The pressure's on the Federal Reserve to make a diverse pick for Atlanta post
The pressure's on the Federal Reserve to make a diverse pick for Atlanta post
The selection of a regional Federal Reserve bank president normally takes place in relative obscurity, followed only by...
The selection of a regional Federal Reserve bank president normally takes place in relative obscurity, followed only by local business leaders, financial executives and analysts who track monetary policy.
But amid concerns about a lack of diversity at the highest levels of the nation’s central banking system, great attention is being focused on who will be chosen as the next head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
The search is being watched closely by members of Congress and advocacy groups that have complained publicly in recent months that the Fed’s top leadership is nearly all white.
The Atlanta region, which has a large African American population, presents the perfect opportunity to start changing that, they said.
“This would be historic,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who would like the Fed to make the next Atlanta chief the first African American to lead one of the 12 regional banks. “It would be very important, and it’s long overdue.”
As the Fed has taken on a larger role in the economy in the wake of the Great Recession, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among key decision-makers has sparked concerns that monetary policy decisions haven’t taken into account the higher unemployment rates among African Americans and Latinos.
“Communities of color have not yet experienced full economic recovery,” said Shawn Sebastian, field director of Fed Up, a campaign by labor, community and liberal activist groups that wants the Fed to enact pro-worker policies.
“As a really important economic policymaker, the Fed needs to actually reflect America,” he said.
Leading African American lawmakers have called on Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen, the first woman to lead the central bank, and the Atlanta Fed to conduct a broad search.
Fed officials have promised to do that. But they’ve made no commitment to a diverse appointment for a complex job that includes overseeing about 1,700 employees in the Atlanta region and participating in monetary policy deliberations in Washington.
During an October webcast on the search, Tom Fanning, chairman of the Atlanta Fed’s board of directors, was asked whether the bank had “a special opportunity” to break the regional bank “color barrier.”
“That would be a great thing. We’re all for it,” he said. “We want the best person as well.”
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Fanning, chief executive of Atlanta-based energy firm Southern Co., is leading the bank’s search committee. The committee is reviewing candidates and doesn’t have a timetable for a decision, Atlanta Fed spokeswoman Jean Tate said.
The five sitting members of the Board of Governors and 11 of the 12 regional bank presidents are white. Since the central bank was created in 1913, three African Americans have served as governors, but there have been no Latinos. There never has been an African American or Latino regional Fed president.
“They just need more diversity,” Waters said.
Regional Fed presidents rotate onto the Federal Open Market Committee, where they join Fed governors in setting the level of a key interest rate that affects business and consumer loans.
The committee has started nudging up the rate as the unemployment rate has fallen below 5%. But many liberals are worried the job market isn’t fully healed, pointing to higher unemployment rates for African Americans and Latinos.
Last spring, Waters was among 116 House members and 11 senators who wrote to Yellen criticizing what they called “the disproportionately white and male” leadership at the central bank.
“Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated,” said the letter, organized by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
At congressional hearings, lawmakers have pushed Yellen to do more to improve diversity among the regional bank chiefs.
The president nominates Fed governors, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Yellen and her colleagues on the Board of Governors give final approval for regional bank president selections, which are made by the board of directors of each bank.
“It’s our job to make sure that every search for those jobs assembles a broad and diverse group of candidates,” Yellen told Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) last winter after he pressed her to consider “getting an African American, for the first time in history, to be a regional president of a Federal Reserve bank.”
That was before Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart announced his resignation in September, effective Feb. 28.
Shortly afterward, Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, joined Conyers, Scott and Rep. John Lewis, another Georgia Democrat, in writing to Yellen and Fanning urging the Fed to “consider candidates from diverse personal backgrounds, including African Americans, Latinos and women.”
The letter said that “grave racial disparities exist across our nation in unemployment wages and income.” It also said that the unemployment and poverty rates for African Americans in the Atlanta region — Alabama, Florida, Georgia and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — were about double those for whites.
