Media

Groups of workers employed in service jobs at federal buildings around D.C. are picketing this morning outside the landmark sites at which they are employed over their low wages. The protest, organized by a new group calling itself Good Jobs Nation, includes people who work at federal building food courts, loading docks, memorabilia shops, and facilities that manufacture uniforms for the military.[...]

A group of about 200 protestors stood outside of a Wendy’s restaurant near Union Square in New York City Saturday. They were demanding that the fast food company sign on to the Fair Food Program, an agreement not to buy agricultural products from farms that employ low wage Hispanic and Haitian farm workers.

The protest is part of a larger campaign that started in 2001 that has thus far pushed eleven retail companies including fast food companies like Taco Bell, Subway, and McDonald’s to sign on to the Fair Food Program.

The Senate confirmation vote on Richard Cordray this week won’t have much to do with Richard Cordray.

According to The American Pediatric Association’s Task Force on Child Poverty, one in five children live below the federal poverty level, and in addition to being an economic strain on families it’s also "the most important problem facing children in the US today.”

New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street and a setback for financial reform. They may also signal worse things to come.

Since NVRA was passed, citizens can now register to vote when they go to public assistance offices to apply for welfare or disability benefits, or at their local DMV when they apply for a drivers license — hence the nickname “Motor Voter Act” — and also allowed for mailed-in registration forms. The result was that over 30 million people registered via the new paths opened by NVRA in its first year.

Though Americans of all ages suffered as a result of the Great Recession, the downturn dealt a particularly harsh blow to young people, as employers opted for suddenly plentiful workers with more experience. As a result, nearly half of the nation’s unemployed are under 34 years old, according to an April report from public policy organization Demos.

The National Voter Registration Act set the first ever national standards for mail-in registration and increased the number of places people could register to vote, including motor vehicle and public assistance offices. 

Let us finally dispel the notion that increased numbers of African American voters, and more broadly all voters of color, headed to the polls in 2008 and 2012 solely because of Barack Obama.