The Working Poor and Minimum Wage

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

The Working Poor and Minimum Wage

The cover story this morning on CBS Sunday Morning was about the movement to increase the federal minimum wage.  

Here is how the story began: 

Twenty-seven-year-old Nancy Salgado’s sweet smile may be her most marketable asset in the fast food industry — that and her willingness to do just about any task . . . 

“I work at grill, I fry products; making sandwiches, assembling the sandwiches,” she told Moriarty. “I work breakfast, lunch, dinner.  I work cashier.  I work drive-through.  I do drink station.  Throw away garbage.  Pretty much that’s it.”

“Do you think [that] people run in to get their fast food, do they notice the person serving them?” Moriarty asked.

“No, they never notice.  But I believe that’s my skill to be friendly. Even though I’m heartbroken, even though I have problems at home and I have to deal with them day by day, I would still give you a smile.”

And yet, after working for a decade at McDonald’s franchise restaurants in Chicago, she still earns the state minimum wage in Illinois — currently $8.25 an hour.

Salgado, a divorced mother of two, struggles to get by on little more than a thousand dollars a month, and that’s with no benefits. . . . 

The Fair Housing Act: Then and Now

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

The Fair Housing Act: Then and Now

Last weekend, This American Life ran a fascinating episode on housing discrimination and the history of the Fair Housing Act. 

The “Prologue” talks about the impact where children lives on their education. Here is a description: 

Ira talks to 15 year old Jada who, when she was in third grade, moved from Akron Public Schools in Ohio, to the nearby Copley-Fairlawn schools in the suburbs. After two years, Jada was kicked out by administrators who discovered that her mother was using Jada’s grandfather’s address in Copley, instead of her own in Akron. Jada says that while the schools are only a few miles apart, the difference in education was astounding.
For more information about Jada and her mother, Kelley Williams Bolar, who spent 10 days in jail because she falsified documents so she could enroll Jada and her sister in the Copley-Fairlawn schools, you can go here. (5 minutes)

Both Acts One and Two discuss the history of the Fair Housing Act and housing discrimination in New York City today. 

Act One, “Rental Gymnastics” is described as follows: 

Reporter Nancy Updike talks to a group of New York City residents about their frustrating attempts to rent an apartment. With hidden microphones, we hear landlords and supers tell the apartment hunters that there’s nothing available. But that’s not necessarily true. Forty-five years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jonestalks to Nancy about the history of racial housing discrimination in the United States and what has been done — and hasn’t been done — to rectify it. (31 minutes)

Here is a description of Act II, “The Missionary“:

Once the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968, there was some question about how to implement it and enforce it. George Romney, the former Republican Governor of Michigan and newly-appointed Secretary of HUD, was a true believer in the need to make the Fair Housing Law a powerful one — a robust attempt to change the course of the nation’s racial segregation. Only problem was: President Richard Nixon didn’t necessarily see it that way. With Nikole Hannah-Jones, Nancy Updike continues the story. (16 minutes)

Nikole Hannah-Jones’s investigative series on the history and enforcement of the Fair Housing laws — with more stories, research and interviews —is here.

 

Colorado Community Pushes Back Against Fracking

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Colorado Community Pushes Back Against Fracking

A short segment (4 min.) on NPR’s All Things Considered discussed the ballot initiatives in few Colorado communities that would put limits on fracking, or hydraulic fracturing.

Here is how the story began:

The 2013 election marked a victory for foes of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Colorado. Voters in three Front Range communities decided to put limits on the practice.

Next week, the north Denver suburb of Broomfield will launch a closely watched vote recount on a proposed moratorium there.

Oil and gas companies say the measures create an uncertain business environment.

During its original vote count, Broomfield felt more like Miami-Dade County circa 2000 than a sleepy Denver suburb. About two dozen lawyers and other observers invested in the outcome of the proposed five-year fracking moratorium crowded into a windowless room.

Eco-Friendlier Holiday Shopping

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

I was going to write a post on how to have an eco-friendly Thanksgiving this year, but a quick Google search showed that this has been done many times over. So instead, with Black Friday and the holiday shopping season quickly approaching, here are some ways to reduce your environmental impact while gift-giving.

