Rev. Dr. Barber's #FightFor15 Convention Speech Reverend Dr. William Barber II is the architect and leader of the Moral Modays movement which has rallied a broad coaltion of North Carolinians to protest outside the state capital building demanding that the legislature restore full voting rights

Recently, thousands of low-wage workers from across the country marched on Richmond, VA, the former capitol of the Confederacy to fight for racial and economic justice at the #FightFor15 National Convention. Barber , founding member of Repairers of the Breach and architect of the Moral Monday movement, delivered the address at the culmination of the march in sweltering temperatures, He proclaimed "We won't stop fighting until we win"to 8,000 people marching to oppose the racial, social and

economic inequalities that plague our nation, which are all linked and so too must be the fights to address them.

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Ain’t I A Woman:  how twenty-years after Bill Clinton pulled the safety net from under predominantly poor women and children they’re left to sink to deeper destitution
with
Felicia Kornbluh is associate professor of history and gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Vermont and president of the faculty union, United Academics. She’s author of "The Battle for Welfare Rights" and, with Gwendolyn Mink, of the forthcoming "Ensuring Poverty: The History and Politics of Welfare Reform".

April McCray thought she had finally caught a break in late 2005. That’s when the state of Louisiana granted cash assistance to the single mother through the Temporary Assistance of Needy Families (TANF) program. It was her first experience with America's welfare program.  McCray, who had been in and out of work, struggled to make ends meet. This, she hoped, would at least help soften the
burden.  But a month later, the state stripped her of the benefits without a clear explanation, she said. Since then, she says Louisiana, which controls state and federally allocated TANF dollars, has denied her requests for assistance several times. "It gets depressing," said McCray, who in 2016, is still struggling. With three kids and rarely more than a part-time job, she says she needs help she can’t seem to get from a welfare system that was overhauled 20 years ago.  “As far as whether people are better off, I do think they are, in some cases, worse off.”

Twenty years ago on August 22, then President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, that imposed work requirements and term limits on public assistance into effect and people like April McCray across the country have been left destitute.

Now, while there are advocates who in the wake of the shredding of the social safety net, such as in New York are demanding an end to the Work Experience Program (WEP), increased allowances to reflect the cost of living, and more humane treatment at public assistance centers, for the millions of poor, predominantly woman and children across the nation like April McCray they’re left to wonder why across the spectrum those seeking electoral office and with a national platform have failed to meaningfully address poverty and put together a platform to reverse twenty-years of

the harmful legacies of the 1990s “Welfare Reform and Destruction Act”.  

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“Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics,

and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck” 

with

Adam Cohen, former member of the NY Times Editorial Board 

One of America’s great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court’s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of “undesirable” citizens the law of the land.  Bestselling author Adam Cohen tells the story in Imbeciles of

one of the darkest moments in the American legal tradition: the Supreme Court’s decision to champion eugenic sterilization for the greater good of the country. In 1927, when the nation was caught up in eugenic fervor, the justices allowed Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal young woman, for being an “imbecile.”  Adam Cohen sets the context for the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck and thousands of others: a panic, fed by the pseudoscience of eugenics, that so-called feebleminded people constituted a threat to public safety and the nation’s gene pool.  The book serves as a cautionary tale about what may happen when those who have, or obtain, power use the institutions of government and the law

to advance their own interests at the expense of those who are poor, disadvantaged, or of different ‘hereditary’ stock.

Plus
Donald Trump's Fascist Week - The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Donald Trump comes under fire for unknowingly tweeting a Benito Mussolini quote, and he may have more in common with the fascism founder than he realizes.

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Building Bridges, Not Walls!  
A Building Bridges Democratic Convention Special
With
Deborah Burger Co-President, National Nurses United
and
Larry Hamm, veteran activist, Chairman the Peopleâs Organization 
for Progress 

With her selection of Gov. Tim Kaine as her running mate Hillary Clinton reinforced her determination to run a traditional political campaign in a year noted for mass upsurges from the left and right. 

Join Building Bridges as we highlight issues in the host city's working class communities, and from behind the barricades the protests as activists from around the country converge on the DNC. Then we'll analyze the nature of the Democratic Party and what it says about the state of U.S. politics and the impact and future of the movement initiated by Bernie Sanders.

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