Agenda Block
~ Personal Commentary
This is a story about women and "...Life in America's Booming Service Industry" but, I think it is important to point out that it is not just women who are impacted by the economic cruelty hardworking Americans suffer under the hands of business owners who left to their own devices see very little value in America's human capital and it's not just waitstaff and it is unconscionable.
📎 Note: If one owns a business and one's employees need to apply for government assistance one is not a "rugged individual," a successful business person -- one is government dependent, welfare recipient.
Please consider that as you avail yourselves of their services and as you -- vote. Thank you.
📎 Note: If one owns a business and one's employees need to apply for government assistance one is not a "rugged individual," a successful business person -- one is government dependent, welfare recipient.
Please consider that as you avail yourselves of their services and as you -- vote. Thank you.
g.
Focused Read, excerpts in about 5-6 minutes
"Low Wages, Sexual Harassment and Unreliable Tips. This Is Life in America’s Booming Service Industry
(By Alana Semuels and Malcolm Burnley / Published in partnership with The Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom that reports on issues impacting women.)
After an eight-hour shift on her feet, shuffling between a stuffy kitchen and the red vinyl booths of Broad Street Diner, Christina Munce is at a standstill in traffic.
Still wearing the red polo shirt and black pants required for work at the diner in South Philadelphia, she’s arguing with her colleague Donna Klum.
They carpool most days to spare Klum a two-hour commute on public transportation that involves three transfers.
“It’s not O.K. for people not to tip,” Munce says from the driver’s seat, the Philly skyline passing by.
Klum believes that bad karma will catch up with non-tippers, but Munce, a single mother who relies on tips to live, doesn’t care much about their fate.
“I have to make sure that my daughter has a roof over her head,” she says. The desire for cash over karma is understandable:
Munce’s base pay is $2.83 an hour.
(Emphasis is mine.)
The decade-long economic expansion has been a boon to those at the top of the economic ladder.
But it left millions of workers behind, particularly the 4.4 million workers who rely on tips to earn a living, fully two-thirds of them women.
Even as wages have crept up–if slowly–in other sectors of the economy, the minimum wage for waitresses and other tipped workers hasn’t budged since 1991.
Indeed, there is an entirely separate federal minimum wage for those who live on tips.
It varies by state from as low as $2.13 (the federal tipped minimum wage) in 17 states including Texas, Nebraska and Virginia, up to $9.35 in Hawaii. In 36 states, the tipped minimum wage is under $5 an hour.
Legally, employers are supposed to make up the difference when tips don’t get servers to the minimum wage, but some restaurants don’t track this closely and the law is rarely enforced.
Waitresses are emblematic of the type of job expected to grow most in the American economy in the next decade--low-wage service work with no guaranteed hours or income.
Though high-paying service jobs have been growing quickly in recent months, middle-wage jobs are growing more slowly and could decline sharply in the event of a recession, says Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Analytics.
Those who lose their jobs in a recession usually move down, not up,
the pay scale.
Jobs like personal-care aide (median annual wage $24,020),
food-prep worker ($21,250)
and waitstaff ($21,780) are among the fastest-growing occupations in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
They have much in common with the burgeoning gig economy, in which people turn to apps in the hope of getting shifts delivering food, driving passengers and cleaning houses.
This “sometimes” work has put the stress of earning a weekly wage, paying for health insurance and saving for retirement squarely on the shoulders of workers.
Munce is on food stamps and Medicaid, and many days doesn’t make it to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
One of her recent paychecks read $58.67 for 49 hours worked. Add in the $245 she took home in tips, and she made about $6.20 an hour.
She wants to work 40-hour weeks, but some days the diner is slow and she gets sent home early. “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, all I do is save money,” Munce says.
(Emphasis is mine.)
But these employers are hiring, and these jobs are becoming a fallback for people whose former jobs placed them solidly in the middle class.
Food-service jobs have grown nearly 50% over the past two decades, to 12.2 million, according to the BLS.
