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Fear was the overwhelming emotion Alvin Major felt when, on a chilly November morning in 2012, he went on strike at the Brooklyn KFC where he worked.

Everybody was scared, said Major. He may have been fearful, but what Major didnt know was that he was about to make American history an early leader in a labor movement that some historians now see as the most successful in the US in 50 years.

Major was paid just $7.25 an hour as a cook at KFC, but the consequences of losing his job were dire, as his family was already struggling to make the next months rent. Everybody was scared about going back to work, he said. Nobody visualized what this movement would come to.

The New York strike by hundreds of majority Black and brown New York fast-food workers was, at the time, the largest in US history but it would be dwarfed by what was to come. Two years later, strikes had spread across America, and fast-food workers in 33 countries across six continents had joined a growing global movement for better pay and stronger rights on the job.

In eight years, what became the Fight for $15 movement has grown into an international organization that has successfully fought for a rise in minimum wage in states across the US, redefined the political agenda in the US, and acted as a springboard for other movements, including Black Lives Matter. It now stands perilously close to winning one of the biggest worker-led rights victories in decades.

This Tuesday, fast-food workers will walk out again, hoping to push through a change that will affect tens of millions of American workers.

For Major, now 55, it all began in a hall in Brooklyn, where union and community activists had convened a meeting of fast-food workers to see what pressure they could bring on an industry notorious for its low wages and poor conditions, and a state that had shown those workers little interest.

With a platform to speak, the workers talked about how you had to be on food stamps, get rent assistance, all these kinds of things, and were working for these companies that are making billions, said Major.

At one point, a worker showed the burns on his arm he had suffered at work. In a show of solidarity, workers across the room others rolled up their sleeves to show their scars too. Even when injured on the job, workers said, they were too scared to take time off.

This was not how Major imagined America to be when he moved to the US from Guyana in 2000. In our family, with 14 kids, my dads wife never worked a day. My dad used to work, he took care of us, we had a roof over our head, we went to school, we had meals every day, he had his own transportation.

In America, the greatest, most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, he found [that] you have to work, your wife has to work, when your kids reach an age they have to work and still you could barely make it.

Industry lobbying allied to Republican and until relatively recently Democratic opposition has locked the USs minimum wage at $7.25 since the last raise in 2009. Now a raise to $15 looks set to be included in Joe Bidens $1.9tn Covid relief package although it will still face fierce opposition.

Even Biden, who campaigned on the raise, has expressed doubt about whether it can pass. But more progressive Democrats including longtime champion Senator Bernie Sanders are determined to push it through, and it remains in the House Covid relief bill.

The stakes are huge. The Congressional Budget Office said this week that 27 million Americans would be affected by the increase, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty at a time when low-wage workers and especially people of color have suffered most during the pandemic. The CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years.

Other economists have disputed the CBOs job-loss predictions the Economic Policy Institute called them wrong, and inappropriately inflated. The long-running debate about the real cost of raising the minimum age will no doubt continue. What is certain is that Biden will face enormous political blowback if his campaign promise to raise the minimum wage falls so early in his presidency a promise that during his campaign he argued was central to his plans to address racial inequality.

That backlash will also cross party lines at least outside Washington. The US may be as politically divided as it has been since the civil war, but polling shows the majority of Americans support increasing the minimum wage no matter their chosen party. In November 60% of voters approved a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026 even as they voted to re-elect Donald Trump.

More people voted for that ballot initiative than voted for either presidential candidate in the state. With Florida, seven states plus the District of Columbia have now pledged to increase their minimum wage to $15 or higher, according to the National Employment Law Project (Nelp) and a record 74, cities, counties and states will raise their minimum wages in 2021.

The movement, and this widespread support, has changed the political landscape, pushing Democratic politicians, including Biden, Hillary Clinton and the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, to back a $15 minimum wage, against their earlier qualms.

Cuomo called a $13 minimum wage a non-starter in February 2015. By July, he was racing California to get it into law.

In the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton went from supporting a raise to $12 an hour to $15 as Sanders made ground on the issue. Even Saturday Night Live parodied the pair arguing about who was most for a $15 higher wage.

