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Source: Yes! Magazine

When Republic Windows and Doors closed down without giving workers notice, the issue drew national attention. Since then, they’ve turned the factory into a worker-owned co-op—where they hold the power.

Back in the day, factory workers at the Chicago-based Republic Windows and Doors were simply told what to do. That wasn’t unusual. Workers might have seen ways to improve the production process, but at Republic their supervisor wasn’t interested, said former employee Armando Robles. read more

Source: Yes! Magazine

This week, I returned to Detroit as I do every few years. On Thursday, I visited the James and Grace Lee Boggs School and heard of the influence Grace had in founding a school that is deeply rooted in community. On Friday, I visited the Boggs Center and talked to board members about their perceptions of displacement, water shutoffs, and community power in Detroit.

And I had a chance to sit with Grace, hold her hand, and bring our greetings from YES!

“I’m tired,” she told me. read more

Source: The New Internationalist

This is Part 3 of Hussam’s story. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Rescues from the mass crossing of the Mediterranean went largely unnoticed in the wider world until 19 April, when more than 800 migrants drowned off the coast of Libya when their boat capsized.

More than 200,000 refugees and migrants travelled to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea in 2014, more than triple the number in 2013; 30% of those were Syrian. Italy alone received 160,000 of those 200,000 refugees and migrants, at the rate of 480 each day. The Italian-operated Mare Nostrum maritime search and rescue programme, with a price tag of $10.5 million a month, was cut for budgetary reasons in October 2014. read more

Source: Yes! Magazine

If she did not make plasma deposits twice a week at a donation center in Tennessee, Jessica Compton and her family would have no income. If not for a carton of spoiled milk, Modonna and Brianna Harris’ refrigerator would be barren.  The Harris and Compton families’ stories are just two accounts of devastating poverty documented in sociology professors Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer’s book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

The book, released in September, documents the rise of 1.5 million American families, including 3 million children, who subsist on as little as $2 per person per day.  It reads like a Dickens novel. Edin and Shaefer spent years immersed in the lives of financially deprived families, combing through the budgets of welfare recipients and surveys of poor people’s cash flows. Additionally, they set up study sites in diverse locations like metropolitan Chicago and rural Mississippi to find out where and how severe poverty was concentrated. read more