"Moral Mondays" movement spreads in South as a coalition of the NAACP, other activist organizations, including unions, rallied Monday in Tallahassee, one day ahead of the opening of Florida's 2014 legislative session.
As written, this bill does not protect the rights of racial minorities against discrimination at the polls. The North Carolina State Conference of Branches of the NAACP is not willing to accept any legislation which does not mandate that North Carolina is designated as a covered jurisdiction.
The AFL–CIO is a multifaceted institution composed of scores of autonomous unions, so President Richard Trumka’s leadership can hardly turn around this cumbersome vessel all that quickly. But the new emphasis is clear: the unions should ally with progressive partners and devote more energy to make the kind of changes in social policy that can benefit millions of poorly paid and insecure workers.
The recent AFL-CIO convention marked a long overdue strategic shift. The shift is to speak for the whole working class.
Out of sheer existential necessity, then, unions have entered a period of experimentation. The fast-food campaigns that SEIU is backing won’t plausibly conclude with a contract with McDonald’s and Wendy’s. The more likely scenario is that those protesting will try to win minimum-wage increases for workers—either generally or in particular industries—at the city level, either through the vote of city councils or of voters at the polls.
"Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens," Ella Baker(1964). Responses to trial of George Zimmerman; NAACP petition has over one million signers; "Justice for Trayvon" vigils in 100 cities; Stevie Wonder won't play in Stand Your Ground states; Bruce Springsteen dedicates song to Trayvon; Portside readers responses
Organizer: 'When you are hurting, you need to be around some people who still believe in the possibility of us being one people'.
The Civitas Institute is publicizing the names, residence, political registration, employers, and other details of those arrested at the ongoing NAACP-organized protests at the legislature. The project calls to mind how Southern Dixiecrats and opponents of civil rights once published the names of NAACP supporters in newspapers to encourage retaliation against them.
Week by week, Monday by Monday, since April 29, a growing coalition assembled by the N.A.A.C.P. has challenged the newly conservative Republican leadership in North Carolina, raising its voice against the loss of the state’s centrist government and what they see as diminished recognition of the poor and minorities.
Faced with the very real threat of extinction, unions have largely put collective bargaining on the back burner, and instead must try to remind American workers of the basic concept of worker solidarity. “We start from the point of view that, because so few people are in unions these days, very few people have personal experience with collective power,” explains Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America.
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