For the first time, the Atlanta Fed’s search committee has asked the public to submit names of potential candidates. The Atlanta Fed also has tried to make the process more transparent by posting details on its website, including holding the October webcast in which Fanning answered the public’s questions.
Asked about the importance of diversity for addressing “the special concerns of minority communities,” Fanning said he thought the Fed already did a good job on the issue, but “increasing our cultural bandwidth” was important.
“It is incumbent upon the person that gets this job to have the broadest perspective possible,” he said. “That’s why valuing diversity is really a critical component here.”
By Jim Puzzanghera
Source
Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal...
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal Obamacare.
Lining hallways across Washington, participants staged multiple demonstrations looking to voice their dissatisfaction with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's intent to dismantle Obamacare without a replacement following the implosion of the Republican Party's latest Senate health care bill.
Read the full article here.
Pennsylvania Groups Press For Quicker Action on Immigration Reform
CBS – September 5, 2013, by Cherri Gregg - PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — As Congress gets ready to head back to Washington, a...
CBS – September 5, 2013, by Cherri Gregg -
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — As Congress gets ready to head back to Washington, a coalition of Pennsylvania advocates for immigration reform is holding a series of events to send a clear message to area elected officials.
The events include town hall meetings, business roundtables, prayer vigils, and rallies in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and other counties.
“This last week of events is just to send them back to Washington with a big push,” says Sundrop Carter, the lead organizer for Pennsylvania United for Immigration Reform. “Now is Congress’ opportunity to do the right thing — to pass comprehensive immigration reforms that provide a pathway to citizenship, workers’ rights, and reunification of families.”
Bucks County resident Celia Sharp came to the United States 40 years ago from Colombia because of civil unrest in her home country. Now a US citizen, she says reforms are necessary — especially in Pennsylvania, where immigrant populations are growing.
“This is a critical human rights matter, a national security issue,” she says.
Some of the upcoming regional events include the following:
Business Roundtable by Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, Center for Popular Democracy, Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians:”Immigration Reform: Growing Pennsylvania’s Economy.” Thursday, Sept. 5, 12 noon, 200 S. Broad St., G. Fred DiBona Jr. Room, Philadelphia, PA Vigil for Immigration Reform and End Deportations Now by Pennsylvania United for Immigration Reform, JUNTOS. Monday, Sept. 9, 6:30pm, at 354 W Elm St, Norristown, PA March and Rally for Comprehensive Immigration Reform by Organizing for Action, Keystone Progress. Thursday, Sept. 12, 1pm, at Delaware Canal State Park, New Hope, PA Community Forum on Comprehensive Immigration Reform by Center for Popular Democracy, Grupo de Apoyo e Integración Hispanoamericano, Muhlenburg College. Thursday, Sept. 12, 7pm, at Muhlenberg College, 2400 W. Chew St, Seegers Union, Allentown PA.Source
For Safer City Schools, More Counselors, Fewer Cops
Our city is facing a tough question: how do we make schools safer? New York City schools are on the precipice of...
Our city is facing a tough question: how do we make schools safer?
New York City schools are on the precipice of returning to ineffective policies and practices like more policing and metal detectors that have harmed the students who are most in need. The city could and should instead take this opportunity to move further towards school culture and climate priorities that are designed to meet the social, emotional, and mental health needs of young people.
Read the full article here.
Who were the women who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake about Kavanaugh vote in an elevator?
Who were the women who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake about Kavanaugh vote in an elevator?
Two women who said they were survivors of sexual assault angrily confronted Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona in an...
Two women who said they were survivors of sexual assault angrily confronted Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona in an elevator Friday morning over his decision to vote yes on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read the article and watch the video here.
How Walmart Persuades Its Workers Not to Unionize
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room,...
