Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 879

Televising Democracy? How Televised Trials Distort the Criminal Justice System by David J. Leonard

Televising Democracy? How Televised Trials Distort the Criminal Justice System by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
With 2.2 million people in prison, critics have rightly described the United States as “Prison Nation.” Not surprisingly, America is also a trial-watching nation.  Law and Order seems to be on every hour; switch the channel and you are likely CSI, LA Law reruns, and countless other shows spotlighting the criminal justice system.  Add to this, MSNBC runs Lockup every weekend; Nancy Grace has made a career commenting on the legal process; and the nation stops whenever there is a high profile trial, and what becomes clear is that the courtroom and the jail cell are central to the contemporary American imagination. 
Given its racial implications and the national fascination with courtroom drama, it is not surprisingly that the recent trial of George Zimmerman captured the attention of a divided America (although studies have highlighted that white America watched the trial less than African Americans yet conclusions about guilt or innocence are given equal weigh).  Yet, the daily watching, the ubiquitous commentary, and the post-trial debate continues a tradition established with the OJ Simpson trial but one that has continued with the Scott Peterson, Conrad Murray, Jodi Arias, Amanda Knox, Martha Stewart, and so many others.
These televised trials are often cited as beneficial to democracy because they provide a glimpse at the justice system at work; they offer “education” and a greater understanding of the inner-workings of the criminal justice system.  Given that research shows that people rely on Law and Order and other shows as the basis for their understanding of the criminal justice, supporters view televised trials as important truth serum.  “As a general rule, legal proceedings should be televised,” notes Allan Deshowitz.“No legal system worth preserving need hide its operation from public view, and public view today – unlike   a hundred years ago – means  a worldwide audience of television viewers.”
Rather than provide Americans a glimpse into the criminal justice system, one that counters the packaged sensationalism of primetime television, the airing of trials gives the public a distorted view of the criminal justice system. These spectacles are just that; they are a window into the exceptional rather than the rule.
The trial of George Zimmerman was no different.  It has been a sobering reminder of not only the failures of the criminal justice to foster justice, but how exceptional it is within the broader landscape.  It is starkly different reality for most defendants, particularly the poor and those of color.  Televised trials reproduce the illusion of a criminal justice system that affords every defendant the right to confront their accuser and a right of due process.  Most never are able to exercise this right, furthering the racial and class inequality within America’s prison system. The fact that there was a trial is unusual in itself.
If the goal were to educate and inform the public the media would cover plea bargains with equal zeal.  Can you imagine the cameras rolling as two attorneys negotiate a plea bargain, often under threats excessive or additional charges?  What if CNN ran plea bargain/pre-trial conferences with equal zeal?  Law and Orderbecoming Law and Plea Bargain.  Trials, sensational or not, are the exception rather than the rule. 90-95% of all criminal cases end with a plea bargain; in federal court, this number reaches us as high 97%. America’s criminal justice could not exist without plea bargains; the same cannot be said for trials.  Milton Heumann suggests that, “To speak of a plea bargaining-free criminal justice system is to operate in a land of fantasy”(quoted here).
The Zimmerman trial is an aberration because most cases would have never gotten to this point.  Most defendants, particularly those black, poor, and without access to donors, would never have their day in court.  And they likely would have been force to plead guilty and that is an immense injustice.
Likewise, most defendants, whether in drug cases or murder trials, don’t have access to defense TEAM.  Amid the media celebration of Zimmerman defense team should be recognition that he is the exception because of his ability (and his friend’s dollars) to hire a team of lawyers.  Whether impacting defendants who lack access to these resources, or privileging defendants who are able to buy the best defense possible, the criminal justice system is stratified along racial and class lines.
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that every criminal defendant had a “right to counsel” irrespective of financial constraints.  Yet, in practice this isn’t so simple. “Many public defenders lack the staff, time, training, and resources to investigate each case adequately or prepare a robust legal defense,” notes a recent report from Brenan Center for Justice. “Often, they end up spending only minutes per case due to overwhelming and unrealistic caseloads. As a result, they are simply unable to provide clients with their constitutional right to counsel, effectively making Gideon an unfunded mandate at a time when public defenders are needed most.” Unlike George Zimmerman, who had three attorneys, along with interns and presumably others on the team, working as part of his defense, most people accused of crimes are left with a best an overworked public defender.
A 2004 study found that one WA defense attorney had 6½ times the number of cases recommended by the state bar; at one time, he was handling 413 felony cases, which was nearly triple the 150 recommended by the State Bar.  A more recent study found that on average public defenders in Miami carry 500 felony cases.  In New Orleans, public defenders “handled on average 19,000 cases in 2009, which translated into seven minutes per case.”  Astonishingly, public defenders in Minnesota spend an average of 12 minutes per case outside of court time.   Media reports of Zimmerman’s team spending hours in deposition, with witnesses, excerpts, and investigators, points to how the right to a trial, the right to counsel, and the right to vigorous defense remain an unfulfilled promise.

