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President Barack Obama on Thursday called for "peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson," one day before Missouri authorities were expected to release the identity of the officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
In response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and subsequent police action, Demos President Heather McGhee issued the following statement:
When a government does not represent its people we have no demos, and therefore no democracy.
Last night's police violence against citizens of Ferguson, MO was an affront to democracy. There is nothing more American than a community uniting in the face of tragedy, than ordinary people organizing to peacefully protest injustice. The police reaction—to protests of their own violence—has been more violence, less transparency, and an active suppression of first amendment freedoms.
In May 2013, low-wage workers in federal buildings in Washington began walking off the job in a series of one-day strikes. Employed by concessionaires and janitorial contractors at places like the Smithsonian and the Ronald Reagan Building, the workers said their rock-bottom wages weren't enough to survive on. Like the Walmart and fast-food workers also going on strike, they asked for better working conditions and a greater share of the spoils.
Los Angeles lawmakers were expected to vote Wednesday on a proposal to renegotiate or terminate an interest rate swap deal from the mid-2000s that critics say now costs the city millions of dollars a year in fees. If successful, the initiative could make the city the nation's largest to challenge ballooning Wall Street levies that accompany similar interest rate swap deals throughout the nation.