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room, he informed company headquarters and within 24 hours, an anti-union SWAT team flew to his store in a corporate jet. And when the meat department of a Walmart store in Texas became the retailer’s only operation in the United States to unionize, back in 2000, Walmart announced plans two weeks later to use prepackaged meat and eliminate butchers at that store and 179 others.
With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.
Walmart maintains a steady drumbeat of anti-union information at its more than 4,000 U.S. stores, requiring new hires—there are hundreds of thousands each year—to watch a video that derides organized labor. Indeed, Walmart’s anti-union campaign goes back decades: There was “Labor Relations and You at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center,” a 1991 guide aimed at beating back the Teamsters at its warehouses, and then in 1997 came “A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free.” The first half of a statement in that toolbox has been repeatedly snickered at for being so egregiously false: “We are not anti-union; we are pro-associate.”
Early last year, Anonymous, a network of hacker activists, leaked two internal Walmart PowerPoint slideshows. One was a “Labor Relations Training” presentation for store managers that echoed the “Manager’s Toolbox” in suggesting that unions were money-grubbing outfits caring little about workers’ welfare. “Unions are a business, not a club or social organization—they want associates’ money,” the PowerPoint read. (Walmart confirmed the PowerPoints’ authenticity.) “Unions spend members’ dues money on things other than representing them,” it added.
Walmart is perfectly within its rights to communicate its stance to employees. While employers are legally barred from threatening store closures, layoffs, or loss of benefits because of unionization, they are free to tell workers why they oppose unions.
Walmart has battled for years against the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents employees at many grocery stores and retailers, and its offshoot, OUR Walmart, an association of Walmart employees. Walmart insists that the UFCW is out to damage Walmart’s business. The second PowerPoint that Anonymous leaked last year attacked OUR Walmart, asking, “Is OUR Walmart/UFCW here to help you? Answer: NO.”
Tensions have risen between the retailer and OUR Walmart in recent years, with the labor group organizing nationwide protests outside hundreds of stores each Black Friday. The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint in January of last year, accusing Walmart of illegally firing 19 OUR Walmart members and illegally disciplining more than 40 others after strikes and protests demanding higher pay. Walmart maintains that the firings and disciplining were legal and not in retaliation for protesting.
Getting a glimpse of Walmart’s internal PowerPoints and training manuals is rare, but one of Walmart’s orientation videos was leaked recently, and it again revealed Walmart’s anti-union efforts. Labor experts and Walmart employees say they were surprised at the blatant untruths in many of the video’s pro-company and anti-union statements.
Walmart confirmed the video’s authenticity and said the company showed it to new hires from 2009 through last year. Early on in the course of the video’s nine minutes, an actor dressed as a Walmart employee says, “You’re just beginning your career with us. It’s hard to grasp everything that’s available to you, like great benefits.”
Ken Jacobs, the chairman of the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center, suggested that this was essentially propaganda. “Walmart's benefits are well below the standard for union groceries,” he said. “They are not ‘great benefits’ by any standard.” A discounter like Walmart certainly doesn’t have the generous pensions or Cadillac health plans offered by some companies. Gertz, the overnight stocker in Denver, says her health plan is so stingy that she often doesn’t see a doctor when she’s sick because the deductible requires her to pay the first few thousand dollars out of pocket. Gertz said that when workers call in sick, their first day off comes out of their vacation days or personal days, not their paid sick days.
A spokesperson for Walmart says it will soon revamp its policy so that employees can use paid sick days starting on their first day out. The spokesperson added that its bonuses, 401(k) plan, and health plan are considerably better than at most other discounters—its 401(k) plan gives a dollar-for-dollar match for the first six percent of pay and the premium for its most popular health plan is just $21.90 every two weeks. That said, part-time workers, who represent nearly half its work force, don’t qualify for many of these benefits.
The leaked video also boasts, “There’s no retail company that offers more advancement and job security than Walmart.” Considering that some retailers are unionized with strong job-security provisions in their union contracts, some labor advocates wondered how Walmart could begin to assert that its job security is as strong as any other retailer’s.
