(I love these actions that show so directly the intersection of class, color, gender, and solidarity. On many issues, like school closings ahead of privatizations and teacher firings, poverty, and environmental degradation from resource extraction, the Rabble are all in it together.)
https://twitter.com/RebeccaLynchNYC/status/664042718293815296
https://twitter.com/FastFoodForward/status/664040273484361728
RaiseUpfor15 “Hold your burgers &your fries, make our wages super-sized!” @McDonalds workers #FightFor15 in #RVA.
Women and the Minimum Wage, State by State, May 19, 2015
The minimum wage is falling short for millions of Americans — especially for women, who represent about two-thirds of minimum wage workers across the country, and at least half of minimum wage workers in every state. Today, the federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, and full-time earnings of $14,500 a year leave a family of three thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia currently have minimum wages above the federal level, but in every state, the minimum wage leaves a full-time worker with two children near or below the poverty level.
Click on a state below to see its statewide minimum wage and tipped minimum wage, plus the share of minimum wage workers who are women. (the rest is here.)
The fight for $15: Why thousands of fast food workers are protesting (via Mashable.com)
Additional resources:
http://labornotes.org/
http://workerscompass.org/
http://forrespect.org/ (formerly Our Walmart)
How robots will even affect the jobs of people we thought were immune (WaPo) ;-)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
“Negotiating, bargaining and conflict resolution 101” counsels DEMAND (the ACTUAL Livable minimum wage of) ~ $22/hr; if you’re willing to settle for $15! Oughtta sought $30 for $22!! Unlikely as it seems; It WORKS!!! Otherwise, nada; Absent DEMAND.
i certainly see where you’re coming from bruce, and i’m not sure whose idea $15 was. it’s barely a living wage, but so many are making half that now. the stats are stark regarding the working poor, aren’t they?
in weather news, we had a blizzard here last night and have about six inches of snow this morning. ;-)
well, it turns out that (unsurprisingly) pittsburg’s and NY’s plans for a rise to $15 is very, very incremental. but RT notes other cities that have phase-in-plans, but listen to the dog-whistle from cuomo; he sounds just like O:
““I believe that if you work hard and work full time, you should not be condemned to live in poverty,” the governor said, adding that “families nationwide continue to be left behind by an insufficient minimum wage. And it’s time that changed.”
otoh, bernie sanders apparently said this:
“”Thank you all for coming out and standing up for justice, standing up for dignity, and for saying loudly and clearly that people in this country that work 40 hours a week deserve a living wage,” he said, addressing a crowd in the rain while holding an umbrella.” at least he didn’t say ‘work hard’. ;-) an yeah, his plan for $15 is also just as incremental.
The tweet from NC struck me as odd ‘we work, we vote’, this demographic, poorly paid. less educated and mostly, but not all young are the least likely to vote. Examining the pictures is even more telling, besides the small numbers of demonstrators there doesn’t seem to be any actual striking happening except shutting down one McD’s for a few hours. The other thing that is obvious is that almost all the signage is professionally produced except for the one BLM and HC worker in Durham just as most of the hashtags are a bit too clever. The tweets of solidarity from foreign supporters could be circumstantial or they could be a sign of more SEIU/Democrat organizing.
The news reports calling this an, important voting demographic, and the photo-ops with HRC and Sanders set off my Astroturf detector, these poor folks are being used.
There may be a modest bump in the MW from this movement but once the election is over and these people are no longer useful they will be ignored.
as i took it, the ‘strikers’ were more about asking customers to not go in, and that after explaining the issue, many left. now i dunno how many hours various groups stayed, either.
but yeah, as i’d said on the other thread, seiu seemed to play a huge part in it, and the pols were out in force, at least on the various related twit accounts. the minimum wage gains have been growing, for sure, but the incremental nature of them sucks. but seeing big unions ‘assisting them’ is harsh dem gate-keeping.
i keep thinking of the UAW asking for a waiver for wage increases: they wanted, and did keep, their two-tier pay practices. pfffft. seeing trumpa all-jiggy n the main hashtag was nauseating, as well.
but for now, any gains are good, and this may be good practice for the future, even though they didn’t actually #ShutShitDown, as some of the BLM activists have in the past. oh, and by the way, the cases against those arrested while closing down the Maul of America have been dismissed.
also noteworthy was the Big News in media that these folks would protest the gop debate in milwaukee, or wherever it was.
and what in the world is with all these italics? i can’t find anything in Admin that’s causing it. might just be a temporary wordpress glitch or something.
“As with the paradox of the invisible non-terrestrial life, given the prevailing conditions, the probability would suggest that there MUST be resistance to capitalism organically developing amongst the oppressed class. Given the invisibility of this probable working class resistance, we may need to call in to question what we are looking for. Perhaps what we recognise as the ‘performance’ of resistance is limited by our expectations, experiences and traumas. This may bias our search, causing us to to inadvertently overlook evidence of ruptures within capitalism.
A renewal of working class investigation, adopting a different framework is needed. We need to turn our focus away from capital and the state to where hope resides – the agents for change: the working class.”
“Whilst we still tend towards a shared communist history to make sense of our experience, a clarity has emerged: unequivocally the answers to a way forward to attaining that goal reside in our backyard.
For us that place is Western Sydney. This blog is written by two people communicating from suburbia, attempting to bring analysis to what we are part of and observe around us. We write about people like us, for people like us. We will share stories of resistance and analysis of struggle, and welcome contributions to the same ends. Through circulating and generalising observations we wish to contribute to the pollination of struggles which prefigure a vibrant new world in the shell of the old.”
From war correspondents in Sydney.