Monthly Archives: January 2018

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Tell the DoL: No Tip Stealing Rule


Protect the wages of workers. Take Action Now!

 

$4.6 billion. Billion with a B. That’s how much women who earn tips at work could stand to lose each year if a proposed Department of Labor rule that makes tips the property of employers goes into effect.

Tell the Department of Labor: We Won’t Let You Take Workers’ Tips
Submit your comment to the Trump administration today!

Take Action

This callous and unfair rule would do away with an Obama administration regulation — and longstanding practice — affirming that tips are the property of the employee who earns them. Instead, it would allow employers to take the tips their employees earn and use them as they see fit, as long as they pay their employees the (incredibly low) federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. This rule has the backing of the powerful National Restaurant Association, which is looking to line the pockets of restaurant owners at the expense of the staff who make their businesses profitable.

The Department of Labor and the lobbyists who support this rule are trying to push it through quickly, before we can make our voices heard. Please send your message now saying you oppose this rule!

Women make up two-thirds of tipped workers, and they already face long hours, low wages, and disproportionately high rates of sexual harassment and assault on the job. And this rule would only make them more vulnerable to harassment as they must try to please both customers AND their employers in order to keep their tips.

Instead of making it legal for employers to steal employee tips, the Department of Labor should be encouraging employers who rely on tipped workers for their profits to adopt policies and practices that protect employees from sexual harassment and assault at work. And the agency should promote raising the minimum wage and abolishing the lower tipped minimum cash wage altogether so that all working people — tipped and non-tipped alike — can count on a fair minimum wage.

Please take action before it’s too late to protect the wages of millions of working people!

Thank you for support!
Julie Vogtman
Director of Job Quality and Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

We the Resistance is our fight to protect our rights and freedoms and to defend the most vulnerable among us through powerful collective action. Every conversation you have with a loved one about the issues important to you, every call you make to Congress, every rally you attend is a part of that resistance. Join us — sign on to the We The Resistance manifesto.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Tell Maryland Lawmakers: Give Back Dirty Bail Money ~ Larry Strafford, Progressive Maryland


A petition was started by Progressive Maryland on Organize For to:

Get The Corrupt Bail Industry Out Of Maryland Politics. Contact Campaign Creator

Last Wednesday, members of Progressive Maryland, including myself and other community leaders held a press conference calling out Senator Nathaniel Oaks and other lawmakers for fattening their pockets with thousands of dollars from the bail industry in exchange for blocking bail reform. We are demanding that every elected official who has received money from bail lobbyists, return the money and refuse to sponsor bills that come from the bail industry.

This is a total slap in the face to the people of Maryland, especially our most vulnerable communities. Despite the potentially fatal harm in holding people in jail because they can’t afford bail, many lawmakers are accepting dirty bail money and neglecting their constituents in order to protect the industry’s cash flow. Our legal system is not a game for corporations to collect money every time someone goes to jail. These are our real lives. It’s time that this ends once and for all.

Tell the Maryland General Assembly: Get out of bed with the bail industry! Give back the dirty money.

Money bail is the fuel that fires the system of mass incarceration which seeks to swallow up Black, Brown and poor people whole. When our people are stuck in jail they run the risk of losing their families, homes, jobs and sometimes their lives. This impacts their emotional, mental and physical well-being and causes severe trauma that people have to continue to live with. Meanwhile, elected officials and bail agencies are racking up tens of thousands of dollars in cash off of poor, mostly Black, people who can’t afford their freedom, guaranteeing them a profit no matter the outcome of the case. Just like within almost every other aspect of the criminal justice system, racial disparities run rampant in the assignment of money bail. In Maryland, Black defendants were charged premiums of at least $181 million over five years while defendants of all other races combined were charged $75 million.

Maryland prides itself on being one of the most progressive states in the country and now we’re making them prove it. Get the bail industry out of politics.

Last week, Maryland’s 2018 Gubernatorial annual report was released and so far it’s showing that Lexington National Insurance Company and Fred Frank Bail Bond are the leading contributors to Maryland electeds from the bail industry. In 2012, Lexington National collected over $120 million in premiums from families of people locked up. Some of the legislators who have historically received the largest amounts, Bobby Zirkin and Joseph Vallario just under the Governor Larry Hogan and Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, have yet to file their contributions. It’s likely that they’ll be reporting large donations from bail lobbyists this year mirroring previous years. Zirkin who represents Baltimore County has received nearly $80,000 in donations from dirty bail money since 2001. Both Vallario and Zirkin chair judiciary committees in the house and senate, both have the power to stand up to the bail industry and put an end to their exploitative practices in the communities that they represent. However, with the both of them being major beneficiaries of the bail industry, they’ve chosen profit over the people. They can no longer hide under the guise of being for the people while selling us off to the highest bidder.

Accepting money from an industry that exploits Black and poor families during their most difficult times, causes apathy and distrust of politicians. Money bail keeps our people locked up and desperate to get out, while the industry, lawmakers and law enforcement officials are benefiting, this ends now!