“That’s patently false,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a division of the UFCW. “At Walmart you can be fired for any reason at all or no reason.” He contrasted Walmart, one of the nation’s many “at-will” employers, with retailers that are unionized or partly unionized, including Costco, Macy’s, H&M and Modell’s. At unionized stores, workers can only be fired “for cause,” meaning managers need a strong reason to fire someone—for example, stealing from a store or arriving 30 minutes late five days in a row. Moreover, workers in those unionized stores can usually challenge their dismissal by bringing in an impartial arbitrator who helps determine whether a firing was justified.
Walmart, in its orientation video, makes other attempts at belittling unions. It features an actor who says, “I was a union member at my last job. Everyone actually had to join the union . . . The thing I remember most about the union is that they took dues money out of my paycheck before I ever saw it, just like taxes.” The character’s assertion that he “had to join the union” diverges from the truth. The Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that workers cannot be required to join the union at a unionized workplace—although they can be required to pay union dues or fees (unless they live in one of the 25 states with “right to work” laws).
In the video, an actress standing in front of a rack of produce continues to hammer the message. “I always thought that unions were kind of like clubs or charities that were out to help workers,” she says. “Well, I found out that wasn’t exactly the case. The truth is unions are businesses, multimillion-dollar businesses that make their money by convincing people like you and me to give them a part of our paychecks.”
Although some union leaders have generous salaries, Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, said that unions aren’t for-profit businesses. “If unions are businesses, they’re the best example of the sharing economy we’ve seen,” Sachs said. “Here’s the business model: By sharing their resources, including their financial resources, workers make better lives for themselves and their families.” Thomas Kochan, an MIT professor of management, said that the phrase the actor uses—“clubs and charities”—“insults any new hire’s intelligence.” “Most people know what unions are and what they try to do,” Kochan said.
Indeed, one might ask, if unions are doing as little for workers as Walmart maintains, why then does Walmart bother to battle unions so aggressively? Walmart takes a far more jaundiced view of unions than do many Americans—for instance the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. “The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions,” the bishops once wrote in a pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All. And Pope John Paul II, never known as a raging liberal, called unions, “an indispensable element of social life.”
Brian Nick, a Walmart spokesman, explained why the company made the video. “The core reason to have the training and information on video, in and of itself, is we know that third-party groups often reach out to our associates,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to provide accurate information that gives our associates knowledge about their work environment and their own rights as associates.”
In boasting about Walmart, the video says, “Walmart jobs are flexible jobs, giving associates the opportunity to balance our personal life with our worklife.” But Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group, strongly disagreed. “I’ve spoken with countless Walmart associates who talk about how erratic their work schedules are, about how managers regularly disregard their requests for basic accommodations so they can go to school or take care of their families,” she said. Some Walmart workers say their stores slashed their hours when they asked managers to accommodate their college schedule or their efforts to hold a second job to make ends meet.
Brian Nick, the Walmart spokesman, said the company was improving its scheduling practices. Beginning next year, it will offer some employees fixed schedules each week—many employees complain that their work schedules change vastly week-to-week.
In urging workers to shun unions, the Walmart video says, “In recent years, union organizers have spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to convince Walmart associates to join a union, all without any success.” But that’s not quite true. The UFCW hasn’t sought to persuade Walmart employees to join a union in recent years, although it did help form OUR Walmart to push for better wages and working conditions. OUR Walmart claimed a victory in February when Walmart announced it would raise its base pay to $9 this year and $10 next year. A spokesperson for Walmart said it was responding to a tighter labor market and boasted that the move would mean raises for 500,000 workers.
