Kenny Leon teams up with Marvel stars for Puerto Rico benefit
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Kenny Leon teams up with Marvel stars for Puerto Rico benefit
Actress Scarlett Johansson has been in Atlanta working on Marvel’s latest “Avengers” project and keeping up with the harrowing updates out of storm-ravaged Puerto Rico. It could be Christmas...
Actress Scarlett Johansson has been in Atlanta working on Marvel’s latest “Avengers” project and keeping up with the harrowing updates out of storm-ravaged Puerto Rico. It could be Christmas before power is back on throughout the island and access to a steady supply of clean drinking water is still a challenge more than a month after Hurricane Maria hit.
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Community Activists And Senator Warren Persuade HUD Sec. Julian Castro To Help Homeowners And Reign In Wall Street Speculators
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Community Activists And Senator Warren Persuade HUD Sec. Julian Castro To Help Homeowners And Reign In Wall Street Speculators
Last September 30, community activists and local officials from around the country came to Washington, DC to protest HUD’s pro-Wall Street policies.
Two years ago, community organizing...
Last September 30, community activists and local officials from around the country came to Washington, DC to protest HUD’s pro-Wall Street policies.
Two years ago, community organizing groups around the country, with the key support of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), began pressuring HUD Secretary Julian Castro to stop selling delinquent mortgages to Wall Street investors and help nonprofit organizations to purchase the loans, help homeowners keep their homes, and expand the supply of affordable housing.
On Thursday, they won. Castro announced a set of policy changes to its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) that activists had labeled a “Wall Street giveaway.” Last year, for example, 98% of the mortgages HUD sold went to Wall Street firms, at discounts averaging nearly 50%. Castro pledged to fix the program to triple the sales of delinquent mortgages to nonprofit community groups with experience in stabilizing neighborhoods and helping homeowners and to put more restrictions on foreclosures.
The policy fix was needed because some of the same Wall Street firms that precipitated the housing crash have been buying up distressed housing assets in bulk, including delinquent mortgages and vacant houses that are a product of the crash.
Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and HUD Secretary Julian Castro are frequently mentioned a potential VP running mates with Hillary Clinton.
The campaign’s victory is the result of a perfect political storm. The organizers mounted a savvy grassroots organizing campaign that built on the momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in 2011. In the current political season, no politician, especially a Democrat, wants to be too closely identified with Wall Street’s financial industry, which most Americans still blame for the 2008 economic tsunami from which the country still hasn’t recovered. During this presidential season, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders vied to be the champion of Wall Street reform. HUD Secretary Castro, a former San Antonio mayor, has been auditioning for the role of Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, but many pundits view him as too conservative and cautious — and too pro-business — to help Clinton galvanize both Latino voters and Bernie Sanders’ supporters in the contest with Donald Trump. With his announcement this week, Castro can claim to be on the side of homeowners and communities against Wall Street speculators.
HUD’s DASP program, started by the Obama administration in 2012, became a part of the larger problem by auctioning off its distressed mortgages to the highest bidder, which allowed Wall Street firms to take ownership and accelerate foreclosures.
“This whole process shows just how tilted the playing field is for the big banks and hedge funds,” said Warren, who has been the Senate’s most vocal critic of Wall Street abuses, last year. “Many of these banks and funds were responsible for fueling the housing bubble in the first place — leading to the crash that hit these families like a punch to the gut. Now these same banks and funds are turning around and scooping up these loans at bargain-basement rates so they can profit from them a second time.”
The new HUD policy changes to fundamentally reform the program, resulting in more mortgage pools being sold to non-profits, more foreclosures avoided, and more vacant property turned into affordable housing. The changes include:
Help existing homeowners facing foreclosure remain in their homes by modifying their mortgages to reflect current market values — a strategy called “principal reduction.” Until now, both HUD and Fannie Mae, under pressure from the banking industry, had resisted this approach. Now, even private equity firms and hedge funds will have to use that strategy in reworking troubled mortgages.
Increasing the sale of HUD’s distressed mortgages to non-profit organizations
A commitment to work with local governments and non-profits to target sales to those who will help homeowners keep their houses and expand the supply of affordable housing.
Far greater provisions for transparency in the sale process
“These recent HUD changes move in the direction of common sense policy,” said Maurice Weeks of the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the groups that coordinated the nationwide grassroots campaign. “We shouldn’t be handing over our neighborhoods at bargain basement prices to Wall Street.”