They are on track to surpass America’s manufacturing workforce, which, at 12.8 million, has fallen 25% over the same period.
Markets have swung wildly in recent weeks on fears of a possible recession, which could speed up the nation’s continuing shift from one that makes things to one that serves things.
The last recession, from 2007 to 2009, took a sharp toll on industries that make things in America...
In contrast, industries like health care and food service added hundreds of thousands of jobs...
If another recession starts, “the primary hit is going to generally be in sectors that don’t involve providing basic services to other people...
...Still, whenever the next recession comes, more workers will have to turn to the booming service industry, where low wages and unstable hours are the norm.
(Emphasis is mine.)
Christina Munce didn’t plan to be a waitress. She was in school studying massage therapy when, at 21, she got pregnant, and started waiting tables to put away the cash she would need as a young mother.
She doesn’t regret a thing–her daughter, now 11, is her whole world, her name tattooed in cursive on Munce’s forearm. Pictures of the two posing together dominate the otherwise blank walls of their government-subsidized two-bedroom apartment.
But being a single parent has limited Munce’s job options, since she needs the flexibility to take care of her daughter.
Tipped workers have always been an underclass in America.
The concept was popularized in 1865, when some formerly enslaved people found employment as waiters, barbers and porters; still seen as a servant class, they were hired to serve.
Many employers refused to pay them, instead suggesting that patrons tip for their service.
(Emphasis is mine.)
A 1966 law tried to bring some measure of security to these jobs, requiring employers to pay a small base wage that would bring tipped workers up to the federal minimum wage when combined with their tips.
In 1991, the tipped minimum wage was equal to 50% of the value of the overall minimum wage, but it’s stayed at $2.13 since then, as the minimum wage has nearly doubled.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed legislation that froze the wage for tipped workers at that amount. It hasn’t changed since.
The regular minimum wage has doubled in that time.
If the tipped minimum wage had even risen with inflation since 1991, it would be $6 an hour,... Only 12 states currently pay waitstaff above that.
The serving workforce remains a microcosm of pay disparities in the broader economy.
(Emphasis is mine.)
...people of color make up nearly 40% of the workforce that falls under federal tipped-minimum-wage rules, which includes nail-salon workers and car-wash attendants.
The flexibility of restaurant work is in part why more than a million single mothers are on the job. After eight years working at the 24-hour diner, Munce, 32, mostly gets the shifts that she wants–working breakfast and lunch and leaving by 3 p.m. when her daughter gets out of school–so for that, she’s grateful.
When her daughter got bullied at school and Munce had to pick her up, Munce was able to get other waitresses to cover for her without getting in trouble for calling off work–though of course this also meant she didn’t get paid.
When her daughter was younger and Munce couldn’t find anyone to watch her, she’d bring her daughter to the diner and have her sit quietly in a booth with crayons.
Half a century ago, people like Munce without a college education could expect to make a middle-class wage.
But in recent years, as male-dominated manufacturing jobs have been outsourced or automated, women are contributing more to their families’ paychecks, and more of the 40% of Americans with no more than a high school education are being pushed into the service sector–as waitresses, domestic workers, hairdressers and Uber drivers.
Consumer spending on restaurants surpassed spending in grocery stores for the first time in 2015, and to support that, the BLS projects more than 500,000 food-serving job vacancies between 2016 and 2026, a higher number of openings than in all but three occupations it tracks.
“We’re not a sliver of the economy,” says Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center, an advocacy organization pushing to eliminate the tipped minimum wage.
“We’re increasingly the jobs that are available to every new entrant into the economy, including people being laid off from other sectors.”
Karen Baker, 52, one of Munce’s managers at Broad Street Diner, says she once made $90,000 a year as an assistant production manager in a plant that made plastic soda bottles. When the plant moved to Iowa, she didn’t want to uproot her family so she returned to the service industry. “That’s one good thing–if you can’t find a job anywhere else, you can always find a job waitressing,” she says.