The Walmart video is correct about at least one thing: Most of the recent unionization votes at Walmart stores in the U.S. were unsuccessful. For example, the tire and lube workers at two Walmart stores, in Colorado and Pennsylvania, voted overwhelmingly in 2005 against unionizing. But the UFCW had a big success in 2004, when it unionized a Walmart in Jonquiere, Quebec—a first in North America. Walmart closed that store shortly afterward, and Canada’s Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the shutdown was an illegal ploy to avoid having a union. Walmart has long argued that it closed the Jonquiere store because it was unprofitable and that the closing had nothing to do with the union. As for Walmart’s decision to suddenly begin using prepackaged meat after that meat department in Texas unionized in 2000, the company said that the timing was just a coincidence and that the decision had nothing to do with unionization.
This past April, Walmart abruptly announced it was closing its store in Pico Rivera, California, along with four other stores, for six months. Many workers saw that as a daunting anti-union statement—the Pico Rivera store has the nation’s most militant OUR Walmart chapter, having staged a sit-in and numerous other protests. Walmart, however, insisted that the closing was necessitated by “ongoing plumbing issues.”
Source: The Atlantic
Lawsuit: Arizona Minimum-Wage Initiative Stiffed Petition Firm for $65,000
Lawsuit: Arizona Minimum-Wage Initiative Stiffed Petition Firm for $65,000
An Arizona employer is stiffing a small-business owner on a completed job, affecting dozens of low-income employees....
An Arizona employer is stiffing a small-business owner on a completed job, affecting dozens of low-income employees.
Sounds like the kind of greedhead Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families is targeting with its campaign to raise the minimum wage, right?
Wrong — the employer is Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families. The campaign refuses to pay the last $65,000 of a $965,000 bill to Sign Here Petitions, the company that hired the people who gathered the signatures that put the measure on this November's general-election ballot.
Sign Here owner Bonita Burks sued the campaign on September 21 to recover the balance due. In the meantime, Burks says, she has been unable to distribute final paychecks to the 45 to 50 petition gatherers she hired to get Prop 206 onto the ballot.
It's not as if the minimum-wage campaign can't afford to pay Burks, a Maricopa resident who has owned her own business for 12 years. Though the campaign ran short of money over the summer, its spokesman, Bill Scheel, confirms that Arizonans for Fair Wages expects to receive an influx of $1.5 million in donations any day now.
Scheel says the campaign intentionally shorted Burks' company because it didn't do its job well enough, resulting in tens of thousands in unexpected expenses.
If Arizona voters approve the minimum-wage measure in November, the state's minimum wage would go up to $10 an hour next year and rise to $12 in 2020. Waitresses and others who expect tips would see their wages increase from $5.05 to $7 by 2017, and to $9 by 2020. The ballot initiative also mandates that workers can take between three and five days of earned sick leave annually.
Much of the money for the campaign has come from out-of-state donors as part of a national effort by activists and labor unions. Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), the largest donor, is itself being funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Popular Democracy. The Commercial Workers union Region 8 States Council and California-based Fairness Project are also major contributors.
As New Times reported in August, a member of the political-strategy firm hired by the campaign, Javelina, loaned the campaign $100,000 after it ran short of cash while defending itself from a legal challenge that could have kicked the measure off the ballot.
Scheel, a cofounder of Javelina and spokesman for the campaign, said in August that he gave the campaign the loan on August 4 to cover unexpected expenses from a legal challenge by the Arizona Restaurant Association.
The restaurant owners behind the ARA, an influential organization led by Steve Chucri, one of five Maricopa County supervisors, doesn't want to see minimum wage go up and sued the campaign in an attempt to deny voters the right to decide the question. The ARA's lawyers argued that many of the campaign's signature gatherers were felons or had filled out their forms incorrectly, meaning tens of thousands of signatures should have been tossed. The workers are typically paid $3 to $5 for each signature they collect.
The ARA identified up to 85,000 signatures they claimed were no good, and expected to find even more invalid ones. At least 150,642 valid signatures were needed out of the 271,883 turned in by the campaign.
Yet before a deeper probe of the campaign's signature-gathering process occurred, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joshua Rogers dismissed the ARA's complaint because it hadn't been filed on time. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the ruling on appeal.
