Chris from South Carolina used to work in an unemployment office. Then he was laid off. Here’s his warning:
You should know that Congress has let the emergency benefits lapse several times in the past few years and always when a break is scheduled for them. It happened last Easter and last Christmas. They don’t care about the unemployed. They take their holiday break and deal with it when they return to Washington.
We can’t assume Congress will renew unemployment in time for the millions who are hanging by a thread before extended benefits expire Dec. 31. That’s why we’re pulling out all the stops. More than 2,000 jobless workers, activists and clergy are on Capitol Hill, right now—demanding a clean and immediate extension of emergency unemployment benefits. Thousands more are in district offices across the country.

As we gather on Capitol Hill and at district offices, activists across the country are flooding Congress with messages.

Add your voice: Help make sure the voices of America’s jobless can’t be ignored by Congress. http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=NNlhbPw0buvN0Kq3T7aq%2F2C84X%2BQ3emC

Diane from Michigan worked in the newspaper industry and is now unemployed. Here’s how she describes her situation:

Every job opening has hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants. It is almost impossible to get a job—especially if you also face age discrimination. Retraining is too costly. Meanwhile, we are hanging on by a thread. No health insurance….My current unemployment benefits are the only thing saving me from the street. I have faced food insecurity for the first time.

We must not let people like Diane be forgotten.

Make Congress hear the stories and see the faces of jobless workers. Contact Congress now and demand an immediate, clean extension of emergency unemployment benefits.

Momentum is building—but we can’t take the passage of emergency unemployment aid for granted.

Obstructionists like House Speaker John Boehner—who has nearly absolute control over what comes up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives—continue to block a clean, immediate extension of emergency jobless aid. There’s no excuse for that. Especially when our economy is so bad and budget cuts in our communities are so dire.

Chris, a now unemployed unemployment office worker, asks a powerful question: “Don’t they realize they work for us?”

Tell Congress: “You work for us. Renew emergency unemployment aid now.”

Will obstructionists like Speaker Boehner really let benefits lapse yet again, take a vacation, come back and play partisan games?

Will the obstructionists let families get thrown out of their homes? Will they force kids to go hungry to extract cuts and concessions that hurt our most vulnerable people?

Send a clear message now: “No help for the jobless? No vacation for Congress!”

Thank you for all the work you do.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. Our unemployment stories website has been covered by the media in publications lawmakers read while in Washington, D.C., including The Washington Post and The Hill—plus papers they read at home.

But we need your help to make sure every lawmaker feels the heat and sees these stories. Take action now.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Starbucks general counsel retires to work on Obama campaign …by Melissa Allison

12/13/2011 Nativegrl77

Starbucks general counsel retires to work on Obama campaign

Paula Boggs leaving Starbucks.

By Melissa Allison

Seattle Times business reporter

Starbucks general counsel and secretary Paula Boggs will retire April 2 to join President Obama’s re-election campaign. She has been at the coffee company since 2002.

Boggs will be based in Seattle and Santa Fe and work for the campaign in communities across the country.

In 2010, Obama appointed Boggs to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which has worked on community-developed solutions to youth development, education and employment.

Boggs is well-known at Starbucks headquarters for her singing and songwriting. She is a voting member for the Grammy’s and serves on the advisory board for KEXP.

Her legal career began in 1984 when she was a U.S. Army officer assigned to the Pentagon. She was a staff attorney for the White House before leaving the service in 1988, after which she served as assistant U.S. attorney in the Western district of Washington prosecuting fraud and regulatory crimes.

Boggs was a partner at Preston Gates & Ellis in Seattle from 1995 to 1997, working as a trial lawyer specializing in corporate civil litigation.

She was an executive at Dell Computer from 1997 to 2002

STARBUCKS

Paula Boggs

KEVIN P. CASEY / BLOOMBERG, 2010 … Paula Boggs, left, Starbucks general counsel and secretary of Starbucks, left, and Howard Schultz, chief executive officer, make a presentation at the 2010 annual shareholder meeting.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @AllisonSeattle.

~ Culture & History

The Untold Story … Horne of Africa

12/13/2011 Nativegrl77

http://youtu.be/ssaqOwWeh9c

The recent images of men, women and children starving in the Horn of Africa tell a painful story of famine and suffering. How does a nation recover from a devastating food crisis? To find out, Chip Duncan and Salim Amin returned to a Ethiopia, to a place where famine caused a massive death toll over 25 years ago. What they discovered was surprising and hopeful. In partnership with One, they created a documentary showing the contrast between 1984 and present-day Tigray. Read their words below, view a preview and watch their powerful short film. << click on link for VIDEO

In Somalia, innocent people are dying needless deaths due to a famine driven by politics and war. Those who are dying need our help and our voice.

Drought is a challenge faced by people around the world. Climate change is now making droughts more common and less predictable. But drought shouldn’t equal famine. Famine is the outcome of poor infrastructure, corrupt governments and warring factions who choose to use food as a weapon.

During our recent work in Ethiopia, we had a chance to revisit the site of the 1984 famine. Our film uses footage and stills from that famine to remind us of the suffering and of its causes. Our story also chronicles the policies and infrastructure put in place during the last two decades to build sustainable agriculture. Water retention systems, irrigation, improved transportation systems, terraced farming, training programs, improved seeds and fertilizers – this is the new legacy in Tigray Province. It’s a story worth sharing so people everywhere can promote small scale agriculture while motivating governments to make similar investments in the future.

Chip Duncan
Director, “The Untold Story”

I made a journey following the footsteps of my father from 25 years ago. When Mohamed Amin made that journey a quarter of a century ago, he never imagined it was one that would change his life forever. He had covered every major story in Africa over four decades, but nothing prepared him for what he saw in Korem in October 1984.

A famine of biblical proportions, with more than 5 million people on the verge of starvation. A famine that was, to a large extent, man-made. The ruler of Ethiopia at the time, Colonel Haile Mariam Mengistu, was using the famine as a tool to suppress the rebel movement that was rising against his brutal regime from the north of the country. He didn’t want the world to know this famine existed.

The pictures that my father shot on the plains of Korem changed his life and changed the world. They prompted the greatest single act of charity of the 20th century and saved the lives of millions of Ethiopians. After this story, he changed the way he looked at news coverage. He cared for the first time in his life and did everything he could to keep the story in the headlines. Those images were amongst the most powerful and iconic images in television history.

I was expecting to see Korem still reeling from the effects of that massive famine. It takes generations to repair that kind of damage, but I was in for a shock. I went in with the best TV production team I had ever worked with, and what we saw stunned us all! A massive drought is taking hold of the Horn of Africa once again, but Korem and Tigray Province is an oasis of crops. Irrigation schemes that have been put in place over the last decade. There’s also a new awareness of the types of crops to grow and how to market and sell them for the best prices; and new resilient seeds have all transformed a community from being “takers” to being “providers”.

The farmers of Tigray Province have proved that drought doesn’t have to equal famine, and smart aid can work.

Salim Amin
Chairman Camerapix/A24 Media

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Millionaires Made A Video, A Message To Jonah, And A Very Big Number

12/13/2011 Nativegrl77

Hello! Here are the three hottest progressive videos and graphics that we found on the web today, December 08, 2011.

Some Millionaires Made A Video And This Is What They Said

by TheAgendaProjecton Jun 6, 2011

Ten year ago, Republicans made a mistake. They gave tax cuts to millionaires. They decided our country needed less money and millionaires needed more.

Now our country doesn’t have the money we need to build an economy that will work for all of us.

We need better roads to transport our products; faster internet for our technology companies; and more research at universities to spark our innovation.

Taking money from our future and giving it to millionaires is un-American.

Put America ahead of politics: END TAX CUTS FOR INCOMES OVER A MILLION DOLLARS.

ACT: Sign the petition supporting the Patriotic Millionaires as they demand higher taxes then call Boehner‘s office at (202) 225-6205 (PatrioticMillionaires.org)

JOIN: Friends of Patriotic Millionaires on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Patriotic-Millionaires/108886172517978)

A Powerful Response To Jonah’s Extremely Viral Video