The consequences of the lack of adequate counsel are clear. According to Paul Rubin and Joanna Shepherd, economic professors at Emory University, and Morris B. Hoffman, a trial judge, “the average sentence with serious cases was almost three years longer than the average for clients of private attorneys.”   This, coupled with the practice of overcharging, contributes to America being a plea bargain nation.  So, while the Right, some in the media, his defense and and others lament a criminal justice system that worked against Zimmerman, that unfairly charged him, lets not get twisted because the Zimmerman trial once again demonstrate who the system was designed to protect, who it works for, and how justice is never equal under American neo-apartheid. 
While a trial, a zealous defense remains an unfulfilled promise to all, demonstrating the exceptional nature of the Zimmerman trial, it was a glimpse into a fixture of the American criminal justice system: the criminalization of black bodies.  As noted by Syreeta McFadden, “Only in America can a dead black boy go on trial for his own murder." And this isn’t the exception.
***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman.  Leonard’s latest books include  After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness   (SUNY Press) and African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings (Praeger Press) co-edited with Lisa Guerrero. He is currently working on a bookPresumed Innocence: White Mass Shooters in the Era of Trayvon about gun violence in America.

Fruitvale Station: Swansong for Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, & the Bruhs by Stephane Dunn

Fruitvale: Swansong for Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, & the Bruhs by Stephane Dunn | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
I knew I had to see it, but to tell you the truth a part of me was not looking forward to Fruitvale Station. I’ve been avoiding writing about Trayvon Martin, wanting to get a better grip on the volcano of emotion that has enveloped me since The Verdict despite bracing myself for just that outcome. Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, coming literally on the heels of it, was bound to serve as a powerful footnote of this defining contemporary moment. 
The murder of Oscar Grant is one I remember too well. Upon hearing about it on New Year’s Day 2009, I was upset, actually furious and sad, and something else kind of new. I was afraid already for my own child, my son as it turns out, who was months from being born. I couldn’t ignore the way that Grant’s death struck me four years ago.  And luckily, there are two things I don’t like to miss: a rare entry in the usual overhyped, blockbuster crazy summer season and that moment when a new filmmaker bursts on the scene with a stunning debut. 
Spoiler alert on my own review: At the end of Fruitvale Station, I sat there in my seat, along with several friends and family, and did not move. I sat and stared at the screen as if the last image of the film was still to come, and I was still sitting there, we all were, until the ‘All Rights Reserved 2013’ rolled across the screen. Fruitvale Station comes down to story or rather compelling storytelling; it does not skate on its heavyweight topic. 
Coogler’s stylistic choices, the documentary-look, minimalist approach, the emphasis on the simplest visual details and cues – these enhance the very right choice to frame the story through the prism of a day, an ordinary one for Oscar Grant that ends extraordinarily and tragically as his last on earth.  Choosing to focus on his life to suggest what of value was lost rather than say the aftermath when Oscar becomes Bay area headline news sets the tone for a well-paced narrative.
Other smart choices abound, for example, the fictionalized fill-in moments rounding out Oscar’s day like a heart wrenching gas station stop [no spoiler here], the text messages, imposed on the screen that serve to punctuate the time ticking down to midnight and the end of Oscar’s life, the strategic mix of close-up and long shots. The flashback, used sparingly, but to extraordinary effect, and especially at the end when Oscar is pronounced dead. The contradictions and challenges of the streets that Oscar struggles to navigate as he goes about being a son, lover, and the father of a little girl are treated with an edgy realism that avoids either over sentimentalizing Oscar and his world or demonizing either.
The humanization of Oscar Grant, both a gift of Coogler’s direction and Michael B. Jordan’s perfectly pitched performance as the young victim, is one of the great achievements of this difficult dramatization. Grant is neither neatly hero or anti-hero [stereotypical young black thug] but a young man who alternately has failed to make sound choices but desires to do right, to do better.
There are deceptively basic everyday moments that serve to humanize Oscar Grant and essentially many young black men beyond their criminalization – Grant’s home training [manners] and decency to others on the street and in a store, the simple play and best friends talk between a young father and the daughter he obviously adores.  
We know going into the theatre how the story must end; this is not where poetic license will intrude, but still, the movement and the sound of that BART train, rushing towards Fruitvale and a fatal clash with police, and then the inevitable end for a family in a hospital waiting room is simultaneously suspenseful and heartbreaking.
Fruitvale Station is a for all audiences kind of film across race, ethnicity, and class, including police and folks who believe the hype about young black men on sight. It is the story of Oscar Grant but it’s also that of many other ‘Bruhs’ – that’s why it’s a painful watch. It bears signs of a first feature film though that too will become part of its historical charm. There is a lot more than can be said about Fruitvale Station, which makes a few missteps but offers much to interrogate about the politics of representation. But that’s for later. For now, add Ryan Coogler to an impressive group of young directors with memorable debut films.
***