“HUD’s bulk mortgage sale program has been fueling the speculator buy-up of our neighborhoods,” observed San Francisco Supervisor John Avalas, one of many local elected officials who supported the campaign. “Finally, HUD is making changes to this mortgage sales program that better prioritize what our communities need — saving more homes from foreclosure and creating more affordable housing. It’s about time!”
Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the Center for American Progress and coauthor of a new report on the problem, told the New York Times that the policy changes “significant improvements” in the loan sale program.
“The policies announced today are a promising step toward more responsible loan auctions,” she said.
Millions of homeowners are still delinquent on the mortgage payments, many through no fault of their own, but because of predatory and reckless lending practices as well as the sluggish recovery of the economy in terms of restoring the incomes of working families. As a result, federal officials and community activists expect there to be many more sales of troubled mortgages that were guaranteed by the federal government.
The policy changes are a culmination of several years of research and activism by grassroots groups on the front lines of the nation’s housing and banking crisis.
Several years ago, different community groups began noticing the growing presence of Wall Street speculators in their neighborhoods, one of the aftershocks of the epidemic of foreclosures. Several local groups examined records, interviewed tenants, and issued reports documenting that in areas where Wall Street investors own a significant number of these single-family homes — including Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Charlotte, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, and Los Angeles and nearby Riverside — their practices have harmed tenants and undermined long-term neighborhood stability.
The activists discovered that HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac — which own or guarantee the distressed mortgages on many single-family homes — were part of the problem. Over the past few years, they’ve auctioned off about 150,000 non-performing loans that they want to get off their books. Of these loans, fewer than two percent have gone to nonprofit buyers. The rest (98 percent) have gone to Wall Street companies. As of last fall, five Wall Street firms — Lone Star, Blackstone Group, Angelo, Gordon & Co., Selene Residential Partners, and the Royal Bank of Scotland — accounted for 64 percent of all the public loan sales. Last year, Goldman Sachs popped up on the purchaser list for the first time, buying loans from Freddie Mac.
The community organizers and their researchers also exposed a double standard. Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been unwilling to offer principal reduction to struggling homeowners, and HUD has been unwilling to require principal reduction as part of its program, these agencies often offer steep discounts when they sell these mortgages to Wall Street speculators, who typically foreclose on the homeowners, adding to their inventory of homes scooped up in private foreclosure sales. In unloading these mortgages, the federal agencies often ignored the housing needs of local communities.
The grassroots groups enlisted the help of two national umbrella organizations — the Center for Popular Democracy (a network of community organizing groups) and Local Progress (a network of progressive local elected officials) — as well as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who championed the cause in Congress. These used a variety of tactics — protest actions, internet petitions, and muckraking research — to generate media attention and put pressure on the Obama administration.
These groups — many of which had been working on banking issues for over a decade — launched their national campaign in September 2014. They were relentless in pressuring HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prioritize non-profits over speculators in their sales of troubled mortgages. In particular, they demanded that these agencies prioritize sales to non-profit Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) that have the capacity to purchase large inventories of underwater mortgages and distressed properties — including vacant houses that owners lost through foreclosure and occupied homes where underwater borrowers are on the brink of foreclosure — and stabilize them as affordable housing. The CDFIs were being crowded out by hedge funds working hand in hand with HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
At the start of the campaign, the activists released a report, Vulture Capital Hits Home: How HUD is Helping Wall Street and Hurting Our Communities, that explained why HUD’s policy of favoring Wall Street investors was exacerbating the nation’s housing crisis.
A week before Christmas in 2014, at rallies outside local HUD offices, community groups in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston presented HUD with their “Grinch of the Year” award for refusing to fix the DASP program.
“By auctioning pools of delinquent loans to the highest bidders — vulture capitalists — HUD is driving unnecessary foreclosures and contributing to the rise of ‘Wall Street Landlords,’” said Gisele Mata, an organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a statewide organizing group that played a key role in the national campaign, at the press conference.
In June 2015, the campaign released another report, Do Hedge Funds Make Good Neighbors? How Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD are Selling Off Our Neighborhoods to Wall Street, at a protest rally in front of the Santa Monica office of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant (with over $300 billion in assets under management), which had become the largest landlord of single-family rentals in the country by gobbling up distressed mortgages - including many sold by HUD — at bargain-basement prices. Since 2012, the report found, federal agencies had sold over 120,000 delinquent mortgages to Wall Street hedge funds and private equities firms. Bayview Acquisitions, largely owned by Blackstone, has bought 24,000 of these mortgages. The report unearthed an array of disturbing business practices, including failure to make repairs and the harassment and illegal eviction of occupants. An investigation by the New York Times published last week confirmed earlier findings of abusive practices. The Times revealed, for example, that Lone Star had pushed thousands of borrowers into foreclosure and failed to negotiate with homeowners to modify their mortgages so they could remain in their homes.
