Galindez writes: "Hundreds of fast food and healthcare workers and their supporters marched, rallied and even went on strike in Des Moines on Labor Day. The demands were for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and the right to form a union."
Cathy Glasson, a Democratic Party candidate for governor, joined hundreds of Iowans outside of Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines to call for higher wages and a union for healthcare workers. (photo: Des Moines Register)
Iowans Put "Labor" Back in Labor Day
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
07 September 17
undreds of fast food and healthcare workers and their supporters marched, rallied and even went on strike in Des Moines on Labor Day.
The demands were for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and the right to form a union.
Des Moines area workers marched at the Burger King on Southeast 14th Street and Mercy Medical Center on Monday. They also closed a Burger King in Ankeny Sunday night.
Cathy Glasson, the president of SEIU Local 199, a registered nurse and Democratic candidate for governor, said that more than half of Iowa healthcare workers earn less than $15 an hour.
The CEO of Mercy-Des Moines’ “is making over $900,000, and most people caring for patients, cleaning the rooms, cooking the food, pushing the wheelchairs are making less than $15 an hour,” said Glasson.
Glasson was not the only candidate present at the event. Former School Board president Jon Neidaerbah, who is also running for the governorship, marched with the workers as well.
There were also two candidates who are seeking the Democratic Party nomination to challenge David Young for Congress. Paul Knupp, a local minister, was at the rally at Mercy. Pete D’Alessandro told the crowd at the Mercy rally, “The discussion starts at $15 an hour with me, not nuanced, not years down the road.” D’Alessandro, son of a union diaper delivery driver, also said he would make it easier for people to join unions and he credited his father’s union for his comfortable middle-class upbringing.
The day began at 5:15 a.m. at the offices of the Iowa CCI, where workers and supporters gathered to board buses and converge on a local Burger King for a 6 a.m. rally.
Dartanyan Brown, a local blues musician, got the day started by playing guitar as the crowd sang along to songs like “I’m Sticking to the Union.”
With Brown still playing, the crowd marched to the Burger King and circled it several times before stopping to hold a rally.
As two striking fast food workers spoke, two Burger King employees walked off the job and joined the rally, giving each other a high five as the crowd cheered.
Angel, a Dunkin Donuts employee, described her job duties and told the crowd that she is struggling to support her 1-year-old daughter on the wages she is paid.
Jake Long, who on Sunday night went on strike from an Ankeny Burger King, told his story. Jake started at Burger King when he was 18. It wasn’t long before his mother moved to South Dakota and Jake was supporting himself. Over the seven years he has been working at Burger King, he has become homeless. He is now living with his brother and trying to get back on his feet.
Rev. Alejandro Alfaro Santiz of the Trinity United Methodist Church MC’d both events. At one point he asked if this was the first protest for anyone in the crowd. Three young people’s hands went up. They were in their early twenties and worked at Taco Bell, Little Caesars, and Subway.
The fast food workers and their supporters then got back on the buses and headed to Mercy Hospital in Des Moines to join healthcare workers for an 8 a.m. rally.
While waiting for a bus from Iowa City, the group decided to pay a visit to the McDonald’s across from the hospital. Dozens went into the restaurant before being asked to leave by a security guard. They then circled the McDonald’s several times, chanting, “Hold the lettuce, hold the fries, we want wages supersized!”
The healthcare workers soon arrived, and the two groups marched together to rally in front of Mercy Hospital.
Glasson and D’Alessandro were joined on the back of a pickup truck that served as the stage by Mike Carberry, a county commissioner from Johnson County, who talked about running for office on a plank to raise the minimum wage. He reminded the crowd that he had succeeded, only to have the State legislature roll back wages.
Amy Smith, a CNA who works at Mercy in the Cath Lab, described making less than her fiancée, who works at Walmart. Iowa nurses are 50th in the nation in earnings. Many of them have substantial student debt.
The day ended with the crowd holding hands and Rev. Alejandro asking what they wanted. The response was “$15 and a Union.” It was a great way to spend Labor Day.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott moved to Des Moines in 2015 to cover the Iowa Caucus.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Meggyesy writes: "The only thing the NFL owners will understand is action by NFL players. Football is about solidarity, and teamwork is solidarity in action. As NFL players, you know this in your bones."
