The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein
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The Sidney Hillman Foundation is now accepting entries for the 2016 Hillman Prizes which honor investigative journalism and commentary in the public interest.
Winners exemplify resourcefulness and courage in reporting, skilled storytelling, social impact and relevance to the ideals of Sidney Hillman.
The received-by deadline for all submissions will be January 30, 2016.
Click here for more details.
Susan Melkisethian, Creative Commons.
The Best of the Week’s News
Monday’s panel on #BlackLivesMatter and the #FightForFifteen, co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute and the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
The Best of the Week’s News
Left to right: Kendall Fells, Frances Fox Piven, Jelani Cobb, Alicia Garza. By Lindsay Beyerstein.
Black Lives Matter and the Fight for Fifteen are two of the most dynamic social movements in the United States today. These were the subject of Monday’s New Labor Forum, sponsored by the Murphy Institute and the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
Scholar and activist Frances Fox Piven introduced the panel, which was moderated by Hillman Judge Jelani Cobb.
Kendall Fells of Fast Food Forward/SEIU described the genesis of the Fight for Fifteen movement. Fast food workers were desperate, he said, because they had no consistency in their scheduling and no respect at work. One woman was fired for drinking water out of the wrong-sized cup, another for eating a single chicken nugget. At first, a $15 minimum wage for the fast food sector seemed like an unattainable goal, Fells said. Today, a $15 wage is a reality for many fast food workers in New York, California, and other states.
Alicia Garza is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement and the executive director of National Domestic Workers Alliance. She described how veterans of the Fight For 15 in Ferguson applied their newfound leadership skills to the struggle for civil rights and police accountability in Ferguson.
The panelists agreed that poor communities are both underpaid and overpoliced, and their residents are more likely to be Black and Latino. These are the threads that tie Black Lives Matter and the Fight for Fifteen together. Fells pointed out that the same workers who were striking for respect at their fast food jobs were also getting harrassed by the police on their way to work.
Randy Bayne, Creative Commons.
The Best of the Week’s News
Grant Blankenship for ProPublica.
Nina Martin of ProPublica and Amy Yurkanin of AL.com win the October Sidney Award for exposing Alabama’s attempt to twist an anti-meth-lab law to punish women for using drugs during pregnancy. The arrests of hundreds of new mothers combine the worst excesses of the War on Drugs with the anti-abortion movement’s “personhood” agenda.
Find out how this remarkable piece of investigative journalism came to be in an interview we call The Backstory, with Lindsay Beyerstein.
Diana Robinson, Creative Commons.
The Best of the Week’s News
Lindsay Beyerstein.
The Best of the Week’s News
Courtesy of Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Hillman Judge Ta-Nehisi Coates has been selected to recieve a MacArthur Genius Grant for his work in journalism, social criticism and memoir. The $625,000 grant is awarded to exceptionally creative people. It provides a stipend for five years with no strings attached:
“We take ‘no strings’ quite seriously,” said Cecilia A. Conrad, the foundation’s managing director. “They don’t have to report to us. They can use the funds in any way they see fit.” [NYT]
Coates, the author of the best-selling memoir, Between the World and Me, is one of 24 outstanding winners. This year’s MacArthur fellows include a cutting-edge brain researchers, visual artists, economists, and a puppeteer.
Nicoliee528, Creative Commons.
The Best of the Week’s News