This is true of many service jobs, says David Autor, an economist at MIT who studies the future of work. But as job seekers are flooding into those fields, they’re being met with low pay, few benefits and no raises as they age and gain more expertise. In 1980, 43% of workers without a college education were in middle-skill jobs; by 2016, that number had dropped to 29%, Autor says.
A raise for tipped workers, then, could mean a raise for middle-class families across the country, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute who worked in the Department of Labor under President Obama.
... Under Pennsylvania’s $2.83-an-hour tipped minimum wage, Baker’s colleague Debbie Aladean, 74, says she can’t retire because she has so little Social Security.
Olivia Austin, a 30-year-old waitress in rural Pennsylvania, started driving across the border to a restaurant in New York, where there was a higher minimum wage, because she couldn’t save any money as a waitress in Pennsylvania.
“Most of the people I worked with could barely pay their rent,” she says.
Of course, some do quite well in the restaurant industry–especially white men, who are more frequently employed by fine-dining establishments.
According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), a lobbying group that represents more than 500,000 restaurant businesses, the median hourly earnings of servers, including tips, actually ranges from $19 to $25 an hour.
Asking owners to do away with tipping and pay workers a $15-an-hour set wage puts too much burden on business owners and could sink one of the economy’s strongest-growing sectors, they say.
“We need a commonsense approach to the minimum wage that reflects the economic realities of each region, because $15 in New York is not $15 in Alabama,” says Sean Kennedy, the executive vice president of public affairs for the NRA.
The owner of Broad Street Diner, Michael Petrogiannis, is supportive of raising wages. “If [the minimum wage] goes to $15 an hour, then we’ll go to $15 an hour, no problem. I support that,” he says.
He leaves reporting tips up to the waitstaff, and his employees have not complained about being shorted. “We want them to make whatever they have to make.”
The strength of the service sector offers a sort of tenuous job security for waitresses, but it comes with few protections. Sexual harassment is rampant.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives more complaints of sexual harassment from the restaurant industry–more than 10,000 from 1995 to 2016–than from any other industry. ...
After 12 years of waitressing, Munce’s somewhat hardened to the disrespect, but for her, the fickleness of the work is a bigger problem when it affects her family’s well-being.
Her daily income depends on whether people decide to brave the heat or snow to dine out the day she’s working.
It depends on whether customers order the $5.29 breakfast special or the $16.99 New York sirloin strip with two eggs, and whether they leave 20% of their bill.
It depends on how many other waitresses are working that day, all hungry for tables.
This lack of certainty is stressful for waitresses, but as more workers face this reality, it has implications for the broader American economy, which relies on consumer spending to drive growth.
(Emphasis is mine.)
Munce has saved about $1,000 by putting aside every $5 bill she earns in tips, but she can’t seem to ever get ahead.
During a recent shift, she was staring down a weekend where she’d need cash for a cake for her daughter’s 11th-birthday party, $650 for a new evaporator for her car and quarters for the laundry.
She feels the weight of taking a day without tips, wondering whether she’ll have enough to pay for back-to-school season, or the money that finally allowed her to get an air conditioner for her apartment.
“My mind is always calculating,” she says of each tip, good or bad.
Though the women at the diner will chip in and pay for one another’s expenses in case of emergency–a car accident, a babysitter or even funeral costs–
slow shifts mean they’ll have to lean more on the one free meal they get at work, or make another trip to the food bank, or dip into whatever cash they have stored away from a better week.
(The emphasis is mine.)
Because their pay is so unpredictable, the women at Broad Street Diner sometimes have to pull double or triple shifts when they’re short on cash.
... Restaurant owners say that the problem isn’t low wages, or even low tips–it’s that the federal government should enforce its requirement that waitresses make at least the minimum wage after tips.
But the sheer number of restaurants in America–an estimated 650,000 and growing–makes that difficult.
“We could have spent all of our time on tipped-minimum-wage enforcement because the violations are so pervasive,” says David Weil, who was the head of the Wage and Hour Division in the Department of Labor under President Obama.
Weil’s division did 5,000 investigations into the restaurant sector in his time in the department, but “we were just scratching the surface,” he says.
The Trump Administration last year revoked an Obama-era rule that would have increased enforcement on restaurants that make tipped employees spend more than 20% of their time on non-tipped work.
The federal government does help low-wage workers like waitresses in other ways–with food stamps, subsidized housing and health care.
Some cities have raised their own tipped minimum wages; others have opened wage-and-hour enforcement offices, but investigations on behalf of tipped workers often remain a low priority.
... In July, the House passed the Raise the Wage Act, which would phase out the tipped minimum wage nationwide by 2027, eventually bringing all low-wage workers to $15 an hour.
“Every member of this institution should be fighting to put more money in the pockets of workers in their communities,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor when the bill was passed.
(Emphasis is mine.)
In 2019 alone, at least 12 states as politically varied as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana introduced legislation to end the tipped minimum wage.
... Restaurant owners say they aren’t the ones who should pay the price of America’s shift to a service economy.
“Today, the middle class has been gutted, but [lawmakers] are trying to legislate entry-level low-skilled jobs into living-wage jobs where you can raise a family in New York, one of the most expensive places in the world,” says Andrew Riggie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents hotels and restaurants.
“We can’t address all societal ills on the shoulders of small-business owners.”
In the long, final days of summer, business at Broad Street Diner has been slow. Munce tries to stay positive. The customers and staff of Broad Street Diner are her family, more or less...
For Munce, it all adds up: the freebies, the walkouts, the cops receiving a 50% discount, the mess-ups from the kitchen–each one a knock to her take-home pay.
“I am a people person. But at the end of the day, your compliments and smiles are not enough,” she says during one of her shifts, a sheen of sweat on her forehead.
She hopes she can give her daughter a better life than she had growing up.
Her dad served in Vietnam and her mom always scraped by on odd jobs, she says, but it’s harder to string together a living these days.
She lives a couple of miles from where she grew up.
Is she really doing better than they did?
She tells her daughter that education is the most important thing, that she needs to get good grades, no matter what. “I say, ‘I just want you to be better than me,'” she says. Not that she’d steer her daughter away from waitressing, necessarily. If you’re a people person, Munce says, it can be fun to talk to strangers all day.
Depending on them for tips, though, is something else.
Focused Thought in 15 seconds
(I am unable to read the name of the creator of this political cartoon. If you know who it is please drop the name in the comments section so I can give credit. TY!)
Focused Action in 15 seconds
You can retweet my retweet of Maya's Tweet here
Focused Point of Interest in full in 2 minutes
"Chairman Nadler Statement for the Markup of the Resolution for Investigative Procedures
Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler delivered the following opening remarks during a markup of a resolution to implement procedures for future hearings related to the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment with respect to President Donald Trump:
"The resolution before us represents the necessary next step in our investigation of corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power.
“This Committee has already covered the central findings of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The President’s 2016 campaign asked for and received the assistance of the Russian government. Key figures from the campaign then lied to federal investigators about it. The Special Counsel found that, at least ten times, the President took steps to interfere with the investigation. In at least five of those incidents, the Special Counsel concluded that all of the elements necessary to charge obstruction of justice had been met.
“Our investigation is not only about obstruction. Our work must also extend beyond the four corners of the Mueller Report. We have a responsibility to consider allegations of federal election crimes, self-dealing, violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and a failure to defend our nation from future attacks by foreign adversaries.
“And, of course, this Committee and others have gone to court to secure evidence that has been withheld from Congress on indefensible legal grounds. Former White House Counsel Donald McGahn is not ‘absolutely immune’ from appearing before this Committee. We require his testimony for our obstruction investigation. But the President has vowed to ‘fight all of the subpoenas,’ and this, too, is conduct that requires a congressional response.