Stephane Dunn, PhD is a writer and Co-Director of the Film, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program at Morehouse College. She is the author of the 2008 book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas : Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois Press), which explores the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in the Black Power and feminist influenced explosion of black action films in the early 1970s, including, Sweetback Sweetback’s Baad Assssss Song, Cleopatra Jones, and Foxy Brown. Her writings have appeared in Ms., The Chronicle of Higher Education, TheRoot.com, AJC, CNN.com, and Best African American Essays, among others. Her most recent work includes articles about contemporary black film representation and Tyler Perry films.

What’s Normal?: Disability and Privilege by Wilfredo Gomez

What’s Normal ?: Disability and Privilege by Wilfredo Gomez | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
What is “normal” and where do we locate and identify “privilege?”  The segment on privilege, responsibility, and celebrity airing on the July 21, 2013 episode of the Melissa Harris-Perry show highlighted several forms of privilege in America: heteronormative, male, celebrity, amongst others.  A less mentioned form of privilege was raised as a metaphor, or perhaps, better yet, a proxy from which to gauge and situate notions of white privilege.  The topic of able-bodied privilege was raised, which while poignant and thought provoking, was somewhat misleading in its representation of what is normal. 
The conversation takes its framework from the introductory remarks from Harris-Perry where she humbly notes:               …If you look behind you, my cameras probably can’t see it.  To get on  this stage you have to walk down three stairs.  There is no way to get here without walking down three stairs.  That means when I think about  booking this show, I have never booked someone in a wheelchair to sit at  this stage.  The reason I can not is because my building is built in a way that makes it impossible for a person dealing with a disability to show up  at my table, and that is privilege…
While the Americans with Disabilities Act is a central component to protecting the civil rights of those impacted by disabilities throughout the United States, it is precisely the unfolding of the conversation that normalizes ideas about disability.  The fact that MSNBC viewers were not privy to the make-up of the studio does not obscure the fact that mobility issues and questions of access are not the sole experiences or representation of all disabled folk.  The issues of access and wheel chair accessibility, however normative they appear in conversation, further blurs the lines as to where culture, socialization, privilege, and presence converge and depart.  Harris-Perry is cognizant of the question of accommodation as it pertains to mobility and access. We should not assume that the issue of physical access is the only form of disability.  There are people whose presence, bodies, dispositions, and disabilities are not readily visible, to the human eye or the camera.   These disabilities are psychological, emotional, cognitive, neurological, and yes, even physical. 
I raise this point to allude to the iterations and definitions of degree that shape, mold, and effectively modify, how we read, identify, empathize, and relate to disability—the visible and invisible tolls of disability.  Not unlike questions of race, your perceived disability, in part, is about how others around you read your body.  However, there is the question of intersecting identities of race, class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and the like, and how they may or may not trump notions of being able-bodied or disabled in society. 
I am a disabled Latino male with cerebral palsy.  My limitations, issues of mobility, access, and strength do not overlook the fact that if I were a guest on the show and I were seated amongst the host and other panelists, the viewing audience would not know of my disability unless I acknowledged it on air.  My intellectual abilities, educational attainment, and ability to articulate myself, sometimes leads people to question that disability, whether I am seated or standing. 
While I am not attempting to speak to a post-disabled America, a notion that disability is somehow masked, less noticeable, or readily ignored due to one’s intellect and independence, I acknowledge that my ability to walk at a rally in support of Trayvon Martin is an act of privilege.  I also acknowledge that the ability to walk at said rally will come with its fair share of stares and assumptions about my body.  Some of those stares and assumptions may very well come from those marching for justice on behalf of Trayvon. Having to deal with those stares and assumptions is not a manifestation of privilege.
I ask you in light of this, what does it mean to be disabled and embody privilege?  What does it mean to belong to multiple minority groups (race and disability) in America?  How might the lived realities of my Latinoness and disability inform and complicate one another?  What of other experiences that complicates and contradict my own? Where can these conversations be had?  And to the extent that a conversation on disability and its critical engagement can frame and augment a discussion of the Zimmerman case, we must be mindful of the ways in which black male bodies are viewed as consummately able, yet far too often perceived and portrayed as physically threatening. 
That is to suggest, that the black male body is disabled in its ability to embody, radiate and/or illicit humanity, all the while being seemingly enabled to be a symbolic marker, a martyr, for (in)justice.  How do we as a country disable and disarm language to talk about the inherent privileges we assume and take for granted?  The fact that I have posed these questions are themselves a manifestation of privilege, so what is normal?
***

