California established its welfare program, CalWORKs, to alleviate the impact of extreme poverty on children and to keep families together. But one element of the program—the Maximum Family Grant rule—instead penalizes children for being born into poverty. The MFG rule does this by denying financial support for babies born to families that are already receiving CalWORKs assistance. After twenty years of hurting low-income families, the MFG rule has to go! This year, a strong coalition led by State Senator Holly Mitchell has come together to repeal the MFG rule through a bill, SB 899, and the state budget. In my eight years serving clients at the East Bay Community Law Center, I’ve seen how harmful the MFG rule is for families, especially children. I have seen children go without medication because their parents no longer have a working fridge to cool it, and children who can’t make it to school on time or at all because their families lost their housing and are living in far-away shelters. I have seen families who can’t afford a car seat and so have to drive their newborns home from the hospital without one, and babies with diaper rash because their families have to stretch their too-limited diaper supply too far. The parents I work with, like other parents across California, want what’s best for their children. This is true regardless of whether their child is the first-born or last-born. But by denying aid for newborns in CalWORKs families, the MFG rule tells parents that some children deserve support and others don’t— and it ends up hurting everyone in the family. The MFG rule isn’t just flawed in its premise. CalWORKs’ administration of it is also riddled with mistakes, with families and children on the losing end. Grace, one of my clients, was denied assistance for her son Henry over a six-year period due to an incorrect application of the MFG rule. Without the additional money she should have received, Grace lost her housing, and she and her children experienced an extended period of homelessness that is still affecting them years later. Because she is so committed to sparing other families that experience, Grace recently testified before legislators in Sacramento, urging them to pass SB 899. In addition to exacerbating poverty, the MFG rule limits women’s reproductive decisions and leads to government intrusion into families. The only exceptions to the MFG rule are for rape, incest, or failure of certain birth control methods. This means that women must disclose private information about their use of contraception or prove that they experienced rape or incest. I’m proud that California is a national leader in protecting women’s reproductive freedom. But the MFG rule is a shameful exception that punishes poor women for their reproductive decisions by withholding basic aid for their families. All children deserve equal opportunities to lead safe, healthy, and successful lives. California has shown a commitment to lifting children out of deep poverty through the CalWORKs program, but the MFG rule undermines that commitment. It drives families deeper into poverty and leads to worse outcomes for children. It needs to be repealed today.

Forward this to everyone you know in Nevada. We plan to introduce ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Nevada State Legislature at the start of the 2015 session and we are building support for its successful passage. 35 states have ratified the original Federal Equal Rights Amendment; we need 3 more states to complete the process. Currently, there is legislation moving through both the US Senate and US House to Remove the Ratification Deadline and allow the last 3 states to ratify. Some Members of Congress say they need to see movement in the states before they will put their support behind this legislation. Will Nevada stand up and be the first state in the 21st century to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and move the entire country forward toward full economic equality? The Equal Rights Amendment would provide a path to reliable economic security for both women and men by guaranteeing that equal pay for equal work is enshrined in the United States Constitution. We need the Equal Rights Amendment to lift women and families out of poverty and promote household stability. This is a civil rights issue! Without the Equal Rights Amendment laws like Lily Ledbetter and the Pay Equity Act have no teeth. There is nothing in the United States Constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex so these piecemeal laws have no judicial standing. "Every Constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not." -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg We still need the ERA. Currently, federal and state laws do not and cannot fully protect equal rights for women and girls--and in some cases men and boys--under the law. This is because discrimination on account of sex is not barred by the Constitution. Antonin Scalia, Betty Ford, Patricia Ireland, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter have all asserted that the ERA is necessary for constitutional protection of equal rights for all. The Equal Rights Amendment would provide blanket protection to women for all time. A yes vote by your Assembly person/Senator will send a positive and clear message that the time has come to recognize women as equal under the law in the United States of America. It is time to guarantee women a reliable path to economic security and lift American women and children out of poverty. America is one of the few industrialized nations that has not yet recognized its women as equals. It is now time to do the right thing and move our country forward.

When I left the Army, I wanted to pursue a career as a video game designer. A recruiter for for-profit Gibbs College in Massachusetts, owned by Career Education Corp., told me their program would put me on a fast track to a job at a video game company, but the experience left me with poor training and a worthless degree. The paid internship they promised turned out to be an unpaid assignment doing the laundry of a wedding photographer. So I tried again, at the Art Institutes, owned by EDMC. Again, the recruiter promised their degree would get me the video design job I wanted. But as I went forward with classes, the school kept bringing me back to the financial aid office to push me to take out more high-interest student loans. When I couldn't afford any more, I had no choice but to drop out. Now I'm unemployed with more than $85,000 in student loan debt. It's time that predatory career colleges like ITT Tech, Everest, The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Sanford-Brown Institute, Heald College, Kaplan University, and The University of Phoenix are held accountable for abusing students and ripping off taxpayers. Career education programs are supposed to prepare students for jobs where they can earn a living, including the ability to repay your student debt. But far too often, these schools ruin students’ lives. The Department of Education recently proposed a rule to hold career education programs accountable. But the proposal is full of loopholes and giveaways to schools. We need a strong rule that protects students from sham colleges that leave them with overwhelming debt and dismal career prospects. For-profit colleges have about 13 percent of US college students but account for nearly half of student loan defaults. Many of these schools get close to 90 percent of their revenue from taxpayer dollars. But they spend more of that money on marketing, big CEO salaries, and profits for Wall Street private equity firms than on educating students. As a result, more than half of the students who enroll in these schools drop out within about four months. What's worse, these schools often target vulnerable populations, including veterans and disadvantaged communities who can least afford costly and worthless degrees. To adequately protect students and taxpayers and prompt schools to quickly improve or end weak programs, the rule (Docket ID ED-2014-OPE-0039) needs to be strengthened by: - Providing financial relief for students in programs that lose eligibility. Schools with ineffective programs that lose eligibility for federal aid should be required to make whole the students who enrolled in the program. Providing full relief to all such students is not only fair, it also creates a greater incentive for schools to quickly improve their programs. - Limiting enrollment in poorly performing programs until they improve. Under the proposed regulation, poorly performing programs can increase the number of students they enroll, without limit, right up until the day the programs lose eligibility. Instead, the rule should impose enrollment caps until a program improves. - Closing loopholes and raising standards. The proposed regulation is too easy to game, and its standards are too low. For example, programs can pass the standards even when 99% of their students drop out with heavy debts that they cannot pay down. Unscrupulous schools can easily manipulate job placement rates or evade accountability by limiting program size. They can exclude the debt of graduates who enroll in a program for just one day, and can enroll students in online programs that lack the accreditation needed to be hired in the states where the students live. These types of loopholes need to be closed and the standards raised. - Protecting low-cost programs where most graduates don’t borrow. Low-cost programs where most graduates do not borrow at all – such as community colleges -- should automatically meet the standards because, by definition, these programs do not consistently leave students with unaffordable debts. Burdening these programs with a complicated appeals process could prompt more schools to leave the federal student loan program and lead to the closure of effective, low-cost programs. It’s time to protect students and taxpayers by holding predatory colleges accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with our tax dollars. Join us and make your voice heard! #studentsDemand #Gainful

We need to tell Governor Brown to sign Senate Bill 1272, the Overturn Citizens United Act, which would let Californians vote this November to demand that Congress pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. The Supreme Court has gutted more than one hundred years of campaign finance laws and given corporations and the rich even more power over our government -- with the outrageous rationale that limiting spending on elections limits speech. If our democratic system of representative government is to survive, these deeply damaging rulings must be overturned. SB 1272 will put a proposition on this November's ballot that will let California voters demand that Congress create a constitutional amendment to do so. SB 1272 has now passed the legislature – now it's up to Governor Brown to sign it so it goes onto this November's ballot!

My name is Aklima Khanam. I’m 20 years old. I started working in a garment factory when I was 14 years old. My dad was ill and couldn’t work and my mom had to take care of my four siblings. I started working at New Wave Style at Rana Plaza on January 3, 2013. We made clothes for Walmart and Children’s Place. Managers would say “This is for Walmart, you need to make it beautiful.” If I spent too long in the bathroom, they would pull my hair, kick me off the stool, call me “whore” or say “your parents are children of pigs” or many other kinds of abusive language. They would give me a ton of work and if there was one or two mistakes, they would do this. All I made was about $125 a month. My normal workday was from 8am to midnight. Sometimes they kept us there til 2am or 3am. I worked 7 days a week. The whole time January 3rd to April 24th, I was never given a single day off. On the morning of April 24th, the management forced us into the factory using physical violence and said that there was a shipment of 24,000 pieces that needed to go out. They said we would be fired and not paid if we couldn't meet the target. Soon after we started working the power went out. Then the generator went on. Moments later the building collapsed. A machine fell on top of me. I was trapped under it. A man next to me died immediately. I was trapped for 12 hours until a rescuer found me. I had a head injury, my chest hurt, my hip hurt, my ankle hurt. Now I stay at home. I do housework. I’m ill a lot of the time so I can’t do much. There are points when I had to stay in bed for 15 days at a stretch. All I’ve received since the collapse was 45,000 taka ($580) from Primark and 7,000 taka ($90) from Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association. Because the factory owner fled, BGMEA stepped in and gave us the wages we were owed for April – that’s what the 7,000 taka ($90) was for. I urge Walmart, Children’s Place and all the other brands and retailers whose clothes were made at Rana Plaza to pay full and fair compensation. If the brands don't pay compensation, it will be really difficult to get by. If they pay compensation we'll somehow get by. If everyone puts pressure on the brands then Walmart, Children's Place and all others might pay fair compensation. Translated by International Labor Rights Forum.

This petition is written by and for concerned residents of Pennsylvania who are affected by the proposed construction of the 178-mile-long Central Penn Line natural gas pipeline, which would run from Susquehanna County to Lancaster County. This proposed pipeline threatens the land we live on, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and our most treasured outdoor spaces — and violate our rights under Pennsylvania law. Therefore we call on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to deny Williams Partners (Tulsa, OK) permission to construct the Central Penn Line, and we call upon residents and friends of southeast Pennsylvania to join together in this cause. Some important facts about the proposed Central Penn Line: • This is a non-essential pipeline. The proposed pipeline is, by Williams’ own admission, merely a shortcut between already-existing lines. The proposed pipeline would be 42 inches wide and under 1200-1500 pressure per square inch (meaning an explosion— and Williams has had many— could have devastating consequences). It would also create a 125-ft wide construction zone during the development process, and require a permanent 50-ft clear-cut right of way. This would mean irrevocable changes to our land, forests, and nature preserves. • None of the pipeline’s gas will benefit Pennsylvania residents. PA will bear the destruction involved in pipeline construction, as well as the permanent risks associated with major natural gas transport through our scenic woods, pristine waterways, and treasured farmlands. Yet 100% of this natural gas will flow out of our state—potentially to US ports for export to foreign countries. • The pipeline would permanently damage the scenic River Hills of the Susquehanna River, including some of the region’s most treasured natural preserves: Tucquan Glen, Kelly’s Run, Fishing Creek, Rock Springs, and Shenk's Ferry Wildflower Preserve. The preservation of these areas is important for their natural beauty, their role in maintaining the health of local ecosystems, and the outdoor recreation opportunities (hiking, fishing, hunting, etc.) they afford. • In Lancaster County, much of the proposed pipeline’s path violates land now protected by Lancaster County Conservancy and Lancaster Farmland Trust. Both organizations are fighting hard to keep this pipeline off our lands. Millions of dollars have been donated and spent by generations of landowners for the express purpose of land preservation. The preservation of our farms and woodlands protects the livelihoods of generations to come, protects the food we eat, and protects our Lancastrian cultural inheritance and our living history. • If FERC grants permission, then even those landowners who oppose the pipeline will lose their land rights through eminent domain. Running pipelines through individual properties decreases property values — and owners will not be compensated for this loss. At the same time, because of decreased property values, local municipalities lose tax money — and are not compensated for this either. This proposal violates the purpose of eminent domain. The 5th Amendment states that eminent domain may only be enacted when it will benefit the public. But this natural gas being pumped through the fertile, pristine soil of Lancaster County is not for the benefit of Lancastrians or Pennsylvanians — instead it will be transported to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, and may even be exported overseas. Therefore, this project is not valid under the founding principles of eminent domain. Landowners should be entitled to retain their properties unmarred by these pipelines. • Fracking is contaminating water, poisoning the air, industrializing communities, and putting public health at risk across Pennsylvania. Building more fracked gas infrastructure will only commit Pennsylvania to more dirty drilling, further endangering our communities. • When it comes to public health, these pipelines endanger the air we breathe and the water we drink. Pipelines such as this one have exploded multiple times in the past, killing and injuring people and destroying homes. Williams Partners has a history of lax safety standards, frequent pipeline leaks, and explosions. Few regulations (and even less monitoring) exist to ensure the safety of these pipelines for humans or the environment. Who bears the cost of these risks? The local communities who live near the pipelines. Our present and future community has the right to a safe and clean environment— in fact, these rights are guaranteed under Pennsylvania law. Yet this proposed pipeline project threatens those rights. Therefore we call on FERC to deny permission for this project.

Student debt is a major economic injustice that denies students the opportunity to go to college, or a life without extreme financial strain. At KSU, tuition and fee's are being raised every year for bonuses and additional construction. Increasing the costs of college has been the Board's solution to additional costs since 1987, increasing tuition more than four fold over the past 26 years. This way of budgeting must end. If it doesn't end, based off current trends, in-state tuition for 2016 will be over $11,000. Help us end this horrible trend of increasing costs, and help Kent State University be a debt free campus. Below is a letter that goes into more detail about the three issues we want changed. We will present it to the Board of Trustees, along with the petition signatures... To the Board of Trustee’s for Kent State University: We as students, future students, alumni, student supporters, and faculty and staff demand 3 changes be set in place. First, we petition you to terminate the 16-hour credit hour cap. This injustice forces students to take fewer classes or pay a ludicrous fee to take more than 16 hours. Those who take fewer classes to avoid the fee, then have to take more semesters, which still forces them to pay more in tuition than if there was no credit hour cap. In addition, for those who chose to graduate on time and take more than 16 hours, they are required to pay an additional fee that is unmerited. Either way, the student’s debt is increased. We are a liberal arts school that is supposed to create well-rounded students; how can we so that with a credit hour cap? Moreover we decree that you put a freeze on the cost of tuition, fees, and room and board for 5 years. The increases are putting students in further debt and financial hardship, all because they want a better future. This freeze will allow the students from financial security for 5 years while you decide on a better system. Increasing such costs is not the answer to for more students or better facilities. Our third demand is that the Board of Trustees develops a plan during the 5 year freeze, for a debt free campus. This plan will then take place once the freeze is over, so students can continue to not struggle financially. This includes expanding the FYE course to have a focused section on financial aid, loans, and loan payment. This is to help insure that students understand these processes and use them correctly. Also a better budget for Kent State University, in which the cost of college is not increased for bonuses, more scholarships or construction. We urge you to heed our requests. Sincerely,

Voters spoke loudly and clearly in favor of a living wage for hard-working Chicagoans. An astounding 87% of voters said yes on March 18th to a $15 an hour minimum wage for employees of corporations with $50 million or more in annual revenue. We can't keep up! The economic recovery has not been for everyone. Most of the jobs growth is in the low-wage service sector pushing people into lower and lower paying positions. Thousands of Chicago residents cannot make ends meet despite working full-time jobs. According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a couple with one child must earn at least $15.30 an hour to afford the basic necessities without public assistance. Raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour would help over a quarter of a million Chicagoans better provide for their families. The Second City cannot be second on this fight. Cities on both coasts are bustling with momentum towards a living wage. Chicago can lead the way and reverse the growing trend of a city of have's and have-not's.

Governor Brewer is in negotiations with the legislature to increase funding for child welfare services, and we’re asking her to include a full restoration of the childcare budget for the estimated 33,000 children who’ve been cut out of subsidized care programs in recent years. Arizona’s new child welfare department shouldn’t be tied up dealing with loving parents caught in a terrible choice between watching their children and trying to feed their children. Arizona’s parents need better options to keep their families together and well provided for. While parents in Arizona have been forced to make hard choices when they couldn’t afford childcare, the Arizona state legislature decided to do nothing on behalf of these families. Their recent budget includes no funding for childcare subsidies for low-income families, which have been cut 40 percent over the last four years, [1] and even underfunds Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal to fix a state child welfare agency that had failed to look into more than 6,500 child abuse and neglect cases. [2][3] Will you join RH Reality Check, and our friends at Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), in asking Governor Brewer to work for the restoration of Arizona’s childcare subsidy budget? [1] – “Homeless Mother Gets Job Interview But Doesn’t Have Childcare, Ends Up In Jail,” by Annie-Rose Strasser, Think Progress, March 27, 2014. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/27/3419192/homeless-woman-job-interview/ [2] – “Divided Arizona House Oks budget deal,” by Mary Jo Pitzl, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Alia Rau, The Republic | azcentral.com, March 28, 2014. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/28/divided-arizona-house-nears-budget-deal/6995315/ [3] – “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer dissolves state child welfare agency,” by Bob Christie, Associated Press, January 14,2014. http://m.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/0114/Arizona-Gov.-Jan-Brewer-dissolves-state-child-welfare-agency

My name is Maria Elena Durazo. I was born into a poor immigrant family. We were farm workers who migrated with the crops, but we always carried with us our faith, our hope and our sense of obligation to those who had even less than we did. Since Cesar Chavez and the farmworker’s movement, I have dedicated myself to a simple idea-no one who works hard should stay poor. In January, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO released a study by the Economic Roundtable that showed what many of us suspected – 46 percent of workers in Los Angeles are earning poverty level wages. That percentage translates into 810,000 breadwinners and their families trying to scrape by on poverty wages in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Imagine if 46 percent of the people in your city were being denied a basic freedom guaranteed under our Constitution? That would be considered a human rights crisis of immense proportions. It would be a crisis that would compel everyone to act. We live in a very rich country, yet working people in America are earning shamefully low wages denying basic human dignity. That’s why people of all faiths, from all over America are calling on Pope Francis to address the inequality of wealth plaguing our communities and to lift up the voices of millions of workers and their families.

My name is Amanda Weninghoff and I work at McDonald’s in Kansas City, MO. You probably know that McDonald’s and other fast food chains don’t pay us enough to make ends meet. You know what’s worse? When they STEAL from us on top of that. They call it wage theft but I call it getting robbed on the job when we are forced to work off the clock or denied breaks during long shifts. When I was living out of my car in the parking lot of the very McDonald's where I worked, I was also a victim of wage theft. It's so infuriating to see it’s happening to other workers across the country, but it's not surprising. A new poll reports that 89% of fast food workers say it happens to them. How many fall short on paying rent or at the grocery store because they weren’t paid overtime or were made to work off the clock? Even one is too many. If we stole $20 from the cash register, we’d be fired and our employers would not hesitate to call the cops. If McDonald’s and the other big chains steal thousands from their employees, they get away with it and corporate executives might even see a bonus. That’s why workers in New York, California, and Michigan brought lawsuits against McDonald’s – charging they have been forced to work hours off the clock and been refused overtime. Illegal pay practices abound in the fast food business – and they can mean the difference in keeping food on the table for our families. Two brave whistleblowers have come forward to tell the truth about wage theft at McDonald’s. These former managers have a lot to say about the pressure to keep labor costs low and who, ultimately pays the price; workers like me. Illegal pay practices abound in the fast food business – and they can mean the difference in keeping food on the table for our families. On March 13, workers at restaurants in New York, California, and Michigan brought lawsuits against McDonald’s and franchisees against illegal pay practices. From forcing employees to work off the clock, to denying breaks, to cutting overtime pay, withholding pay makes it all the harder for fast food workers to pay their rent and care for their children. No one deserves to be robbed by their boss – it’s time to make sure every McDonald’s employee receives the legal wage they deserve. Help us send McDonald's a message that they can’t ignore. Let them know you have our backs. Sources: The New York Times: "Fast-Food Workers Seeking $15 Wage Are Planning Civil Disobedience" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/business/fast-food-workers-seeking-higher-wages-plan-another-strike.html?_r=0 The New York Times: "More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’ " http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/business/more-workers-are-claiming-wage-theft.html?_r=0 Salon: "McDonald’s ex-managers sound off to Salon: Non-existent breaks and illegal overtime" http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/thats_illegal_mcdonalds_ex_managers_sound_off_to_salon/ Chicago Tribune: Survey: Almost 90% of fast-food workers allege wage theft http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-survey-almost-90-of-fastfood-workers-allege-wage-theft-20140401,0,540484.story LA Times: Nearly 90% of fast-food workers allege wage theft, survey finds http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-wage-theft-survey-fast-food-20140331,0,4674874.story#ixzz2xe4D3Adt New York Times: McDonald’s Workers File Wage Suits in 3 States http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/business/mcdonalds-workers-in-three-states-file-suits-claiming-underpayment.html?_r=0 New York Times: Happy Meals, Unhappy Workers (Editorial) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/happy-meals-unhappy-workers.html

Solar is great (obviously!) but the traditional panels-on-your-roof approach to solar simply doesn't work for the majority of Connecticut: families and businesses who rent, homeowners with shade trees, and plenty of other solar supporters are left in the dark. These customers are paying into our state's successful clean energy program without being able to participate. It's time for more a more inclusive approach to Connecticut clean energy. As part of renewable energy bill SB 353, Connecticut state lawmakers are considering an exciting new Shared Clean Energy program that would allow these energy customers to go solar for the first time. Participants would be able to subscribe to a local renewable energy project and get credit on their utility bills for their portion of the clean power produced. If passed, a strong Shared Clean Energy program would build on Connecticut’s proven solar energy success. Connecticut already has 74 megawatts of installed solar capacity, enough to power 9,700 homes with sunshine. Shared Clean Energy would make solar work for more of Connecticut - and that means more local clean energy investment, more climate change progress, and healthier communities. By further increasing our state's use of solar power, we can reduce the need for expensive, polluting power plants and build a stronger electric grid that benefits all. But utilities are pushing for a weaker bill that would limit participation or reduce participating customer savings. The state shouldn't be putting a restrictive limit on a program that's very purpose is expanding solar access to new communities! Help us encourage lawmakers to pass the strongest Shared Clean Energy program possible for Connecticut.