Michael Bennett gets a hug from teammate Justin Britt. Benett has shown solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and Britt has been supportive of Benett. With the recent assault on Michael Bennett by Las Vegas police, the NFL player protests are likely to ramp up. (photo: Yahoo Sports)
Yes, Players, You Are the Game
By David Meggyesy, Reader Supported News
07 September 17
An open letter to the NFL players
s we await the start of the 2017 NFL football season, a glaring hole remains in the 32 team player rosters. Stellar quarterback and former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick remains unemployed.
Colin Kaepernick is one of your own. His ability as an NFL-caliber quarterback is beyond question. As you all know, Colin could be starting for at least half the NFL teams. You should also be aware that what the 32 teams under Roger Goodell’s direction are doing to Colin they can easily do to you. Roger and the owners are sending a message to all of you.
Colin is a citizen. He has every right, indeed obligation, to speak out and protest nonviolently against injustice, which he has done supported by other NFL players.
The only thing the NFL owners will understand is action by NFL players. Football is about solidarity, and teamwork is solidarity in action. As NFL players, you know this in your bones.
So let’s cut to the chase. What I propose is that to protect one of your own, you boycott the start of the season. This can be done in various ways. It is time to send a message back to the NFL owners.
Players on some or all teams stay in their locker rooms after pre-game warm-ups, let’s say for a half hour, and delay the start of the games. No players, no games.
Position groups, the offensive line, D-line, stay in the locker room; that pre-game meal made us all sick. The games can’t be played without position groups.
A rolling boycott at the start of this season. Not all teams would need to participate; a few teams or position groups each week if the NFL does not respond.
Teams or position groups delaying the start of games by not playing would be disruptive, for sure – that is the point.
If not the first game, pick a game during the first part of the season and act together. A perceived threat of a player boycott would definitely get Goodell’s attention.
You are the game – own it and protect your own. As NFL players, we must believe the best players will be given the opportunity to play. That is what sport and football are all about. The NFL is throwing this core belief in your face by boycotting Colin Kaepernick – not because of his ability as an NFL football player, but because they don’t like Colin speaking out about social injustice.
Time to step up and make a play, all of you.
David Meggyesy was a seven-year NFL linebacker and is the author of Out of Their League.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Keillor writes: "Conservatives blanch at spending additional billions to subsidize health care for the needy, but a truckload of cash for Texas? No problem. It makes me think that we Minnesotans should get a few billion in federal aid for recovery from the upcoming winter. It is going to be cold."
Garrison Keillor. (photo: WPPB)
When a Red State Gets the Blues
By Garrison Keillor, The Salt Lake Tribune
07 September 17
Conservatives blanch at spending additional billions to subsidize health care for the needy, but a truckload of cash for Texas? No problem.
he Republic of Texas believes in self-reliance and is suspicious of Washington sticking its big nose in your business. “Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility.” So said Sen. Ted Cruz, though not last week.
Sunday on Fox News, Gov. Greg Abbott said Texas would need upward of $150 billion in federal aid for damages inflicted by Harvey. The stories out of Houston have all been about neighborliness and helping hands and people donating to relief funds, but you don’t raise $150 billion by holding bake sales. This is almost as much as the annual budget of the U.S. Army. I’m just saying.
I’m all in favor of pouring money into Texas but I am a bleeding-heart liberal who favors single-payer health care. How is being struck by a hurricane so different from being hit by cancer? I’m only asking.
Houstonians chose to settle on a swampy flood plain barely 50 feet above sea level. The risks of doing so are fairly clear. If you chose to live in a tree and the branch your hammock was attached to fell down, you wouldn’t ask for a government subsidy to hang your hammock in a different tree.
Ronald Reagan said that government isn’t the answer, it is the problem, and conservatives have found that line very resonant over the years. In Sen. Cruz’s run for president last year, he called for abolition of the IRS. He did not mention this last week. It would be hard to raise an extra $150 billion without the progressive income tax unless you could persuade Mexico to foot the bill.
Similarly, if a desert state such as Arizona expects the feds to solve its water shortage, as Sen. Jeff Flake suggested recently, by guaranteeing Arizona first dibs on Lake Mead, this strikes me as a departure from conservative principles. Lake Mead, and Boulder Dam which created it, were not built by Lake Mead, Inc., but by the federal government. The residents of Phoenix decided freely to settle in an arid valley and they have used federal water supplies to keep their lawns green. Why should we Minnesotans, who chose to live near water, subsidize golf courses on the desert? You like sunshine? Fine. Take responsibility for your decision and work out a deal with Perrier to keep yourselves hydrated.
Arizona is populated by folks who dread winter and hate having to shovel snow. In Minnesota, we recognize that snow is a form of water and it’s snowmelt that replenishes the aquifers. So we make a rational decision to live here. A warm dry winter is a sort of disaster for us but we don’t apply to Washington for hankies. If we made a decision to live underwater on a coral reef off Hawaii, we wouldn’t expect the feds to provide us with Aqua-Lungs. If we chose to fly to the moon and play among the stars and spend spring on Jupiter and Mars and we got lost out there, we wouldn’t expect NASA to come rescue us. Get my drift here?
I was brought up by fundamentalists who believed it was dead wrong to get tangled up in politics. They never voted. Our preachers had no time for that. They knew that we were pilgrims and wayfarers in this world, and we shouldn’t expect favors from the powerful. We were redeemed by unfathomable grace and preserved by God’s mercy and our citizenship was in heaven. We looked to the Lord to supply our needs.
This has changed and godly Republicans now believe in the power of the government to change the world in their favor, of the Department of Education to channel public money freely to religious schools, of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and prohibit Joshua from marrying Jehoshaphat.
Conservatives blanch at spending additional billions to subsidize health care for the needy, but a truckload of cash for Texas? No problem. It makes me think that we Minnesotans should get a few billion in federal aid for recovery from the upcoming winter. It is going to be cold. This will cause damage to homes. Drive-in movie theaters and golf courses and marinas will suffer loss of revenue. We must salt the highways to prevent accidents and the salt corrodes our cars. And then there is the mental anguish.
If Minnesota gets billions of dollars for winter recovery, then I am going to seriously consider becoming a conservative. As a philosophy of governing, conservatism is rather sketchy, but if it helps Minnesota, I am all in favor. I have my principles but I can be bought, same as the rest of you.
Eight Hundred Thousand People With Dreams to Be Deported by One With Delusions
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
Wednesday, 06 September 2017 13:07
Borowitz writes: "According to reports, U.S. residents who have obtained advanced degrees, served in the military, and saved people from Hurricane Harvey will be kicked out of the country by a man who believes that his microwave is spying on him."
Donald Trump. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Eight Hundred Thousand People With Dreams to Be Deported by One With Delusions
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
06 September 17
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
ight hundred thousand people with dreams will be deported by one person with delusions, sources confirmed on Tuesday.
According to reports, U.S. residents who have obtained advanced degrees, served in the military, and saved people from Hurricane Harvey will be kicked out of the country by a man who believes that his microwave is spying on him.
“Under this new decision, if you have worked hard, gone to school, and contributed to the country, you face immediate deportation,” one legal expert said. “On the other hand, if you can prove that you have a glaring personality disorder and a flimsy grasp on reality, you can decide the fate of those other people.”
The delusional man defended his controversial decision late Tuesday afternoon, accompanied by several key voices in his head.
“The people I am deporting are parasites who have exploited our economy,” the man, who has declared bankruptcy six times, said.
I'm a DACA Recipient and This Is What Will Happen to Me
Wednesday, 06 September 2017 13:02
Pimentel writes: "I now risk being forced back into the shadows of undocumented status, unless the US Congress revises federal immigration law to permanently protect DACA recipients."
Demonstrators rally against the termination of the DACA programme outside the San Francisco Federal Building. (photo: Stephen Lam/Reuters)
I'm a DACA Recipient and This Is What Will Happen to Me
By Rodrigo Pimentel, Al Jazeera
06 September 17
Trump's decision to end the DACA programme will force "Dreamers" like me back in to the shadows.
fear that I may no longer look forward to a future in the United States, my home and the only country I have ever known. I immigrated to the state of Rhode Island at the age of 10 months, through no choice of my own and I have no recollection of Portugal, my country of birth.
I'm afraid of what will happen now that President Donald Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Session have announced the decision to abandon the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) - an Obama-era executive order allowing me and many other undocumented migrants like me to stay in the country lawfully.
DACA was implemented in 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and currently protects about 800,000 undocumented people. DACA grants a two-year renewable period of work authorisation and a reprieve from deportation by recognising the recipient as a non-priority for removal. Immigrants that are eligible - dubbed the Dreamers - include those who have been present since at least June 2007 and were 16 or younger at the time they entered into the United States.
The vast majority of undocumented immigrants have no viable pathway to citizenship, unless they marry a US citizen, can argue that they are a refugee in need of asylum, or find an employer willing to sponsor them for a green card. This is further complicated by the fact many DACA recipients have accrued unlawful presence or entered without inspection, making it almost impossible to adjust their US residency without undergoing consular processing abroad and being subject to a 10-year ban from entering the country.
I have been able to openly and lawfully work, study, and contribute to my community ever since I was granted deferred status under DACA three years ago. Prior to this, my family and I had struggled for many years to pursue the American Dream, with no available path to citizenship. In spite of this, I am proud of what we've achieved: iconic American milestones such as purchasing a family car and moving into our own family home.
With the new decision, however, I now risk being forced back into the shadows of undocumented status, unless the US Congress revises the federal immigration law to permanently protect DACA recipients.
Living in the shadows means declining legitimate job offers, as I would be unable to work lawfully. Undocumented people that work "off the books" risk employer exploitation such as wage theft. My father was a victim of this when he first came to the US: he found a job in Maryland soon after arrival, but after two weeks of work, he was laid off without pay and no legal recourse. Like many undocumented people, I fear that I may have to move from job to job, without a sense of knowing where I will be working next week or even whether I will be paid.
The decision to terminate the DACA programme was ostensibly propelled by threats from Texas and eight other states to sue the Trump administration if it did not act to end it by September 5. The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, intended to amend an existing case before the court, Texas v United States. In 2015, the case resulted in Texas Judge Andrew Hanen issuing an injunction against a similar programme called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). DAPA, although never implemented, would have also granted work permits and would consider recipients as a non-priority for removal.
Paxton has framed Texas' challenge to DACA by arguing that it represented an unconstitutional abuse of executive authority by the Obama administration. In the brief (PDF), however, Texas concedes that it would be within the authority of the federal government to "issue 'low-priority' identification cards to aliens" affirming precedent previously set by the Supreme Court. In fact, in Arizona v United States (2012), it was ruled that "federal officials ... must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all. If removal proceedings commence, aliens may seek ... discretionary relief allowing them to remain in the country." DACA and DAPA both function by considering a recipient as a non-priority for removal; in essence, this is an exercise of discretionary relief.
The federal circuit court judges were divided on United States v Texas, which also resulted in a 4-4 draw when it was finally heard by the US Supreme Court. Perhaps the only reason Texas was found to stand is due to a dubious claim that issuing driver's licenses to DACA and DAPA recipients would present an unreasonable burden on the state, costing millions of dollars. Texas, of course, is at liberty to decide the cost of issuing its driver's licences.
Time and again the courts have ruled that the executive branch of government has broad discretion on immigration, leaving President Trump with no real reason to terminate DACA, except to leave 800,000 other recipients, such as myself, without a place in America.
Congress must finally stand up to protect the Dreamers and pass the DREAM Act, which would first grant conditional residency and, upon meeting further qualifications, permanent residency to people like me.
For far too long, our lives, our hopes, and our dreams have been at the whim of the White House and it is time for this to change.
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undreds of fast food and healthcare workers and their supporters marched, rallied and even went on strike in Des Moines on Labor Day.
s we await the start of the 2017 NFL football season, a glaring hole remains in the 32 team player rosters. Stellar quarterback and former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick remains unemployed.
he Republic of Texas believes in self-reliance and is suspicious of Washington sticking its big nose in your business. “Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility.” So said Sen. Ted Cruz, though not last week.
ight hundred thousand people with dreams will be deported by one person with delusions, sources confirmed on Tuesday.
fear that I may no longer look forward to a future in the United States, my home and the only country I have ever known. I immigrated to the state of Rhode Island at the age of 10 months, through no choice of my own and I have no recollection of Portugal, my country of birth.