The campaign had apparently run out money before the lawsuit was filed, though. On July 19, about two weeks after the July 7 deadline to turn in signatures to the state, Sign Here and the campaign — represented by Scheel — drew up a one-page amendment to their original contract. In the amendment, Burks made clear that the campaign owed $186,884.60 and would assess a late fee of $1,000 per day starting on July 18.
The campaign "understands and agrees that the final invoice amount is requires for [Burks] to pay individuals already-earned monies," the contract states, adding that if Burks is sued by the signature gatherers, the campaign will cover the costs.
Scheel signed the amended contract.
About a month later, Burks says, Scheel promised falsely that the money was on the way.
Burks provided New Times with a screenshot that shows a text exchange with Scheel on Friday, August 19:
"Bill, Please send me a text once the wire has been. Thank you," Burks texted.
"The wire has been initiated," Scheel texted back.
But the following Monday, the money had not materialized in Sign Here's account.
"Sorry," Scheel informed Burks in another text. "We have been on conference calls with the national funders all morning. We've been instructed to hold off any further wires till after the Supreme Court rules on the appeal, which we hope will be Friday."
The state Supreme Court upheld Rogers' ruling on August 30, clearing its final hurdle to make the ballot.
Scheel says Sign Here invoiced the campaign a total of $965,000, of which the campaign paid $900,000.
"We paid 93 percent of everything that was due," he says.
The campaign contracted with Sign Here for more than just making the ballot, he argues: "It was about making sure circulators were qualified. She promised 80 percent validity — it came in at barely 50 percent. That's not acceptable."
The lawsuit cost the campaign $70,000 in legal fees, and Burks' company "nearly put the campaign in jeopardy," he says.
Scheel admits that he doesn't know whether Judge Rogers would have thrown out enough signatures to void the measure, had the ARA's challenge been filed on time.
"No one ever did the math on our side," he says.
But that isn't the issue, Scheel maintains. Burks didn't properly vet the signature gatherers, which cost the campaign $70,000 by leaving a potential vulnerability for the ARA to exploit.
The campaign recouped $33,500 of the legal fees via a settlement with the ARA, Scheel says. Arizonans for Fair Wages could have asked for up to $55,000 in legal fees, but decide to settle rather than prolong the fight, he says.
Scheel also confirms, as he told New Times in August, that the campaign is about to receive $1.5 million in donations from its national backers to pay for marketing and promotion of the measure in the final weeks before the election. Some of that money has already trickled in, he says, and the campaign has used it to pay 15 of the signature gatherers who haven't received checks from Sign Here.
Burks did such a poor job, Scheel says, that according to the campaign's calculations, she owes the campaign $35,000.
Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.
Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.
"She's a small-businessperson who unfortunately and sadly dropped the ball," he says.
Burks says she's upset and frustrated by the situation. Signature gatherers keep contacting her, asking when they'll get their last checks.
"They're hurting bad," she says. "My phone's blowing up every day."
By her account, adding in the $1,000-a-day late fee, Arizonans for Fair Wages now owes her company $143,000.
"I'm standing firm: You owe the money, you need to pay it," she says.
Burks says she doesn't have the money to pay the petition gatherers the remainder of what they're owed and says she made "no profit" on the project. Campaign officials took advantage of Sign Here to make a strong final push to collect more signatures before the July 7 deadline, even though they were broke at the time, she adds.
"They told me in the last week: Get as many as you can because our volunteer efforts suck," she says. The workers came up with an additional 35,000 signatures.
"My team and I, we worked so hard in the 120-degree heat," she says. "I was paying bonuses. I haven't made one damned dime on it. I really wanted to see it happen, for the people."
At least one signature gatherer is suing Burks in Maricopa County Justice Court.
