Let’s Challenge Corporate Democrats and Fight for a Universal Jobs Guarantee
Let’s Challenge Corporate Democrats and Fight for a Universal Jobs Guarantee
“Ady Barkan became somewhat of a household name after he was spotted over and over again at protests against healthcare...
“Ady Barkan became somewhat of a household name after he was spotted over and over again at protests against healthcare cuts in Washington during the fight to protect the Affordable Care Act and then against the Republican tax bill. For Barkan, a longtime organizer who was diagnosed in 2016 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the fight for healthcare had become very personal. We sat down last week in Baltimore at the Congressional Progressive Caucus strategy summit, where Barkan, who masterminded the Fed Up campaign to challenge the Federal Reserve to adopt pro-worker policies, was being honored with the Tim Carpenter Advocate of the Year award. Ady Barkan: My name is Ady Barkan. I am 34 years old. I live in Santa Barbara, California, with my wife and toddler. I work at the Center for Popular Democracy.”
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New York to Boost Scheduling Protections for Hourly Workers
New York to Boost Scheduling Protections for Hourly Workers
New York's governor says his administration is implementing new regulations that require employers to pay extra to...
New York's governor says his administration is implementing new regulations that require employers to pay extra to workers who are called to their jobs at the last minute.
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Two Cook County commissioners proposing county I.D. card
Two Cook County commissioners proposing county I.D. card
A few weeks after the City Council approved the creation of a new municipal identification card, two Cook County...
A few weeks after the City Council approved the creation of a new municipal identification card, two Cook County commissioners on Wednesday introduced plans for a similar card in the county.
And like the city’s program, the Cook County version is aimed, in part, at people who are living in the county illegally.
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‘Fight for $ 15′: fast food employees prepare mobilizations throughout the country
Inside the World - Associated Press Kendall Fells, organizational director of the campaign “Fight for $ 15,”...
Inside the World - Associated Press
Kendall Fells, organizational director of the campaign “Fight for $ 15,” said the protests will be April 15.
The demonstrations will include 170 campuses and cities across the country and abroad, Fells said.
More than 2,000 groups including organizations Jobs With Justice and Center for Popular Democracy show their support.
The plans are a continuation of a campaign that began in late 2012.
union organizers Restaurant industry fast food are expanding the scope of its organizing campaign and raise the minimum wage to $ 15 , this time with a day of activities even be made on campuses .
Kendall Fells, organizational campaign manager “Fight for $ 15″ said on Tuesday that the protests will be April 15 and will include about 170 campuses and cities across the country and abroad.
In an event held on Tuesday against a McDonald’s in Times Square , organizers reported that among those will join the protests be people who provide home health services, caregivers and employees of Wal-Mart.
” The greatest mobilization in decades “
Terrence Wise, who working in a Burger King in Kansas City , Missouri, and is a leader of the movement, said more than 2,000 groups including organizations Jobs With Justice (Jobs with Justice) and Center for Popular Democracy (Center for Popular Democracy) also show their support.
“This is the increased mobilization that America has seen in decades,” Wise told the rally while pedestrians walking in the middle of the busy street.
The plans are a continuation of a campaign that began in late 2012. The movement is led by SEIU and included demonstrations around the country to gain public support to raise salaries for employees of fast food and others who earn little. Last May, the campaign reached the gates of the headquarters of McDonald’s in Oak Brook, Illinois, where protesters were arrested after they refused to leave office shortly before the annual meeting of the company was made.
Fells, employee union, said the April 15 was chosen because workers are struggling for $ 15. “It’s a pun,” he said.
“ McDonald’s need to come to the table because they can fix this issue,” he said.
In a statement, McDonald’s said it respects the right of persons to demonstrate peacefully, but added that the actions of the past two years have been “rallies organized to attract the attention of the media” and that ” very few “of their employees participated.
In addition to the ongoing demonstrations, the organizers have been working on several legal fronts for McDonald’s Corp. is held responsible for the conditions in their franchises. This principle is fundamental for workers encaren the entire chain, instead of dealing with each of the franchisees operate more than 14,000 McDonald’s in America.
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Campaign Zero: A ‘Blueprint for Ending Police Violence’
On Friday, activists with the country’s growing racial justice movement unveiled a new campaign to end police violence...
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
Reading Tea Leaves on New Speaker
Crain's New York Business - February 8, 2014, by Chris Bragg - Before...
Crain's New York Business - February 8, 2014, by Chris Bragg - Before Carl Heastie's election as Assembly speaker last week, the Bronx lawmaker's biggest accomplishment in Albany may have been passing a 2012 bill creating a fleet of outer-borough green taxis. The legislation's primary opponent was the Metropolitan Taxi Cab Board of Trade, a yellow-cab group that saw the new taxis as a major threat.
Yet one of the group's lobbyists, Michael Woloz, recalls Mr. Heastie being an honest broker who made the bill fairer to yellow cabs, despite Mr. Woloz's group having had little prior relationship with the lawmaker. He said Mr. Heastie made a point of citing his business background.
