The growing demand for a $15 per hour minimum wage has the potential to help rebuild the workers movement in the United States. Beyond the obvious purpose of raising income in our own home town, that is my main objective in working on the 15 Now Tacoma campaign. If we are going to counteract the political and economic power of Big Business, we workers seriously need our own political voice. It is the absence of such a movement that has enabled Big Business to claw back the hard-won gains achieved by workers movements during the 19th and 20th centuries. Those achievements included the eight-hour work-day, child labor laws, the original minimum wage - even the free public schools so many of us now take for granted. Here are some facts about the minimum wage. Read more
As our representatives head back to Olympia for another special session focusing on additional budget cuts, our communities in every county of the state, including Pierce, continue to feel the effects of devastating budget cuts already in place. But the mass mobilizations of the Occupy Movement, from Tacoma to Wall Street, show that people will no longer submit quietly to these cuts while corporations continue to benefit from huge profits and tax breaks that are destroying the very foundations of our society. Read more
You are, if you are one of thousands of employees in Pierce County with pensions managed by TIAA-CREF, whose slogan is 'Financial Services for the Greater Good'. Unfortunately the greater good does not include Palestine, where companies whose stock is held by TIAA-CREF make money helping Israel suppress the Palestinians. Read more
Where can organizations like Hilltop Urban Gardens in Tacoma go for operating funds to create innovative urban agricultural programs to address root causes of inequity while growing healthy young people, elders and community? Organizing for social justice is not in most funders’ mission statements. The Social Justice Fund Northwest works to fill that gap. Read more
