The number of homes with an unemployed parent rose by a third in just six years

The number of households with at least one out-of-work parent soared by a third from 2005 to 2011, according to a new U.S. Census report on families and living arrangements.[Read more]

The link between civil and economic rights

Of all the commemorations of the March on Washington, the one that will best capture its spirit isn’t really a commemoration at all. Thursday, one day after the 50th anniversary of the great march, fast-food and retail workers in as many as 35 cities will stage a one-day strike demanding higher wages.

Sadly, the connection between the epochal demonstration of 1963 and a fast-food strike in 2013 couldn’t be more direct. 

The march 50 years ago was, after all, a march “For Jobs and Freedom,” and its focus was every bit as economic as it was juridical and social. Even more directly, one of the demands highlighted by the march’s leaders and organizers was to raise the federal minimum wage — then $1.15 an hour — to $2. According to Sylvia Allegretto and Steven Pitts of the Economic Policy Institute, that comes out to $13.39 today.  [Read more]

The March@50: Jobs

Watch the PBS video here: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365067768/.

The Unfinished March Toward a Decent Minimum Wage

Immediately after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the march, read off the marchers’ demands.

As they did after each demand was read aloud, the crowd roared its approval when Rustin proclaimed, "We demand that there be an increase in the national minimum wage so that men may live in dignity.^"

The demand for a higher minimum wage was part of a package of demands seeking economic justice for workers through government intervention in the labor market. At the time of the march about half of all blacks lived in poverty. Due to discrimination in the labor market and the educational system, blacks were heavily concentrated in many of the lowest-paid occupations. An increase in the minimum wage, along with the other march demands, had the potential to lift a large share of the black population out of poverty. [Read more]

A White Working-Class Remembrance of the March for Jobs and Freedom

 

King helped me see how the issues of class and race exploitation overlapped. He brought me–like many others–with him on a political journey from the initial moral disgust at the brutal repression in the Jim Crow South to an understanding of the way the entire country’s elite used racial antagonism to keep the working class divided. Finally, to his prescient grasp of the massive damage that the Vietnam War would do to this country.

The spirit on the Mall that day fifty years ago was alive with anger, joy, anxiety and hope. Our goal was to shape America’s future.

We did, in part. But not quite the way I would have guessed. [Read more]

King helped me see how the issues of class and race exploitation overlapped. He brought me–like many others–with him on a political journey from the initial moral disgust at the brutal repression in the Jim Crow South to an understanding of the way the entire country’s elite used racial antagonism to keep the working class divided. Finally, to his prescient grasp of the massive damage that the Vietnam War would do to this country.
The spirit on the Mall that day fifty years ago was alive with anger, joy, anxiety and hope. Our goal was to shape America’s future.
We did, in part. But not quite the way I would have guessed.
- See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/fifty-years-marched/#sthash.hlG6THIF.dpuf

King helped me see how the issues of class and race exploitation overlapped. He brought me–like many others–with him on a political journey from the initial moral disgust at the brutal repression in the Jim Crow South to an understanding of the way the entire country’s elite used racial antagonism to keep the working class divided. Finally, to his prescient grasp of the massive damage that the Vietnam War would do to this country.
The spirit on the Mall that day fifty years ago was alive with anger, joy, anxiety and hope. Our goal was to shape America’s future.
We did, in part. But not quite the way I would have guessed.
- See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/fifty-years-marched/#sthash.hlG6THIF.dpuf

King helped me see how the issues of class and race exploitation overlapped. He brought me–like many others–with him on a political journey from the initial moral disgust at the brutal repression in the Jim Crow South to an understanding of the way the entire country’s elite used racial antagonism to keep the working class divided. Finally, to his prescient grasp of the massive damage that the Vietnam War would do to this country.
The spirit on the Mall that day fifty years ago was alive with anger, joy, anxiety and hope. Our goal was to shape America’s future.
We did, in part. But not quite the way I would have guessed.
- See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/fifty-years-marched/#sthash.hlG6THIF.dpuf

A SNCC Member Remembers the March for Jobs and Freedom

I’d spent the summer in New York at the national headquarters of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, working with Bayard Rustin, the march director, and a dozen young people. I raised funds to charter buses to bring Southerners to Washington. It took us eight weeks — without social media, fax machines, email, and only limited use of the telephone – to organize the march. We routinely worked 10 to 12 hour days in the Harlem office, and many nights when Eleanor Holmes (now Congresswoman Norton), Rachelle Horowitz and I would arrive at Rachelle’s one bedroom co-op on Eighth Avenue and West 24th Street, we’d find Bob Dylan sitting on the sofa serenading my sister, Dorie. All I could think was I wish he’d leave so I could pull out the sofa and go to sleep. [Read more]

The Applied Theology Behind the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

They wanted a set of tactics that were at once more aggressive and at the same time deeply rooted in biblical teaching. That meant the tactics had to start with love, not hate; nonviolence, not violence; renunciation, not self-indulgence. “Ours would be one of nonresistance,” Randolph told the Senate Armed Services Committee all the way back in 1948. “We would be willing to absorb the violence, absorb the terrorism, to face the music and to take whatever comes.”[Read more]

For Jobs and Freedom

"The March on Washington grew out of a long, sometimes complicated, but often close relationship between the civil rights and labor movements that persists to this day. One of King’s closest associates—and the guiding hand behind the March—was A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union of black men who worked on America’s railways, carrying luggage, waiting on passengers, and serving food. The 1963 march was the culmination of Randolph’s lifetime fighting for racial equality and unionism." [Read more]

Detroit: Pensions, Racism and Bankruptcy

"Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs." [Read more]

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Detroit’s current citizens and the public employees who serve them are not the cause of Detroit’s fiscal problems. They are the victims of forces beyond their control, including globalization, capital flight and racism. No one can, with any seriousness, blame Detroit’s librarians, social workers, garbage collection workers or street cleaners for the city’s catastrophic loss of population and tax base, the long decline and near-collapse of the Big 3 auto companies, or the 1967 riots, which launched a frantic exodus of businesses, white residents, and money from the City of Detroit to the suburbs. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/detroit-pensions-racism-bankruptcy/#sthash.fFDClc7O.dpuf

Minorities and whites follow unequal college paths, report says

"The nation’s system of higher education is growing more racially polarized even as it attracts more minorities: White students increasingly are clustering at selective institutions, while blacks and Hispanics mostly are attending open-access and community colleges, according to a new report.


...

"Students at the nation’s top 468 colleges are the beneficiaries of much more spending — anywhere from two to five times as much as what is spent on instruction at community colleges or other schools without admissions requirements. And students at top schools are far more likely to graduate than students at other institutions, even when they are equally prepared, according to the report. In addition, graduates of top schools are far more likely than others to go on to graduate school." [Read more]