, but the choices and trade-offs they were facing then are still relevant choices and trade-offs now. Our federated structure reflected a desire to ensure that the diversity of views were reflected in monetary policy,” he said.
Mr. Lacker spoke to the Journal on Thursday in his office overlooking the James River, ahead of speech in which he argued the Fed was increasingly likely to face trouble if it doesn’t raise short-term interest rates soon.
The veteran central banker—he is the longest-serving regional Fed bank president—and Kansas City Fed President Esther George are scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Committee on Financial Services’ Monetary Policy and Trade subcommittee. They will discuss the structure of their banks and “how it relates to the conduct of monetary policy and economic performance.”
The Fed in recent years has faced critics from the right and left who would like to change the way the central bank operates. Some Republican lawmakers, for example, want to give Congress more scrutiny over the Fed’s interest-rate-setting policy actions via formal government audits, something central bankers have long argued would make policy-making more political and ultimately less effective.
Some left-leaning activists and Democrats, including the campaign of presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, have called for bankers to be removed from the boards overseeing the regional Fed banks.
Members of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign, working with a former top Fed staffer, have gone further. They have called for the regional Fed banks, which are technically owned by private banks via nonvoting shares, to be moved fully into government. The group also has sought a more open process to select bank presidents, and to take stock of their performance once they are on the job.
“I completely understand the heightened attention the Fed has gotten” in light of the dramatic actions it took over the course of the financial crisis and its aftermath, Mr. Lacker said. “We’re America’s central bank. And I think it’s a discussion worth having.”
Some of the criticism of the Fed owes to misunderstandings, Mr. Lacker said. But he added, “I’d agree we could do a better job of explaining our governance.”
By and large, Mr. Lacker said the current setup has proved to be the best in terms of setting policy and achieving the independence most economists believe is critical for effective central banking, a view shared by other regional Fed bank chiefs.
He said the regional banks, part-private and part-public organizations, are afforded independence to provide views protected from political interference. Turning the regional Fed banks into fully governmental institutions would compromise that and relieve the board of governors of a vital counterweight, Mr. Lacker said.
“Preserving that diversity of views, preserving the independence of the reserve bank president’s role in monetary policy, is an exceptionally high value,” he said.
Mr. Lacker also said the regional Fed banks’ boards of directors, drawn from a mix of local business and community leaders, as well as bankers, provide insight into local economic developments. These directors also offer operational insight to the central bank, a large service provider to financial institutions on a variety of fronts, he said.
The U.S. central bank, which is a major financial industry regulator, has long faced criticism because bankers serve on the boards of directors of the regional Fed banks. Critics say it is a conflict of interest because it allows banks to oversee their supervisor. Fed officials reject this view, saying that its regulatory activities, while carried out largely by the regional banks, are directed out of Washington.
“I think we all appreciate the—you know, I think [former Treasury Secretary and New York Fed President] Tim Geithner called it the optics issue, or optics problem” of the ownership structure and board composition, Mr. Lacker said. “As a practical matter, it’s not an issue.”
Mr. Lacker said that private bank ownership of the regional Fed banks isn’t like corporate ownership because the banks’ shares don’t have voting rights. He also said the regional boards have “a classic American governance role” and he rejected the idea that there would be any conflicts of interest faced by the board members.
Mr. Lacker said he welcomes meeting with Fed critics.
Many are activists “trying very hard to do what they can to improve lives. And you know, you can’t help but come away from conversations like that with a deep appreciation of the struggles and challenges that many of our—you know, many people in our country face,” Mr. Lacker said. He added, “I commend them for their interest in us and the willingness to engage in conversation with us.”
By Michael S. Derby
Source
More states adopt tough paid sick-leave laws
More states adopt tough paid sick-leave laws
PHOENIX — A new paid sick-leave law took effect Saturday in Arizona, which joins a cluster of other states in...
PHOENIX — A new paid sick-leave law took effect Saturday in Arizona, which joins a cluster of other states in continuing momentum on an issue that has seen broadening political support.
Measures adopted across the nation typically require a minimum number of paid sick hours or days each year and often mandate other guidelines in terms of permissible reasons for leave and record-keeping duties for employers.
Read the full article here.
The John Gore Organization & Scarlett Johansson's Our Town Benefit Raises $500,000 for Hurricane Maria Community Relief Fund
The event played to a full house and a very enthusiastic crowd. With more than 3,500 tickets sold, it was one of the...
The event played to a full house and a very enthusiastic crowd. With more than 3,500 tickets sold, it was one of the largest audiences the play has ever been presented to in one night. Johansson was joined on stage for opening remarks by director Leon and Xiomara Caro, Director of New Organizing Projects for the Center of Popular Democracy and coordinator for The Maria Fund, sharing an inspiring message about the purpose of the event and the relief effort. They brought the crowd to their feet when they revealed that the evening’s efforts resulted in half of a million dollars raised to help Puerto Rico in their hour of need.
Read the full article here.
New Program Arms Immigrants Facing Deportation with Legal Aid
WNYC - November 20, 2013, by John Hockenberry - Fifty years ago, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme...
WNYC - November 20, 2013, by John Hockenberry - Fifty years ago, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court mandated that those accused of a crime must be provided a lawyer, regardless of their ability to pay. With that decision the public defense system was born.
While Gideon has changed the equation for many indigent defendants, the law doesn't apply to all cases—just those in criminal court. Immigrants facing detention or deportation have no right to a court-appointed attorney and are left to advocate for themselves. In New York, at least 60 percent of detained immigrants lack access to counsel during their immigration proceedings.
But the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project is looking change that.
With funding from the New York City Council and Cardozo Law School in Manhattan, the Project—the first of its kind in the country—provides indigent immigrants representation in detention and deportation proceedings, regardless of whether they can pay.
The Project is the result of a task force of attorneys, activists and experts, chaired by Judge Robert Katzman, chief judge of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the task force, immigrants facing deportation in New York courts that have the help of an attorney are 500 percent more likely to win their case than those who lack counsel. Judge Katzmann says he hopes the Immigrant Family Unity Project will allow more immigrants access to justice, while helping immigrant families to stay together.
Source:
5 days ago
5 days ago