"I remember he told us very early on in the process that he had an M.B.A. from Baruch," Mr. Woloz said. "We took that to mean he was coming not from a place of activism, but from a place of pragmatism."
The business community hopes Mr. Heastie, a former city budget analyst, will have that approach as speaker. His history, such as his taxi-bill experience, offers some clues.
Though not a prodigious bill writer, he once sponsored legislation to let check-cashers make high-interest loans. Bill proponents donated $10,000 to the Bronx Democratic Party that Mr. Heastie led; Mr. Heastie has said that had no effect on him. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's chief banking regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, helped kill the bill, arguing that poor people would be sucked into debt.
Mr. Heastie gave up his Bronx Democratic chairmanship when he gained the speakership, but eyes will be trained on the operatives who have long been close to the county leader. One is Stanley Schlein, who is often described as a "political fixer" and whose ethical troubles include being fined $15,000 for using city resources for his law practice.
Mr. Heastie's right-hand man, lobbyist and consultant Patrick Jenkins, has a good reputation. But he represents the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, a powerful group and a bane of business interests for its opposition to tort reform.
One of that group's top tasks will be to get Mr. Heastie to block reform of the state's 129-year-old scaffold law, as the last speaker, Sheldon Silver, did for years. But prosecutors say Mr. Silver had a financial incentive to do so: a $120,000 salary and several million dollars in fees from a personal-injury law firm. A scaffold-law reform bill is carried by Assemblyman Joseph Morelle, who lost the speaker's race to Mr. Heastie.
Mr. Heastie's position on the issue is not clear, according to Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York. He sponsored neither Mr. Morelle's bill nor one from Queens Assemblyman Francisco Moya that Mr. Stebbins considers a "red herring."
"We're just pleased that the new speaker of the Assembly is not on the payroll of the trial lawyers," Mr. Stebbins said. But the lawyers' lobby has made 26 contributions totaling $26,600 to Mr. Heastie's campaign fund since 2000. A spokesman for Mr. Heastie has said he will make decisions solely on the merits.
Josie Duffy of the Center for Popular Democracy, part of a coalition opposing scaffold-law reform, said, "We appreciate the speaker's past support for worker safety."
Mr. Heastie chaired the Assembly Labor Committee, a post typically held by strong supporters of unions. He sponsored the Wage Theft Prevention Act, which passed in 2010 over business groups' objections.
Mr. Heastie's spokesman also noted his sponsorship of a bill to let domestic-violence victims break their lease if their home is unsafe.
Mr. Heastie originally voted against gay marriage, but supported the marriage-equality bill that passed in 2011.
Before his election to the Assembly in 2000, Mr. Heastie, now 47, was a budget analyst in the city comptroller's office. Like Mr. Silver, he has a reputation as someone who does more listening than speaking, and whose opinions can seem inscrutable. He is considered media-shy, but is known for keeping his word, which helped him to rapidly line up votes for the speakership.
"I've always been a coalition builder, even when I was county chair in the Bronx," Mr. Heastie said at a press conference last week. "I like to hear other, differing opinions."
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Insurer To Cover Dying Activist’s Breathing Machine After Twitter Campaign
Insurer To Cover Dying Activist’s Breathing Machine After Twitter Campaign
The California-based insurance company HealthNet agreed to cover a breathing assistance machine for Ady Barkan, a 34-...
The California-based insurance company HealthNet agreed to cover a breathing assistance machine for Ady Barkan, a 34-year-old progressive activist afflicted with ALS, after his complaints about the company went viral on Twitter.
The company had initially refused to cover the costs of the machine on the grounds that it was “experimental,” according to Barkan.
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As the federal government fails the people of Puerto Rico, local governments and states must step up
As the federal government fails the people of Puerto Rico, local governments and states must step up
“Most recently, I’ve answered the call to service within my Delaware community. As the Program Director for Achievement...
“Most recently, I’ve answered the call to service within my Delaware community. As the Program Director for Achievement Matters, I lead a team working with youth to close the educational achievement gap. Through the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, I teach young people how to fight for social change. I also work with the Center for Popular Democracy on solutions to the opioid crisis, healthcare, immigration, and taxes, and as the Kent County Coordinator for Network Delaware, I’m organizing to increase engagement throughout Delaware.
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Diverse, Radical and Ready to Resist: Meet the First in the New Wave of Local Progressive Officials
Diverse, Radical and Ready to Resist: Meet the First in the New Wave of Local Progressive Officials
At Local Progress’s 150-person meet-up, left-leaning politicians from around the country share plans to build rebel...
At Local Progress’s 150-person meet-up, left-leaning politicians from around the country share plans to build rebel cities.
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Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte...
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte Monday but found the doors locked as they attempted to enter the building. A security guard accepted a letter from the group.
It was part of the grassroots fight to shield Mecklenburg County’s estimated 54,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation.
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