“As Members of Congress—and, in particular, as members of the House Judiciary Committee—we have a responsibility to investigate each of these allegations and to determine the appropriate remedy. That responsibility includes making a judgment about whether to recommend articles of impeachment.
“That judgment cannot be based on our feelings about President Trump. It should not be a personal reaction to misguided policies or personal behavior. It must be a decision based on the evidence before us, and the evidence that keeps coming in.
“Now, there has been a good amount of confusion, in the press and elsewhere, about how we should talk about this work.
“Some have said that, absent some grand moment in which we pass dramatically from ‘concerned about the President’s conduct’ to ‘actively considering articles of impeachment,’ it is hard to know exactly what the Committee is doing here.
“Others have argued that we can do none of this work without first having an authorizing vote on the House floor. But a House vote is not required by the Rules of the House or by the Constitution, and the argument ignores ample precedents in which no such votes were taken.
“There should be no doubt about our purpose. We have been open about our plans in this Committee for many months. The record is recounted in the preamble of the resolution before us now.
“On March 4, 2019, we sought information from many sources related to ‘alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump,’
“On May 8, 2019, we recommended that the House hold Attorney General Barr in contempt. As part of that recommendation, the Committee was clear that our work ‘includes whether to approve articles of impeachment with respect to the President.’
“On June 11, 2019, the House approved H. Res. 430, authorizing this Committee to enforce its subpoenas in court. The Committee report stated explicitly that our work includes whether to approve articles of impeachment with respect to the President.
“Pursuant to that resolution, on July 26, 2019, we asked a federal court for access to grand jury information, and we told the court that it falls to this Committee to ‘exercise . . . a constitutional power of the utmost gravity—approval of articles of impeachment.’
“On August 7, 2019, we filed suit to enforce our subpoena for Mr. McGahn. There again, we told the court that we require his testimony in order to help decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment.
“In each of these documents, we have been explicit about our intentions. This Committee is engaged in an investigation that will allow us to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment with respect to President Trump. Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. Some call it an impeachment investigation. There is no legal difference between these terms, and I no longer care to argue about the nomenclature.
“But let me clear up any remaining doubt: The conduct under investigation poses a threat to our democracy. We have an obligation to respond to this threat. And we are doing so.
“Under the procedures outlined in this resolution, we will hold hearings that allow us to further consider the evidence against the President. At those hearings, in addition to Member questioning, we will allow staff counsel to participate for one hour, evenly divided between the Majority and the Minority. This will allow us to develop the record in ways that the five-minute rule does not always permit.
“We will also allow the President to respond to the evidence, in writing and on the record. No matter how we may disagree with him, President Trump is entitled to respond to the evidence in this way. And we will treat certain, sensitive evidence—such as grand jury information—as being received in executive session. Under these procedures, when we have finished these hearings and considered as much evidence we are able to gather, we will decide whether to refer articles of impeachment to the House floor.
“We have a constitutional, historical, and moral obligation to fully investigate these matters. Let us take the next step in that work without delay. I urge my colleagues to adopt this resolution, and I yield back.”
You can find the original statement here
You can watch the markup here
(You can pick it up at about the 52-minute mark.)
You can find the Resolution here
Focused Monthly Inspiration
( #itsNovember2020Now )
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THE next Democratic Party 2020 Presidential Nomination Debate will be held Tuesday, October 15 (and 16 if a second night is required). You can find more information here
And the best candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination is Kamala Harris, IMO...
* @Kamala is the only candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential 2020 Nomination who grasps that 100's of 1000' of the American People are drowning and they need economic relief -- NOW. That is what her 3 A.M. Agenda addresses, an urgent response to People in distress.
