Pelosi said she hopes decision-makers on both sides of the debate over the wall at the Southern border can agree on funding for key needs in Latin America as well as the U.S.: food and medical care for people crossing the border, assistance for the countries from which they are fleeing and additional federal judges to adjudicate their cases.

We work multiple jobs. We live paycheck to paycheck. We skip meals to save money. We don’t have health care. We sink deeper into student loan, credit card and medical debt. We spend more than two hours on public transportation to work a part-time shift. We ignore pain shooting through our backs, joints, knees, necks, minds....

We are one cracked radiator or rent increase from catastrophe. Even with the $15-per-hour “raise,” we live in poverty (my food stamps were cut from $190 to $43 per month). And for those of us who do get full-time hours, we all know that $15 is not a living wage in the Portland metro area when the cost of housing, food, transportation, etc., is skyrocketing.

Contrast this with the fact that Oregon has given or promised Amazon more in corporate welfare than any other state in the country, according to an October 2017 report.

Each week seems to bring more reports of us, Amazon workers, about organizing unions, boycotts and strikes all over this country and the world. In the 1930s, socialists and working-class people unionized the auto industry, raising the standard of living directly for hundreds of thousands of union households and indirectly by tipping the balance of power away from the Bezos class and toward workers.

It’s time to unionize the auto industry of our generation. It’s time to unionize Amazon.

We work multiple jobs. We live paycheck to paycheck. We skip meals to save money. We don’t have health care. We sink deeper into student loan, credit card and medical debt. We spend more than two hours on public transportation to work a part-time shift. We ignore pain shooting through our backs, joints, knees, necks, minds....

We are one cracked radiator or rent increase from catastrophe. Even with the $15-per-hour “raise,” we live in poverty (my food stamps were cut from $190 to $43 per month). And for those of us who do get full-time hours, we all know that $15 is not a living wage in the Portland metro area when the cost of housing, food, transportation, etc., is skyrocketing.

Contrast this with the fact that Oregon has given or promised Amazon more in corporate welfare than any other state in the country, according to an October 2017 report.

Each week seems to bring more reports of us, Amazon workers, about organizing unions, boycotts and strikes all over this country and the world. In the 1930s, socialists and working-class people unionized the auto industry, raising the standard of living directly for hundreds of thousands of union households and indirectly by tipping the balance of power away from the Bezos class and toward workers.

It’s time to unionize the auto industry of our generation. It’s time to unionize Amazon.

President Donald Trump, Wisconsin's former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) spent a lot of time at press events and photo-ops last year touting the 13,000 manufacturing jobs Foxconn was supposedly going to create in the U.S., but—as with many of his job claims—the president's soaring promises are looking increasingly hollow.

"Trump bragged about his deal with Foxconn to bring jobs to Wisconsin. So far 178 people were hired—but the company is on track to score over $4 billion in incentives.
That's $22M per job. #WhatADeal."
—Swing Left

As Reuters reported on Wednesday, the Taiwanese tech firm—which Walker lured to Wisconsin with over $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies—is now saying "it intends to hire mostly engineers and researchers rather than the manufacturing workforce the project originally promised."
In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Louis Woo, a special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, said the company is completely walking back its plan to build $10 billion factory in Wisconsin.

In a move progressives celebrated as an essential step toward ensuring that no one retires into poverty, over 200 House Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation that would protect and significantly expand Social Security benefits by subjecting the earnings of wealthy Americans to the program's payroll tax.


Additionally, the Democratic bill would prevent Social Security benefits from eroding over time by more accurately adjusting them to rising costs of living.

One of the points in Ocasio-Cortez’s plan is calling for the protection of Indigenous nations and communities.
Indigenous people have been on the front lines of extractive policies in the U.S. and Canada, while also being frontline resisters. Two years ago, we witnessed the inspirational struggle at Standing Rock calling to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Indigenous resistance is attempting to push back increased attacks on Indigenous lands by both Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the service of fossil-fuel energy projects.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE of Indigenous resistance to pipelines is in Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia — the site of a battle against TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline.

ON THE other side of the imaginary border between the U.S. and Canada, the Ojibwe in Minnesota have been fighting the replacement of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline that runs through their territory. The project is being undertaken to accommodate oil from Alberta’s tar sands.

Part of his secret, it seems, is religion. Over the course of multiple interviews with Religion News Service, Coons, who grew up attending Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only provided grounding for his own life but has also emerged as a point of connection with Republicans, with whom he has forged lasting relationships — and legislation....

“This is what interests me more than almost anything that I’ve done in public life,” Coons said, referring to the intersection of religion and politics....

“Christian nationalism, understood as a view that God created and inspired the United States to be the nation on earth that is meant to be a Christian democracy and to carry forth Christ’s vision for the world … that is in profound tension with our founding as a pluralistic, multifaith, multiethnic, multilingual democracy, which in its founding documents recognizes a creator and recognizes natural rights but expressively declines to create a state religion, and to align … powers of the state with any particular faith,” he said.

One way is to try to feel less alone. As soon as we became victims of this hate crime, we thought of those who had had similar experiences. The Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., had been attacked in June 2015 and lost nine members; a mosque in Quebec had six members killed in a January 2017 attack; and six people were fatally shot at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., in August 2012.

The way to connect with someone is to meet them, which is how we decided to go to Charleston to visit Mother Emanuel Church. We saw it as a way of taking control of the narrative, to say that both New Light and Mother Emanuel Church were harmed by hate but that we in turn were sending a message of unity and of love.