The topic of last Thursday’s roundtable discussion hosted by the West Los Angeles Democratic Club was “The Privatization of Public Schools.” About 80 Democratic activists and Los Angeles Unified School District teachers at Mar Vista’s St. Bede’s Episcopal Church heard teacher and former congressional candidate Marcy Winograd moderate a discussion of such hot-button issues as charter schools, co-locations, Parent Trigger and federal learning-standards-based programs such as No Child Left Behind.
Panelists included LAUSD Board member Steve Zimmer, United Teachers L.A./National Education Association Vice President M.J. Roberts, Crossroads School for the Arts & Sciences founder and charter school advocate Paul Cummins, middle school teacher Loren Scott, former middle school principal Marcia Haskin and LAUSD parent and education blogger Sara Roos.
The evening’s harshest words were reserved for LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and Parent Trigger, the controversial law that allows 50 percent-plus-one of parents from an under-performing school to fire the staff and start over.
» Read more about: School Privatization Critics Slam Parent Trigger Law »
In 1999 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a Living Wage Ordinance applicable to private businesses that contract with the county to provide certain services, including landscaping, janitorial and security. The reason for the ordinance was simple: The state’s minimum wage at the time — $5.75 per hour—was insufficient and the failure of some county contractors to pay their workers living wages was placing financial burdens on L.A. County by causing these employees to use social and health services provided by the county.
The board set the living wage initially at $9.46 per hour without health benefits, or at $8.32 per hour if an employer offered health benefits worth at least $1.14 per hour. Since then, the living wage has been raised only once, in 2006, when the board approved an increase to the current level of $11.84 per hour without health benefits, or $9.64 with health benefits valued at $2.20 per hour.
» Read more about: Rally to Raise L.A. County’s Living Wage »
What would the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. march for if he were alive today?
America has made progress on many fronts in the half-century since King electrified a crowd of 200,000 people, and millions of Americans watching on television, with his “I Have a Dream” address at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But there is still much to do to achieve his vision of equality.
Fortunately, many Americans are involved in grass-roots movements that follow in his footsteps. King began his activism as a crusader against racial segregation, but he soon recognized that his battle was part of a much broader fight for a more humane society. Today, at age 84, King would no doubt still be on the front lines, lending his voice and his energy to major battles for justice.
Voting rights: Along with other civil rights leaders,
» Read more about: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Spirit Is Still Marching »
See original feature by Gary Cohn, “Interpreter Bill Would Help Save Lives Lost in Translation.”
» Read more about: Lalo Alcaraz on California’s Need for Medical Interpreters »
Low-income parents and child care providers who oppose a controversial finger-scanning policy in Mississippi won a reprieve August 15 when a judge issued an order that stops its implementation – at least for now.
Judge Denise Owens of the Chancery Court of the First Judicial District in Hinds County issued a temporary injunction, which effectively means that low-income parents whose kids are in a federally-funded voucher program that supports child care do not have to have their fingers scanned for facility pick-ups or drop offs.
The requirement applies to other adults designated to escort kids to and from participating child care facilities. The Mississippi Department of Human Services had planned on using the scans to track attendance to pay child care centers that participate in the subsidy program.
Certain requirements would have started on August 15. The scanning policy was scheduled to start throughout Mississippi,
» Read more about: Judge Blocks Fingerprint Scans for Low-Income Moms »
(This post first appeared on The Nation and is republished with permission.)
Nine fired workers and a current employee were arrested around 2:30 p.m. Thursday after locking arms and sitting in front of the entrance to a Washington, D.C., Walmart office. The planned act of civil disobedience concluded a noon rally at which workers announced a Labor Day deadline for Walmart to raise wages and reinstate workers they allege were fired for their activism. Twenty workers who joined a June strike by the labor group OUR Walmart have since been terminated; another 50-some have been otherwise disciplined by Walmart.
“Hopefully it opens Walmart’s eyes and lets them know that this is just the beginning,” OUR Walmart activist Barbara Collins told The Nation prior to her arrest. If Walmart doesn’t meet the Labor Day deadline, she said yesterday, “then we’re going to give them a lot more actions,
» Read more about: Walmart Gets Ready for Labor Day With Arrests »
Congressman John Lewis is the only survivor among the ten speakers at the March on Washington, a turning point in the civil rights movement that occurred 50 years ago, on August 28, 1963. The march is most famous as the setting of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” oration, but Lewis’ speech that day, representing the movement’s radical youth wing, provided a different kind of call to arms. It is a message that Lewis has continued to voice as a movement activist and an elected official.
Only a handful of the 250,000 people at event – officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to reflect the link between economic justice and civil rights – knew anything about the drama taking place behind the Lincoln Memorial. Under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph, the longtime civil rights and trade union leader, the march had brought together the major civil rights organizations as well as labor unions and religious denominations and women’s groups.
No one ever said housemaid or domestic. Pride matters more
And here’s the truth of it: she was Tantie, a grand-mothering
substitute chained to Miss B., a former Hollywood come-hither
and Tantie’s final mystery. I couldn’t name a single movie
Miss B had starred in but Mother told us she was a 1st-class bitch.
Thirty years later, watching late night television, I recalled:
I met that bitch once. Ill-preserved on celluloid, she fluttered
there amidst her ersatz brood but not in the same way I’d seen
her flutter decrees upon my Tantie. And my Tantie, once a muck-
a-muck in her own right (having flown an airplane solo in days when
most women and Negroes were grounded) half-fluttered in return—
to make sure her family had dimes and nickels. Tantie didn’t tell us
she was Miss B’s maid and I never knew a thing about it until I saw
this black-and-white movie with Miss B—half a star among stars—
given third place billing—nearly unrecognizable as the cold shrew
I remembered flaunting dipped pearls,
I wanted to cry after watching Go Public: A Day in the Life of an American School District. After the hour-plus video collage of complex and inspiring day-to-day interactions that make up our nation’s public schools, the film culminates in pleas from teachers, parents and maintenance staff to the Pasadena Board of Education to forestall millions of dollars in new budget cuts to the district’s schools.
I’ve been there myself, 25 years ago when my kids were in grammar school, pleading with Santa Monica School Board members to save school librarians and nurses, most of whose positions were eventually eliminated.
It’s so hard to understand how a city like Pasadena, where median home prices are in the $600,000 range, has had to face $6.5 million in education cuts in the past few years. These cuts have resulted in school counselors having to handle 480 students apiece,
This Walmart low-prices, low-wages thing isn’t working out so well — even for Walmart.
The company released its quarterly numbers last week, and they weren’t pretty. Same-store sales declined by 0.3 percent, and the company lowered its earnings-per-share forecast. Bad news wasn’t limited to Walmart. At the low end of the retail consumer market, Kohl’s reported similarly bad news; Macy’s, a little higher up the food chain, lowered its earnings forecast as well.
While Americans with money are boosting both the housing and auto markets, the growing number of Americans without are curtailing their shopping. As Douglas McMillon, chief executive of Walmart International, noted last week, “When we do see good things in the economy, sometimes they don’t immediately flow through to a paycheck. Remember how the average American lives.”
And who signs more paychecks than any private-sector employer on the planet?