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Weekly Address: America’s Resurgence Is Real

12/20/2014 Nativegrl77

Weekly Address: America’s Resurgence Is RealIn this week’s address, the President reflected on the significant progress made by this country in 2014, and in the nearly six years since he took office.

This past year has been the strongest for job growth since the 1990s, contributing to the nearly 11 million jobs added by our businesses over a 57-month streak. America is leading the rest of the world, in containing the spread of Ebola, degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL, and addressing the threat posed by climate change. And earlier this week, the President announced the most significant changes to our policy towards Cuba in over 50 years.

America’s resurgence is real, and the President expressed his commitment to working with Congress in the coming year to make sure Americans feel the benefits.

Watch the President’s Weekly Address now.

Top Stories

A Look Back at 2014As 2014 winds down, President Obama stopped by the press briefing room in the White House yesterday to offer his thoughts on what the past year has meant for the country.

“I said that 2014 would be a year of action and would be a breakthrough year for America,” he said. “And it has been.”

If you missed the President’s news conference, check it out here:

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Charting a New Course on Cuba

The United States and Cuba are separated by no more than 90 miles of water, but an ideological and economic barrier has hardened between our two countries for the past 50 years. On Wednesday, however, President Obama announced historic new steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba.

“Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future — for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world,” he said.

Take a deep-dive into the President’s historic actions at WhiteHouse.gov/Cuba-policy.

On Monday, the President traveled to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey to offer his thanks to the U.S. military members and families stationed there and across the world for their service to our country.

“The message I’m here to deliver on behalf of the American people is very simple,” he said. “It’s just to say thank you.”

The President also marked an important milestone: After more than 13 years, we are finally bringing a responsible end to America’s war in Afghanistan.

When the President took office, we had nearly 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of this month, we’ll have fewer than 15,000 in both countries. Over the course of six years, we have brought home 90 percent of our troops. And this month, Afghans will take full responsibility for their security.

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A New course for Cuba

12/19/2014 Nativegrl77

Charting a New Course on Cuba

The United States and Cuba are separated by 90 miles of water, but are brought together through shared relationships and the desire to promote a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba.

Yesterday, President Obama spoke on our actions to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba, which will engage and empower the Cuban people:

Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future — for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world.

Watch the President’s full remarks on Cuba and get the details on these historic new actions.

Our Uninsured Rate Is Near Historic Lows

With this year’s dramatic decline in the share of Americans without health insurance, the nation’s uninsured rate is now at or near the lowest level recorded across five decades of data.

We’ve koshered the kitchen and set up the menorah. And yesterday, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed hundreds of guests here at the White House for the second night of Hanukkah.

This holiday season, in honor of our service members, veterans, and their families, the Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden dedicated five trees at the Naval Observatory Residence representing each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Our daughter was hit and killed by a car

12/19/2014 Nativegrl77

Eric Schneiderman: Justice for Allison Liao

Hsi-Pei Liao
Fresh Meadows, New York

Sign Hsi-Pei’s petition

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Why We #StandWithPeggy

12/19/2014 Nativegrl77

A Better Balance The Work and Family Legal Center

We Stood with Peggy Young at the Supreme Court to Fight Pregnancy Discrimination

Rally at the Supreme Court in Support of Peggy Young

Dear friend,

Earlier this week, Peggy Young’s pregnancy discrimination case came before the Supreme Court. Peggy was forced off her job while pregnant, losing income and her health benefits in the process. Women should not have to choose between their jobs and the health of their pregnancies. We stood with Peggy inside the court room, at the rally on the steps outside of the Supreme Court and online. Thank you for taking the time to show your support, so many of you helped us to show solidarity with Peggy and all pregnant workers that #StandWithPeggy peaked at 2,300 tweets per hour on Wednesday!

ABB Co-President Dina Bakst was inside the court for the arguments. You can read her Op-Ed, Supreme Court Must Make Clear That Pregnancy Discrimination Is Unjust co-authored with MomsRising here.

The rally emceed by ABB’s Southern Office Director Elizabeth Gedmark was a complete success! More than 200 advocates and supporters came together for the event, enthusiastically chanting and carrying signs despite the wintery weather. Stories were shared of other pregnant workers, who were pushed out of their jobs, like ABB Client Officer Lyndi Trischler. You can read her story here.

See more photos from the rally

ABB’s Senior Staff Attorney Phoebe Taubman was on To The Point with Warren Olney. If you missed this informative radio program you can listen to it here.

Thank you for all of your support!

The A Better Balance Team,

Sherry, Dina, Phoebe, Jared, Elizabeth, Risha, Morenike, Rachel, Jake, Molly & Lynn

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Don’t miss the final story in our Product of Mexico series: Children work the fields

12/19/2014 Nativegrl77

Dear Readers:Meet Alejandrina. She was 11 when Los Angeles Times journalists first began reporting her story. Alejandrina, a little girl who likes lip gloss and longs to go to back to school, works 14 hours a day picking chile peppers for a farm that supplies a U.S. distributor.

Mexican law requires workers to be at least 15, but Alejandrina is among an estimated 100,000 children younger than that who work the fields. As she told The Times: “I work because we don’t have any money and we need money to eat things.”

Times reporter Richard Marosi and photographer Don Bartletti tracked Alejandrina’s nomadic existence for a year. Read her story, which is also the story of so many others: Children harvest crops and sacrifice dreams in Mexico’s fields

This marks the fourth and final piece in our Product of Mexico series, an investigation into conditions on Mexican farms that supply Americans with much of our tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other produce.

We’ve told readers about unbearable conditions at labor camps and taken them into Bioparques, a supplier to Wal-Mart and one of Mexico’s biggest tomato exporters, where Mexican officials found workers held captive. We’ve examined company stores, where a lack of price tags and big mark-ups leave many farmworkers trapped in a cycle of debt.

I want to thank all of you for reading this important series and sharing it with others. Here’s a sneak peek at a video coming Monday that features Marosi and Bartletti talking about the reporting behind this eye-opening series.

Davan Maharaj, Editor

P.S. We’ve created some extra content available only to our subscribers. Bartletti, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist whose interest in photography dates back to his service in Vietnam, has covered Mexico for decades. He shares some of his best photos and memories of what it took to capture the images.