1. Skip the mall. Although Destiny USA in Syracuse has achieved gold level LEED certification, this addresses only some components of sustainability, including recycling programs, building materials, energy efficiency, and water use. Malls take up huge areas of land, creating large areas of impermeable surfaces and destroying wildlife habitats and corridors. Impermeable surface areas, including both the building itself and the parking lots, prevent rain from infiltrating into the soil and causes runoff of both the water and any contaminants it carries into the sewer system or nearby water bodies (in the case of Destiny, Onondaga Lake). Malls also consume large amounts of energy for lighting and cooling, as well as the indirect energy consumed by the cars bringing shoppers from around the city and beyond. Many of the goods sold in the mall have traveled from around the world to reach the shelves.

2. Buy from local craftsmen and women. Buying from local producers keeps money in the local economy and reduces the energy consumed in transporting goods. Additionally, local producers may use local materials, further reducing the embodied energy (all of the energy used in producing and transporting the goods) in the goods.

3. Buy gifts that are made to last. Planned obsolescence means that an item is meant to last for a limited number of years and is meant to keep demand for that item up over time as people will need to replace it. This is why appliances made more recently tend to not last as long as appliances made twenty or more years ago. This results both in increased consumption and increased wastes in landfills. Even if the items are recycled, energy is required to make the materials usable again.

4. Consider an environmental gift for the people in your life who are difficult to shop for. The Nature Conservancy sells carbon offsets, clean water offsets (to fund water projects in developing countries), hummingbird habitat, and wild area protection in east Africa, Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, the US, and coral reefs. Heifer International allows you to buy an animal for a family in a developing country, help fund the start up of a small business, or provide stoves for a village (among other gifts).

 

Happy Thanksgiving and happy shopping!

PTSD: The Scars of Combat

/ Christopher Moritt / Leave a comment

In 2007, I came home from Iraq just before Thanksgiving, it is often something I don’t really think about until my Mom reminds me. That Thanksgiving my family and a friend of mine from the Marines ate our meal at a hotel buffet in California, the food was great and it was great being around my family again. I was a little older than most guys in the Marines and had been away from my family before for long periods of time, but this of course was a little different. This time I had been in combat and no matter how much you think you’re the same, there is something about it that changes you, if only just a little. I thought this week I would talk about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I have mentioned it in passing in my posts about suicide and other issues but haven’t really discussed it detail.

 

On a personal note, I do not believe that I suffer from PTSD, and 90 percent of the time I consider myself a normal person who happens to have had a few unique and harrowing experiences. By most accounts my time in Iraq was not filled with gunfire and waves of enemies coming after us as you would see in a movie about Vietnam. Our unit was shot at, and we encountered IED’s and other problems, but others among the ranks have had far more violent experiences and carry the scars of combat wherever they go. What I can say is that I probably don’t sleep as well as I used to, and for a while I hated fireworks, but not to the point that I did not go see them every 4th of July. Most infantry guys become more aggressive and emotional, and those feelings come and go. For others, it is constant.

 

The National Institute of Mental Health has a great outline (found here) about the issue surrounding PTSD and the steps that are being taken to conduct further research to help those whose lives will never be the same. PTSD is characterized as a change in the body’s fight or flight response, the reaction that helps us survive when we believe we are in danger. PTSD changes this response to believe you are in fear even though the danger is gone. Not just infantrymen who have been in combat suffer from this affliction; rape victims, those who witness something violent like a train wreck, and other people who have suffered from abuse can also encounter problems with PTSD.

 

Additionally, not everyone who experiences a trauma has PTSD. As far as veterans are concerned there are many services available to work through some of the problems associated with PTSD. When units return from a combat zone, we have to undergo classes that discuss whether or not the trashcan will explode on the street corner in our home city and that not everyone who is middle eastern is trying to kill us. These statements seem silly to some and often when I tell people about theses classes it get a laugh; and quite frankly, while I was sitting in one of them, I also thought it was funny. But the reality is I have seen tough, strong Marines take cover when a car backfires or when fireworks go off, a reaction most normal people probably wouldn’t have. A guy I served with goes to the VA hospital once a week to talk to a shrink about his experiences. I am not sure if it helps him or not, but my guess is it is better than not talking about it. For the purpose of this post, I thought I would just get out some of the basics and my thoughts about PTSD and will do a follow up with a bit more detail in a future post.

 

For now, as Thanksgiving approaches, I find myself thankful that if I did feel as though I had problems I have a support element to talk about it. However, not every veteran has that going for him or her. Also, this Thanksgiving, remember there will be a future veteran somewhere in the world sleeping on the ground or not sleeping at all as bullets and explosions fill the air while we eat Turkey with our families.