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A recession is looming. In July, the Fed cut interest rates for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. Wealth inequality is growing, the racial wealth gap is exploding, and wages for ordinary workers are stuck and stagnant. For most families, especially Black and brown families, their wages are simply not enough to keep up. The Republican-controlled Senate is holding the key to a better economy hostage, and it doesn’t have to be this way. GOP Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking one of our best chances to pull working families out of poverty and pump money back into our communities: raising the minimum wage. The House has already passed the Raise the Wage Act of 2019, a popular bill that would bring the federal minimum wage up to $15 per hour by 2025, eliminate the racist and discriminatory tipped minimum wage, and tie the minimum wage to median wages so that wages aren’t dragged down by inaction again. “Hiking the minimum [...]

By Janell Ross FLINT, Mich. — LaTosha Brown stepped off what she calls the “Blackest Bus in America,” to the sound of James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” The longtime political organizer was in Flint to mobilize black voters — one stop on an 11-state tour. Brown and her organization, the Black Voters Matter Fund, which she co-founded with political strategist Cliff Albright in November 2016, are doing this work in an unusual way. In the first 20 minutes or so in Flint, before a group of about 20 people, the words “vote,” “voting” and “election” never left Brown’s mouth. Not once. Instead, she asked community organization leaders who had turned out to Flint’s Neighborhood Engagement Hub about the details of life in Flint, the challenges faced and the solutions imagined and tried. Read the Full Article