Through Local Progress and 17 progressive mayors from across the county,, the campaign persuaded the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pass resolution asking HUD to change its policy.
Last September, community activists and local elected officials from around the country converged in Washington, D.C. to bring the cause directly to federal officials. After a rally at which Senator Warren and Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass) demanded that HUD curb its mortgage sales to Wall Street investors, the activists met with senior officials at HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A few weeks later, the New York Times published an editorial, “Foreclosure Abuses, Revisited,” calling on HUD to suspend its sales of distressed mortgages until federal agencies adopt significant reforms.
By March of this year, the campaign had built enough momentum to get 45 members of Congress to send a letter to HUD and FHFA in support of the campaign’s demands.
In April, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) wrote to Castro - by then on many lists of potential vice presidential candidates - criticizing HUD for worsening the housing crisis with its favorable treatment of Wall Street investors and urging him to “end to the days of casino-level gambling with other peoples’ livelihoods.” That same month, the campaign sent Castro a petition with over 100,000 signatures, demanding that he change HUD’s policies on disposing troubled mortgages.
Along with the changing political climate and Castro’s ambitions, the community organizing groups’ persistence paid off.
With more homes in the hands of non-profits instead of Wall Street speculators, communities will gain further control over their neighborhoods and be less at the mercy of Wall Street. Community groups now plan to work city by city, and state by state, to make sure that HUD sells delinquent mortgage pools to mission-driven purchasers, and to continue the fight for housing justice and community control to strengthen and protect neighborhoods across the country.
By PETER DREIER
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A guaranteed “Jobs For All” Program is Gaining Traction Among 2020 Democratic Hopefuls
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A guaranteed “Jobs For All” Program is Gaining Traction Among 2020 Democratic Hopefuls
A longtime organizer, Barkan — who has Lou Gehrig’s disease — gained national recognition after his viral confrontation of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., over his support for the Republican tax plan...
A longtime organizer, Barkan — who has Lou Gehrig’s disease — gained national recognition after his viral confrontation of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., over his support for the Republican tax plan and the cuts to Medicare that it would impose. When he was diagnosed with ALS in late 2016, Barkan was working with the Center for Popular Democracy on a campaign to reform the Federal Reserve and American monetary policymaking with it. Following Trump’s election, he has continued to fight for that and against a range of Republican policies.
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New Report: State School Takeovers Lead To Academic Failure
02/08/2016
WASHINGTON — Today, the Center for Popular Democracy released a report, State Takeovers of Low-Performing Schools: A Record of...
02/08/2016
WASHINGTON — Today, the Center for Popular Democracy released a report, State Takeovers of Low-Performing Schools: A Record of Academic Failure, Financial Mismanagement, & Student Harm, showing that all statewide takeovers of low-performing schools have failed to achieve positive results and have instead resulted in harm to students and communities.
Kyle Serrette, the Director of Education Justice at Center for Popular Democracy, released the following statement:
“An education strategy that consistently has not been able to achieve its intended results doesn’t make sense. The data is clear: state takeovers harm students, families, and communities.”
Despite the poor track record of statewide school takeovers, lawmakers in seven states -- Wisconsin, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah -- have introduced bills to expand the number of takeover districts in 2016, following 2015, when nine states introduced legislation to create statewide takeover districts: Arkansas, Georgia, Nevada, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.
In 2003, Louisiana established the “Recovery School District,” the first statewide district of this kind. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the state rapidly expanded its takeover district. Tennessee followed suit, creating its “Achievement School District” in 2010 and expanding it in 2012. Finally, Michigan established its “Education Achievement Authority” in 2013, explicitly modeling it on the Louisiana precedent.
Louisiana Recovery School District: In 2014, there were 136 charter schools operating in Louisiana, attended by over 65,000 students. Of those schools, which accounted for 21,000 students, 41 percent, received a letter grade of D, F, or T (Transitional School), with a School Performance Score (SPS) below 69.1. Only 9 percent of Louisiana’s charter schools, enrolling just 8,700 students, received the letter grade A.
Tennessee Achievement School District: Only six out of the 17 takeover schools had moved out of the bottom performance decile by the end of the 2013-2014 school year. 2015 was the first year that statewide test scores in the takeover schools had improved after two years of either zero gains or actual decline. Reading scores in takeover schools have been consistently lower than pre-takeover levels all three years of the ASD, down over four percentage points in 2015.
Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority: The chancellor of Michigan’s EAA, Veronica Conforme, recently admitted that, “three years into this [the EAA], achievement hasn't improved.” In fact, it has actually set students back rather than delivering positive educational outcomes. Between 2012 and 2013, 36 percent of students in EAA schools saw declines in their performance on Michigan’s MEAP mathematics tests, and another 43 percent saw no improvement. Over the same time period, 36 percent of EAA students also saw declines in MEAP reading performance, with another 26 percent showing no improvement. Even worse, nearly half (46 percent) of students who had previously been proficient in the MEAP mathematics exam saw significant declines in their performance. Among these previously proficient students in the EAA, 82 percent of previously proficient students saw declines in their math test performance and 11 percent saw no change.
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www.populardemocracy.org
The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
Media Contact:
Asya Pikovsky, apikovsky@populardemocracy.org, 207-522-2442
Anita Jain, ajain@populardemocracy.org, 347-636-9761
KKR, Bain Create $20 Million Fund for Toys ‘R’ Us Workers
Toys “R” Us shuttered its last stores at the end of June and its liquidation left more than 30,000 workers without expected severance payouts. That prompted months of lobbying by the employees,...
Toys “R” Us shuttered its last stores at the end of June and its liquidation left more than 30,000 workers without expected severance payouts. That prompted months of lobbying by the employees, organized in part by advocacy groups linked to the Center for Popular Democracy. Those groups estimate that workers are owed $75 million in severance pay and they have pressed Toys “R” Us creditors Angelo Gordon and Solus Alternative Asset Management to contribute to the fund, but the hedge funds have so far declined.
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America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda
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America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda
America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda...
...
America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda...
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Donald Trump: Evictor-in-chief
Landlord-in-chief Donald Trump wants to evict 800,000 people from the U.S. On September 5th, the Trump administration announced it intends to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA...
Landlord-in-chief Donald Trump wants to evict 800,000 people from the U.S. On September 5th, the Trump administration announced it intends to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Many DACA recipients, employed in the construction industry, built the very buildings that made real-estate moguls like Trump rich.
Everyday, the people of New York City are fighting landlords and their racist policies. This past couple of weeks have been no exception. On Wednesday, Aug. 30, thousands turned out for a march to protect DACA. It was organized by 15 different community organizations, including 32BJ SEIU, Working Families Party, Make the Road New York, New York Immigration Coalition, United We Dream, Tenants and Neighbors, Churches United For Fair Housing (CUFFH), New York Communities for Change, Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), VOCAL NY, the Women’s March, and the Center for Popular Democracy. Thousands in cities and municipalities around the country also rallied and marched to defend DACA.
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Puerto Rican Activists Reject Debt Restructuring Agreement
02.10.2020
San Juan,...
02.10.2020
San Juan, Puerto Rico -- In response to the new debt adjustment deal announced by the Financial Management and Oversight Board (FOMB) on February 9th, the co-director of community dignity campaigns at Center for Popular Democracy, Julio Lopez Varona, shared the following statement:
“The FOMB’s latest proposal should be seen as an insult to the people of Puerto Rico. This agreement ensures lofty payments to hedge funds and corporations who paid cents on the dollar on bonds that were in some cases emitted illegally. These payments will be funded by cutting pensions and imposing even more taxes, despite the struggle to recover from ongoing earthquakes and the impact of Hurricane Maria. No payments to Wall Street should be made while Puerto Rico struggles to recover. It is imperative that we reject this agreement and demand the cancellation of the debt as the only way to a fair recovery.”
Despite Puerto Rico’s unsustainable debt undergoing renegotiating deals for the last few years, the FOMB’s proposal has barely reached a consensus on a plan that does more than benefit Wall Street and bondholders. The proposal would give bondholders more than a 70% rate of recovery, retrieving that by raising local taxes and sustaining an 8.5% cut to pensions.
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New Pilot Program Gives Immigrant Detainees Public Defenders
NPR - November 29, 2013, by Hansi Lo Wang - In the American criminal justice system, you have the right to an attorney. And if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
...
NPR - November 29, 2013, by Hansi Lo Wang - In the American criminal justice system, you have the right to an attorney. And if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
That's not the case if you're a defendant in U.S. immigration court. Immigration proceedings are civil matters, and the Constitution does not extend the right to court-appointed attorneys to immigrant detainees.
But a new pilot program in New York City is trying to change that with the nation's first government-funded public defender service for immigrants facing deportation. Launched earlier this month, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project provides poor immigrant detainees with court-appointed attorneys from the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services.
About 44 percent of detainees entered immigration court hearings last year without a lawyer. Organizers say public defenders could not only help some immigrants avoid unnecessary deportations, but also speed up immigration proceedings and cut down on detention time.
Quick Matches
Attorneys at the Bronx Defenders leave nothing to chance as they prepare for immigration court. After double-checking files and running through courtroom scenarios, there's still one thing attorney Conor Gleason won't know for sure until just hours before he's in front of a judge: the person he'll have to represent next as a public defender in immigration court.
"We are used to meeting our clients long before our first hearing before a judge and having contact with their families and knowing a little bit about their life," Gleason explains. "And now we're requesting people to trust us within five seconds of meeting us."
These quick matches happen about once or twice a week, when there's a new group of unrepresented detainees scheduled for their first hearings before a judge at New York's Varick Street Immigration Court. Detainees must have household incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level to receive free legal services.
Gleason says having a public defender can have huge implications on the fate of immigrant detainees who cannot afford a private attorney or secure pro bono legal defense.
"Someone's rights are involved in this scenario," he says. "The individuals are in orange jumpsuits. They have the name of the facility on the back of their jumpsuits. Their hands are chained to their waist, and [only one hand is unchained], their writing hand, if they need to sign something."
'A Sea Change'
Funded mainly by the New York City Council and a contribution by Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law, the pilot program costs $550,000 and will serve 190 detainees until at least late February. Organizers say they hope this test run will ultimately lead to a model program for other parts of the country.
"What we're seeing right now is a sea change in the quality of justice afforded to immigrants in America," says Peter Markowitz, a law professor at Cardozo and one of the program's key organizers.
But the project raises questions about immigrant detainees having access to government-funded representation, says Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tougher immigration enforcement. While there are a few exceptions under federal law, such as juveniles in delinquency proceedings, for the most part, Vaughan says, "American citizens are not entitled to this kind of taxpayer-funded representation when they're in civil courts."
“What we're seeing right now is a sea change in the quality of justice afforded to immigrants in America.
- Cardozo law professor Peter Markowitz
Still, the launch of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project comes months after the Obama administration introduced a new policy in April that provides "qualified representatives to detainees who are deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration proceedings."
A Ripple Effect
Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, says the pilot program in New York is "long overdue." After serving on the San Francisco Immigration Court for more than two decades, she says the more lawyers, the better.
"It's helpful to have lawyers involved in the process because this is such a complicated area of the law. It's just that simple," Marks says.
The federal court system is currently overburdened with a large backlog of immigration cases. Part of the reason, she says, is a ripple effect of unrepresented or misguided appeals.
"We are not where the case ends. People then can appeal it to the Board of Immigration Appeals, to the Circuit Court of Appeals, and even ultimately sometimes go to the U.S. Supreme Court," she says.
Organizers of the pilot program argue in a recent report that public defenders can save time and money for both detainees and taxpayers by ensuring proceedings move along efficiently and shortening detentions.
A Lawyer And 'An Angel'
Jose Antonio Rico is one of its first test cases taken on by the public defender program. Rico's mother, Brunilda Fontanillas, says she and her son couldn't afford a private attorney after he was detained in October following an earlier landlord-tenant dispute that escalated into an arrest.
"The court helped find my son not only a lawyer but an angel," Fontanillas says in Spanish.
As a lawful permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. for decades, Rico may be eligible to avoid deportation back to the Dominican Republic, according to Rico's attorney Ruben Loyo of Brooklyn Defender Services.
Of the 41 detainees represented by public defenders in the pilot program's first month, 17 so far have accepted orders for deportation.
Jennifer Friedman, who manages the immigration attorneys at the Bronx Defenders, says the public defenders have encountered more clients anxious to accept removal orders than they expected.
While it "doesn't feel good" to represent clients accepting deportation, Friedman says she and her team take comfort in helping detainees make "empowered" decisions.
"Each one of those people who took a removal order sat down and had a lengthy conversation with an attorney before they made that decision," she says.
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The #MeToo Movement and Everyday Industries, Part 2
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The #MeToo Movement and Everyday Industries, Part 2
The Center for Popular Democracy reports that 18 percent of women have upper-management positions, even though they make up 60 percent of first-line supervisors. People of color, namely black and...
The Center for Popular Democracy reports that 18 percent of women have upper-management positions, even though they make up 60 percent of first-line supervisors. People of color, namely black and Latino, are also delegated to low-level, low-paying positions, such as cashiering. Older, experienced employees often do not receive benefits or long-term rewards, according to The Washington Post.
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