Big companies including Amazon, Target and Disney have all moved to $15, or pledged to do so. One of Bidens first executive orders called for federal contractors to pay employees a $15 minimum wage. The federal holdout would be the movements biggest win to date, but there is little arguing that they have made significant progress without it not least for Alvin Major, who now has a union job earning over $17 an hour working at JFK airport and who says he is no longer worried about his bills.

For Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), this is the David and Goliath story of our time. She puts the public support down to the pervasiveness of underpaid, low-wage work.

Every family in America knows somebody thats trying to make ends meet through a minimum-wage job. And the pandemic has revealed that essential work in a way that many people hadnt noticed before, and they now understand how grocery store clerks, nursing home workers, janitors, airport workers, security officers, delivery drivers [and] fast-food workers are all people trying to do the very best job they can, and provide for their families.

The SEIU has been a longtime funder and supporter of Fight For $15 and for Henry, the first woman to lead the SEIU, the fight for a higher minimum wage is just the beginning of a greater push for workers rights not least the right to join unions, in a service sector where women and people of color make up a disproportionate number of workers.

Eighty per cent of our economy is driven by consumer spending. Service and care jobs are the dominant sectors in the US economy, and we have to create the ability of those workers to join together in unions in this century, just like auto, rubber and steel were the foundation in the last century, she said.

If the US Congress cant see what the American people are demanding, in terms of Respect us, protect us, pay us, then theyre going to have a political price to pay in 2022, she added. Our nations leaders need to get this done. Congress has used its rules to pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and massive corporations, so now its time for our nations leaders to give tens of millions of essential workers a raise.

Backing Henry will be a younger generation of activists who cut their teeth in the Fight for $15 movement and have used it as a springboard into a political debate that is now centered around racial and economic justice. One of those leaders is Rasheen Aldridge, one of the first to take action when the Fight for $15 spread to St Louis, who was elected to Missouri state assembly last November.

Aldridge was working at a Jimmy Johns restaurant in 2013 when he was approached by a community organizer asking him about his pay and conditions. Aldridge had recently been humiliated by a manager who took pictures of him and a co-worker holding signs they were forced to make, saying they had made sandwiches incorrectly and had been 15 seconds late with a drive-through order. It was so dehumanizing and just a complete embarrassment, said Aldridge.

The organizer talked about the strikes in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and suggested the same could happen in conservative Missouri.

I thought he was crazy, said Aldridge. But he also thought: I have to do something. The worst thing that can happen is what? I get fired. And, its unfortunate, but I can find another job, another low-wage job, because theres just so many of them unfortunately that exist in our country and our city.

By 2014, Aldridge was a leader in the local minimum wage movement and building a network of contacts. Some of them were working in a nearby McDonalds in Ferguson that was next to the Ferguson Market and Liquor store where Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who had graduated from high school eight days earlier, was shot dead by the police after leaving the store with an allegedly un-bought package of cigarillos.

Aldridge heard the police cars rushing to the scene. The shooting led to months of unrest and, coming after the high-profile killing of other Black people, was a turning point for the Black Lives Matter movement. I remember I was in high school and I was wearing a hoodie and said, Im Trayvon, said Aldridge, referencing the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old shot dead by a neighborhood watch guard in Sanford, Florida.

I think after Ferguson, it really took off in a different way. I think the way we resisted in Ferguson was like no other, said Aldridge. Aldridge became an early BLM organizer in Ferguson. If it wasnt for the Fight for $15, though, Im not sure if I would have went out to Ferguson as quick as I did and would have been out there as long as I did.

For the freshman representative, Fight for $15 and BLM are the same fight.

You cant really talk racial injustice without talking economic injustice, he said. You cant forget that those same black workers still live in the same community that is oppressed, that is over-policed. Those workers were the same workers that also went to the streets of Ferguson, have protested, because they feel like Mike Brown could have been them, regardless if they was working at McDonalds or if they was working at a healthcare facility, said Aldridge. Its all connected.

Hopefully President Biden really follows through and does it, and makes it possible for everyone all across the state, all across this country, to make a livable wage. To not have so much burden on their back, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

For labor historian Erik Loomis, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes, the Fight for $15 is one of the most significant victories for workers in 50 years. Although he has caveats.

