Conyers on Jobs:
"We've Had It." Lays Out Obama, Calls for Protest at White House
With
Representative John Conyers, Founding Member and
Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus

Michigan’s U.S. Representative John Conyers brings us back to
fundamentals, The real crisis in this country is that of unemployment,
the recession &cutbacks. It’s time to explode the myth that budget
deficits are the imminent danger that pervades the rhetoric of Washington
from Obama to the Tea Partyers. The cure is to educate and pressure
them by mobilizations and demonstrations to do the right thing.
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The American Dream is Dying
With
Heather McGhee,Director of Demos' Washington office.

Amongst her many writings, McGhee is the co-author of a chapter on
retirement insecurity in the book "Inequality Matters: The Growing
Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences" .
Heather McGhee speaks to youth, at a national teach-in, with alarm
that they face potentially less opportunity and greater wealth deprivation
than their parents and the imperative for them to organize, organize,
organize for their interests.

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Nurses Say Lady Liberty Is Sick,
But A Wall Street Financial Speculation Tax Could Heal Her

The Statue of Liberty apparently got “sick” over what’s happening to this country’s working class so, the nation’s nurses rushed to N.Y.C. to try and heal her. One by one, members of National Nurses United (NNU) attempted to diagnose what was making Lady Liberty ill. They concluded her malady was because of the foreclosures spawned by Wall Street’s greed, because of the broken health care system and joblessness.

But, Lady Liberty perked up when one person pointed to the Stock Exchange
across the street and said the nation needs a financial speculation tax to
make Wall Street pay its fair share to heal America. The NNU used street
theater as the centerpiece of its huge protest its members and supporters
converged on Wall Street to demand that the same financial market
speculators who plunged our economy into the recession pay to rebuild the
nation. They rallied as part of a global day of action for a financial speculation
tax.

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What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Jobs:
How Racism, Global Economics, and the New Jim Crow Fuel Black
America's Crippling Jobs Crisis
with
Andy Kroll, Assoc. Editor, TomDispatch and reporter at Mother Jones magazine

The Labor Department released the latest figures on unemployment and payrolls - the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, and employers added only 18,000 jobs last month, below the 150,000 threshold that economists say is needed to prevent the unemployment rate from increasing. The figures were dismal for the working class, however what isn’t delineated & probed within that general dilemma is the unemployment rate for black workers, almost double the percent rate for the rest of the population - it's twice the 8% white jobless rate. Since the 1940s, the jobless rate for blacks in America has held grimly steady at twice the rate for whites. The question of why has divided economists, historians, and sociologists for nearly as long.

Plus
The acclaimed public intellectual and author of "Democracy Matters" and "Race Matters", Cornel West, as he spoke recently at a youth teach-in continues to stir us to organize – forward ever, backward never!

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America’s Not Broke. Not Even Close. Tax the Rich!

Overall average individual wealth in the United States has risen 23 percent
since the year 2000, to $236,213 per American adult. But, wealth has
become incredibly more concentrated. We are taxing the dollars that go to
our ever-richer rich at levels far below the tax rates that America levied just
a few decades ago. Now, both an analysis of our current predicament and
a series of proposals that can help open our eyes to a far more equitable —
and brighter — future,

with
Meizhu Lui, Director of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative,
Insight Center for Community Economic Development
and
Chuck Collins, a senior scholar, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
and Director of IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good.
Co-author of the recent report, Unnecessary Austerity, Unnecessary
Government Shutdown.

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Wisconsin Blues: Don’t Mourn, Organize
With
Eric Cobb, Exec. Dir. South Central Wisconsin Building Trades Council
Peter Rickman, Teaching Asst., LaFollette Law School , Univ. of Wisc. member of Teaching Assistants’ Assn., AFT Local 3220
LaTaunya Johnson, Pres. Wisconsin Childcare Providers Together,
Local 502, AFSCME

The Walkerville protest tents and encampment came down at Wisconsin’s
state capital after Gov Scott Walker’s budget victory slashing education,
health and other services in the state budget while increasing tax breaks for
the wealthy. He even attacked child labor laws. A week earlier the State
Supreme Court narrowly approved Walker’s union busting measures
stripping civil service unions of most of their effectiveness and eliminating
the dues check-off. While Walker and the Republicans may loose control of
the State Senate in the recall elections scheduledin July, that will come too
late to reverse much of the major damage that has been done. We’ll talk with
key organizers in the struggle as to what lessons have been learned and
what is to be done to organize for future victories.

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