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Equity

Transgender Rights: China Advances While US Backslides

March 3, 2022 Serena Sojic-Borne, Fight Back News. , , ,
New Orleans, LA - This year, transgender star and People’s Liberation Army veteran Jin Xing announced the re-launch of her talk show. It aired from 2015 to 2017 as the most-watched show in China. With 100 million viewers, Jin was the world’s most popular trans celebrity. Her rise to fame foretells the Chinese people’s rise against transphobia. But in the U.S., trans people have suffered sharpening attacks. Last year broke records for trans murders and state-level anti-trans legislation. What does this difference tell us? The U.S. empowers bigots The Republican evangelical right scapegoats trans people as their latest “culture war” to mobilize far-right support and secure corporate interests. In a coordinated transphobic attack, state legislatures introduced over 100 anti-trans bills in 2021.

New Report: Small Business’s Big Moment

January 31, 2022 Kennedy Smith, ILSR. , , ,
Small businesses build local wealth, with benefits for nearly every aspect of the community and region. They offer a path to prosperity for hard-working entrepreneurs. They keep a larger share of their economic output within the community than businesses with outside ownership, putting that output to work to support schools, public safety, roads, parks, affordable housing, and many other vital public needs. And young, small businesses create the bulk of the nation’s new jobs. But one of the biggest challenges facing America’s communities is leveling the playing field for small businesses and intentionally moving away from the past decade’s Amazon-take-all trajectory. The $1.9 trillion ARPA provides America’s towns and cities with the money and encouragement to do so.

Union Membership Resumes Its Fall

January 31, 2022 Doug Henwood, LBO-News.com. , , ,
Union membership fell by almost 2% in 2021 as employment rose by over 3%. That took union density—the share of the workforce belonging to unions—down from 10.8% in 2020 to 10.3% last year, where it was in 2019. Density rose in 2020 because more nonunion workers lost their jobs in the covid crisis than their unionized counterparts, but 2021’s return to employment undid that. For the private sector, just 6.1% of workers were unionized last year, down from 6.3% in 2020, an all-time low for a series that goes back to 1900. (Official numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics began in 1983; I’ve assembled figures for earlier years from various sources.) Public sector density also fell, from 34.8% to 33.9%, not quite a record low. But the number of government workers organized in unions fell by 2.7%, almost four times as much as private sector members. The full history is graphed below.

Understanding The Politics Of Urban Apartheid In The United States

January 25, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Baltimore Maryland is a majority-black but hyper-segregated city. Following the uprising in Baltimore in 2015 in response to the police murder of Freddie Gray, Dr. Lawrence Brown, a public health expert at Morgan University, a historically black university in Baltimore, found that historical context and data were missing from the conversation about what was happening. Thus, he wrote "The Black Butterfly: The Politics of Race and Space in America." In this book, Dr. Brown describes the history of and the players who created the urban apartheid and how Baltimore became a template for many cities across the country. His book, available through Johns Hopkins University, provides the data, language and solutions necessary for the struggle to dismantle systemic racism.

Activists, Health Care Workers Are Fighting To Keep Mercy Hospital Open

December 29, 2020 Maxwell Evans, Block Club Chicago. , , ,
Chicago - A coalition of activists are demanding elected officials maintain pressure on Mercy’s ownership to keep the hospital open or sell to someone who will. The activists held a vigil Monday, a week after a state board unanimously rejected Mercy Hospital’s request to close. Board members agreed closing the Near South Side institution would negatively impact South Siders, especially in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Mercy Hospital leadership announced in July the city’s first chartered hospital would shut down, citing monthly operating losses of $4 million and shifting trends in the field of health care away from inpatient services. The news came two months after a billion-dollar plan to consolidate the hospital with three others on the South Side fell apart.

Atlanta Jail Task Force Recommends Razing Building, Creating Equity Center

June 22, 2020 By Raisa Habersham, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. , , ,
Nearly a year after its creation, the Atlanta City Jail task force has recommended closing the jail, demolishing the building and replacing it with a Center for Equity that would support Atlantans’ needs. The 26-page report was delivered to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on June 12, giving suggestions on how the city can change the institution and convert it into a space to serve Atlanta residents, particularly those from communities most affected by the criminal justice system. The report described a center “that will advance racial and economic equity, promote restorative justice, and invest in the well-being of individuals, families, and communities.” The 52-member task force suggested any changes to the 11-story facility that can hold up to 1,300 inmates include addressing ongoing justice reform and the city’s employment and housing concerns.

The Boston Ujima Project Is Working To Create Economic Equity For Artists

November 2, 2018 By Nicole Rupersburg, Springboardexchange.org , , ,
The Boston Ujima Project is a community-led organization with a mission of growing a people’s economy in Greater Boston, one that is controlled by the community with neighbors, workers, business owners, and investors all working together on a shared vision of collective work and responsibility. From Ujima’s citywide assembly “Old Roots, New Rules,” October 2018. The idea is to challenge poverty and develop local neighborhoods by organizing individual savings, businesses, and customers to grow their own wealth and meet their own needs. The word ujima is a Swahili word that refers to the Kwanzaa principle of collective wealth and responsibility.

