Category Archives: Post type

On a crisp autumn day in 2012, I joined a group of pastors and community leaders from the Illinois-Indiana Regional Organizing Network (IIRON) at a church on the south side of Chicago. We talked about the way corporations and the wealthy systematically hoarded political power over the last forty years to make our country work for them—instead of people like us. They built elite think tanks, bought the media, and took over universities. They fought back against the wave of pro-equality reforms that had been achieved in the 1950s and 1960s, and turned the tide in their favor.

That corporate-conservative movement transformed our political and economic landscape over the last 40 years, and the resulting shift has left us with growing economic and racial inequality, a broken democracy, and a planet on the verge of catastrophic climate change.

Together, that day we recognized that the solutions our elected leaders had proposed were wholly inadequate to the scale of the crises we faced: We’d seen massive bailouts for banks, while thousands of homeowners in our neighborhoods faced foreclosure and were getting little help staying afloat; We faced a massive jobs crisis without a proposal for the kind of public jobs program we needed.… Continue reading »

s the Minnesota elections near a group is taking to the streets in a grassroots effort to try provide information to voters about candidates they believe will fight for issues like paid sick leave and paid maternity leave and other family matters.

Member, Rachel Chafee said, “I have learned how important it is spending time with the little one and so to be able to have paid maternity leave or parental leave, so that you don’t have to make a decision about whether you get to spend time with your kid or whether you pay your bills.”

Click here to read the full article.… Continue reading »

TakeAction Minnesota and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research released a new statewide analysis recently, detailing access rates to earned sick time leave across the state of Minnesota. The new report breaks down data by gender, race and ethnicity, occupation, hours worked and earnings level. Overall, the report concludes that 41% of Minnesota workers lack access to even a single day of earned sick time off.

On the morning tele-conference briefing with reporters and policymakers, Jessica Milli, Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, reviewed key findings from the statewide analysis. Milli said, “This data indicates that Minnesota workers who are least able to lose pay when they are sick are also the least likely to have employer-provided earned sick days. Earned sick time gives workers the ability to seek health services or stay home with sick children or other family members, helping reduce the spread of illness in schools and workplaces. It provides more economic security for families across the board, but most especially for those struggling in lower-wage and part-time jobs.”

Click here to read the full article.… Continue reading »

The Bethany Lutheran Church sits in the center of the Seward neighborhood, southeast of downtown. It’s the kind of neighborhood where a non–hierarchically run cafe jostles up against a radical bookstore and co-op grocery, and the local representative belongs to the Green Party. Before learning about Minneapolis’s deep poverty and racial inequity, this was the city of my imagination, a sort of radical utopia where the only oppression was inflicted by the winter weather.

The church, however, offers a different narrative. Bethany Lutheran serves as the headquarters for Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha, or CTUL (pronounced say-tool). Inside, there is a bulletin board covered with photos of men and women protesting; a piece of butcher paper lists the sueldos robados—stolen wages—the group recovered in 2011. While the contractors listed are mostly small and unfamiliar, in recent years CTUL has moved up the supply chain, waging a campaign against the retail giant Target, which is headquartered in Minneapolis, hoping to organize the subcontracted janitors who clean the company’s stores.

“Lots of people said these workers were impossible to organize,” says Veronica Mendez, CTUL’s fiery co-director. “Those people were wrong.”

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The seeds that grew into Minnesotans for a Fair Economy were planted out of frustration.… Continue reading »

Labor Day constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. The American worker is the core of our high standard of living and great production in the world. Evidence of this can be found in the history of a workforce that has had dramatic impact on the success of this nation.

There is one group in particular whose mark on the nation’s workforce history was pivotal yet greatly overshadowed by the events of the time. And appreciation for their work is deserved and long overdue.

More than 70 years ago, Irene Weller and Adeline Stoskopf, both of Grand Rapids, were among the millions of women who answered the call to enter the industrial labor force in tough jobs left vacant with widespread male enlistment during World War II.

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Earlier this month, Weller and Stoskopf were recognized as “Rosie the Riveters,” in the Tall Timber Days parade with Take Action Minnesota, a network working for racial and economic equity across the state. In pushing equal pay for men and women, Take Action is shedding light on the fact that despite the advancements made by women over the past decades, difficulties like pay disparities make it hard for women to get ahead.… Continue reading »

Can you name the worst job you’ve ever had? For Cliff Martin, that’s not an easy question. All three of his current jobs—delivering newspapers, delivering magazines and working as a janitor—are strong contenders. Taken together, they pay so poorly that the 20-year-old Northfield, Minnesota, native relies on MNsure, the state Medicaid plan, for healthcare and lives at home with his father to save money. But what if Martin’s bosses had to fork over a fee to the state for paying him so badly? That money, in turn, could be used to help support Martin and his fellow low-wage workers in a variety of ways, from direct subsidies for food and housing to social programs such as Medicaid or public transportation.

