I recently traveled 2,500 miles to return to my home state of Ohio. The journey ended with me beginning my new role as Member Coordinator with Working America here in Columbus. I had been working in the Portland, Oregon office for the past few years and, while I miss my friends and the scenic landscape, I must say it’s good to be home. One thing I learned during my time away is that not everyone shares my positive view of the Buckeye State. It’s not that we’re disliked; it’s that some folks don’t consider Ohio all that exciting. In fact, a U.S. travel guide I once read described Columbus as, “the blind date your mom arranges – average looking, restrained personality, but solid and affable.” Well, I’m here to argue that we are a much more enthralling companion than may initially meet the eye. While I’ll admit that the allure of soy bean farms may be debatable, one thing is not: Ohio’s political significance.
First of all, we’re not as sparse as some might think; we have three major cities and we’re the seventh most populous state in the country. Therefore, when it comes to presidential elections, we have a significant amount of electoral votes to give away. The winner has taken Ohio in all but two presidential races since 1892. On top of that, where those electoral votes will go is incredibly unpredictable – hence our notorious “swing state” status. That volatile voting behavior is what keeps the national eye on Ohio, and it’s due to the very thing those West Coasters might complain about: our averageness. Ohio is a microcosm of America. The population has an extensive mix of urban, rural and suburban; of industry and agriculture; and of republicans and democrats. That’s why Ohio is so telling of what will happen nationwide and why candidates spend so much time and money here.
Politics at the state level are no less contentious, exemplified by last year’s fight against Senate Bill 5. Governor Kasich and the Ohio legislature attempted a highly political attack on the middle class, going after the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Of course, when the referendum was placed on the ballot, the people of Ohio sided with our firefighters, teachers, and police officers. But there are still dangers in our state’s political climate.
At a time when corporate profits are at record highs, wages are at new lows, and corporations are considered “people,” we non-millionaires have a lot of work ahead of us. There is no place I’d rather be than with Working America in the political “heart of it all” – and I know a lot of Working America members who would agree with me.
On Monday, April 30, some of us gathered together in the Columbus office for a community action meeting. There were ten members in attendance from a wide variety of backgrounds. They all had one experience in common: receiving a knock on their door from a Working America canvasser. These folks believe so strongly in workers’ rights and strength in numbers that they want to volunteer their time to do more.
We heard from Fred Strahorn, a former state senator and house member, about what is going on in the legislature and what we citizens can do to influence the political process. We discussed in detail our concerns on the local, state, and national levels and brainstormed solutions. One common concern among all of us was apathy. These activists want to make sure the public is informed and mobilized. We decided to start with an easy step: voter registration assistance. Our members are leading these efforts in their own communities, and we will keep you updated on our progress. Stay tuned for what these motivated Working America members can do and what unfolds here as this big election year continues. Ohio, it turns out, is an exciting place after all.
As one Working America member explained in a published letter to the editor about Governor Tom Corbett’s state budgets: “Children have made enough sacrifices, parents have paid for enough school expenses and local property owners have seen enough property tax increases. We need to demand that our legislators finally require the only group not kicking in enough — corporations — to pay their fair share of taxes.”
On Wednesday, nine Working America members and I met with two of Gov. Corbett’s aides to demand just that. We met with Gov. Corbett’s aides for an hour to urge the Corbett administration to restore funding for education and social services by finally requiring corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Each of the nine members presented Gov. Corbett’s aides with a statement describing why he or she opposes Gov. Corbett’s unconscionable budget plan. Each member provided Gov. Corbett’s aides with solutions. And six of those members presented statements sent by other members who couldn’t join us but who were determined to speak up for a decent state budget.
Forty other Working America members wrote letters on Monday and Tuesday for us to deliver. More members signed notes or filled out postcards to Gov. Corbett that we presented yesterday.
Benita, a Working America member who spoke in yesterday’s meeting with Gov. Corbett’s aides, wrote a letter to the other meeting participants about our work that I’d like to share with you all:
We, Working America members, did a great job at the meeting yesterday, and our well prepared and ethical case, supported with facts, overshadowed the response by Corbett’s aides. Even though I was disappointed with the projected characterization of our message as divisive and that we want to raise corporations’ taxes instead of just closing the loopholes, I realized later that the aides just weren’t really ready for us.
Our undertaking is a gathering storm on today’s political-social landscape. We really are just beginning to collectively envision a better future for our children, and we have to look past tired talking points from political leaders and media that too often reflect their dystopian race-to-the-bottom view. We must continue not only to challenge that downward spiral; we must also replace it in people’s hearts and minds with a sane, sustainable vision.
The long-term corporate agenda to overtake our public institutions and to jam the levers of democracy has been going on for several decades, and it has had a corrosive effect not only on our material lives, but our souls as well. The drumbeat of hopelessness expressed by saying, for instance, since corporations “create” job and that they must be incentivized, is repeated for a reason: to stunt our dreams for a fair and just world. We instinctively know that any number of factors conspire together to create an economy that serves the majority of people. Demand (i.e., necessity is the mother of invention) probably does way more to stimulate the economy than CEOs who’ve appointed themselves as creators. But the wash-rinse-repeat cycle of well-worn tropes dulls our impulses.
So I just want to encourage you to think long term too. Because our message is more salient and recognizable to people, we will eventually see progress. Sometimes we individually have to recharge our batteries, but our moral compass pulls us toward continuing to do this good work over the longer duration.
It’s the first Friday of the month, so it’s time for the monthly employment reports, and today’s are pretty disappointing—only a net 115,000 jobs were created in April, leaving us still pretty far off from where we should be.
That’s certainly better than the fall of 2008, when the economy was plummeting and shredding half a million jobs or more every month. But 115,000 jobs a month isn’t the kind of rate that can get us out of the hole the recession put us in.
The economic situation isn’t help by the fact that we continue to shed public-sector jobs. Private-sector growth is driving the recovery, and that’s great, but at the same time, state and local cuts are throwing teachers and firefighters into the ranks of the unemployed. Austerity doesn’t create economic growth, and the problems caused by unemployment aren’t any better when the person who lost their job worked for a school or a state agency.
It’s especially galling that the same right-wing politicians who have pushed these cuts are gloating over bad jobs reports. They’ve managed the tricky feat of hurting the economy while using economic pain as a political argument.
In a must-read Washington Post story this week, reporter Zach Goldfarb explains how hundreds of thousands of lost state and local jobs have undermined the economy:
Beyond education, dozens of states have cut funding for services for the elderly and disabled and for emergency service providers such as police and firefighters.
Experts worry that the cuts will have lasting effects.
“There’s a big body of research showing that a lot of the things that state and local governments spend their money on have long-term effects on the economy and society as a whole,” said Nicholas Johnson, vice president for state fiscal policy at CBPP. “Cutting school funding now can hurt the education of a future workforce.”
It’s a sign of a deep dysfunction in our political system that we aren’t focusing all of our energy on putting people back to work. The obstruction of the American Jobs Act last year is just one symbol of a failure to deal with an ongoing jobs crisis.
Hat tip to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) for spotting this:
The Republican National Committee (RNC) used a call center based in the Philippines to hold a media conference attacking President Obama’s economic record, the Chicago Sun-Times reported today.The RNC didn’t help its image by pointing out that the call was run by Verizon.
Companies like Verizon that have shipped call center operations overseas have contributed to the devastation of the U.S. based call center industry. While the industry still comprises approximately 3 percent of the overall U.S. workforce, the industry lost more than 500,000 jobs between 2006 and 2010, largely because of the off-shoring trend. This continued trend depresses our economic recovery.
There’s no better symbol of the erosion of working people’s wages than the declining power of the minimum wage, which, in terms of purchasing power, is lower than it was in 1968.
On the bright side, there’s some momentum at the state level for a higher minimum wage. But state legislators who support higher minimum wages have big hurdles to overcome from corporations who are more active than ever in politics.
In Connecticut, the state House passed a minimum wage increase—but the measure is stalled in the state Senate, reportedly a few votes short of passage. The bill would increase the state’s minimum wage to $8.75 by 2014.
The biggest challenge facing our economy continues to be a crisis in demand, one emerging from the stagnating wages and high debt levels working families face. A higher minimum wage would go a long way towards increasing these families’ purchasing power so that they can be more secure and active in the economy. We’ll watch these state battles closely.
Meet Viviette Applewhite, the new face of the nationwide, corporate-backed assault on voting rights.
Applewhite is 93 years old, and she has voted in every election for the past 60 years. She even marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Georgia. But under Pennsylvania’s new voter suppression law HB 934, championed by the radical Rep. Daryl Metcalfe with a strong assist from ALEC, Viviette Applewhite cannot exercise her right to vote.
Applewhite doesn’t drive and her purse containing her identification card was stolen. She’s been unable to obtain an identification card since because officials can’t track down her birth certificate.
Applewhite is one of the plaintiffs in ACLU-PA’s legal challenge to the voter suppression law, which Gov. Tom Corbett signed in March. And while her situation is quite specific, there are hundreds of other ways in which the law effectively disenfranchises Pennsylvania citizens, as shown by the suit’s other plaintiffs:
Other plaintiffs in the case include a transgender man…a 89-year-old resident who initially couldn’t get a driver’s license because her marriage certificate is in Hebrew and another 93-year-old woman who has limited mobility and trouble getting to the polls.
They aren’t alone, either. As voting rights activist Faye Anderson told the Philadelphia Weekly, one of the groups most affected by this new law are divorced women:
“If a woman wants to change her name to vote, she has to produce her marriage license,” says Anderson, noting many newlyweds often forget to change their name on their driver’s license. “It’s possible that we can have a situation in which a voter in Pennsylvania without ID, a married woman who is now divorced, will have to stand in four separate lines to gather the documents that she would need to show voter ID.”
In addition to the many women and seniors disproportionately affected by this policy, there are the usual targets of voter suppression: minorities and low-income voters, who are more likely not to have state-issued ID.
The biggest joke of the Pennsylvania voter suppression law? It seeks to prevent a practice that largely does not exist. Supporters of the law try to conjure up fear of old-school city machine-style politics, like the “walking around money” once given out on the streets of Philadelphia, or the “dead voters” in Chicago. But those practices, to the extent that they exist, are not affected by HB 934:
But the law’s main provision, requiring the state’s 8.2 million registered voters to produce drivers’ licenses or other official forms of photo ID, appears to target a kind of fraud that by all accounts hasn’t cropped up in recent years in the city or state.
“The phrase used is voter impersonation, where John Doe pretends to be Henry Jones in order to cast a vote,” Harvey said. “No one has identified any such cases, certainly in Philadelphia, in my time frame.” Harvey is 75.
Remember again, HB 934 costs the taxpayers $6 million – while cash-strapped schools across Pennsylvania go wanting.
We agree with the ACLU: not only is HB 934 unconstitutional, but Corbett, Metcalfe, and their allies never sought to address any actual problems by pushing the law. Their goal is to keep enough voters away from the polls to remain in power and keep champions of working families out of office, so that the coffers of their corporate backers can go unscathed by closing loopholes, a fairer tax system, or any sort of accountability.
In Wisconsin, a permanent injunction is keeping that state’s voter suppression law from impeding the will of the voters in the June 5 gubernatorial recall. Hopefully, the ACLU suit will succeed and a legal injunction will keep this disgusting law from disenfranchising thousands in November.
Thousands of working families are gathering outside the Verizon shareholder meeting this morning in Huntsville, Ala., to protest the company’s “VeriGreedy” treatment of customers, workers and taxpayers.
Even as Verizon tripled the compensation of CEO Lowell McAdam to$23.1 million last year, the corporation was outsourcing U.S. jobs, gutting worker pensions and charging current and retired employees and their families thousands of dollars more for health benefits while cutting disability coverage. Verizon employees have been struggling to win a new contract for nearly a year.
Verizon, a $100 billion company, paid no federal income taxes in 2010—but that didn’t stop the corporation from socking customers with a new $30 fee to upgrade phones, giving Verizon another $1 billion a year.
You can take part in the action today by calling Verizon executives at 800-229-9460. Tell them it’s the hard work of tens of thousands of customer support representatives, technicians, electricians and other workers that has fueled Verizon’s success. Let Verizon know the corporation’s workers should not be punished with job cuts and increased health care and benefit costs while Verizon executives get huge pay raises and the company sits on $14 billion in cash holdings and short-term investment.
Call 800-229-9460 now to record a message that will be delivered directly to Verizon executives.
After you have left your message for Verizon executives, click here to find out if an event is happening in your area today you can attend to support Verizon workers.
