A federal judge in Ohio laid out a plan on Wednesday for the state to restore voting privileges for people who were illegally removed from the state's voter rolls over the past five years.
Several weeks ago Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson agreed to be a guest on my City University television program. A few days later his office called to say he was ill and would have to reschedule.
On Labor Day, let’s all take a moment to thank our bosses for the rights and benefits they have so generously granted us.
Oh wait, that’s right. Decent wages and working conditions were never gifts. Workers organized, fought, and in many cases died for each and every improvement in our working lives. And workers are fighting today—to protect the rights we’ve won, and to advance new and needed labor laws.
Although the socioeconomic biases in representation are most apparent at the state and national levels, many of our elected officials start their careers at the local level.
For the past year, Albuquerque has been experimenting with a pilot jobs program for its homeless population called “There’s a Better Way.” The initiative began as a push to connect the homeless with shelters and other assistance providers, but within a few months of its launch, the city also started offering needy residents $9 an hour to perform menial labor such as cleaning up litter. The program also offers lunch and overnight shelter to participants.
When the Labor Department ruled last week that 674 workers in the cafeteria of the United States Senate had been denied their full pay in recent years, the contractor that runs the cafeteria said it was an accident. The workers said it was deliberate.
Latino/as’ changing economic fortunes in the wake of the Great Recession and the racist undertones of anti-immigrant rhetoric are major sources of their disillusionment with the Republican Party. While Latino/as have more positive attitudes toward the Democratic Party, their feelings are lukewarm.
Latino/as distrust of the Republican Party was high even before explicitly racist language became mainstream again this year. Much of this distrust is rooted in the GOP’s discourse on immigrants and immigration, but immigration is not the only policy area in which Latinos and Republicans diverge in opinion.
Confidence in American political institutions is at one of its lowest points in recorded history. About one out of every ten Americans expresses confidence in Congress and roughly one-third have confidence in the presidency or the Supreme Court, according to a Gallup poll from June. By contrast, nearly three-quarters of Americans have confidence in the military; a small majority trust the police.
More bosses are weighing the credit worthiness of job candidates before making a hire — a practice that some lawmakers say unfairly keeps people with bad credit from landing a job.
On Thursday, the Senate takes up a proposal to restrict employers in most cases from using financial information such as credit scores to decide whom to hire, promote or fire. [...]
Immigration policy is considered the holy grail of policies when it comes to attracting Latino voters. Immigration is explicitly mentioned in the post-2012 Republican autopsy report as one of the strategies to increase the party’s base racial and ethnic diversity.
The Rising American Electorate was credited with helping Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 and his reelection in 2012. Comprised of people of color, women, and young people, this Rising Electorate represents people in constituencies that have been underserved in a political system that increasingly caters to the needs of the wealthy.
Shortly before I went on parental leave, an acquaintance asked me about my plans for the “three-month vacation” awaiting me. After explaining that I was going to take care of a newborn child full-time for three months, my acquaintance responded, “Oh, good for you!” This interaction marked the first time I realized that many people do not take fathers as caregivers seriously.
The first platform committee meeting for the 2016 Democratic National Convention, featuring representatives from both campaigns as well as DNC neutrals, took place on Wednesday. Their deliberations will likely feature tough negotiations on a range of issues — a $15 minimum wage, fracking, the legitimacy of giant banks — that were points of contention during the campaigning, helping clarify the political and ideological shift that has taken place in the party since the mid-1990s when Robert Rubin was its intellectual lodestar.
Differences of opinion are certainly important, but at some point the question of how inclusive the dominant society must be to the concerns of different people will have to move beyond the realm of personal preference.
Inequality is the common thread connecting every issue we work on at Demos, and challenging the public narrative about that inequality is essential to our work to solve it. This year, we’re proud to have an ally in that fight in the entire team behind the upcoming television documentary series America Divided, premiering this fall on EPIX.
Brenda Wright, an attorney with the public policy group Demos — which backed the lawsuit along with the Prison Policy Initiative — said the the litigation was aimed at getting localities to account for prisoners where it truly counts.
The ruling concluded that Cranston artificially inflated the population of Ward 6 by treating all inmates of the ACI as residents of the prison for redistricting purposes.
``I’m thrilled that our fight for equal representation has been successful,’’ said Karen Davidson, lead plaintiff, in a news release. ``Fairness in redistricting is a fundamental right and I’m glad the court has vindicated our claims.’’
Lagueux gave the city thirty days to redraw the districts.
“This is a big win for democracy,” said Adam Lioz of Demos, counsel for the plaintiffs. “Prison gerrymandering distorts representation and should no longer be tolerated. This decision should pave the way for other courts to address this long-standing problem.”