Older climate activists gathered in on hundred cities around the country for a day of action targeting banks that finance fossil fuel projects. New organization, Third Act, already has 50,000 members.
Our current system defines health as the ability to work. Those who can’t are abandoned and exploited. If you’re too sick to work, you will be forced into poverty twice over: First by the loss of wages, and second, if lucky, by SSDI, or poverty.
Ten thousand Americans turn 60 every day, and on average we’ll live another 23 years. We’ll vote in huge numbers, as we always do. One possibility is that we’ll help turn back the clock a little, toward the world we actually built in our youth.
Most middle and lower wage older workers are not able to retire and must work to avoid poverty and maintain living standards. For work to be a bulwark against old age poverty, work must be decent, and work and retirement policy must be compatible.
In the 1960s, more than a third of seniors lived in poverty. Federal programs like Medicare to help the elderly, the situation improved significantly. But last year, the poverty rate for those 65 or older increased, even as it sank for everyone else.
Our new organization, Third Act, is mobilizing the generation with the most political and economic influence to fight for a working climate and a working democracy.
The book under review, written from a labor organizer's informed perspective, is seen by the book reviewer—himself a longtime labor militant-- as an essential resource for workers navigating their retirement and pension options.
Pension legislation historically has been bipartisan—and it very well might be again in the future. After more than a decade of failed efforts, the retirement security of 1.5 million Americans and their families, finally, took priority.
Nomadland is a piercing look into a country that’s becoming less and less inhabitable for its older men and women, and more stingy about who gets to dream. And, fundamentally, it’s a poignant portrait of a broken heart.
Frances McDormand is naturally great in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of a book about older Americans who give up the security of home for the hope of work.
Spread the word