Media

Now more than ever, our progressive movement needs real leaders who are equipped with the skills, fortitude, and vision to meet the political and economic challenges we face as a nation. For nearly four decades, the United States Student Association (USSA) has fostered this leadership.

Demos is proud to honor USSA with a legacy award for its role in empowering tomorrow’s leaders at our annual Transforming America Awards & Gala. 

Lobbyists are often frowned upon for doing the bidding of major corporations. A list of the organizations that spend the most on lobbying, maintained by the websiteOpenSecrets.org, is full of corporations like Boeing, General Electric, and AT&T, as well as associations like the National Association of Realtors.

(BOSTON, Mass.)- Today, a broad coalition of consumer, civil rights, labor, and community organizations issued a letter strongly urging members of the U.S. House of Representatives to support of H.R. 5282, the Comprehensive Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 2016, introduced today by Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

If you’re feeling underpaid and overworked, you probably are: wages for typical U.S. workers still haven’t recovered from the Great Recession, even as working Americans continue to put in long hours. But a long-awaited update to the federal rules on overtime pay may finally bring relief.

Millions more workers could soon be making more money thanks to overtime changes the Obama administration announced today.

Starting December 1, the regulations being issued by the Labor Department would double the threshold under which salaried workers must be paid overtime, from to $47,476 from $23,660.

This rule is part of the patchwork of changes on the national, state, and even municipal level to raise wages for workers that have small businesses and large corporations figuring out how to balance the books, by either cutting workers or raising prices.

It’s not every day that low-paid workers — cleaners mopping the floors of Washington’s Union Station, vendors selling pretzels at the National Zoo, servers dishing out hot lunch at congressional cafeterias — speak out and win a voice in setting national policy. Yet three years ago, that’s exactly what began to happen.

In May 2013, workers employed by private companies under contract with the federal government came together to form Good Jobs Nation – and walked out on strike in the nation’s capital.

Today, the working class are most likely to work as caregivers, retail workers, cashiers, fast food workers, and janitors. How are the working class movements such as  “Fight for $15” minimum wage shifting the political and economic landscape?  Join the conversation, on the next Your Call, with Rose Aguilar, and you. 

About 94% of donors to Emanuel's campaign were white, even though white people comprise just 39% of Chicago's total population, according to the new report, from progressive think tank Demos. Emanuel's donors almost entirely (84%) gave large contributions of $1,000 or more. A staggering 80% of his donors had an annual income of at least $100,000 or more, despite just 15% of Chicagoans making six figures.

Confession: I've defriended people on Facebook when their political rants and vicious posts got to be too much.