Activists and researchers have pointed out that the Detroit Water and Sewage Department’s financial woes can’t be blamed entirely on the city, since it stretches far beyond the city itself, serving 40 percent of Michigan’s population.
While no law prevents outside donors, for example, from investing in the campaign of a low-income person, the likelihood that they’ll do so is low. The problem is social capital: Low-income people lack it, and so their personal networks do not often contain millionaires with open pocketbooks.
Heather McGhee will develop the Starbucks training plan with the former US attorney general Eric Holder and representatives of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Anti-Defamation League.
Six years ago today, on April 25, 2012, activists took to the streets to mark the country’s outstanding student-loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. And in the years since, many of the trends that pushed student debt levels to climb have persisted and in some cases gotten worse.
As the idea of implicit bias has permeated our culture, an entire industry has sprung up, like mushrooms after rain, to conduct trainings meant to raise awareness of the problem and counteract it. But few of the implicit-bias trainings that are now de rigueur have been rigorously evaluated. Many don’t measure their own impact. In fact, many don’t establish concrete goals at all. The approach is akin to whipping up an elixir to treat a disease, and then dispensing it to patients without ever assessing its effects—or even deciding what its effects should be. [...]
Between March 2017 and March 2018, union members’ approval of Trump fell 15 points, to 47 percent. In more than two dozen interviews with union members, many blasted Trump’s tax cut, arguing most of the benefits will flow to corporations and wealthy people. [...]
"The biggest issue facing police today is a crisis of public confidence. We have seen examples of racial discrimination, viral videos documenting misconduct, and widespread protest against incidents of police violence and the lack of accountability. Officers themselves report that it's a difficult time to be in law enforcement."
Accumulating student loan debt has become a typical part of higher education for students. As of March 2018, nearly 44 million Americans owed over $1.48 trillion in student loan debt, a number expected to grow as tuition rates outpace inflation and wage growth. Few people experience the hardships of student loan debt more than students of color. Approximately 77.7% of all black students use federal student loans to pay for their education. That group also has the highest loan default rates and lowest graduation rates among college students.
In the midst of a Twitter feed alight with stories about police being used to shut black people out of places to eat, drink, exercise, and relax, comes a story about Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) using policy to do the same. The federal government is adding new and significant hurdles to communities of color — particularly black people — being able to access housing.
The ability of college graduates to pay student loans isn’t simply a matter of earnings. It also reflects wealth — and differences that persist in wealth among racial and ethnic groups.
Though the public is intrigued by the idea of Starbucks' half-day all-staff training on discrimination and bias, that is just the first in many steps the company plans to take to try to implement a better system, says Heather McGhee, president of Demos, a social advocacy group.
Millions of eligible voters remain unregistered. To fulfill the promise of the NVRA, states must do much more to ensure all Americans have a voice in our democracy.
According to the New York Times, full-time employees in retail generally make less than $33,000 a year. The same article states that “42 percent of retail workers earn a low hourly wage — defined as less than two-thirds of the median wage across the economy.”
Heather McGhee, leader of the nationally known public policy organization, Demos, will deliver the Commencement address at Vassar College’s 154th graduation ceremony on Sunday, May 27.
Starbucks said the long-term program is being designed and developed with input from researchers, social scientists, employees and other advisers.
Those partners include consultancy SY Partners - which worked with Starbucks to reinvent itself after a business crisis spawned by the “Great Recession”; the Perception Institute; Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; and Heather McGhee, president of public policy group Demos.
Starbucks enlisted the help of groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense and Education Fund (NAACP LDF) and Demos, a public policy organization committed to racial equality and economic advancement, to design a curriculum focused on recognizing bias and creating a more inclusive environment. [...]
Nothing, it seems, has been more difficult to remedy than the issue of racism and implicit bias in this country, but this week, coffeehouse juggernaut Starbucksattempted to at least begin the conversation when they shut down more than 8,000 of their stores for a day of racial bias training following
