What did we miss in Tennesseee?

 words by charles brooks

A few months back, two Black state representatives, Rep. Justin Jones, (D-Nashville), and Rep. Justin Pearson, (D-Memphis)  protested gun violence in Nashville, and was briefly expelled from Tennessee’s House of Representatives. They did return to office days later but they were forced to win “special” elections, months later to serve out their original terms.

Their brief expulsion drew nationwide attention to Tennessee’s racial and partisan politics, amplifying the ongoing tensions between Black Democrats and White Republicans there.  The brief expulsion triggered a very public display of party loyalty amongst Black Democrats that quickly turned this show of racial politics into a political spectacle.  

The bright lights and camera flashes surrounding this spectacle managed to dim attention or urgency around the Republican supermajority in Tennessee’s state legislature that enabled the expulsion.  Taking advantage of the low hanging fruit in electoral politics – race and partisan politics, there was a massive marketing campaign catapulting the “Justin’s” into the limelight. 

Minimum Wage Hikes Will Boost Pay of Nearly 10 Million US Workers in 2024

 "These raises are the outcome of over a decade of workers organizing with Fight for $15," said the National Employment Law Project.

Tireless campaigning by economic justice advocates helped to secure minimum wage hikes for nearly 10 million U.S. workers starting in 2024, and one think tank noted on Wednesday that further successes at the state and local levels are expected in the coming year—but experts said the federal government must catch up with state legislators to deliver fair wages to all workers.

Louisiana’s low voter turnout attributed to apathy, mistrust

 

In an important election year — featuring races for governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, secretary of state, attorney general and several local government seats — Louisiana saw historically low voter turnout. Experts are still looking at why.

Only about 36% of registered voters cast ballots in October’s primary election, marking the lowest turnout in a Louisiana gubernatorial primary since 2011. The general election in November saw even lower turnout, when only about 23% of registered voters made it to the polls.

“This entire state didn’t show up,” said Ashley Shelton, president and CEO of the Power Coalition, a nonpartisan civic engagement group.

Celebrating Working-Class Victories in 2023

By Sarah Anderson

From the picket lines to state houses to the White House, champions in the fight against inequality landed huge wins.

Looking for something positive to celebrate on New Year’s Eve? Consider lifting a glass to the hardworking people behind these inspiring victories of 2023.

1. The ‘Year of the Strike’

More than half a million American workers walked off the job this year. In October, companies lost more workdays to strikes than in any month during the past 40 years.

Big 3 auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors, Las Vegas and Los Angeles hotel staff, and Kaiser Permanente health care employees were among those who used strikes to score big bargaining table wins. For UPS drivers, the mere threat of a Teamsters strike was enough to secure historic wage hikes and safety protections.

After renewing contracts with Ford, GM, Stellantis, and UPS, the UAW and the Teamsters doubled down on efforts to organize the unorganized. The Teamsters picketed outside 25 Amazon warehouses, demanding a fair contract for unionized drivers at a California-based delivery service for the notoriously anti-union retailer. The UAW set their sights on non-unionized car companies, causing so much indigestion among Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai executives that they immediately hiked wages for their U.S. employees.

‘That was my home’

Homeless residents face uncertainty as encampment sweeps gain steam.

SAN DIEGO — Tracy Bennett has packed up and moved her tent and possessions so many times when the city periodically clears her sidewalk encampment, she jokes she could run her own moving company.

The black canopy that she’s wrapped in blue tarps and filled with blankets, food, a coloring book and the rest of her belongings, stood on a sidewalk on a Friday morning this month, a few blocks from the Gaslamp Quarter, a downtown San Diego nightlife hub. Her shelter had a bit of holiday flair: On the corner of her tent, near its entrance, sat a stuffed elf and two red stockings tied in green and red tinsel.

Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel's War on Gaza

By Jessica Corbett

"As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible."

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring.

Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. 

Is the death penalty dying? Sentences, executions remain low

 The number of executions in 2023 rose to 24 from 18 a year earlier. Texas (8) and Florida (6) made up 60% of the total.

The number of states imposing or performing executions in 2023 was at a 20-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that complies such statistics.

Polling indicates that public skepticism of the fairness and propriety of the death penalty continues to increase. And increasingly, bipartisan coalitions in legislatures are pushing to abolish it in states that haven’t already, the year-end report said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is one institution, however, that seems to be out of step with the growing march against state-sponsored killing.

He’s on Louisiana’s death row, his attorneys say, for a crime that didn’t happen

A Netflix documentary calls into question the methods of forensic examiners in the case

BY: GREG LAROSE

“Definitely, the system in Louisiana is broken.”

That’s the frank assessment of Matilda Carbia with the Mwalimu Center for Justice, one of the organizations representing Jimmie “Chris” Duncan. He’s among more than 50 people incarcerated on death row for whom Gov. John Bel Edwards has used his clemency power to push for state parole board reviews in order to switch their execution sentences to life in prison. 

Critics of the death penalty point out 11 people facing the electric chair or lethal injection have been exonerated or had their convictions reversed in Louisiana since it reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Over that same period, 28 people have been executed. 

'Unacceptable': US Homelessness Hits Record High

"Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country will only continue to worsen," warned one campaigner.

The number of people in shelters, temporary housing, and unsheltered settings across the United States set a new record this year, "largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time."

That's a key takeaway from an annual report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

On a single night in January 2023, "roughly 653,100 people—or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States—were experiencing homelessness," with about 60% in shelters and the remaining 40% unsheltered, according to HUD. That's a 12% increase from 2022 and the highest number of unhoused people since reporting began in 2007.

Spending on health care in US rises to $4.5 trillion in 2022; a return to pre-pandemic growth rates

BY: ERIK GUNN AND CASEY QUINLAN 

After skyrocketing in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and then tempering almost as dramatically a year later, health care spending in the U.S rose just over 4% in 2022, hitting $4.5 trillion, the federal government announced Wednesday.

The annual growth in the nation’s health care spending appears to be returning to pre-pandemic trends, according to a new report from analysts at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The report was published online Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs.

In the four years before 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care spending rose 4.2% to 4.6% a year, according to CMS.

While last year’s increase was higher than the 3.2% growth in health spending in 2021, it was less than half the 10.6% growth of health spending in 2020.