Photo cred K. Kendall on Flickr
Last week, 5,800 employees at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama held a vote on whether to form a union. At press time, the votes are still being counted, but if the vote to unionize passes, the Bessemer employees will be the first Amazon employees ever to unionize.
Photo by Fibonacci Blue on Creative Commons
Mass shootings have left 18 people dead in Atlanta and Boulder; across the country, others have been injured and killed in smaller-scale attacks. We’ve been through this cycle before: a gunman takes lives, new regulations are considered, NRA-backed Republicans say no, and nothing happens.
But there is reason to keep pushing. Washington Post reporter Sean Sullivan observes that even though the majority of Americans favor implementing common-sense gun safety laws, “people who oppose these new restrictions are very, very passionate... in many cases, they tend to be more passionate than the people who favor the new restrictions.” The filibuster may stand in the way of Congressional legislation, but showing our passion in saying “enough is enough!” can motivate the White House and state legislatures to act.
This week, Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which received final approval from Congress on Wednesday, despite opposition from all Senate Republicans. While the stimulus package has some gaps, it is a historic piece of anti-poverty legislation and will provide the kind of relief Democrats campaigned on. The bill is "expected to slash the poverty rate by about a third and reduce the share of children in poverty by more than half.”