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Walmart Free: Education Forum

09/14/2012 Nativegrl77

On September 20th, join the Black Institute in educating New Yorker’sabout Walmart’s lies and building support for our local Walmart FreeNYC Campaign at the “No More Lies” Forum.

Walmart’s urban strategy is to buy and bully its way into our cities with a massive million-dollar ad campaign making promises to communities and associates. Community members will be sharing the story of broken promises in cities across the country where Walmart is expanding and what organizing efforts are happening to protect workers and communities in our cities.

This forum is an opportunity for all of us – community, faith,labor, students, low wage workers, elected officials and every day NewYorkers to learn about Walmart’s broken promises in urban markets and to engage in the NYC local campaign. Click for More Info

The Black Institute http://www.theblackinstitute.org/

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Think Voter ID is Bad? Meet the Poll-Watchers

09/14/2012 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

by Jessica Pieklo

September 13, 2012
8:00 am

Think Voter ID is Bad? Meet the Poll-Watchers

The Republican fight against voter rights has garnered the lions share of press attention, but as The Nation reports, the fight for voting rights extends well beyond the fight over Voter ID and includes the fight over who gets to raise the question over who is eligible to vote.

In at least twenty-four states any random person is authorized, if they feel so inclined, to question individual voters and ask them to “prove” their eligibility to vote. As restrictive and complicated Voter ID laws have passed state-by-state, conservative groups have realized there’s good leveraging in voter registration challenges and poll watcher trainings.

Tea Party loyalists have created True the Vote, an advocacy group which pushes Voter ID laws and training “patriots” to protect the polls. But as a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, “Voter Challengers” spells out, these groups rely on American’s historical amnesia when it comes to race in order to promote their activities. Poll-watching can’t be divorced from its racially motivated roots, and groups like True the Vote understand that, even if they won’t acknowledge it.

“This history of discriminatory voter challenges casts doubt on the fraud-prevention arguments traditionally used to justify these laws,” writes Nicolas Riley, author of the Brennan Center report.

As it stands, thirty-nine states allow private citizens to challenge voters at the polls. According to the Brennan study, election officials in those states are “under immense time pressure to decide challenges quickly in order to avoid voting delays.” True the Vote is aware of this, but they put it differently, saying at a recent poll watcher training that election officials are “under immense pressure to do the wrong thing”—namely let undocumented immigrants vote, and let people vote multiple times.

As detailed in The Nation, even in 2012 voting restrictions are intimately tied to our collective history of racial segregation and discrimination.

In those states, people can make up a reason to challenge a voter’s rights without any evidence backing them up, and do so with impunity. It’s the same as when people drum up charges of voter fraud to pass voter ID bills and go unpunished when it’s revealed that no such fraud exists. You can’t fabricate a police report by saying you were mugged if you weren’t; you can’t file a false claim saying you lost possessions in a disaster. In both cases, you face jail and fines for bearing false witness, but not if you fabricate voter fraud or voter ineligibility in many states.

The Brennan report points out that South Carolina and Virginia allow people to challenge voters even if it’s nothing but a whim. Consider that both South Carolina and Virginia both have passed voter ID laws. In South Carolina, that law is currently being challenged in a federal court, where it was discovered that the law’s author Representative Alan Clemmons made racist comments about black voters in an e-mail while discussing how to pass the legislation.

Both states have strong True the Vote connections. In South Carolina, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Cibby Krell, is a True the Vote volunteer with the Spartanburg Tea Party. In Virginia, the Virginia Voters Alliance is a group that trains Tea Party groups in challenging voters while pressuring Virginia election officials to engage in reckless purging processes.

Like other forms of evolved and modern discrimination, poll watching has become more sophisticated. But that doesn’t make it any less toxic to our democracy.

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Lafcadio Cortesi, Rainforest Action Network

09/14/2012 Nativegrl77

Chip in to help hold paper villain Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) accountable.

Here are RAN, we are engaged in one of our largest campaigns yet in an emergency effort to save Indonesia‘s imperiled forests. We’re working in the U.S., Japan, and Indonesia to create the market leverage necessary to transform the corporate practices of APP, the largest paper company in Indonesia. And our campaign is working: major U.S. and European customers like Staples, Random House, Levi’s, and Gucci have stopped buying paper from controversial sources like APP.

Now is the perfect time to put more market pressure on APP, and that is directly where your support will go.
Make a tax-deductible donation to the Rainforest Action Network today.

Canadian donors, please click here.

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CPS states they Offered a Fair and Reasonable Deal to CTU to Avoid a Strike

09/14/2012 Nativegrl77

Chicago Teachers Strike For The First Time in 25 Years

Photo from Care2

Visit cps.edu/childrenfirst or call 311 if you have no alternative childcare

From the CPS website : Posted September 9, 2012

The Chicago Board of Education is Offering the Chicago Teachers Union a Fair and Reasonable Proposal

to Set the Stage for a Deal and Avoid a Strike:

Increases in Pay: 16 percent average salary increase equaling $320 million over the next four years, including COLA (3% year 1; 2% years 2,3,4) lanes and modified step increases that both reward experience and provides better incentives for mid-career teachers to help keep them serving in the Chicago Public School system.

New Opportunities and Security for Laid Off Teachers:

Teachers displaced due to school closings: will receive a job at a school receiving their students if there is a vacancy; placed in a reassigned teacher pool for five months or may elect to receive a three-month lump sum severance; or placed in a Quality Teacher Force Pool in which teachers who apply for positions shall be entitled to an interview and explanation if not hired.
Teachers displaced due to turnarounds or phase outs: placed in a reassigned teacher pool for five months or may elect three-month lump sum severance.
Teachers displaced for other reasons: shall have recall rights for one year for the same unit and position and will be offered interim assignment in substitute teacher pool.

Joint Implementation of Teacher Evaluations with Flexibility When Needed: The Board has proposed to work jointly with CTU to fully implement REACH Students and maintain performance standards and student growth requirements. This proposal will also allow CPS and CTU to study REACH’s implementation jointly and make adjustments as needed.

New Short-Term Disability Policy, Including First-Ever Paid Maternity Leave: While the banking of sick days will end, the Board will offer short-term disability to all CTU members, including paid-maternity leave. Employees will no longer need to use sick days to take time off needed for the birth of a child – nor will they need to bank the number of sick days needed before starting their family planning. Employees who have a short-term illness will not have to use sick days in order to take time needed to get well; short-term disability coverage will cover their needs and provide pay while recovering. The proposal will protect accrued sick-day accumulation for teachers with over 15 years of service in the form of pension service credits.

CPS to Cover Part of Employee Pension Contribution: The Board has also offered to continue picking up 7% each employee’s 9% pension contribution.

Freeze on Health Care Contributions for Most Plans: The Board is calling for a modification to the health care plan funding that will freeze all employee health care contributions for single and couple plans with a small increase in family contributions of no more than $20 a pay period in addition to a small increase in emergency room co-pays. 67 percent of all CTU members will not see a change to their healthcare.

Increased Opportunity for Promotion: The Board proposes that CPS and CTU collaborate and work together to increase promotion opportunities and identify differentiated compensation models that have worked in other places.

Improved Health and Living: Like the nearly 40,000 City employees who have already signed up for the Wellness program, the Board is asking teachers to join the program at no cost. Teachers can opt-out of Wellness, and pay a small premium differential.

Improved Monitoring of Class Size Issues: The Board remains committed to protecting and maintaining current class sizes, but will establish a panel and joint supervisory committee with the CTU to monitor and address any class size issues that may arise.

Creation of a New CTU/CPS Commission to Find Fair Pension Funding Solution: The Board pledges to partner with the CTU through the formation of a Legislative Commission to find the right solutions for pension reform and draft legislation that ensures equitable pension funding.

A Better, Fuller Calendar: Maintain a calendar with 180 student attendance days, and 190 teacher workdays, including 10 Professional Development days.

A Full School Day: The newly extended Elementary school day will continue to be 7 hours, while high school days will now be 7.25 hours, a decrease from 7.5 hours. In addition, high school teachers will be limited to teaching only five classes.

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Nancy Keenan President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

09/14/2012 Nativegrl77

This past weekend, Mitt Romney said that he wants the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade – the decision that recognized a woman’s constitutionally guaranteed right to choose.¹

And you know what? He’s trying to make his position sound reasonable so that voters won’t notice.

We’re not about to let him get away with that!

We created this graphic to catch people’s attention – but I need your help to get it in front of as many people as possible.

Share this graphic on Facebook so that people know about Mitt’s plan to pack the Supreme Court with justices who will ban abortion.

When Romney appeared on “Meet the Press” this past weekend, he tried to sound reasonable by saying that people can disagree on the issue of abortion. But in the next breath he told viewers:

“Well, I don’t actually make the decision the Supreme Court makes and so they’ll have to make their own decision…. I hope to appoint justices for the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.”

Let’s be clear: Mitt Romney wants to outlaw abortion.

I think that voters need to know where Romney stands – and that he’s ready to pack the Supreme Court with justices who will take away women’s freedom and privacy.

Tell your friends about Romney’s plan to take over the Supreme Court so that it can outlaw abortion. Share this graphic on your Facebook wall.

Thanks for standing up for women time and again.

My best,