Media

It's hard to believe in the power of organized labor if you've grown up over the past thirty years, a period of steady union decline. Conventional wisdom hold that the new service economy is inherently hostile terrain for labor organizers and, more broadly, that Americans just aren't the joiners they used to be. (Lots of civil society institutions have withered, not just unions.)

President Barack Obama wants workers to make more money. Walmart and other low-wage employers also want to make more money.

They could both get what they want if the federal minimum wage goes up.

After decades of seeing their incomes shrink, those at the bottom of the economic ladder are starting to band together and fight back — and it’s one of the most important economic stories of our time.

The deep racial segregation of America's schools is such a difficult challenge because it is so driven by economics: Many families of color simply can't afford to live in white or mixed neighborhoods. Zoning rules also play a big role, with white communities often making it difficult to contruct more affordable multi-family apartment units. 

If there’s one thing you can say about Art Pope, North Carolina’s mega-donor, it’s that he is a man on a mission. Unfortunately, his mission is to use his wealth to make voting more difficult and restrictive and continue the outsized role money plays in politics.

President Obama met with the nation’s top financial regulators last week, to urge for rulings associated with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law passed more than three years ago. It was the first time the president convened a sit down with each regulator since 2011.

According to a White House statement, Obama “stressed the need to expeditiously finish implementing the critical remaining portions of Wall Street Reform to ensure we are able to prevent the type of financial harm that lead to the Great Recession from ever happening again.” [...]

U.S. society seems to have given up on school desegregation -- which has been intensifying.

Fast food workers in over 50 cities across the nation are striking on Thursday in what organizers are touting as the largest ever strike to hit the industry.

The workers are demanding $15 an hour and the right to unionize, continuing the calls and momentum of a series of strikes that first started in November of 2012.

Long after he left the governorship of Alabama, George Wallace -- the leading segregationist of the Jim Crow era -- apologized and repented for his racism. Among the statements he regretted was his famous vow in his 1963 inaugural address: "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

It was Wallace's escalation of the civil rights battle in 1963, among other things, that brought 200,000 marchers to Washington.