LA Brings Social Equity To Marijuana Sellers

December 13, 2017 Thandisizwe Chimurenga, mintpressnews.com , ,
LOS ANGELES – Beginning in January in Los Angeles, individuals who are low-income and/or have had a conviction for a marijuana-related offense will enjoy priority status when it comes to applying for a license to legally sell the herb. Cultivators or manufacturers will also have such status, thanks to the Los Angeles City Council.  On Wednesday the council voted to repeal a four-year-old ban on such businesses in the city, and that repeal is accompanied by what supporters are saying is the most aggressive and progressive “social equity” clause in the nation. In the movement to decriminalize marijuana, attempts to apply “social equity” standards to cannabis have been talked about but have not made much progress.

#WeChoose Equity In Education Campaign

September 29, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Popular Resistance. Launched just after Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss was appointed in February, 2017, the #WeChoose campaign is fighting for equity in education. They write: "We are not fooled by the 'illusion of school choice.' The policies of the last twenty years, driven more by private interests than by concern for our children’s education, are devastating our neighborhoods and our democratic rights. Only by organizing locally and coming together nationally will we build the power we need to change local, state, and federal policy and win back our public schools. School closings are a key issue now because if our communities don’t have schools, we will have little to fight for. But if we only fight against closings, we won’t succeed at building the kind of sustainable school transformation that will carry us forward.

The People’s Congress Of Resistance

August 9, 2017 People's Congress of Resistance, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By the Convenors of the People's Congress of Resistance. We are excited to release the Manifesto of the People's Congress of Resistance! Titled "Society for the Many: A vision for revolution," the manifesto sets out a bold and clear program for people's power, emancipation, equality and a society to meet human needs. In the introductory paragraphs, the People's Congress of Resistance Manifesto explains: "Without a revolutionary vision, change will not take a revolutionary direction. Resistance will remain rudderless, an exercise in activism for its own sake, or it will be co-opted into a vessel for the political elites. A vision for social, economic and political revolution is necessary. We need to know where we want to go. Our vision ties our actions to our goal by showing us what we are mobilizing for. It guides us in coordinating our strategies and tactics. It helps us build collective strength. Our vision tells us how we can win and that we will win."

How To Make City Budgets Racially Just

October 30, 2016 Paulina Phelps, www.yesmagazine.org , , ,
By Paulina Phelps for Yes Magazine. The amount of money spent on hiring sworn law enforcement officers to patrol public schools shot up nearly 40 percent between 1997 and 2009, despite the fact that crime in school has steadily declined for decades. A coalition of civil rights groups, including the NAACP, argues that this policy funnels kids of color into the school-to-prison pipeline. But that debate doesn’t always make it into the process of setting the budget, which is where important decisions, like how much money goes to counselors in schools and how much goes to police, ultimately get made. Budgets are usually determined by elected officials and their advisers, while ordinary residents may only get a chance to comment at a public hearing.

DCTP Launches The Equitable Internet Initiative

September 16, 2016 Staff, www.alliedmedia.org ,
By Staff of Detroit Community Technology Project - The Equitable Internet Initiative will accelerate outreach, training and wireless broadband Internet sharing on the neighborhood level in Detroit. Led by the Detroit Community Technology project of Allied Media Projects, the Equitable Internet Initiative will ensure that more Detroit residents have the ability to leverage online access and digital technology for social and economic development.

Zapatista Solution To Food Sovereignty, Decolonization & Equity

August 22, 2016 Levi Gahman, www.thesolutionsjournal.com , , , ,
By Levi Gahman for The Solutions Journal - One of the biggest threats to food security the world currently faces is neoliberalism. It’s logic, which has become status quo over the past 70 years and valorizes global ‘free market’ capitalism, is made manifest through economic policies that facilitate privatization, deregulation, and cuts to social spending, as well as a discourse that promotes competition, individualism, and self-commodification. Despite rarely being criticized, or even mentioned, by state officials and mainstream media, neoliberal programs and practices continue to give rise to unprecedented levels of poverty, hunger, and suffering.

Fairfax Board Pledges To Weigh ‘Equity’ When Making Decisions

July 13, 2016 Antonio Olivo, www.washingtonpost.com ,
By Antonio Olivo for The Washington Post - Virginia’s largest jurisdiction resolved Tuesday to approach decisions surrounding police, schools and even land-use through a prism of racial and social equity. A resolution unanimously approved by Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors aims to address disparities in the county of 1.1 million residents by allocating more funds in some areas and considering the importance of diversity in hiring and other decisions.
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