It has been a huge success in conjunction with other issues in reshaping narratives around economic equality in America, he said. From Occupy Wall Street to the Fight for $15 to the #MeToo movement to BLM, Loomis sees a building movement for greater equality. For the first time in a half-century we are beginning to move in the right direction on this, in a way that, forget about Republicans, did not exist not only under Obama but under Clinton or Carter, said Loomis. This is the farthest left economic platform than anything you have seen since the 60s.

But, as he points out, the $15-an-hour wage Major and others were fighting for in 2012 is worth less than it was back then due to inflation, and will be worth even less in 2025, when a lot of states aim to hit that level. Nor has the campaign managed to establish unions in many fast-food outlets at least not yet. The answer is you just keep pressuring, said Loomis. In other words, dont be satisfied with $15. It is time for 20.

Many workers caught up in the movement are exhausted. While their hard-fought successes have made a big difference, many have been hit hard by the pandemic. Now they are worried that some have made gains, others will be left behind.

Management just has a way of knocking you down, making you feel useless, you are not worth $15

Back in 2010, Adriana Alvarez was earning $8.50 an hour at McDonalds in Chicago. The city voted to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by July this year and Alvarez is now on $15.15.

Like many restaurant workers, she has seen her hours cut during the pandemic. But she is hopeful about the future. Before Covid-19, when her wages went up, I was able to fill up the fridge a little more, she said. She took her son to Winter Wonderfest, a gigantic annual event where Chicagoans can temporarily forget the citys bitterly cold winter and go ice skating and take carnival rides. It was something I had never been to. He had a blast. Hes scared of heights. He said, mummy, I have to try it. I have to get rid of my fear.

But the journey to her somewhat better life has been hard for Alvarez. Before the Fight for $15, she said managers regularly asked workers to work off the clock to finish jobs they hadnt completed on their shift for no pay. There was more shouting, more hostility. That has stopped now. They know we can show up with 50 people in a store, she laughed.

Along the way, she has met senators, she has a picture with Sanders, been on a call with Biden, welcomed the pope to the US and met workers from different industries, from teachers to airport and healthcare workers, who are also fighting for a better deal. She too has been surprised that the fight has been so successful. When people first started telling her they wanted $15 an hour, she said she told them they were crazy.

Management just has a way of knocking you down, making you feel useless, you are not worth $15, she said.

Now, hopefully, she said finally these politicians are doing what they should be doing. Last time it [the minimum wage] was raised was 2009. Its about time. Everything else has been going up. People have to work two or three jobs just to get by.

Does she feel like part of history?

Hopefully it makes history, said Alvarez. But I dont think Im part of history. Im tired, Im tired of being mistreated, of being underpaid and overworked. We want that $15 and a union. I guess you dont think about the whole history part until after its been done.

Go here to read the rest:
'Hopefully it makes history': Fight for $15 closes in on mighty win for US workers - The Guardian

If you are gay and you want to practise cruising and to have casual NSA encounters in public places in Northumberland in an anonymous way, here you can find spots such as beaches, parks, forests and other spaces next to urban areas, as well as every kind of public toilets and rest areas of highways where you can practise cruising in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

Below we show a Northumberland cruising map with all cruising areas and spots that shared our gay community. Click on the map markers for details of each spot.

In the tab for each zone you will find a location map with directions to the place: driving, walking, public transport or bike. You can vote the area and leave a comment for the rest of the community guys know your opinion, and if you want people to know you're in the area, do not hesitate to check in.

To avoid sexually transmitted diseases, always use a condom. When finished, remember to collect everything (condom wrappers, tissues, etc.) and leave the environment clean.

In many cruising areas there are malicious people who take the opportunity to steal valuables. Therefore, when you go to practise cruising, try not to carry money, jewelry, etc., and if possible try to be accompanied.

Not everyone in cruising areas is looking for the same thing as you. If they tell you NO, respect and do not disturb, just as you'd like to be respected.

Remember that it is totally forbidden to have sex with children under 18. Before you do anything, check that the person you're flirting with is of legal age.

If at any time while you practice cruising you suffer some form of aggression, intimidation, theft or extortion, report it to the local authorities. Therefore, it is always good to get some information about your cruisingmate: name, description, license plate, etc.

Excerpt from:
Cruising in Northumberland, Pennsylvania - Gays-Cruising.com

When it comes to clarity, the advice of the NSA, the US intelligence agency, is official. The latter has published a series of recommendations on its site, warning against the risks associated with the location of smartphones, tablets and computers. Initially for their agents, these advice can be applied to everyone.

Location data is transmitted continuously

The simple fact of turning on your mobile device exposes your location data, recalls the NSA. And ISPs who collect it can pass it on, and in some cases even sell this data.

Simply connecting to a cellular network can allow someone with the necessary equipment to track you. Wi-Fi access points and Bluetooth sensors can also be used to track a persons activities.

Geolocation data can be extremely valuable and must be protected, the NSA says. They can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organization), and uncover otherwise unknown associations between users and locations.

Tip: Turn off location in settings.

Closing the location is not enough

The NSA then specifies that disabling the location option on your phone does not guarantee that you will be immune to any tracking.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that turning off location services on a mobile device does not turn off GPS, and does not significantly reduce the risk of location risk, the agency explains. Disabling location services only limits access to GPS and location data by applications .

Tip: Use a virtual private network (VPN) to help hide your location.

Your smartphone can track you even without mobile data

When mobile data is cut, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices can be carried to track. And the option to turn off Bluetooth does not always guarantee that this is indeed the case, warns the NSA.

And even if you turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, location data can be saved and transmitted once turned back on.

Tip: Turn off all wireless connections, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, when youre not using them.

Risk is not limited to mobile devices

Smartphones, tablets, and laptops are not the only ones that can provide location data.

Smart watches, fitness bracelets, as well as all connected objects, such as those related to the home (alarms, thermostat, connected lamps, etc.) are likely to share information related to your location.

And securing them is not always easy, most of these items do not offer the option of muting the location. In addition, most automatically store this data in the cloud.

Tip: Only use linked items after taking into account the inherent risks related to your privacy.

Applications and social networks present risks

Even if they are verified and downloaded through an official platform (AppStore, Google Play ), some applications can collect information, collect and reveal a persons location Can.

Many applications ask for permission to collect data that is not necessary for their operation.

Similarly, social networks are a major risk, especially if many possible settings are not properly configured. Pictures posted on these may contain metadata that may allow anyone to locate the location where they were taken. And the photos themselves may indicate something.

Tip: Give the application as few permissions as possible, and be careful what you share on social media.

Have to see

Read more from the original source:
Smartphone: To prevent being tracked, here are 5 essential tips from the NSA - Sprout Wired

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The politician who championed the bathroom bill in the Texas Legislature in 2017 is now singing The Star-Spangled Banner.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unfurled the first of his priority bills this week, in reaction to news that the NBAs Dallas Mavericks had stopped playing the national anthem before home games.

That went on for 13 games before anyone noticed, according to The Athletic. But when they noticed, they really noticed. The news traveled all the way to the lieutenant governor, and before you could say dawns early light, he had proposed the Star Spangled Banner Protection Act.

It hasnt been filed yet, but it would require the playing of the anthem at all events that receive public funding. Presumably, that would include sessions of the House and Senate, which start with prayers, and pledges to the U.S. and Texas flags, but no anthem.

It is hard to believe this could happen in Texas, but Mark Cubans actions of yesterday made it clear that we must specify that in Texas we play the national anthem before all major events, Patrick said in a news release. In this time when so many things divide us, sports are one thing that bring us together right, left, Black, white and brown.

Cuban is the owner of the Mavericks.

We respect and always have respected the passion people have for the anthem and our country, Cuban tweeted. But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been. Going forward, our hope is that people will take the same passion they have for this issue and apply the same amount of energy to listen to those who feel differently from them.

The problem, as far as professional basketball is concerned, has already been solved. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that the leagues teams will be required to play the national anthem before each game.

That was after Patrick had a chance to tweet that Cubans decision was a slap in the face to every American & an embarrassment to Texas. Sell the franchise & some Texas Patriots will buy it. We ARE the land of free & the home of the brave.

The states culture wars are back, led by their most prominent warrior. In 2017, Patrick led the unsuccessful, session-dominating effort to prevent transgender Texans from using restrooms and other public facilities that match their gender. It was a divisive fight that fired up voters and activists who were variously delighted and outraged at the proposal. And it established the understated theme for the 2019 legislative session that followed: Were not messing with things like the bathroom bill this time.

Thats all behind us now. While its dealing with a pandemic, economic troubles, police behavior and funding, election and voting laws, and all the rest, the Texas Legislature is also going to discuss regulating the playing of the national anthem.

Patrick has kept his trap shut for the first month of the five-month regular session, buttoning his lip about the recount of the 2020 votes for his friend, Donald Trump, staying out of the news around the siege of the U.S. Capitol and holding his silence as Gov. Greg Abbott laid out his own priorities for the current session.

The lieutenant governor poked his head up at the beginning of the legislative session to make sure Republicans in the Senate can get things done without Democratic help when need be. But he has been uncharacteristically quiet.

Until, that is, he became aware of the absence of the sound of music. He was already working on presenting a list of legislation he wants the Senate to work on, but jumped at the prospect of a culture battle over the anthem and Cuban.

The man who brought you the bathroom bill is back, starting the game with a call for all to rise for the playing of the nations fight song.

Go here to see the original:
Analysis: A Star-Spangled culture war in Texas - The Texas Tribune

Unlike many of her predecessors, though, Gaga spoke to the LGBTQ community as one of its members. She told interviewers that her 2008 hit Poker Face was about masking her own same-sex desire, and in a 2009 Rolling Stone cover story she identified as bisexual. In clear ways, she set out to destabilize gender too. While other divas shellacked themselves into paragons of feminine glamour, Gagas grotesque fashions seemed to satirize the idea of the socialite, the model, and the doll. A rumor took hold online alleging that Gaga was actually a man in drag, or maybe a woman with a penis. Rather than seem offended by the plainly transphobic and obnoxious speculation, Gaga made sport of it. I do have a really big donkey dick, she told an interviewer when asked about the matter. Her bracing 2010 speech calling for the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell demonstrated Gaga pairing her aesthetics with activism.

Gagas 2009 EP The Fame Monster added leather-goth angst to her sparkly brew, resulting in smashes such as Bad Romance and Alejandro. But she still needed to tackle the much-feared test of longevity facing new stars: the sophomore full-length album. For this, she would go lighter, brighter, and make all her subtext into text. To record the song Born This Way, Gaga turned to producersFernando Garibay, Jeppe Laursen, DJ White Shadowwho were conversant in both disco history and the new EDM sound that was trending at the time. Lyrically, she sought to make as clear a statement as possible. I want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I dont want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors, she told Billboard. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue, because I think, especially in todays music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play.

Indeed, outside of Chistina Aguileras Beautiful, scattered Black Eyed Peas tracks, and Kanye Wests provocations, the 21st centurys first decade was not a banner time for social conscientiousness in pop music. But as the always online, famously idealistic Millennial generation came of age, the tides began to change. Barack Obamas first years in office saw Beyonc, Kesha, Katy Perry, and other peers of Gagas make feminist messages a de rigueur subject on Top 40 radio. The emergence of Kendrick Lamarwho spoke to the grievances underlying the nascent Black Lives Matter movementmarked a renewed period of forthright political engagement in commercial hip-hop. MTV created a new award, Best Video With a Message, in 2011, and Born This Way won it.

Really, though, Gagas song reached back in time as much as it looked forward. The track drew from the 1970s Motown song I Was Born This Way, which was popularized by the openly gay singer Carl Bean. Its first lines go: Im walking through life in natures disguise / You laugh at me and you criticize cause Im happy, carefree and gay / Yes, Im gay. Talk about a this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, right? In a 2016 Vice interview, Bean explained how his openness wasmaybe counterintuitively, given how much gay rights have progressed since thenof its era:

At the time, what the disc jockeys coined as message music was pretty big, and thats what I wanted to do. Message music came out in the late 60s, and it caught on with the young folk at the time. We were in the middle of the civil-rights movement, women were staging sit-ins, and there was a huge dislike for the war in Vietnam. You started to hear, little by little, messages that spoke to what people were dealing with everydaywhat people were feeling Whether youre in the club or wherever, you were hearing about the times.

Message music never fully died out; Gaga was also inspired by the early-90s period of TLC and En Vogue singing of empowerment and safe sex. Whats notable is how these obvious predecessors for Born This Way were created by Black people speaking clearly from their own individual experiences.

Excerpt from:
The Lady Gaga Anthem That Previewed a Decade of Culture Wars - The Atlantic