Wilfredo Gomez is an independent researcher and scholar who can reached via Twitter at @BazookaGomez84 or via email at gomez.wilfredo@gmail.com

Black & Latino Youth Express Greater Support for Gun Restrictions Than White Peers

Youth of Color Experience Higher Levels of Gun Violence; Report Greater Support for Increased Gun Restrictions
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 

07 - 29 - 2013
According to the Black Youth Project's latest memo, "  Gun Violence and Public Opinion on Gun Control among America's Young People ," youth of color experience higher levels of gun violence and report greater support for increased gun restrictions compared with their white peers.
Because young people are the victims of gun violence at especially high rates, our analysis examined public opinion on gun control among youth between the ages of 18-29.
In general, young people support a variety of measures designed to reduce gun violence, including restricting access to guns and ammunition, improving mental health care, and implementing national criminal background checks. 
But in contrast to their white peers, Black and Latino youth expressed greater support for increased gun restrictions, and prioritize reducing access to guns over protecting the rights of gun owners.
Nearly half of white youth reported that either they or someone they know carried a gun in the last month, compared with 24.4 percent of Black youth and 22.2 percent of Latino youth.
However, Black youth were much more likely than either Latino or white youth to report that either they or someone they know experienced gun violence in the last year or that gun violence is a serious problem in their neighborhood.
"Gun Violence and Public Opinion on Gun Control among America's Young People" is the 11th in a series of memos entitled: "Black and Latino Youth: The Future of American Politics" released by the Black Youth Project    CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REPORT

About the Black Youth Project:
The work of The Black Youth Project (BYP) is based on three basic concepts: knowledge, voice, and action.
KNOWLEDGE:We are committed to producing research about the ideas, attitudes, decision making, and lived experiences of black youth, especially as it relates to their political and civic engagement.
VOICE: Unlike any other organization, we amplify the perspectives of young black people daily without censorship or control. We have built a space on the Internet where black youth can speak for themselves about the issues that concern them.
ACTION: Informed with culturally-specific knowledge, we will work to mobilize black youth and their allies to make positive change and build the world within which they want to live.

BlackYouthProject.com is a diverse online resource, divided into three main subsites: BYP BLOG, BYP RESEARCH, and BYP ACTION.