You can read that Agenda here
* @Kamala is the only candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential 2020 Nomination who grasps that 100's of 1000' of the American People are drowning and they need economic relief -- NOW. That is what her 3 A.M. Agenda addresses, an urgent response to People in distress.
You can read that Agenda here
And you can find more information on her website here
You can follow her on facebook here
You can follow her on Twitter here
You can follow her on Instagram here
→ Some of my favorite Direct sources & resources for Democrats:
* ( My personal favored and most informative follows are also shared here, below, with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify -- even if it's me. I am using a "star" rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
Democratic Party Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, representative of The People at home & abroad while the President of the United States is MIA...
There is no better way to get your information than to #Go2TheSource
You can find the Speaker's website here
You can find the Speaker's Twitter feed here
You can find the Speaker's Facebook Page here
The Democratic Party Website
Also, NOT exactly a Democratic Party specific source under a GOP majority but a good place to hear and to watch speeches & hearings directly, i.e. #Go2TheSource C-SPAN
+
→ Some of my favorite, most active organizations:
(Full disclosure, I am a member!)
"Women are already the majority. Now Let's build a Supermajority.
Women are on the cusp of becoming the most powerful force in America. But to fundamentally transform this country, we need to work together. That’s where Supermajority comes in.
LET’S GET ORGANIZED
"Meet the people behind the politicians.
You can email your two Senators and your Representative in Congress in one email here
"Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.
What started on March 11, 2017 with sharing 5 addresses apiece to 5 volunteers on Facebook...
Now, we consist of over 20,000+ volunteers in every state (including Alaska and Hawaii) who have written close to 3 million postcards to voters in over 100+ key, close elections."
You can find Postcards to Voters here
Town Hall Project empowers constituents across the country to have face-to-face conversations with their elected representatives. We are campaign veterans and first time volunteers. We come from a diversity of backgrounds and live across the country. We share progressive values and believe strongly in civic engagement. We research every district and state for public events with members of Congress. Then we share our findings to promote participation in the democratic process.
This movement is diverse, open source, and powered by citizens. We are proud to be a part of it.
"Born from conversations between Governor Howard Dean and Secretary Hillary Clinton in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Onward Together was established to lend support to leaders — particularly young leaders — kicking off projects and founding new organizations to fight for our shared progressive values." here
Organizing for America and the Democratic National Redistricting Committee have merged in "All On The Line":
"Barack Obama Throws All His Weight Behind ‘Issue Of Singular Importance’
" Since #StandOnEveryCorner has grown, it’s become a stand by all of us to protect our democracy from corruption and treason...A stand not at your State Capitol, but in your own backyard. Not once every few months, but as often as you can here "
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of my favorite, highly credible media -- at the moment:
→ Some of my favorite Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
→ Some of my favorite media/panelists -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
✅✅✅ Jonathan Lemire White House reporter for AP; Political analyst for MSNBC & @NBCNews
✅✅✅✅ Joan Walsh national affairs correspondent for The Nation; CNN political contributor
✅✅✅ Heidi Przybyla USA TODAY Senior Political Reporter
✅✅✅✅ Jennifer Rubin Conservative blogger at @ WashingtonPost's Right Turn,MSNBC contributor
Intel community. @ NBCNews/@ MSNBC contributor
✅✅✅✅ Betsy Woodruff Daily Beast reporter, federal law enforcement.
→ Some of my favorite legal analysts in the context of Putin attacked America to install Trump investigations, primarily seen on MSNBC:
→ Some of my favorite Democrat Party Leaders to follow on Twitter, not in elected office but proving knowledge & experience are positives & not negatives are:
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former Labor Secretary/Today's DNC Chair Tom Perez
Note: I rarely get involved in primary races -- outside of those in my own area and unless there is a glaring reason that can not be ignored, I support Democratic Party nominees in general elections. I don't support bashing Democrats.
→ PARTY Informational
(Full disclosure, I am a life-long, registered Democrat!)