TakeAction Minnesota, a network that promotes economic and racial justice in the state, wants to make that fee a reality. It’s developing the framework for a bill that it hopes will be introduced in 2015 by state legislators who have worked with the network in the past. As conceived, the “bad business fee” legislation would require companies to disclose how many of their employees are receiving public assistance from the state or federal government. Companies would then pay a fine based on the de facto subsidies they receive by externalizing labor costs onto taxpayers.… Continue reading »

Kissy Mason understands the importance of second chances. As she grew up in Minneapolis in the ’80s and ’90s, she watched her family members move in and out of prison and saw the discrimination they faced as a result.

“People in my family were being locked up, and then they were locked out of a right to live, a right to employment,” she said.

Mason decided early on that she wouldn’t follow in their footsteps and end up in the prison system. After moving around Minnesota, she returned to Minneapolis to earn her associate’s degree in criminal justice. But in 2006, a domestic argument got out of control and led to a conviction. Mason was offered probation—but her record was no longer clean.

Because of a background check that brought up the incident, she no longer qualified for low-income, or Section 8, housing and struggled to find employment. “At that time,” she said, “I had three children, and I was trying to provide for them.”

“Sometimes people bar you from jobs forever because of one incident, and I don’t think that’s fair,” Mason said. “People should be given another chance. It shouldn’t be one time and you’re out.”

Click here for the full article.… Continue reading »

The Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn rulings handed down by the Supreme Court’s conservative and male majority lay bare exactly what they value. And it’s not caring for each other. Nor is it a woman’s right to make her own decisions. Instead, these justices value ever-expanding corporate power at the expense of working people and believe that women, and the professions they lead, are worth less than others. In ruling as they did on two very disparate topics, these five men have launched an assault on women in the workplace. But it’s workers and their families who should be concerned.

Click here to read the full op-ed. … Continue reading »

It started with the Women and Family’s Economic Security Summit in Duluth this May, said Kathleen Blake, a Grand Rapids resident who recently traveled to Washington, D.C. with a delegation of women from around the state who attended the White House Summit on Working Families.

The delegation was sent by TakeAction Minnesota, a statewide progressive organization that organized the Duluth summit.

Click here for the full article.… Continue reading »

As home retailer Ikea announced plans to raise the average, hourly minimum wage at its U.S. stores to $10.76, the pressure is mounting for other big brand businesses to lift pay for their workers.

Large companies, from retail to food—as well as many states—have hiked their hourly rate, or are considering such a move.

Gap in February said it would set $9 as the minimum hourly rate for U.S. workers, and raise the minimum to $10 next year. Chipotle Mexican Grillhas said an increase to $10 an hour could be absorbed. Starbucks says it would support efforts to lift wages, but hasn’t taken a stance on any specific proposal.

Ikea’s announcement is “a significant step nationally in moving the wage from where it is now,” said Greta Bergstrom of TakeAction Minnesota, which has lobbied to raise wages in the state. Minnesota lawmakers in April approved lifting the state minimum wage to $9.50 an hour over three years.

Ikea’s decision “will put pressure on other big box retailers to raise their wages,” Bergstrom said.

Click here for the full article.… Continue reading »

On June 23, TakeAction Minnesota member headed to the White House for a summit on women and working families. Channel 12 spoke to her about why she made the trip.

Click here to watch Gloria. She begins at 2:25.… Continue reading »

George Goehl is the executive director of National People’s Action Campaign, a network of metropolitan and statewide organizations that are building independent political power to advance racial and economic justice.

In Democratic Promise, his landmark account of the populist movement, historian Lawrence Goodwyn describes achieving collective self-confidence as a critical benchmark for powerful democratic movements. He rightly argues that reaching this psychological tipping point allows social movements to grow exponentially.

Congressional gridlock and austerity have not just expanded inequality in our nation; they have constrained people’s sense of possibility, undermining faith in politics as a means for creating change and in the idea of government as an equalizer in our society.

As a result, these days progressives can build collective self-confidence by starting where we have the most leverage: in the cities. Twenty-seven of the nation’s thirty largest cities voted blue in 2012. In itself, this does not constitute transformative change, but it does present a battlefield for creating next-generation policies and for recruiting candidates to run on a “people and planet first” agenda. And as citizens benefit from this agenda, their faith in politics and in good government will grow.

Our work in cities needs to be part of a plan to shift the politics of state governments, which control too much money and too many rules to ignore.… Continue reading »