February, 11 2016, 10:45am EDT
'We're Back'
Wisconsin Fast-Food Workers to Strike for $15, Union Rights Ahead of Democratic Presidential Debate in Milwaukee
MILKWAUKEE, Wisc.
Hours before the Democratic presidential debate Thursday, fast-food workers across Wisconsin will walk off the job to demand $15/hour and union rights, and will join more than a thousand underpaid workers at a massive protest outside the debate, calling on candidates to stand with the 46% of workers in the state who are paid less than $15/hour.
Wisconsin workers fighting for $15/hour and union rights are converging in Milwaukee for the second time during the 2016 presidential primary season, following a major protest outside the Nov. 10 GOP debate. The first question directed at candidates that night asked them to respond to the demands of the fast-food workers just outside the door. Striking fast-food workers have helped make the economy and income inequality dominant issues in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Many of the workers striking and protesting on Thursday will be voting for the first time this election to support candidates who promise to fight for $15/hour and union rights.
"I never thought my voice could make a difference," said Kyesha Lee, a McDonald's worker form Milwaukee, Wisc. who is paid $8.25/hour and will be voting for the first time this year. "The Fight for $15 has shown me that's not true. Across the country, politicians have responded to workers out in the street marching for $15/hour and union rights, and we're seeing workers win pay raises everywhere from L.A. to New York. It's because of these victories that I'll be protesting this Thursday - because I know that when workers like me band together, we can win."
Thursday, Feb. 11: Schedule of Wisconsin Fight for $15 Strike Actions and Events
Ongoing Media Availability
Striking fast-food workers available throughout the day for interviews. Contact Giovanna or Anna above to arrange.
12:00pm CT Strike | McDonald's, 420 E Capitol, Milwaukee
Striking Wisconsin fast-food workers available for interviews. Strike to feature compelling visuals.
5:00pm CT Rally and March to Debate | Lake Park, Newberry Blvd & Lake Drive, Milwaukee
Massive crowd of underpaid workers and supporters will march from Lake Park to the Democratic debate.
Everywhere candidates go this primary season, workers in the Fight for $15 are following them, forcing White House hopefuls to address the demands of the nearly 64 million Americans paid less than $15, and in many cases drowning out supporters for the individual candidates:
*New Hampshire: Days ahead of the New Hampshire primary, fast-food workers across the Granite State waged their first-ever strike, which culminated in a massive protest outside a GOP debate in Manchester. ABC News, filming live from the debate site, reported, "The volume was just turned up quite a bit out here, but it's not actually GOP supporters: a big group with signs saying the Fight for $15 - they want a $15/hour minimum wage - came in and took over the place."
*Iowa: Ahead of the Iowa caucus, fast-food workers in the state walked off the job for the first time, and a massive crowd of more than a thousand workers stormed the lobby of the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, drawing widespread attention hours before a GOP debate that evening.
*South Carolina: And earlier this year, a walkout by hundreds of fast-food workers in Charlestonprompted a statement of support by the Democratic National Committee and animpromptu visit from Sen. Bernie Sanders, who grabbed a bullhorn and praised the strikers just moments before he took the floor for that night's Democratic debate.
Striking fast-food workers will be joined by home care and other underpaid workers from across the state who are fighting for $15/hour and union rights. Thursday's walkout will be the 10th by Milwaukee fast-food workers since they joined the Fight for $15 in May 2013.
"I am a first-time voter, and the honor and responsibility of that isn't lost on me," said Cornelius Powell, a home care worker from Milwaukee, Wisc. who is paid $9.50 an hour. "Home care workers help hold our communities together and care for one another, and now we're calling on politicians to do the same. Low-wage workers and young people have the most at stake in this election. I know every politician wants a 19-year-old's vote, but if they want it they'll have to stand for $15 and union rights!"
As the Fight for $15 builds a political front ahead of the 2016 election, the New York Times and USA Today have both warned candidates who ignore the growing movement that they do so "at their own peril." Meanwhile, the Associated Press said underpaid workers are flexing, "increasingly potent political muscle," and BuzzFeed has said they "could make up a powerful new voting bloc."
Ahead of the election, workers will continue to collect signatures on their Fight for $15 Voter Agenda, a five-point platform that launched late last year and calls for $15 and union rights, affordable child care, quality long-term care, racial justice and immigration reform--issues identified by underpaid workers as key factors in whether they will go to the polls for a candidate. They will put politicians on notice that, as a voting bloc, workers paid less than $15 could swing elections all across the country.
A recent pollof workers paid less than $15/hour commissioned by the National Employment Law Project showed that 69% of unregistered voters would register to vote if there were a candidate who supported $15/hour and a union; and that 65% of registered voters paid less than $15/hour would be more likely to vote if there were a candidate who supported $15/hour and a union. That's 48 million potential voters paid less than $15 who could turn out if there were candidates who backed higher pay and union rights.
Fast food workers are coming together all over the country to fight for $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. We work for corporations that are making tremendous profits, but do not pay employees enough to support our families and to cover basic needs like food, health care, rent and transportation.
