Kshama Sawant at Seattle 15Now! Campaign Launch

PITTSBURGH FAST FOOD STRIKE HIGHLIGHTS NEED TO FIGHT FOR $15 NOW!

By Karl Belin

As the work day winds down, usually around 5:00 pm or 6:00 pm, Downtown Pittsburgh quickly becomes a ghost town. As the skyscrapers empty, the city’s working class begins the slow trek to the more outlying neighborhoods in the city or to the sprawling suburbs. The opposite begins to happen each weekday morning, starting around 4:30 am. Thousands come teeming back to the Golden Triangle to begin again, choking the main arteries into the city well into late morning.

Some of the earliest of these daily commuters are the city’s fast food workers. Often, they must begin their day two hours before their shift even begins, taking two or more buses from the working-class neighborhoods, due to the cuts in public transit a few years ago. Then a breakneck pace begins, prepping for the mad rush of office workers coming for their morning coffee or breakfast.

Beyonce’s trivialising of violence against women should be the last word in ridiculing her ‘Feminist Icon’ status

By Olivia O'Neill in Ireland

On 13 December 2013, singer Beyonce Knowles released a surprise self-titled ‘visual’ album. The promotional lead of the album was a song and video entitled ‘Drunk in love’ which depicts Beyonce on the beach singing about her sex-life with husband Jay-Z. At first the video seems nothing  out of the ordinary for Beyonce/Jay Z or any mainstream pop/hip-hop/ r’n’b artist, however, towards the end of the song Jay Z adds a cameo verse that contains the astonishing lines;

“I am Ike Turner, turn up baby know I don’t play. Now eat the cake, Anna Mae. I said eat the cake, Anna Mae”.

EVENT: BUILD THE 15 NOW CAMPAIGN IN PGH!

Calling All Pittsburgh Workers!

The national 15 Now Campaign invites you to attend our first working meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. The national fight for a $15/hr minimum wage is quickly becoming one of the most urgent and important struggles for 2014. On February 22, we hope to gather worker activists from across Allegheny County at the Panera Bread location on Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. The meeting begins at 3:00pm.

We hope to use this meeting as a basis for kicking off the campaign locally in time for the upcoming National Week of Action from March 7 to 15, culminating in demonstrations across the country on March 15. Campaign materials will be made available at the meeting.

What: Exploratory Meeting to Build the 15Now Campaign in Pittsburgh

Where: Panera Bread, 3800 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

When: Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014

Contact: Karl Belin, 412-589-2558, karlrbelin@gmail.com

Please forward this message far and wide!!

Also, please see this article for an inspiring report on the 15 Now Campaign's participation in Seattle's MLK Day March: http://15now.org/?p=300

THE POLITICS OF POVERTY IN 2014

Written by Tom Crean

While the question of Obamacare has receded from headlines, the minimum wage has become the biggest domestic political issue in the country. A recent CBS news poll found that 69% of the population wants to see the federal minimum wage raised from the current abysmal $7.25/hr. The minimum wage has been allowed to stagnate for decades during the bipartisan neoliberal offensive, and is now worth less in real terms than under Harry Truman in the late 1940s!

Since the outbreak of the Occupy movement in September 2011 amidst the vast scale of social inequality in the U.S., the extent to which this inequality has grown over the past 30 years has become an increasingly urgent topic in national and local politics. The fast food workers campaign, launched by the SEIU in 2012, popularized the slogan “$15 and a union.” Last November, Seatac, Washington became the first city in the nation to pass a referendum for a $15 minimum wage. Now Seattle is the center of the national fight for a minimum wage that could begin to lift millions of workers out of poverty. This is happening in the wake of the election of Socialist Alternative Councilor Kshama Sawant and the launch of the 15 Now campaign. Already, it is reported that in several other cities, including Chicago, groups are working to bring forward $15 ballot initiatives.

LESSONS FROM KSHAMA SAWANT’S HISTORIC VICTORY

How a Socialist Won

By Ramy Khalil, Vote Sawant Campaign Manager

Everybody knows you have to accept corporate money and work within the corporate-dominated two-party system to get elected, right? Not so with Kshama Sawant. In November, nearly 100,000 voters elected her to Seattle City Council – as an open socialist – and she didn’t take a dime in corporate cash!

In a huge political upset, Sawant’s victory sent shockwaves through the political establishment and even around the globe. Sawant is the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. Her historic breakthrough was covered by every major newspaper in the country, major TV stations, and newspapers around the world.

Now she and her Socialist Alternative political party are leading a movement to implement her main campaign pledge: raising Seattle’s minimum wage to the highest in the country – $15/hour – and the movement is spreading nationally.