Reform

No One Should Have To Bargain For Health Care

September 26, 2019 By Negin Owliaei, Otherwords.org Create! Class Struggle, Health Care, New Economy, Reform, Strikes

Nearly 50,000 members of the United Auto Workers began striking earlier this month, demanding that General Motors pay them their fair share of the billions in profits the company raked in last year. The response from General Motors was shocking. The automaker, which accepted billions in government bailouts during the last recession, cut off its payment of insurance premiums for the striking workers. As the news broke, former Vice President Joe Biden was at an AFL-CIO event, campaigning against a single-payer Medicare for All plan that would replace employer-provided insurance.

The Global Climate Strike Is Just The Beginning

September 25, 2019 Brent Patterson, Rabble.ca Resist! Climate Change, Climate Justice, Green New Deal, Reform

The global climate strike wasn't intended to "amaze" so-called leaders about "the kids" and allow them to make generic statements about climate change to conceal their pro-fossil fuel industry policies and actions. The Canadian environment minister whose government bought an 890,000-barrel-per-day tar sands pipeline patronizingly tweeted, "The kids demanding climate action in New York, across Canada, and around the world have it right -- It is about their future." The prime minister retweeted a local Liberal MP's tweet, "Climate change affects us all. But nobody will be affected more than our youth.

25 Ways The Canadian Health Care System Is Better Than Obamacare For The 2020 Elections

September 20, 2019 By Ralph Nader, Nader.org Educate! 2020 Elections, Canada, Health Care, Reform

Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare, and although it has improved access to healthcare for some, tens of millions of Americans still cannot afford basic medical care for their family. No healthcare system is without problems but Canadian-style single-payer — full Medicare for all — is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal for all basic and emergency medical and hospital services. In the mid-1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!

Federal Court Blocks South Dakota Laws Suppressing Pipeline Protests

September 20, 2019 Staff, Aclu.org Resist! Courts, Pipelines, Protests, Reform, South Dakota

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A federal court today blocked enforcement of the unconstitutional provisions of several South Dakota laws, including the recently-enacted “Riot Boosting” Act, that threaten activists who encourage or organize protests, particularly protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, with fines, civil liabilities, and/or criminal penalties of up to 25 years in prison. In granting plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Lawrence L. Piersol wrote: “Imagine that if these riot boosting statutes were applied to the protests that took place in Birmingham, Alabama, what might be the result?

To Make Vaping Safer, Legalize Cannabis

September 19, 2019 By Paul Armentano, Otherwords.org Create! Health Care, Marijuana Legalization, Reform

The Trump administration is sounding the alarm against vaping products as health officials scramble to determine why some consumers are suddenly becoming sick from them. But while the administration’s pending bans on flavored e-cigarettes will no doubt influence the legal nicotine marketplace, they will have virtually no impact on the counterfeit cannabis vaping products associated with the recent outbreak of serious lung illnesses. Why? Because nicotine is a federally regulated product, and several licensed large-scale corporations operate in this space.

RECAP: Sovereignty And Native Women’s Safety At US Capitol

September 18, 2019 Acee Agoyo, Indianz.com Resist! Indigenous Women, Reform, Sexism, Violence against Women

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Braving brutal temperatures and high humidity, Native women rallied at the U.S. Capitol last week to honor survivors of violence and to push for renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.The 2013 version of VAWA included landmark provisions that recognize the inherent sovereignty of tribes to arrest, prosecute and sentence non-Indians who abuse their partners. The law was written to address high rates of victimization of Native women, accounting for statistics which show that most offenders are of another race.

Texas Charges Oil Port Protesters Under New Fossil Fuel Protection Law

September 18, 2019 BY Nicholas Kusnertz, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Fossil Fuels, Oil, Protests, Reform, Repression, Texas

A group of activists who shut down one of the nation's largest oil ports by hanging off a bridge over the Houston Ship Channel have been charged under a new Texas law that imposes harsh penalties for disrupting the operations of fossil fuel infrastructure. The charges could present the first test for a wave of similar state laws that have been enacted around the country over the past three years in response to high-profile protests against pipelines and other energy projects.

Federal Judge Rebukes Houston DA For Using The Willie Horton Strategy

September 13, 2019 Daniel Nichanian, Appealpolitics.org Create! Reform, Repression, Texas

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal gave preliminary approval last week to a settlement that restructures the bail system and provides for the pretrial release of most people charged with misdemeanors in Texas’s Harris County, the nation’s third most populous county and home of Houston. And she did it over the objections of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg. Rosenthal offered a stern rebuke of Ogg’s bid to stop the settlement by reviving the Willie Horton strategy, so named because of an ad that George Bush’s allies ran during the 1988 presidential campaign to portray Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime.

Victory! California’s Legislature Pulls AT&T And Comcast Bill That Protected Their Monopolies

September 12, 2019 Ernesto Falcon, Eff.org Educate! California, Reform, Telecommunications

AT&T and Comcast lobbyists fought hard this year to pass A.B. 1366, a bill that would have protected their broadband monopolies. Thanks to your support, that bill will not move forward this year. The California legislature in 2012 decided to eliminate the authority of its own telecom regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) through the end of 2019—on the promise that such a move would produce an affordable, widely available, high-speed broadband network.

They Survived Solitary Confinement. Now They’re Fighting To End It.

September 12, 2019 By Victoria Law, Truthout.org Create! Prisons, Reform, Solitary Confinement

For nine and a half months, Lydia Thornton was locked into her cell nearly 24 hours a day. All of her meals were slid through a slot in the cell’s steel door. She was allowed outside to shower three times each week. Through cinderblock walls, she could hear women in adjoining cells screaming for hours on end. Sometimes they threatened to kill themselves, a threat often followed by an eerie silence. This was administrative segregation, or “ad seg,” in New Jersey’s prison system. Ad seg is one of the many official terms for solitary confinement; other systems call it punitive segregation, special housing units and keeplock.

Benefits Of Investing In Climate Adaptation Far Outweigh Costs, Commission Says

September 11, 2019 Nicholas Kusnetz, Insideclimatenews.org Create! Climate Change, Investment, Reform

Images of devastating storm damage and droughts around the world this year have been drawing attention to the risks of global warming, particularly to the world's poorest people. Cutting emissions is critical to minimizing those risks, but a new report argues that the world needs to devote an equally urgent effort to adapting to the changes that are sure to come. The report, released Tuesday by the Global Commission on Adaptation, argues that a drastic increase in investing in adaptation measures, such as early warning systems and resilient infrastructure...

What Really Happened In Zimbabwe

September 10, 2019 By David Adams, Decade-culture-of-peace.org Educate! Africa, History, Land, Media, Propaganda, Reform, Zimbabwe

At one point they describe his seizure of white-owned farms. “By 1998, although Mr. Mugabe had promised new land for 162,000 black families, only 71,000 white households had been resettled. Then came a dramatic turn. Starting around 2000, Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants sent squads of young men to invade hundreds of white-owned farms and chase away their owners. The campaign took a huge toll. Over two years, nearly all of the country’s white-owned land had been redistributed . . . The violent agricultural revolution had come with a heavy price.

The VA As Workers’ Comp: Why Socialized Medicine For Veterans Is Worth Defending

September 9, 2019 By Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, Counterpunch.org Resist! Health Care, Reform, Veterans

Think of America’s forever wars as a funnel between the largest and second largest federal government departments. Entering at the top of the funnel, via the Department of Defense (DOD), are poor and working-class men and women who enlist in the military, often to escape difficult economic circumstances. After being sent abroad, hundreds of thousands end up in a world of hurt and further financial distress. Their later need for disability benefits or health care—“workers’ compensation” as it’s called in the civilian world—is met, at the other end of the funnel, by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

New York Took On The Real Estate Industry And Won. Illinois Could Be Next.

September 9, 2019 Max Budovitch, Inthesetimes.com Create! Affordable Housing, Illinois, New York (NY), Reform, Rent

On June 14, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law new housing legislation that guarantees the “strongest tenant protections in history,” extending rent regulation from New York City and adjacent counties to the entire state, finally closing rent control loopholes and eliminating the “vacancy bonus” that allowed landlords to hike rents once tenants moved out. Some form of rent regulation has been in place in New York City for nearly a century. But the laws that were meant to keep housing affordable and tenants in place by limiting rent increases had been run through with loopholes because they had to be re-legislated...

How Black Activists Sought Healthcare Reform: A New Documentary

September 7, 2019 Christopher Willoughby, Aaihs.org Educate! Black Working Class, Health Care, History, Reform

“The American Medical Association has never been a friend to us [African Americans],” explained the late Chicago physician Dr. Donald L. Chatman. Referring to the history of racial inequality in healthcare, Dr. Chatman revealed the difficulty of forcing the historically white-lead medical establishment in the United States to provide African Americans with equal access to healthcare. A chapter of this history of racial inequality in healthcare and its opposition is the subject of the recent PBS documentary, entitled Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution (narrated by activist and actor Danny Glover).

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources