Why should we focus on women’s health right now? Is women's health under attack?

Women, particularly women of color and poor women, have regularly faced government intrusion in their health care and family planning decisions. Recently, the Right has ramped up its attacks and extended them to health providers and services used by all women. According to plannedparenthoodaction.org, “More than 1,000 provisions related to women’s health were introduced in states over the last two years, and 257 of them became laws, the vast majority of which interfere with women’s health.” These provisions include conferring full constitutional rights on a fertilized egg or unconstitutionally banning abortion after six weeks. In 2012, 48 U.S. Senators voted to allow religiously affiliated (not just religious) institutions to refuse to cover contraception to insured employees, as the Affordable Care Act requires. These are all attacks on women’s health and furthermore, women’s reproductive freedom.

In a capitalist system working people will always fall short of justice when it comes to wages, since the basic logic of the system dictates that a small group of owners appropriates the wealth generated by a company, which then reluctantly forks over a small portion of that wealth to the workers who created it. 

Join us in demanding that President Obama expand his Income Based Repayment Program.

College, in the popular imagination, is still seen as both a time of freedom & intellectual exploration, and as the gateway to future economic opportunity. Yet young people today are increasingly working harder & taking on debt just to get a degree whose value is becoming more questionable. At the same time, universities are increasingly being subordinated to the needs of the corporate world.

"It's not like they told us it would be."

37 million Americans now owe a combined 1 trillion dollars in student loans. Over 25% are delinquent. There are more people between the ages of 30 and 49 paying off student loans than people under 30.

What is “The Inclusive Prosperity Act?” Why should we support it?
HR 1579, “The Inclusive Prosperity Act” proposed by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) in 2013, creates a tax on the trading of financial assets (a Financial Transaction Tax, or FTT), often called a “Robin Hood” tax. The bill focuses on how the global financial crisis was created by an out-of-control financial sector that crashed the U.S. and world economies.

Climate activists are justifiably fearful of the changes that runaway “Global Warming” can make to our world. Fear of climate change and its effects is justified and important. Fear is a two-edged sword. How can activists fight corporate-backed campaigns for fear at work?

In 2011 and 2012 the U.S. Congress, driven by Tea Party extremism and corporate money-fueled hysteria over a contrived “debt crisis,” enacted $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years, mainly by slashing vitally needed domestic programs that serve our most vulnerable citizens.

“You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth . . .And maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, 1966

The Fiscal Cliff deal just approved by Congress was both good news and bad news.  The Good News:  99% percent of Americans (according to Wall Street Journal writer Laura Saunders) will see little or no change in their income taxes for 2013. Wealthy individuals with incomes above $400,000 a year will pay higher income taxes, and taxes on capital gains and dividends will rise from 15 to 20% to help address the federal deficit. Congress also agreed to assist low and moderate income families by: extending unemployment insurance, extending the Earned Income Tax Credit for a year and extending the American Opportunity Tax Credit (for college expenses) five years.  Most across-the-board spending cuts were postponed by two months.