Demand Maryland elected officials stop accepting corrupt bail industry money, now!

Thank you,

Larry Strafford, Executive Director of Progressive Maryland
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

IBM wants to profit off of deporting immigrants ~ Clarise McCants, Color Of Change


reminder
why would she do such a thing? so sad
 Friends,
IBM is planning to work with Trump to create a blatantly racist surveillance program to monitor immigrants’ social media activity.

IBM must make a choice: protect immigrants or support Trump’s Law and Order attack.

TAKE ACTION!

 

Trump has been following through on one of the most dangerous “Law and Order” pieces of his agenda — targeting and criminalizing immigrants at all costs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are planning to create tools that will make it easier to discriminate against and deport immigrants by searching through any social media posts, location tracking and all other manner of digital activity. And they’re recruiting tech companies to help them do this.

In July, IBM Corp attended an information session hosted by immigration enforcement officials to learn about helping develop software tools and programs that promote Trump’s agenda to invade the rights and privacy of immigrants.1 This surveillance program is all part of a white supremacist narrative that paints immigrants as violent and a threat to the U.S., with the ultimate goal to push people out. But if corporations refuse to build the tech Trump needs to carry out his administration’s dangerous attack on immigrants, we can protect thousands of immigrants and their families. In an attempt to make a quick buck, if IBM got this contract, it would be a devastating blow to countless families — affecting their freedom to live their lives.

Trump is piling on more ways to harm immigrant communities. Tell IBM don’t create a racist surveillance program for Trump.

For the past 11 months, the Trump administration has swiftly implemented numerous immigration policies that are clearly meant to discriminate against Black and Brown immigrants. One of Trump’s first actions, when he came to power, was to sign an executive order that punished sanctuary cities and other localities for refusing to comply with immigration officials by withholding federal funding.

And the Trump administration has tried and failed to implement three Muslim Bans that barred immigrants and refugees from Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. Raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in homes and workplaces increased in just the first two months of Trump’s time in office, ICE arrested over 21,000 people.2

In September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) a program that helped protect over 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation. And now the Temporary Protected Status program, which has been in existence for nearly thirty years to protect asylum-seeking refugees from Haiti, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Nicaragua has been eliminated.3 This has led to immigrant communities living in fear and uncertainty.

IBM needs to live up to its promise to protect immigrants.

But IBM is not staying true to its values and words. As a company that supposedly values diversity, inclusion and the contributions of immigrants, IBM’s refusal to step away from Trump’s Extreme Vetting Initiative runs counter to the many pro-immigrant actions they’ve taken. Right after the announcement of DACA ending, the company tweeted a statement of support standing by their “IBM #Dreamers”.4 Their CEO, Ginni Rometty, even flew to Washington D.C. to lobby Congress to save DACA. Yet IBM keeps aligning themselves with Trump. They were one of the companies that ignored pressure to resign from Trump’s Strategic and Policy Advisory Council following the Muslim Ban. They remained on the council despite Trump’s shameful response to the deadly neo-Nazi, white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA.5 IBM only left after the council was disbanded. And now the company wants to lead the way in profiting off a vetting program that would subject immigrants to greater risk of deportation and prevent them from entering the United States. IBM should not call themselves pro-immigrant if they go through with contracting for this program.

This new Extreme Vetting Initiative is part of a long list of surveillance tactics that the Trump administration is using to get rid of any person who they think does not “belong.” From their new “Black Identity Extremist” classification to their efforts to reauthorize Section 702 – a secretive program that allows warrantless surveillance of our emails, texts, and online content – this administration is giving themselves all the tools they need to have a detrimental impact on the daily lives of all of us. No one should have their privacy exposed because of who they are or their country of origin. No one should have to prove they are a “good” immigrant. No one should be spied on. This is not safety, this is not justice.

Sign the petition.

Until justice is real,

Clarise, Rashad, Arisha, Scott, Anay, Enchanta, Malaya, Kristen, Katrese, and the rest of the Color Of Change team

References:

1. “IBM urged to avoid working on ‘extreme vetting’ of U.S. immigrants,” Reuters, 11-16-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/11124?t=9&akid=8208%2E1174326%2ELEf681

2. “On immigration, Trump has plenty to show in 100 days,” CNN, 04-27-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/11178?t=11&akid=8208%2E1174326%2ELEf681

3. “Trump administration to end provisional residency protection for 60,000 Haitians,” Washington Post, 11-21-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/11179?t=13&akid=8208%2E1174326%2ELEf681

4. “IBM on DACA: ‘We Stand By Our Dreamers’,” Fortune, 09-05-2017 http://act.colorofchange.org/go/11125?t=15&akid=8208%2E1174326%2ELEf681

5. “As Trump disbanded advisory groups, this is who was in and who was out,” CNBC News, 08-16-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/11126?t=17&akid=8208%2E1174326%2ELEf681