August 2009

When security officers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art rallied against a recent roll-back of their $0.25/hr raise, they never guessed that their efforts would become an example in the nationwide debate over the Employee Free Choice Act.  That's what happened after an article by Sarah Jaffe appeared on the website of The Nation Magazine.

The guards hope that the arrival of the museum's new director, Timothy Rub, will prompt workplace improvements.  Thus far, they have they tried to communicate with Mr. Rub via written letters and phone calls.  Their requests remain unanswered, so the guards decided to translate their message into a language sympathetic to the ears of the museum leaders: art.  Today, the film entitled "Welcoming Change: A Message To Timothy Rub," directed by David Stuart Randle from local media organization Media Mobilizing Project, will be released on the internet and will premier on screen at 4205 Chestnut St at 6:30 pm.  The film will also be mailed to 100 local churches.

The security guards, with the help of Philadelphia JwJ, began organizing in 2007 in hopes of joining a labor union.  After they began their organizing drive the activists were soon surprised to find out that they had few options in the union world. 

Today, Speed Matters released the third annual report on Internet Speeds in America - and U.S. connection speeds have not improved significantly in the past year. The results of the report are based on the last-mile connection speed of over 413,000 Internet users who took the online test between May 2008 and May 2009.

The state of broadband adoption and deployment in the United States is poor, according to the report:

Only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top-ranked countries - South Korea, Japan and Sweden. 18 percent do not even meet the FCC definition for current-generation broadband: an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.

Not only does the United States rank 15th in the industrialized world in Internet speed, it is virtually the only industrialized country without a national high-speed Internet policy.  CWA says the government invests relatively less on telecommunications than most other major countries. Consumers are charged more for slower speeds, and current high-speed networks don’t even reach millions of American households. 

In August of 2008, the Central Indiana Jobs with Justice chapter had a critical decision to make:  whether or not to seemingly abandon our long time health care reform partners and H.R. 676 and join the national Health Care for America Now Campaign (HCAN), and position ourselves to become part of the largest coalition ever to take on health care reform.   But a secondary question lingered too:  Could Central Indiana JwJ position itself to become the largest social justice coalition in Indiana?

This decision came about at an interesting time, before the election that turned Indiana "blue" for the first time since 1964.  With a limited number of progressive groups in the state, and a history scattered with part-time staff support, the organization decided to join HCAN and launched a state-wide campaign for health care reform.

Re-posted from Berea College.  By Monica Leslie.

Berea College and the Kentucky Social Forum (KSF) are making strides toward “growing the movement" that may help shape Kentucky’s future.

View the photo gallery.

The Kentucky Social Forum, held at Berea College the weekend of July 31 to August 2, is the first statewide social forum to be held in the United States. The purpose of the forum was to build strong relationships among those who work to serve the diverse needs of Kentuckians within the state. The forum, organized by Attica Scott, the Coordinator of Kentucky Jobs with Justice in Louisville, marked the first time in United States history a initiative of this nature has been made to collaboratively create a statewide agenda that will urge human rights to become a priority in future national and State legislation. The forum addressed a variety of issues that affect the Commonwealth, including health care costs and energy.

The debate over the Employee Free Choice Act is going to heat up in the next few weeks. In Philadelphia, there is an effort underway that stands out as an example of why we need to pass this critical labor law reform.