Los Angeles could soon be home to the highest minimum wage in the nation.
An effort by local organizers that has now been taken up by several members of the city council is pushing for a $15.37 hourly wage for hotel workers in the city.
Organizers with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy have led the campaign Raise LA, which has fought for a living wage for hotel workers, for over a year. With the help of other groups in the area, the movement gained support from local communities and backing from more than 700 businesses across the city, according to theHuffington Post.
Now, three city council members, Mike Bonin, Nury Martinez and Curren Price, are drafting the proposal, which has “a decent chance of passing, given that 14 of the 15 city council members are Democrats and generally friendly toward labor,” The Huffington Post reports.
And, if they succeed, there could likely be a push to extend that raise to workers throughout Los Angeles.
“I’d like to see it through the city of LA,” Councilman Bonin told The Huffington Post. “We know it will improve lives. We know it will bring folks into the middle class. We know it will bring more money into the local economy.”
“We would absolutely like to extend this to other industries,” Maria Elena Durazo, chief of the county Federation of Labor, told the LA Times. The Federation of Labor also launched a campaign this week to raise city-wide minimum wages to $15, unveiling billboards across the city styled after green “city limits” signs, which read: “Los Angeles, City Limited, Poverty Wage Pop. 810,864.”
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Currently in Los Angeles, 46 percent of working people earn what the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor considers poverty wages—less than $15 an hour, according to a new study by the group.
“This is an economic apartheid,” said Durazo. “LA won’t prosper and attract business if 46 percent of working people aren’t prospering.”
The movement comes on the heels of a national fight for living wages, including the “Fight for Fifteen” movement led by fast-food workers across the country and an increase in strikes and protests for better working conditions by workers at big box retail stores such as Walmart.
Following a recent victory in SeaTac, Washington, where airport workers won a fight for a $15 minimum wage in November, a group by the name of ’15Now Campaign’ is bringing that fight to the national level.
Starting in Seattle, the group plans to pass a city-wide wage increase, with the extended goal of pressuring municipalities across the nation to do the same.
“A $15 minimum wage in Seattle will set an example that working people and unions across the country would likely be inspired to follow,” the campaign said in their official announcement.
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Hopes to reduce the worst impacts of climate change around the globe will likely be lost if the international community doesn’t immediately switch to clean energy and significantly reduce carbon emissions, according to a leaked draft of a report being conducted by UN scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
If “explicit efforts” are not immediately taken to reduce emissions, the scientists warned, future efforts will either be too costly or too late.
Greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 40-70% of 2010 levels by 2050, a reduction that will not be met if the world continues to rely on fossil fuels such as oil and coal to power the energy needs of an exponentially growing population.
As The New York Times reports:
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emissions grew 2.2% per year on average between 2000 and 2010, the scientists note, in comparison to the 1.3% per year on average between 1970 to 2000.
While oil and coal were cited as the leading contributors to climate change, the draft report says those levels are only expected to rise, thanks to current national and international climate policies.
The draft report is the third installment of three climate change reports conducted by the IPCC.
The first study, published on September 27, said that “warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” and confirmed that that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The evidence for this has grown, thanks to more and better observations, an improved understanding of the climate system response and improved climate models.”
The second and third parts of the report will be published in March and April.
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“Sentinels of ocean health” in Florida’s waters seem to be delivering a warning.
The NOAA Fisheries reports that 25 deceased pilot whales were discovered Thursday near Kice Island off southwestern Florida.
Eight other pilot whales died or were humanely euthanized earlier in the week when they were stranded further north near Lover’s Key State Park.
Contributing to the stranding situation, the NOAA says, are the close bonds the whales have. If one is sick, others may stay close by it even at the risk of getting stranded.
The NOAA says that the these events coupled with a mass stranding in December have sparked scientists to closely investigate the situation.
“This is unusual and something we’re looking into and monitoring,” Blair Mase, a marine mammal specialist with NOAA, told reporters.
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Other marine mammals in Florida waters have taken a hit recently as well.
In 2013, a record number of manatees died, and dolphins struggled along the eastern seaboard last year as well, with eight times the historical average washing up on shores from New Jersey to Florida.
The NOAA also declared an “unusual mortality event” in the state’s Indian River Lagoon system for bottlenose dolphins in 2013. The mass deaths prompted the area to be called a “killing zone.”
The marine mammals’ deaths may be ushering a warning about the environment.
“Marine mammals are very good sentinels for ocean and human health, and they really act like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine,” the New York Times quotes Dr. Greg Bossart, a veterinary pathologist and senior vice president in charge of animal health at the Georgia Aquarium, as saying. “They give us an idea of what’s occurring in the environment.”
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Green groups are calling on President Obama to make a choice: ‘Be remembered as a climate champion or the pipeline president.’
Parading a 100-yard inflatable pipeline outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday afternoon, demonstrators are hoping to grab the president’s attention ahead of the annual State of the Union address.
Organized by groups including 350.org and Friends of the Earth, the demonstration is calling on Obama to renew the pledge he made last year when he said he would not approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline if it is found to “significantly exacerbate” carbon pollution.
“President Obama needs to decide whether he wants to be remembered as a climate champion or the pipeline president. He can’t have it both ways,” said Jason Kowalski, Policy Director for 350.org.
He has “all the information he needs to reject Keystone XL and he should do so in the State of the Union,” the groups added in a statement ahead of the action.
The demonstration comes within days of the anticipated release of the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on the project, which Obama previously said he would look to for guidance on whether to permit the pipeline or not.
“Despite shoddy analysis by industry contractors working for the State Department, there is no doubt that approving Keystone XL would have a dramatic impact on the climate and should be rejected immediately by President Obama as not serving the national interest,” the groups continued, referencing a previously released draft of the SEIS which was condemned by both scientists and green groups as “deeply flawed.”
“The State of the Union would be an excellent time to reject the project and embrace a clean energy future,” they add.
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Last week, the lesser known southern leg of the Keystone XL began operating, carrying tar sands from its northern terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.
Whether or not the Keystone XL is approved,the enormous upswell in opposition to the project has “changed American environmental politics,” according to a piece published Friday in the New York Times.
Times reporter Sarah Wheaton writes:
“I remember when I heard the call for civil disobedience, I thought, ‘Yeah, right, you’ll get like 40 people to show up,’ ” Ross Hammond, a senior campaigner with Friends of the Earth, told the Times. “‘And then, bam!’ Over a two-week period, about 1,200 people were arrested at the White House.”
During Tuesday’s demonstration, 350.org founder Bill McKibben reiterated the power of the KXL opposition:
Twitter users chronicled the action using the hashtags #nokxl and #climateSOTU:
Concerned about the government’s increasing surveillance powers but unimpressed with the congressional response in Washington so far, state lawmakers from both major political parties are now taking it upon themselves to protect the online and communication privacy of their constituents.
Meanwhile, individuals and privacy groups are planning their own grassroots response to mass surveillance, hoping to repeat past victories by harnessing the power of digital communications to ensure they are adequately protected from government overreach.
As the Associated Press reports Wednesday, efforts are now underway “in at least 14 states are a direct message to the federal government: If you don’t take action to strengthen privacy, we will.”
According to AP:
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have joined in proposing the measures, reflecting the unusual mix of political partnerships that have arisen since the NSA revelations that began in May. Establishment leadership has generally favored the programs, while conservative limited government advocates and liberal privacy supporters have opposed them.
Supporters say the measures are needed because technology has grown to the point that police can digitally track someone’s every move.
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Devices such as license plate readers and cellphone trackers “can tell whether you stayed in a motel that specializes in hourly rates, or you stopped at tavern that has nude dancers,” said David Fidanque, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.
“It’s one thing to know you haven’t violated the law, but it’s another thing to know you haven’t had every one of your moves tracked,” he said.
Next week, on February 11, privacy advocates and online freedom groups are mobilizing against NSA and other government surveillance in a day of action they’ve dubbed ‘The Day We Fight Back.’
According to Katitza Rodriguez at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups organizing the action, those participating will be demanding “an end to mass surveillance in every country, by every state, regardless of boundaries or politics.”
Galvanized by what they see as 13 Principles of internet and communication freedoms, activists will use the day to call attention to those goals, lobby on their behalf with their representatives, and declare an end to the encroaching, unaccountable, and unregulated surveillance apparatus.
“The Principles spellout just why mass surveillance is a violation of human rights,” explained Rodriguez, and they “give sympathetic lawmakers and judges a list of fixes they could apply to the lawless Internet spooks. On the day we fight back, we want the world to sign onto those principles. We want politicians to pledge to uphold them. We want the world to see we care.”
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The latest news contained in leaked documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the British intelligence agency GCHQ has developed and deployed a complex series of “dirty tricks,” “propoganda,” and “false flag” operations that it used to spy on its selected targets which included not only “suspected terrorists” and “criminals” but also diplomats, journalists, activists.
Focused on a secret branch within the GCHQ called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG), the documents obtained by NBC News show that the operations of the group included “releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into ‘honey traps'” in order to “go on offense and attack adversaries.”
The new reporting follows on one NBC published earlier this week highlighting other Snowden documents that revealed the existence of the JTRIG for the very first time. Journalist Glenn Greenwald is listed as ‘special contributor’ for both stories.
As the latest story hit the wire, Greenwald sent out a series of tweets remarking on the significance of the latest revelations and pointing to specific documents explored in the report:
As NBC reports:
In one striking revelation contained in the documents, the JTRIG seems have developed a plan to embroil journalists in their intelligence operations.
A coalition of environmental groups is hoping you will share some Valentine’s Day love with the bees.
Rounding out what they’re calling a Bee Week of Action, groups including Friends of the Earth, Pesticide Action Network and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation are calling on major retailers Lowe’s and Home Depot to stop selling a class of bee-harming pesticides known as neonicotinoids and plants contaminated with them.
A recent study from Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute found that plants listed as bee-friendly sold by these retail giants may actually be contaminated with neonicotinoids, also known as “neonics.”
“It’s unnerving that gardeners across the country, looking to grow tomatoes with the help of bees, may be poisoning them instead. It’s bad for bees, bad for our food, and bad for our economy,” Paul Towers, Organizing & Media Director for Pesticide Action Network, told Common Dreams in an email.
The groups point out how neonics, the most widely used class of pesticides, have been linked to global bee die-offs.
“The science shows that neonicotinoid pesticides play a significant role in the declining health of bees and other beneficial organisms. It is therefore imperative that action be taken to protect these creatures, given the lack of action at the federal regulatory level,” Nichelle Harriott, staff scientist at Beyond Pesticides, a group that also joins the campaign, said in a statement.
The campaign is asking people to stand up for these essential pollinators by sending a “valentine” to the stores that urges them to “show bees some love” by stopping the sale of neonics and plants treated with them.
Friends of the Earth says it’s already delivered petitions Home Depot and Lowe’s this week, and plans to bring more messages to them Saturday.
The campaign urges consumers to also call the stores’ corporate offices to make their voices heard there as well. Another tactic the campaign suggests is leaving a message on the Facebook pages of the Home Depot and Lowe’s with a bee-saving message. A few of the messages people have left can be seen below:
Friends of the Earth notes that Home Depot has said they would look into the issue, while Lowe’s has not yet given a public statement.
“To help solve the bee crisis,” Lisa Archer, director of the food and technology program at Friends of the Earth U.S. stated, “Home Depot and Lowe’s need to show bees some love and stop poisoning them with bee-killing pesticides.’
“From backyard garden to almond orchard,” Towers added, “bees are critical to successful pollination and a healthy food system.”
Friends of the Earth has documented some of the Bee Week of Action including delivering petitions to Home Depot, which you can see in the Flickr photos uploaded by the group below:
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A 84-year-old nun and two peace activists who engaged in a non-violent demonstration at nuclear weapons production facility in Tennessee because “our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war” were sentenced Tuesday to several years behind bars while critics of the verdict say the true crime of nuclear weapons proliferation remains unpunished.
U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar sentenced 84-year-old Sister Megan Rice, a Catholic nun, to 35 months in prison and three years probation. Thapar sentenced 58-year-old Greg Boertje-Obed, an Army veteran who lives at a Catholic Worker House in Minnesota, and Michael Walli, a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran who lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC, to five years in prison and three years probation as well.
The trio’s crime: a ploughshares action at the Y‑12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The New York Times has reported that the “plant holds the nation’s main supply of highly enriched uranium, enough for thousands of nuclear weapons.”
While officials called the Oak Ridge, Tenn. facility the “Fort Knox of uranium” in July 2012 peace activists Rice, Boertje-Obed and Walli were able to hike two hours in to the Y-12 grounds, cut through multiple fences, hang peace banners and spray-paint peace slogans, pour blood, pray, sing and pound the ground. It took two hours for the three to be arrested.
The trio call themselves the Transform Now Plowshares, a reference to the Bible’s Isaiah 2:4— “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
At the Oak Ridge facility, they left messages including “Woe to the empire of blood; The fruit of justice is peace; Work for peace not for war.”
Previously explaining why they did the action, Rice said that “we had to [do it]— we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation.”
“The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons,” she added.
Initially accused of a misdemeanor, their charges were upped to a felony.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Theodore said Tuesday that the activists have a history of such actions, saying, “They just keep doing it … They are incorrigible,” adding, “There has to be a heavy toll.”
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The three were convicted of sabotage last May, and in January when their sentencing hearing began, they were ordered to pay $53,000 in restitution, but snow forced that hearing to be suspended until today.
The three have already served over 9 months.
Supporters of the anti-nuclear activists who were inside the courtroom told Common Dreams that while there was some relief that the sentences weren’t as long as federal limits could have made them, the true crime was left unpunished.
John LaForge of the Wisconsin-based environmental and peace group NukeWatch told Common Dreams that Judge Thapar gets to “give the impression that he’s being lenient when in fact the sentences are harsh for what actually happened.”
Further, he said the Thapar “erroneously said multiple times that the the defendants didn’t show respect for the law.” But the law forbids the production of weapons of mass destruction, Forge said, so with his ruling the judge “is protecting outlawed weapons.”
This is a point echoed by Paul Magno, a spokesperson for Transform Now Ploughshares, who told Common Dreams that while the group was “a little bit gratified” to see that the sentences that came down were not as long as they could have been, “the wrong people got prosecuted, convicted and sent to jail.”
What wasn’t addressed, he continued, was the “grotesque” violation of nuclear weapons which threaten all of humanity.
Ellen Barfield, another spokesperson from Transform Now Ploughshares, stressed this point as well, telling Common Dreams that “the U.S., as well as other nations, agreed to as of the 1970s to disarm.” And not only are they not taking weapons apart, they “are now turning around and creating new, more efficient ones,” Barfield said.
“The crime of Y 12 continues,” Magno added, and said that his group’s resistance will continue as well.
While these types of actions are months or years in the making, Barfield said, “I can just about guarantee….there will be other ploughshares actions.”
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Thirteen workers at an underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico have tested positive for radiation following a leak of radioactive particles into the air earlier this month, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday.
“That is an unusually high number of workers to be exposed at any given time,” said Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy under the Clinton administration, in an interview with Common Dreams. “This is very unusual and not supposed to happen. This is a wake-up call.”
The federally-owned Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico holds plutonium-contaminated military waste, generated by nuclear weapons production across the United States, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. It is the only underground nuclear waste dump in the country, storing radioactive material deep beneath the earth’s surface in salt formations. Officials say this facility was never supposed to leak.
The exposed workers were performing “above ground operations” on February 14th at the time the leak was detected, according to a statement by the DOE. “It is premature to speculate on the health effects of these preliminary results, or any treatment that may be needed,” reads the statement, which notes that many more tests are needed to determine the full extent of the workers’ exposure.
Findings that the workers have been contaminated contradict initial claims by WIPP managers that none of the 139 people working when the leak was detected had been exposed.
Furthermore, the number of workers contaminated could be even higher. “We are still reviewing staff assignments to determine if additional employees will need to be tested,” states the DOE.
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The revelation follows an announcement by the DOE on Monday that an underground leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico had contaminated the surface air, resulting in “slightly elevated levels of airborne radioactive concentrations.” The findings sparked alarm among many residents of the nearby town of Carlsbad.
The DOE claimed in their Wednesday statement that “There is no risk to family or friends” of employees who have tested positive for radiation. The DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates WIPP, have aggressively downplayed the danger and impact of the leak.
Yet Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer and nuclear safety advocate at Fairewinds Associates and former nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower, for Fairewinds Associates and former nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower, told Common Dreams that this claim is premature. “It happens routinely when workers are contaminated that they bring that radiation home,” he said. “The families of the workers need to have their homes tested as soon as possible.”
According to Alvarez, the worker contamination is “a symptom of a larger problem”—a system in which the DOE is responsible for regulating and overseeing itself and “often leaves this responsibility in the hands of private contractors.” The DOE has “steadily demoted its environmental and health oversight function,” said Alvarez. “That’s a real problem. These are high-hazard activities.”
“How many times are we going to allow this to happen?”
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Organic farmers and others who do not use GMOs are increasingly under assault by GMO contamination and often left holding the bag, a survey released Monday reveals.
“The risks and effects of GMO contamination have unfairly burdened organic and non-GMO farmers with extra work, longer hours and financial insecurity,” according to research done by watchdog group Food & Water Watch in conjunction with the Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing (OFARM).
The survey comes as the USDA wraps up its public comment period on the feasibility of coexistence between GMO and non-GMO crops.
However, according to Food & Water Watch, USDA policy recommendations have been based on protocols written by the USDA Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21)—which is “heavily weighted with biotech proponents”—without proper data on the the cost and other impacts of coexistence on organic and non-GMO growers.
“If USDA really wanted to know if contamination was happening, all they had to do was ask organic grain producers who take great pains to keep their crops from being contaminated,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Now USDA can no longer claim ignorance about this problem.”
As quoted in a summary of the survey of 1,500 farmers across 17 primarily Midwestern states, the findings include:
Nearly half of respondents are skeptical that GMO and non-GMO crop production can coexist.
Over two-thirds do not think good stewardship alone is enough to protect organic and non-GMO farmers from contamination.
Five out of six responding farmers are concerned about GMO contamination impacting their farm, with 60 percent saying they are extremely concerned.
One out of three responding farmers have dealt with GMO contamination on their farm. Of those contaminated farmers, over half have been rejected by their buyers for that reason. They reported a median cost of a rejected semi load (approximately 1,000 bushels) of $4,500.
As one farmer wrote in response: “Monsanto and allies are spending millions buying votes to vote against GMO labeling in the stores! They should pay for insurance for GMO contamination on organic land. All the big boys care about is their bottom line. They have to be held accountable if their [GMO seed] contaminates my crop!”
Contamination can occur through one of two ways: Gene flow is a result of cross-pollination, which is driven by wind or pollinators’ dispersal of GMO seeds; and the co-mingling of GMO seeds can occur through handling, transport, storage or processing.
“Instead of an extended discussion of coexistence,” the report notes, “the USDA must recognize the harm that is already being done to organic and non-GMO farmers and prioritize ways to prevent contamination.”
Other recommendations from the researchers include: placing the burden of responsibility on biotech and seed companies holding GMO seed patents for “all losses associated with GMO contamination,” including paying into a compensation fund for farmers impacted by contamination; and creating and enforcing mandatory stewardship requirements for GMO crop production.
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