Portside

As many as 400 workers at more than 60 fast food restaurants in the Detroit metro area walked off the job on Friday. The fast food strike in Detroit is the second major labor action to hit an American city’s fast food industry this week: On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 100 workers in St. Louis walked off the job at roughly 30 different restaurants. These rolling walkouts followed similar actions in New York, central Pennsylvania, and Chicago.

The rich are growing astronomically richer while poverty reduction has ground to a standstill. In today’s world of widespread poverty and unprecedented wealth, how about raising the wages of the most poorly-paid workers?

Newspaper headlines have called Donald Trump’s victory “decisive,” “massive,” “resounding,” “historic,” and “sweeping.” None of those things are true. Recent public opinion polls reveal that Trump’s professed policy agenda is very unpopular.

From abortion rights to minimum wage hikes to legal marijuana, voters’ support for ballot issues didn’t correlate with their support for candidates.

Voters backed progressive policy measures

In this year’s election, voters given the opportunity to weigh in directly on questions of economic justice showed policy preferences far more progressive than those reflected in many national and state election outcomes.

People are hurting, and millions of them didn’t vote either way. They just didn’t vote. I want people to hear that. The vote totals went down. They didn’t go up. They went down. And we have to take this very seriously.

“By challenging feelings of isolation and polarization, breaking down division, and creating long-term relationships, we can achieve our goal of building a democracy and economy that works for all of us.”