The Other National Conversation? White Privilege by Esther Armah

The Other National Conversation?  White Privilege by Esther Armah | HuffPost Black Voices
Historic. That was the reaction to President Obama's recent remarks on Trayvon Martin. That stage, that podium, that office all registered this humanizing act as particularly important and necessary to the "national conversation on race." The reaction to those words, which some regarded as too little, too late, and too weak while others offered applause, surprise, and gratitude, pushed the conversation on blackness to another place. It invited folks to re-imagine the day to day for millions of black men and to consider and explore their stories, their whole selves, their realities. Trayvon was a boy again, 17, with dreams, a family he loved, and child-hood friends. If he had become a symbol for injustice, named a predator by the Right, and deemed an icon on the left, the president made him human again. We needed that.
I want to imagine another historic moment. One in which a white male president, in response to the same case and the same verdict, surprised the press at their afternoon briefing and spoke openly about another cancer as equally crucial to the context of the Martin case and as necessary to understanding America's history. I imagine him saying: "I could have committed a crime and still have become president. I could have been arrested for driving drunk and still become president. I could have taken my little brother out on an underage drinking spree, lost control of a car, hit something, kept driving, been arrested and convicted, had my license suspended and still have become president. George W. Bush did exactly those things and he held the office." The point of these imaginings is to consider the proverbial elephant in the room: whiteness, privilege, maleness. Any national conversation on race must also focus on these things . Rarely is this issue given space to be considered, discussed, or explored.
Both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion, the details of what happened on the night of February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Fla., got re-written. Trayvon was no longer a 17-year-old boy shot dead by the gun of a vigilante wannabe cop. No. Zimmerman was narrated as simply trying to protect himself and, to be sure, the jury of majority white women and their neighborhoods from a violent black predator. It's an old narrative central to the history of whiteness in America. It is visceral, it invokes protection, patriarchy and an emotionality that speaks volumes across America. It calls into action a history of whiteness, a narrative to justify brutality towards blackness and to find comfort in that created context.
I want to imagine, still, a different kind of conversation: one that brings about the breaking down of white privilege -- a conversation that exposes the ways white privilege allows for mediocrity to masquerade as excellence and to do so with impunity. Remember when Sarah Palin invoked Obama's exceptionalism as elitism and her averageness as patriotic and quintessentially American? Senior editor and blogger for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay, "Fear of a Black President," writes that "Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye." Ta-Nehisi goes on to cite Daniel Gillion, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies race and politics. Gillion examined the Public Papers of the Presidents, a compilation of nearly all public presidential utterances -- proclamations, news-conference remarks, executive orders -- and found that, in his first two years as president, Obama talked less about race than any other Democratic president since 1961. Of course, the two times Obama has spoken about race -- his "A More Perfect Union" speech and the more recent remarks on Trayvon -- he has made history. Indeed, I would argue he moved the discussion on race and the nation forward in unprecedented ways.
When, in contemporary times, has a white president spoken about white male privilege either in its past or present forms? When has one explained the ways whiteness offers particular advantages - advantages that help no matter the individual's circumstances or situations? Never. Nor has one been expected to. The absence of white male privilege as a topic in the national discourse on race is as powerful as the dehumanization of black male bodies. Undoubtedly, the Left has also failed to fully grapple with white privilege. There are some exceptions such as Tim Wise. His seven books and 600-plus speeches on college campuses call out white privilege, explain its history, and offer examples of its practice. Wise is often described as an anti-racist educator. I consider him an educator about white privilege. That difference matters. Jennifer JLove Calderon is an anti-white privilege activist. Her co-edited volume (with scholar Marcella Runell-Hall), Love, Race, Liberation - Til the White Day Is Done, offers a way to teach, think about, explore, and challenge white privilege for educators and their students.
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary and the bombings in Boston, white privilege has emerged as a topic of conversation in some mainstream platforms. MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry is one. Salon.com columnist David Sirota spoke about profiling white men on MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes," is another example. Reacting to revelations that Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza had mental health issues, Hayes posited profiling those with mental health issues as a way the politics of the Sandy Hook tragedy might play out in the "do something, don't do something" aftermath of the tragedy. Sirota responded: "Except there's one thing, the issue will be the profile is white men. That's a profile in America that is essentially not allowed to be profiled." Sirota cited the 2009 report from the Department of Homeland Security, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.
That report came within the President's first 100 days in office and was aimed at giving law enforcement what then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called "situational awareness." The report cited the recession, the election of a black president and disgruntled veterans as fodder for growth in extreme groups. Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh had been a decorated Gulf War veteran before killing 168 people during the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Napolitano's report sparked widespread outrage from right wing media, veterans groups and Americans across the board. Republicans called for her to step down. Then House Minority Leader John Boehner said: "I just don't understand how our government can look at the American people and say: 'you're all potential terrorist threats.'" The outcry prompted an apology by Napolitano.
Thousands of veterans are young, white males. Many suffer PTSD. They fit the profile for those who commit mass shootings. An article in Mother Jones, "A Guide to Mass Shootings," broke down the numbers. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Twenty-five of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006, and seven of them took place in 2012. Forty-four of the killers were white males. The average age of the killers was 35 and a majority suffered some kind of mental illness. Put differently, young, white, mentally disturbed men pose a national threat to moviegoers, faith followers, elementary school students, elected officials - the country. So, then, shouldn't they be profiled, stopped, questioned, and frisked routinely in the name of protecting regular Americans? They may not have actually done anything, but they fit the profile. They could do something. No such outrageous suggestion has ever been made. Let's be clear: Trayvon was not a burglar. He fit the profile, though, said so many. Indeed, many, including juror B37 in her interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, have offered this as justification for Zimmerman's actions.
This, then, is the other part to any national conversation on race: a conversation about white privilege, about the presumed innocence afforded to whiteness regardless of action and outcome – an issue which has so far gone unremarked by any elected official. It is one that I believe the Left needs to grapple with and focus on more actively. The day a major white figure speaks to white privilege – its  presence, power, when they make it personal - then we'll be engaged in a full national conversation on race. How willing are we to engage in that conversation?
***
Esther Armah is the creator of ‘Emotional Justice Unplugged’, the multi platform, multi media intimate public arts and conversation series. She’s a New York Radio Host for WBAI99.5FM, a regular on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes and an international journalist, Playwright and National best-selling author. 
Follow Esther Armah on Twitter: www.twitter.com/estherarmah