Donna Fox worked for Sign Here before returning home to Kingsport, Tennessee. She has been staying in Scottsdale for the past couple of weeks, making the nearly 2,000-mile trip to resolve the issue.
Fox says her work for Sign Here was impeccable, and that Burks' company owes her $1,320 for her last week's work. She is suing for three times that amount, as allowed under state law.
She could probably make a deal to get her money from Arizonans for Fair Wages, Fox says. "But I don't trust them."
Even if she wins her suit, Fox says she's not sure whether she'll ever see her money. But she's hoping Burks wins her suit against the campaign, which Fox believes treated Sign Here badly.
"This is like Donald Trump strategy," Fox says of Arizonans for Fair Wages. "You can do the work, but we're not paying you. They don't walk the walk they're talking. This is nothing more than business for them."
As for Burks, with whom Fox says she shares a friendly, albeit contentious, relationship: "I chew her out all the time. I tell her she's a complete shithead because she led people to believe the check was in the mail."
The campaign offered to settle the suit for $32,500, Burks says, but she turned them down because it wouldn't cover the money she owes to the petition gatherers.
"My circulators really need their money to pay rent and put food on the table," Burks says. "I believe Arizona Fair Wages just don't care about the people who worked so hard to get their issue on the ballot."
By BY RAY STERN
Source
Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to...
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to President Donald Trump.
A newly launched website called BackersOfHate.org breaks down how nine major corporations are affiliated with the Trump administration and the ways they will gain from the Trump agenda. The website also outlines current company policies that already negatively impact people of color, immigrants, Indigenous communities, and low income populations — similar to critiques of the Trump agenda.
Read the full article here.
Fed’s Kashkari to Spend Day in Life of Struggling Black Family
Fed’s Kashkari to Spend Day in Life of Struggling Black Family
Neel Kashkari tried living on streets for a week during his failed run for California governor in 2014. Now, the...
Neel Kashkari tried living on streets for a week during his failed run for California governor in 2014. Now, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will spend a day in the life of a black family barely making ends meet.
“Walking a day in somebody else’s shoes is actually -- it makes the anecdotes that much more real,” Kashkari, 43, told reporters Wednesday in Minneapolis after a meeting with the local community to discuss race and economic inequality. “It influences how I think about the problems we face.”
Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive who went on to oversee the U.S. government’s $700 billion financial rescue program, took the helm of the Minneapolis Fed in January.
National poverty levels among blacks stand at 26 percent, more than double those for whites. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has discussed inequality and the fact that minorities have higher unemployment than whites in speeches and testimony to Congress.
Outrage has mounted in the U.S. over a recent spate of fatal shootings of black men by police, some of which were filmed and broadcast over social media, worsening racial tensions in many communities.
On Wednesday, Kashkari, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from India, heard Rosheeda Credit describe how she and her boyfriend worked three jobs between them to support their family. She then invited him to find out himself what it was like by spending the day with her.
Kashkari said he’d be “happy to do it.”
The Fed has also been under fire from Democrats, including presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for a lack of diversity on the boards of directors on the 12 regional Fed banks. Kashkari said the central bank had a lot of work to do to improve diversity and was committed to making that happen.
By ALISTER BULL & JEANNA SMIALEK
Source
Activists Face Rain And Security Threats As 10-Day March Against White Supremacy Continues
Activists Face Rain And Security Threats As 10-Day March Against White Supremacy Continues
Braving the rain, threats of violence and uncertainty over police permits, dozens of civil rights activists set out on...
Braving the rain, threats of violence and uncertainty over police permits, dozens of civil rights activists set out on the sixth day of their 118-mile trek from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., on Saturday to protest the white supremacist ideas that inspired deadly violence in Charlottesville a few weeks ago.
The 10-day journey, which organizers from progressive and faith organizations are calling a “March to Confront White Supremacy,” began on Monday with a rally in Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park and is due to conclude this coming Wednesday with nonviolent civil disobedience in the nation’s capital.
Read the full article here.
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