Pennsylvania residents, take note: the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your legislators to hike the state minimum wage to $10.10/hour, index that wage to inflation, and eliminate the separate minimum wage for tipped workers (who would then make the regular minimum wage). There is currently a bill before the state House, Rep. Kim's HB 250, which would raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour over a period of one year, and would narrow the gap between the minimum wage for tipped employees and the minimum wage for the rest of us, but why not ask for more? Asking for more, and fighting for more, means you get more. And raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hour would increase paychecks for over 1.2 million Pennsylvania workers (i.e., those who currently make between the state's current minimum wage of $7.25/hour and $10.10/hour) and would, as you may remember, boost the state's minimum wage back to its earning power in the late '60s, when it was only around $2/hour, as so many right-wingers love to remind you, but $2 went a lot further then than it does now.
Meanwhile, you may have heard about the Walker family of Tate County, Mississippi, who strangely find themselves facing sizable fines or even jail time for the heinous crime of cheering for their daughter at a high school graduation ceremony. Apparently the school has a "no yelling" policy at graduation ceremonies, which covers such things as a father yelling "you did it, baby!" or an aunt yelling a graduate's name. But the school superintendent not only kicked them out of the ceremony -- which action they didn't contest, apparently -- but filed "disturbing the peace" charges against the family several days later. Because ZERO TOLERANCE, BABY! Anyone else think being escorted from the premises is payment enough for yelling out against school policy? Anyone else think a white man filing charges against a black family for being happy during a happy occasion looks a little racist? Anyone else think the Big Stick of Bad PR can shame another jerk into not abusing his power? Color of Change helps you tell the Senatobia school district superintendent to stop being such a jerk and drop the charges against the Walkers already.
Finally, over 60 grocery corporations across America have committed to reject selling genetically-modified salmon -- like the one Aquabounty has developed that they assure us is safe (which totally does not sound like self-interest!), but which reproduces faster than two teenagers with a six-pack of Keystone pounders and a Bat Out of Hell cassette, and threatens to leave too much of that hormonal chaos in the salmon you find on your plate. And among these 60 corporations are some fairly big ones, like Kroger and Safeway, but Costco, which is also a very, very large grocery seller, hasn't indicated whether it'll ban GMO salmon from its shelves yet. So both Friends of the Earth and the Organic Consumers Association help you tell Costco to commit to not selling genetically-modified salmon in their stores. This matter could well be of considerable urgency, as the FDA mulls approving the aforementioned Aquabounty GMO salmon as an animal drug, not a food. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Aquabounty won't be marketing GMO salmon as an "animal drug" in grocery stores.
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