LATEST NEWS
300+ Arrested Outside Schumer's Home During Jewish-Led Seder Against Gaza Genocide
"No one is free until everyone is free," read a banner representing a Seder plate. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Apr 24, 2024
As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared to vote on Tuesday night for a foreign aid package including billions to continue arming Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, roughly 300 protesters were arrested outside his home in Brooklyn for holding an "emergency Passover seder" protest, demanding the U.S. end its support for an assault that has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.
The protest was led by anti-Zionist Jewish organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with a large round banner representing a traditional Seder plate at the center of the protest at Grand Army Plaza, a block from Schumer's home.
Hundreds of people, some wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, linked arms and chanted, "Free, free Palestine!" while blocking traffic and displaying the Seder plate.
"No one is free until everyone is free," read the banner. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Schumer's home has been the site of numerous protests since October, when Israel began its attacks on and blockade of Gaza, which have left parts of the enclave facing famine and the entire population of 2.3 million people suffering from "acute food insecurity," at a minimum.
"A genocide being carried out in our names as Jews demands that we adapt our sacred tradition again, take to the streets, and do everything we can to prevent more death," author and activist Naomi Klein said at the protest.
The Biden administration has approved numerous weapons transfers to Israel, and the Senate overwhelmingly voted Tuesday night in favor of the package that includes $17 billion more in unconditional aid for the Israel Defense Forces.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) were the only members of the Democratic caucus who voted against the funding bill. Fifteen Republicans also opposed the bill over its inclusion of Ukraine aid.
The demonstration at Grand Army Plaza was organized amid a burgeoning protest movement on U.S. college campuses, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students were suspended and then arrested for trespassing last week after setting up an encampment to demand the school divest from all companies that work with the Israeli government.
The student-led protests have been denounced by President Joe Biden and other pro-Israel critics as "antisemitic" and endangering Jewish students, despite the fact that Jewish students have helped to organize the nonviolent demonstrations.
One organizer, Calvin Harrison, told The New York Times that he attended the Brooklyn protest Tuesday night "because I'm a Jew and I was raised to believe that Judaism is about justice."
"Passover is a celebration of liberation for the future," he told the Times. "We can't celebrate liberation for ourselves while we're oppressing Palestinians."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, recalled the group's Liberation Seder in 2016 in New York, where campaigners protested the Anti-Defamation League's support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"Eighteen of us were arrested," he said. "Tonight: [Organizers] led a Seder in the streets demanding Schumer stop arming Israel. Hundreds are being arrested. The movement grows."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Blood on Their Hands': 79 US Senators Approve Billions More in Military Aid for Israel
Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of just three Senate Democratic caucus members to oppose the bill, said that "U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government."
Apr 24, 2024
With the support of nearly 80% of the chamber's lawmakers, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a sprawling foreign aid package that includes $17 billion in unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government as it ramps up its catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip.
The final vote on the $95 billion package, which also included military aid for Ukraine and Taiwan, was 79-18, with just three members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—and 15 Republicans opposing the bill.
Sanders called Tuesday "a dark day for democracy," condemning the upper chamber's refusal to even allow a vote on his proposed amendment to cut offensive military aid to Israel from the legislation.
"I voted no tonight on the foreign aid package for one simple reason: U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people," Sanders said in a statement following the vote. "Thirty-four thousand Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded—70% of whom are women and children."
"The housing in Gaza is destroyed; the infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed; the healthcare system in Gaza is destroyed; the educational system in Gaza is destroyed," Sanders added. "Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu's war machine."
The bill, which passed the House over the weekend, now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it in the coming days.
"That Congress passed many billions of dollars for new weaponry for Israel that will be used to devastate Gaza, and could be used in a war against Iran, is deeply disturbing," said the National Iranian American Council.
The 79 senators who voted to pass Biden's foreign aid bill/expand Israel's genocide in Gaza: pic.twitter.com/bVQisvOndd
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) April 24, 2024
Overwhelming congressional and White House support for arms and military support stands in stark contrast to U.S. public opinion, which has increasingly turned against Israel's assault on Gaza in recent months as the grisly death toll and humanitarian emergency have worsened and evidence of Israeli war crimes has mounted.
As Tuesday's vote took place, thousands of Jewish New Yorkers and allies rallied outside of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) home to voice outrage over U.S. lawmakers' growing complicity in Israel's military assault.
"We're here as thousands of Jewish New Yorkers, calling on Senator Schumer to halt weapons funding to Israel as it massacres and starves Palestinians in Gaza," said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, one of the groups that organized the mass demonstration on the second night of Passover.
A Gallup survey released last month found that 55% of U.S. voters—including 75% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 30% of Republicans—disapprove of Israel's military assault on Gaza. A separate poll commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed that a majority of American voters support halting U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.
Since October, the Biden administration has quietly approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel, flouting U.S. laws that prohibit weapons deliveries to countries that are violating human rights or blocking American humanitarian aid.
"As I have said countless times, sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government the munitions it is using to destroy Gaza is wrong and inconsistent with our foreign policy goals," Welch said Tuesday after voting against the aid package. "It is unthinkable that an ally of the U.S. would conduct its military campaign with planes, tanks, bombs, and artillery supplied by the U.S., while impeding access for aid trucks to destitute civilians under its occupation."
"Urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
Days before the Senate vote, mass graves were discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently raided and destroyed. The United Nations Human Rights Office on Tuesday demanded an international probe into the mass graves, noting that bodies of Palestinians were found stripped naked with their hands tied.
"Victims had reportedly been buried deep in the ground and covered with waste," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
One Gaza official toldCNN that a total of 300 bodies were found in a mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and that "there were signs of field executions."
"The U.S. government is arming a regime creating mass graves in Gaza, indeed turning all of Gaza into a mass graveyard," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, wrote on social media Tuesday.
On the heels of the Senate vote, Agence France-Pressenoted that one of its correspondents and eyewitnesses "reported heavy bombardment of several areas of northern Gaza."
"Early Wednesday, hospital and security sources in Gaza reported Israeli air strikes in Rafah, as well as the central Nuseirat refugee camp," the outlet reported.
The anti-war group CodePink said in a statement after Tuesday's vote in the U.S. Senate that "urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
"People and the planet desperately need healthcare, housing, and climate justice, not a further descent into darkness through this massive war bill that funds death and destruction," the group added. "Every elected official who voted in favor of this bill has blood on their hands."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Defeating 'MAGA Dark Money,' Summer Lee Wins Primary in Landslide
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said the executive director of Justice Democrats.
Apr 24, 2024
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a member of the progressive "Squad," won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, fending off an opponent whose campaign was backed by a billionaire Republican megadonor and ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lee, a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government and leading supporter of a cease-fire in Gaza, handily defeated Bhavini Patel, a borough councilmember in Edgewood, Pennsylvania whose effort to unseat the progressive incumbent was bankrolled by Jeffrey Yass, the state's richest man. Patel actively courted Republican and pro-Israel voters, characterizing Lee as "fringe."
With more than 95% of the vote counted, Lee is ahead of Patel by more than 20 percentage points.
"I am so humbled and proud to win my first primary reelection to be the congresswoman for this incredible district I've spent my life fighting for," Lee said after the race was called in her favor. "Our campaign was built on a record of delivering for our democracy, defending our most fundamental rights, and expanding our vision for what is politically possible for our region's most marginalized communities."
"Our victory is a rejection of right-wing interests and Republican billionaires using corporate super PACs to target Black and brown Democrats in our primaries—be it AIPAC or Moderate PAC or any other MAGA billionaire in Democratic clothing," Lee added. "Western PA is the blueprint for the future all of America deserves."
Opposing genocide is good politics and good policy. #CeasefireNOW https://t.co/A7pnJNskWS
— Summer Lee (@SummerForPA) April 24, 2024
Through the misleadingly named Moderate PAC, Yass—a prolific tax dodger who has been floated as a possible treasury secretary pick if former President Donald Trump wins another term—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting Patel and attacking Lee.
Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn Political Action, said that by ushering Lee to victory, residents of Pennsylvania's 12th District "soundly rejected MAGA dark money."
"MoveOn members are ready to defeat this dangerous flood of dark-money spending against progressive champions and ensure that we continue to elect working-class people to Congress," said Epting.
"Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
During her 2022 campaign, Lee faced and overcame huge spending by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC via its super PAC, the United Democracy Project. But the organization opted to stay on the sidelines this time around, even as it plans to spend $100 million to defeat progressives in this year's cycle amid growing public opposition to Israel's war on Gaza.
"They had every intention of spending in this race—but they didn't, because they realized they would likely lose," Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas wrote in an email late Tuesday. "And that is because all of us had Summer's back and supported her campaign to out-organize AIPAC in every way."
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said Rojas. "Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
While AIPAC ultimately sat out the Pennsylvania race, it is devoting considerable resources to ousting other progressive lawmakers, including Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.).
The pro-Israel lobbying group has endorsed Bush challenger Wesley Bell, calling him a "strong advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship." As The Guardianreported last week, Bell has "raised more than $650,000 in earmarked contributions through the group Democracy Engine Inc. PAC—a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations and lists AIPAC as a client on its LinkedIn page."
AIPAC is the largest donor to Bowman challenger George Latimer, who has supported Israel's war on Gaza and denied that Israel is committing genocide. The Democratic primary for New York's 16th Congressional District is on June 25.
We must be clear-eyed about what's next. @JamaalBowmanNY & @CoriBush are facing an existential threat from AIPAC, their GOP megadonors, and the politicians willing to compromise on core Democratic values to try to take a school principal & nurse out of Congress. #ProtectTheSquad
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) April 24, 2024
Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said Tuesday that following Lee's victory, "we're ramping up to take on AIPAC in Jamaal Bowman's race."
"With a candidate like George Latimer willing to sell their lies to the district, we are going to prove once again that a politician's commitment to their community beats dark money every time," said Weindling. "Whether it's in Pittsburgh or New York, Minneapolis or St. Louis, our generation is going to send billionaires packing and reelect the squad."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular