Maria Guevara had been trying to get pregnant for three years when she saw a doctor at Los Angeles County General hospital in 2008. She was understandably thrilled, then, to learn she was indeed three months pregnant at the time of her visit. As Guevara later recalled, when the doctor asked her in English if she wanted to keep the baby, “without hesitation I replied ‘yes’ to his question. Before leaving the hospital, the doctor prescribed me medication that I thought was prenatal care. That lack of communication between the doctor and me has changed my life forever.”
Guevara took the prescribed medication, and experienced violent pain and bleeding. She returned to the hospital, where another doctor told her the bleeding was the result of a miscarriage.
“My baby was dead. The medication the initial doctor prescribed to me was not prenatal care but medication to induce an abortion,” she told a press conference in April at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
» Read more about: Interpreter Bill Would Help Save Lives Lost in Translation »
Why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it’s been in 80 years? Why is there more anger, vituperation and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war or the Watergate scandal?
If anything, you’d think this would be an era of relative calm. The Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is over. The civil rights struggle continues, but at least we now have a black middle class and even a black President. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been controversial, the all-volunteer army means young Americans aren’t being dragged off to war against their will. And although politicians continue to generate scandals, the transgressions don’t threaten the integrity of our government as did Watergate.
And yet, by almost every measure, Americans are angrier today.
As Labor Day approaches, here’s a question that many opponents of immigration reform don’t want to answer honestly: Can you be for the middle class and against comprehensive immigration reform? The answer is no — a fact that creates all kinds of problems for those lobbying to stop legislation that would create a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Foes of immigration reform like to position themselves as true-blue patriots acting in the best interests of the country. But it’s hard to square that image with opposition to legislation that, more than any other single act, could help rebuild the nation’s middle class.
It’s obvious to most people that immigration reform would improve economic conditions for undocumented immigrants. After all, while most immigrants come here in search of a better life, their legal status often relegates them to low-wage jobs with few if any benefits and unsafe workplace conditions.
» Read more about: Immigration Reform Debate: Facts v. Bad-Faith Arguments »
It’s summer and gasoline prices have peaked — a certain sign that it’s vacation time. Except for those who don’t get vacations or, worse, get them but don’t take them.
Since about a quarter of this country’s workforce earns only minimum wage or holds down a job (or two) at less than full-time hours, a large number of families do not benefit from paid vacations at all. Add in the number of self-employed who only take a vacation if they can earn enough to set aside the money, and vacations, which much of the middle class has always taken for granted, have suddenly become out of reach for a large number of families. If they take any time off, it costs them money they need to survive.
More than three-quarters of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck, which means taking a vacation even for the middle class means going into debt.
Readers who have fought for social justice while waging a home-front war with parents who hold views diametrically opposed to theirs will take heart in Madeline Janis’ op-ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.
The opinion piece, “Dad, Rush Limbaugh and Me,” is a wry meditation on family and political beliefs that was prompted by the recent death of the author’s father. However, the story specifically springs from an incident that occurred when Janis, who is the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy’s national policy director, helped move her father to an assisted living facility several months ago. She writes:
On the day we were packing, with both of us understandably on edge, I came across a stash of Rush Limbaugh caps, maybe half a dozen of them, each with a different year printed on the front. I couldn’t let it pass.
I’ve seen some pretty outrageous anti-worker opinion pieces written about the contract negotiations at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) over the last two months. But nothing I’ve read is as infuriating as a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed from Chuck and Barbara McFadden.
In short, the McFaddens assert that workers like those at BART are not deserving of the middle-class wage their unions negotiate. To make their point, they use an argument that’s all too common today — private sector workers are suffering so public sector workers should too. What’s so absurd about this logic is that the very reason so many private sector workers are struggling is because most don’t have the ability to bargain with their employer for a decent wage in return for a hard day’s work.
Workers should be able to negotiate with their employers over wages and benefits like health care and retirement security.
» Read more about: Scapegoating of BART Employees Continues »
OMG! Was Gene Autry, the “singing cowboy” on TV and in the movies, really a radical?
I just discovered this Autry recording of the pro-labor song “The Death of Mother Jones,” about the great radical union organizer — Mary Harris Jones, sometimes called the “most dangerous woman in America” by her enemies — who died at 100 in 1930. Autry recorded the song in February 1931 during the Great Depression. It is so obviously pro-union that there’s no way Autry couldn’t have known what it meant.
Like many baby-boomers, I grew up watching Autry in his cowboy films and his popular television show. He was famous for singing cowboy songs like “Back in the Saddle” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” as well as popular hits like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” and “Frosty the Snowman.”
In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, he was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Los Angeles Port Drivers and workers across America all have one thing in common: We are working harder than ever but struggling just to get by.
Our economy is stalled out. Households in the middle have seen their income slashed relative to today’s cost of living, and the new jobs being created don’t pay enough for people to make ends meet. That’s why workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and across America, are joining together to demand a fair wage and the right to form a union without retaliation.
Los Angeles’ port drivers are fighting for a wage that will allow them to cover their basic needs and help get our economy moving again. For port drivers working at Green Fleet Systems in Carson, California, their effort to form a union has been met with fierce resistance and illegal retaliation.* Drivers have had enough and are stepping up their fight for justice,
» Read more about: Port Drivers Send Message to Green Fleet Systems »
Writing on the building outside the Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago says “igniting passions since 1871.” The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held its 40th anniversary conference at the hotel, igniting the passions of protesters who came out to inveigh against ALEC’s agenda during a demonstration August 8.
Birthed in Chicago, ALEC first met in September 1973. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit it has tax-exempt status. ALEC “also develops model bills and resolutions on economic issues,” as the organization’s website states, noting that those bills “can be helpful resources” for legislators pursuing privatization of public services.
To kick off the conference, ALEC arranged to have British Parliament member Conor Burns speak at a leadership dinner August 6 before major meeting events the following three days. An ALEC meeting program notes Burns’ relationship with the late Margaret Thatcher, renowned for gutting public projects. He reportedly “visited Lady Thatcher at her home every Sunday evening for drinks [and] developed a close bond.”
There’s nothing quite like being targeted by Tea Party members to show that you’re on to something good. This realization came to Jason López Urena during a State Assembly hearing yesterday on legislation that would spur affordable housing and support the creation of good jobs.
“It felt good to be attacked by the Tea Party – people are against it but they don’t know why,” said López of the legislation. “They said we are communists because we want to give back to the people.”
López, a 19-year-old college student and community activist who sits on the board of the nonprofit Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles, was part of a small delegation that traveled to Sacramento to advocate for SB1 (Steinberg), a bill that would create a Sustainable Communities Investment Authority in areas near transit hubs. Their efforts were rewarded when the Assembly’s Local Government Committee approved the bill with a 6-3 vote,
» Read more about: Capitol Steps: CA Moves One Step Closer to Funding Affordable Housing »