To win over and mobilize the public, social justice advocates must articulate what we’re for, not just what we’re against. The American people deserve better than what’s currently on offer from team Trump, but for many, the status quo also falls short. If progressives are to fulfill one of our core principles—the use of public policy to improve the lives of those left out or underserved by the market economy—we need a simple, plausible plan that excites people. Two key components of that plan are Medicare for All and a guaranteed jobs program. [...]
New York’s plan is a step forward in returning to the days when students could work their way through public college without taking on debt. But the impact on reducing the need to borrow may be minimal, especially for first-generation, low-wealth students.
New York approved a state budget Sunday that included the Excelsior Scholarship, which will allow students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year to attend state public colleges and universities tuition-free.
"You are in a Catch-22," said Emmanuel Caicedo, a senior campaign strategist with Demos, one member of a coalition of 79 labor and civil rights organizations that formed the NYC Coalition to Stop Credit Checks in Employment.
"You can't pay your bills and so your credit is bad. And then you can't get a job to pay your bills because of your credit."
Several top congressional Democrats will embrace on Tuesday a loose plan to make public colleges a debt-free proposition—and will receive an immediate boost from progressive activists who are hoping to shape the 2016 Democratic agenda.
The rationale behind the ban is simple: it’s unfair and useless to use a person’s credit history, which is often inaccurate or misleading, when assessing their job qualifications.
A group of congressional Democrats introduced a resolution on Tuesday seeking to ensure that students who attend public colleges and universities can graduate without debt.
Federal contracting with private vendors supports about two million low-wage private sector jobs, according to Demos, a national research institute, in their study, "Underwriting Bad Jobs." That is "more than the number of low wage workers at Walmart and McDonald's combined."
So far, advocates have yet to coalesce around a detailed policy for debt-free college. The congressional resolutions are general statements of principle rather than detailed legislation.
When discussing race, the conservative argument is best expressed by the famous words of Chief Justice John Roberts: "The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Translation: America has done bad things in its history, but those bad things are gone now, so we should move past those horrors and look forward.
Public university students today pay $3,000 more in annual tuition than their counterparts a decade ago.
Why that is depends on whom you ask. Some pundits like to blame administrative bloat or the construction boom. Within higher education, many cite the decline in state support.
