More than eight years into an economic recovery, the labor market is not bringing young people into the labor force. Approximately 4.6 million young Americans remain disconnected from school and work…
Extreme weather events, such as Tropical Storm Florence and Hurricane Michael, highlight a heavy truth about ongoing climate change: They hit low-income communities the hardest. And the future may be bleaker still.
Over the last year, people with disabilities have fought against attacks on their health care, civil rights, and supports that make inclusion in society possible. Now, as the House and Senate prepare to iron out a final version of the bill, we urge those involved to adopt the Senate’s approach to SNAP.
Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt called for a national floor on wages to ensure “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a core part of the New Deal, the federal minimum wage falls far short of that goal.
Nearly all of us will need to take time away from a job at some point to address a family member’s or our own serious illness, or to welcome a new child into our family. Unfortunately, in the United States we have a patchwork system filled with holes when it comes to paid leave.
Offering up an imaginary monolithic culture as the model for success is futile and dangerous. The model minority rhetoric ignores institutional racism against Asian Americans, not to mention fundamental differences in the history and current reality faced by other people of color, such as African Americans and Latinos.
Republicans are advancing yet another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act that is as bad as the one defeated in July, if not worse. This one makes large use of block grants, a long-standing Republican idea to promote “state flexibility.”
I have spent the last 50-plus years of my life fighting poverty. In 1967, when I worked for Senator Robert Kennedy as his legislative aide, the Senator and I traveled to Mississippi. We saw children starving—literally—with bloated bellies, open sores that wouldn’t heal. Our nation did the right thing then—we expanded the food stamp program—and that’s why you don’t see that kind of starvation here today.
But we had to fight for it. And now we are going to have to fight again.