Campaign News

The Express-Times - June 18, 2013, By Sarah Cassi - Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski and City Council President Julio Guridy were among the residents and community leaders rallying tonight at City Hall for federal action on comprehensive immigration reform.

Organized by Comunidad Unida del Lehigh Valley, the crowd called on U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey to support the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. the bill would create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country, toughen border security and create a guest worker program.

The Senate is preparing to vote on the bill next week.

Rally participants also called on Congressman Charlie Dent to reject piecemeal measures being advanced in the House.

“The piecemeal immigration bills currently being proposed in the House are cruel and totally miss the point. They ignore the crucial role that immigrants play in our communities and our economy. These bills don’t even offer immigrants a path to citizenship. Today we’re calling on our Congressmen to vocally support the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, which a clear majority of Pennsylvanians support,” Guridy said in a news release.

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LA Times - April 13, 2015, by Samantha Masunaga - he scheduling practices of 13 retailers, including Gap Inc., Target Corp. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co., are being scrutinized by New York Atty. Gen. Eric T. Schneiderman.

In a letter sent to the retailers, the attorney general's office said it had received reports that a growing number of employers, particularly in the retail industry, were requiring hourly employees to work on-call shifts. The office said it had “reason to believe” the 13 retailers might be using this kind of scheduling.

A New York state law requires that employees who are asked to come into work must be paid for at least four hours atminimum wage or the number of hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, even if the employee is sent home.

California has a similar law that says employees must be paid for half of their usual time — two to four hours — if they are required to come in to work but are not needed or work less than their normal schedule.

The letter was also sent to J. Crew Group Inc.; L Brands, which owns Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works; Burlington Stores Inc.; TJX Cos.; Urban Outfitters Inc.; Sears Holdings Corp.; Williams-Sonoma Inc.; Crocs Inc.; Ann Inc., which owns Ann Taylor; and J.C. Penney Co.

The letters ask the retailers for more information about how they schedule employees for work, including whether they use on-call shifts and computerized scheduling programs.

Rachel Deutsch, an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York worker advocacy group, said on-call scheduling can make it difficult for workers to arrange child care or pick up a second job.

“These are folks that want to work,” she said. “They’re ready and willing to work, and some weeks they might get no pay at all even though they set aside 100% of their time to work.”

Danielle Lang, a Skadden fellow at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, said the attorney general’s action could have repercussions in other states.

“The New York attorney general is a powerful force,” she said. “It’s certainly an issue that’s facing so many of our low-wage workers in California, and anything that puts a highlight on this practice and really pressures employers to think about these practices is a good thing.”

Sears, Target and Ann Inc. said in separate statements that they do not have on-call shifts for their workers. J.C. Penney said it has a policy against on-call scheduling.

TJX spokeswoman Doreen Thompson said in a statement that company management teams “work to develop schedules that serve the needs of both our associates and our company.”

Gap said in a statement that the company has been working on a project with the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law to examine workplace scheduling and productivity and will see the first set of data results in the fall.

“Gap Inc. is committed to establishing sustainable scheduling practices that will improve stability for our employees, while helping toeffectively manage our business,” spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson said.

The remaining companies did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Source

On Friday, activists with the country’s growing racial justice movement unveiled a new campaign to end police violence, bridging protester demands with data and policy to create structural solutions to the crisis that has gripped national attention for more than a year.

Launched as an online manifesto with an interactive website, Campaign Zero proposes new federal, state, and local laws that would address police violence and reform the criminal justice system—including demilitarizing law enforcement, increasing community oversight, limiting use-of-force, and requiring independent investigation and prosecution of police violence cases.

“More than one thousand people are killed by police every year in America,” the group states on its website. “Nearly sixty percent of victims did not have a gun or were involved in activities that should not require police intervention such as harmless ‘quality of life’ behaviors or mental health crises.”

The action plan also incorporates recommendations by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing as well as those of research organizations like the Center for Popular Democracy. The architects behind Campaign Zero characterized it as a project that will continue to develop over time as new solutions emerge and more supporters come on board.

The four creators of the new campaign and authors of the manifesto—Samuel Sinyangwe, Brittany Packnett, Johnetta Elzie, and DeRay McKesson—are co-founders of We The Protesters, which as the Guardian notes is “a prominent section of a wider protest movement that is frequently referred to, in general terms, as Black Lives Matter.”

“This is just the beginning,” they wrote in a statement accompanying the launch.

In the year that has passed since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, police have killed at least 1,083 Americans—an average of nearly three people per day, according to figures compiled by VICE News. Even that figure, released August 9, quickly became outdated.

The policy recommendations also call for an end the controversial practice of “broken windows” policing—a tactic that involves cracking down on petty infractions as a means to prevent more serious crime. The chokehold death of Eric Garner, who was targeted by police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, heightened criticism of the policy, which Columbia law professor Patricia J. Williams said “has intimidated, dispossessed and humiliated millions of innocent people” for two decades.

Campaign Zero launches just as new reports highlight the lack of training and culture of aggression that permeates law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Addressing that issue in another policy demand, Campaign Zero states, “An intensive training regime is needed to help police officers learn the behaviors and skills to interact appropriately with communities.”

The group points to the recent successful overhaul of policing tactics in Richmond, California, a city which reduced its crime rate by 33 percent through community policing.

“We must end police violence so we can live and feel safe in this country,” Campaign Zero states.

Campaign Zero also introduces strategies for charting presidential candidates’ policy positions on such issues. Racial justice activists have recently engaged with the campaigns of candidates including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Jeb Bush to demand action plans on addressing police brutality and criminal justice reform.

“Right now, the country is awake,” organizers stated. “We must continue to leverage this awakening for substantive change. We have an opportunity to change the way that issues in blackness are prioritized in political spaces and an opportunity to redefine how the political process interacts with our communities.”

“America is finally waking up to this very necessary and critical conversation about race, equity, and preserving the life and dignity of all citizens,” Packnett told the Guardian on Friday.

Added McKesson, “This is a blueprint for ending police violence.”

This Common Dreams article is reposted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Source: San Diego Free Press

Should Federal Reserve officials meet expectations and raise interest rates next week, they will be doing so over the objections of some high-profile experts, including one who used to work for the central bank.

A coalition of economists released a letter Friday urging the Fed to change the criteria it uses to make decisions. Specifically, the group, called "Fed Up," is advocating for a higher inflation rate target than the current 2 percent level. Among its members is former Minnesota Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota.

Read the full article here.