The People's Summit: A Way Forward for Peoples Power
with
RoseAnn DeMoro, Executive Director, National Nurses United
and
Winnie Wong, Founder, People for Bernie & A People’s Summit Organizer

So you couldn’t attend the Peoples Summit, well we’ll provide a report back on the historic convening of organizations and individuals committed to social, racial and economic justice June 17-19, in Chicago to bring together activists committed to a People’s Agenda that can enhance and expand issue campaigns and hold all elected officials accountable to popular demands for justice, equality and freedom. The Summit envisioned as deepening the relationship between participating organizations rooted in principled anti-corporate politics, development of community leaders, direct action not based on partisan identification, and strategic organizing to build power. The Summit was devoted to key issues such as the Fight for 15, mass incarceration and criminal justice reform, voting rights and expanding democratic participation, a tax on Wall Street speculation to fund human needs and jobs, climate justice toward a sustainable economy, improved Medicare for All, the fight for free and debt-free higher education, secure retirement through expanding social security, ending HIV/AIDS, achieving Constitutional pay equity for women, and ending deportations and support for DREAMers, among others. WOW, that’s a heck of an agenda and aspiration and we’ll find out how it turned out! 

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Orlando: I See Your "True Colors" Shining Through

          Saturday was Latin night. More than 350 revelers
          flocked to Orlando’s Pulse nightclub for reggaeton, salsa
          and Puerto Rican drag queens. “Calling all our Latinos,
          Latinas and everyone that loves a little Latin flavor!”
          read a Saturday evening post on the club's Facebook                   page. “It's time to party!” We’ll continue to probe how               the  merriment ended with the deadliest mass shooting of             LGBTQs in U.S. history.

With

 .  Brian Epps, an African-American activist and Executive Director of

    the Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center

    in NY
.   Gil Caldwell, Co-Executive Producer of the newly released film

   "From Selma to Stonewall: Are We There Yet?" He’s a retired

    United Methodist Minister, active in the Civil Rights Movement, and

    a long-time ally/advocate of gay rights
 .  Michael Adams, a Latino elder, CEO of SAGE, which provides

    services and advocacy for the GLBTQ elder’s. 

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Farmworkers Declare, We Put the Food on Your Table
Isn’t It Time We Got to Share in the Bounty?
featuring. 
. Pablo Cruz and Heriberto Gonzalez NYS farm workers
. Rev. Richard Witt, Executive Director Rural & Migrant Ministry
. State Senator Adriano Espaillat
. NYS Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan
. Cardinal Timothy Dolan
. Kerry Kennedy, Pres., Robert Kennedy Center for Human Rights
. Jose Calderon, President, Hispanic Federation

Hey, what about the fact that those who grow the food that feeds us, farmworkers don’t get even one day a week off to rest after from their toil? And, they don’t have the right to organize and bargain collectively; nor are there basic standards under the Sanitary Code for farmworkers living quarters; nor do farmworkers get unemployment pay when they’re laid off or terminated; and they’re not entitled to workers’ compensation if they’re injured on the job; nor can they receive disability benefits when they are unable to work due to illness or injury.  And, they sure don’t receive overtime pay when they’re forced to work more than an eight hour day.  Why is this?  Well, in the 1930s, farmworkers and domestic workers were left out of the New Deal due to pressure from the descendants of slaveholders.  Eighty years later,
farmworkers remain excluded for fundamental labor protections and benefits in New York and now they’re marching throughout NYS with the Rural and Migrant Ministry to end this injustice and demand that the state senate and Gov. Cuomo bring the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act to the floor for a vote to be included in basic labor rights afforded other workers.

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Medicare for All, A Better Prescription for a Health Care Solution
with
Richard Gottfried, Chair NYS Assembly Health Committee

Bernie Sanders is at the forefront over a national debate on improving our health care system, with his proposal for a “single payer” structure shorthand for “Medicare for All”. Meanwhile, in NYS, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried‘s single payer legislation has  passed the Assembly, with wide support from organized labor as well as multiple community advocacy and healthcare professional organizations.  While discontent arises under Obamacare, as insurance companies increase our out-of-pocket expenses the Gottfried plan would provide a comprehensive universal insurance program for all NYers, without deductibles, co-pays and would eliminate restrictive provider networks. Gottfried’s plan would begin a march to “Medicare for All” nationwide, the same state by state way the Canadians began their successful single payer system.  “Health care reform has done a lot of good, but it still leaves us in the hands of insurance companies.  Single Payer would save the billions of dollars that we now spend on insurance company administrative costs…You and your doctor would work to keep you healthy. New York Health would pay the bill with funding
from broad-based revenue based on ability to pay”. 

Plus Lily Tomlin Comedian/actress Lily Tomlin appeared as her character Ernestine to lambaste the insurance companies at a California rally in support of a Medicare for all single payer system

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Following $15/Hour Victories in CA, NY, PA, Underpaid Workers Intensify Call for $15, and Union Rights Nationwide with Record 300 City Strike and Protests!

Fast-food, home care, child care, airport, higher education, hospital and other underpaid workers in the Biggest-ever day of global strikes and protests demanded 15 dollars and hour and union rights for workers everywhere.  The workers and their supporters swept the country in protest to demand corporations pay workers’ wages they can live on and that giant companies like McDonald’s pay their fair share of taxes. The workers zeroed in on McDonald’s, the world’s second largest employer and industry leader, as a symbol of what is wrong with the economy. 

In New York and California, where workers already won $15, the protest was focused on the demand for union rights and on supporting the call for $15 by workers all across the country.  Around the world, workers rallied in more than 40 countries on six continents, including a blockade at the McDonald’s in Disneyland Paris; protests in the United Kingdom against “zero-hou contracts,”
which fail to guarantee workers a minimum number of hours; protests in Korea against unpaid hours and unsafe working conditions; and a series of marches against unfair labor practices in Brazil.

In New York City, the rally for $15 and a union was capped off by thousands marching from McDonald’s, where the Fight for $15 started more than three years ago, across town to a $1,000/plate GOP gala, protesting against Donald Trump's opposition to raising minimum wages.

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