When Cesar Chavez led a band of farm workers on their historic 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento half a century ago, they prominently displayed banners of the Virgin de Guadalupe throughout the line. Why? Because that image held symbolic weight far beyond any other the group could carry.
“No whining, no griping, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” That’s how Susan Story describes the hard lessons she learned growing up in rural Alabama. Then why is the corporation she leads as chief executive officer, American Water, complaining about opposition to its plans in West Virginia?
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, whose family owns the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops, has refused to release his tax returns since running and being elected in 2010. It wouldn’t matter so much if Haslam were your run-of-the-mill governor. But he’s the country’s richest politician, with a net worth of $2 billion.
In early September, a year and a half after having been pepper-sprayed by a Santa Monica police officer, a man was awarded $1.1 million by a court, plus attorney fees, to be paid by the city. He was apparently singled out by police for being in a park after curfew, while other residents, who weren’t black, continued to charge their electric cars – as he recharged his car. The scars will stay with him and his family for life.
Did you know that one speeding ticket in Kansas could land you in jail? That’s what happened to David Jackson in 2011 after he couldn’t afford a $100 fine for speeding. Collection had been outsourced to a private contractor, and his bill quickly ballooned to $2,200 with court costs, jail fines and the contractor’s extra fees.
In Santa Monica a group of residents – frustrated by traffic and angry at developers – has placed a no-growth measure on the local ballot. It would force nearly all new projects higher than 32 feet to a citywide vote. The backers of Measure LV say that it’s buildings of all kinds – whether they house people or create jobs – that bring choking traffic.
Last Wednesday was a big day for In the Public Interest. We released one of our longest and most wide-ranging reports, How Privatization Is Increasing Inequality. The report describes how the privatization of public goods and services disproportionately impacts poor individuals and families, and people of color.
In 2011, Antonio Ramirez* was working in an Inland Empire warehouse, where he’d spent several hours emptying and sweeping out a metal freight container. With the indoor heat level passing 100 degrees, Ramirez showed symptoms of heat stroke – but his employers failed to take any action to help him and Ramirez was forced to call his son to take him to the hospital. He was hospitalized for three days due to heat stroke.
Here at the end of President Obama’s final term in office, we seem to be having the national conversation about race that he called for at the beginning of his candidacy in 2008.
Debate about parental leave has long focused on the benefits for working families and the supposed costs to employers. But more fundamentally, ensuring that new parents have the support and time they need to bond with their children is essential to public health and to infant development.
Two weeks ago, D.C.’s transit agency began taking bids from private companies to operate its parking facilities. In exchange for a big up-front payment, the winning company would collect fees from people parked at train stations for the next 50 years. Privatization would be foolish for a number of reasons.
Since the Justice Department announced in mid-August that it will phase out its use of private facilities for Bureau of Prisons (BOP) prisoners, the stocks of the country’s two largest private prison companies have plummeted. But the companies already have a plan—in fact, they’ve been following it for years.
Everybody knows that sunflowers turn their heads toward the sun. But until now no one knew whether the movement simply followed the sun’s arc, or whether some internal rhythm guided the plants. Now we have a clue.
When the Olympics ended so did a multimillion-dollar assault on democracy. From the start of the games in Rio to the closing ceremony, television viewers in Massachusetts had been bombarded with a $2.3 million ad campaign funded by Wall Street.
Several years ago when my wife Susan and I traveled across Ireland by local bus, we headed toward a national cultural site a few miles beyond the nearest town. The route the bus took crossed a rural peninsula, and finally to the little community.
Paulina Gonzalez and Lori Gay on how a powerful lobby is blocking the extension of California’s community investment program.
As long as I can remember, there’s been an argument over policing in the black community. Do police patrol more intensely because the crime rate is higher there, or do higher crime statistics result from heightened levels of policing?
What if millions of American workers were being denied health insurance, job security and the most basic legal protections, from overtime pay to workers compensation to the right to join a union?
Activists wanting to solve the crisis of human-caused climate change face a serious dilemma. The threat appears neither close enough to get our sustained attention, nor distant enough to postpone doing something about it now.
Today is Earth Day, and it’s sure to be historic. More than one hundred world leaders plan to sign the Paris Agreement, the first global pact that commits nearly every nation to take action on climate change.