"To Whom It May Concern: By authority of the Democratic National Committee, the National Convention of the Democratic Party is hereby scheduled to convene on July 13-16, 2020 in TBD at an hour to be announced, to select nominees for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States of America, to adopt and promulgate a platform and to take such other actions with respect to such other matters as the Convention may deem advisable. ... "
"PREAMBLE We, the Democrats of the United States of America, united in common purpose, hereby rededicate ourselves to the principles which have historically sustained our Party. Recognizing that the vitality of the Nation's political institutions has been the foundation of its enduring strength, we acknowledge that a political party which wishes to lead must listen to those it would lead, a party which asks for the people's trust must prove that it trusts the people and a party which hopes to call forth the best the Nation can achieve must embody the best of the Nation's heritage and traditions. What we seek for our Nation, we hope for all people: individual freedom in the framework of a just society, political freedom in the framework of meaningful participation by all citizens. Bound by the United States Constitution, aware that a party must be responsive to be worthy of responsibility, we pledge ourselves to open, honest endeavor and to the conduct of public affairs in a manner worthy of a society of free people. Under God, and for these ends and upon these principles, we do establish and adopt this Charter of the Democratic Party of the United States of America."
What is the CPD? The Commission on Presidential Debates (the “CPD”) is a private, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization. As a 501(c)(3) organization, it is eligible under federal law so serve as a debate sponsor. The CPD's primary mission is to ensure, for the benefit of the American electorate, that general election debates are held every four years between and among the leading candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United State. The CPD is an independent organization. It is not controlled by any political party or outside organization and it does not endorse, support, or oppose political candidates for parties. It receives no funding from the government or any political party, political actions committee or candidate. The CPD has sponsored general election presidential debates in every election since 1988. Although its plans for 2020 are in the developmental stage, it looks forward to bringing high quality, educational debates to the electorate in 2020 ...
You can read more here
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(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
Owned, Created and Curated by Gail Mountain, this blog is often gently edited and/or excerpted for quick reading, with occasional personal commentary in the form of the written word and/or in the form of emphasis noted. Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( * As a privately owned blog, I reserve the right to edit or remove inappropriate comments such as hate, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, spam, advertising or personal/abusive attacks on other users.)
A long time Democratic Party activist, Gail Mountain is a former community organizer, journalist & personal planning coach with a focus on single moms working toward careers able to support them & their families, while working toward changing the systems that once served them through leadership training. She is a former Affordable Health Care for America Act advocate (2009!); a Hillary supporter who volunteered as a Grassroots Tweeter for Hillary, a Women's Outreach for Hillary member; an OFA Truth Team member; & a DNC Factivist member...currently a media influencer, digital activist/strategist, blogger and head of curation, editor and co-Founder of The People for Kamala Harris; an editor for Progress for Democrats on Facebook; a member of a closed group supporting Speaker Pelosi & her agenda, a member of Supermajority and a volunteer for Kamala Harris for the 2020 Democratic Party Nomination for President of the United States.
You can follow her Blog
at https://networkstrongertogether.blogspot.com & you can follow her on Twitter at GKMTNtwits
( find her on Twitter
*** Sometimes life gets in the way, and it has for me right now, delaying the release of my updated ebook but "How to Influence Media in Real Time!"is coming soon and in time to begin your conversation with media as we head into primary season.
What's in the book?:
( My updated ebook, "How to Influence Media in Real Time," will be ready soon. It will include updated examples of the conversations I have with some of my “media friends” and some updated indications that media can hear us! If you have left a donation toward my effort to help Democrats win in 2020, I will send you an updated copy as soon as it is ready. New donors who leaves a name and an email on my GoFundMe Page will get one as soon as it is ready to go! Thanking you in advance for your interest. I hope you will join me in helping media be the best they can be -- by being a media influencer, too, in your own way and at your own pace. )
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See the League of Women Voters website:
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...for Networking for Democrats today!
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
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