MHP Show: North Carolina Bill Called Worst in Nation for Voter Suppression

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Harry Belafonte Talks Dream Defenders & Meeting with Jay Z and Beyonce

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Style Hunt - Street Style in Washington, DC

i am OTHER
How does the nation's capital stack up on the style front? This week's special guest host, Wetheurban.com editor Willie Greene, takes us through his home city where we meet an eclectic mix of characters. Created by Metro International's style director Kenya Hunt, presented by ModMods.com. 

Fidel Castro: the Lost Interview | Blank on Blank | PBS Digital Studios

Blank on Blank

"If this Revolution falls, what we will have here in Cuba is a hell. Hell itself." - Fidel Castro
Interview by Clark Hewitt Galloway1959, Havana 
Executive Producer: David GerlachAnimator: Patrick SmithTranslator: Sebastian Betti 

Workers Stage #RaiseTheWage Protests Nationwide

Democracy Now

Rallies were held across the country on Wednesday in a national day of action to increase the minimum wage. The #RaiseTheWage protests were held on the fourth anniversary of the last time the minimum wage was increased, to the current rate of $7.25 an hour. In cities from coast to coast, demonstrators rallied outside of major retailers and fast food chains including Walmart, Target, Dunkin' Donuts, and Papa John's. In Washington, D.C., protesters broke into song in one of several stops at local McDonald's. 
At the #RaiseTheWage protest in New York City, fast food workers voted to authorize their third citywide strike for a living wage and the right to unionize without intimidation. The workers assembled in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.
Naquasia LeGrand, KFC Employee: "They are not going to give us what we want. We are gonna stay in poverty we are gonna keep on suffering. I know you're tired of suffering; I don't want to see the next generation suffering and suffering. I don't want my kids suffering. I want to make sure they have a better future then I did. So if I want that happen I need you guys to stand with me just as long I stand with you guys to fight for this 15 and union, or better, living wage in New York it's not right and we have to do something about it."
A new poll released Wednesday by the National Employment Law Project Action Fund shows that 80 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and adjusting it for costs of living. Seventy-five percent listed a minimum wage hike as a top congressional priority over the next year.