Politics and Current
After an emergency cesarean section, I was forced to survive on $170 a week
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New Yorkers are one cancer diagnosis, automobile accident, or difficult pregnancy away from losing their paycheck, shelter, and talent to make ends meet. When our lawmakers finalize the state budget next week, they may have an opportunity to fix this. They have to.
I’m considered one of those New Yorkers. I worked in child look after eight years, putting in long, physically demanding hours to look after our youngest residents. When I gave birth to my second son in 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and needed break day to get well from the birth, my job on the time told me that the one thing I qualified for was New York’s Paid Sick Leave program. . “Temporary invalidity insurance”). The program pays employees who use it a fraction of what they earn: just $170 a week.
That $170 was barely enough to support me, let alone two young children. The lack of support while I was recovering from giving birth – an emergency caesarean section – was devastating to our funds. We’re behind on rent and I’m trying to make up for it in housing court. I cannot afford the exorbitant price to send my sons to kindergarten. Sometimes I was forced to choose from taking good care of my children and household bills, or feeding myself. The stress led to postpartum depression, which I am already recovering from.
I have since learned that paid medical leave in New York has remained at $170 since 1989 – almost 40 years. It’s amazing. Since then, the prices of housing, food, utilities and health care have skyrocketed. Nearly one in 4 New Yorkers today are unable to meet basic needs comparable to food and housing. Indeed, $170 will only cover it half of the groceries needed by the family – and nothing more. That’s not enough to support someone needing break day during a health crisis – let alone a family – especially in New York, where I live.
It doesn’t have to be this manner. According to the organization Better balanceother states incl New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusettsprovide their employees with over $1,000 per week in paid medical leave.
While Paid Family Leave in New York provides support for New Yorkers as they look after a loved one or bond with a latest baby, we’ve got left behind those that needed paid leave for their very own medical care. The excellent news is that our lawmakers can have a probability next week to catch up in New York. They are currently considering proposals to increase the quantity of paid sick leave.
Unfortunately, the Governor and Assembly proposals would only pay sick leave employees 67% of their regular wages. That means employees earning minimum wage would have to pay rent, medical bills and feed their families on just $400 a week.
For these living from paycheck to paychecka fraction of the already too small salary is not going to be enough.
The Senate, on the opposite hand, proposed paying remuneration to individuals with lower incomes and a smaller part to individuals with high incomes. This is a sliding scale approach – already generally known as “progressive wage replacement”. adopted by other countries — advantages all employees while ensuring that those struggling to make ends meet receive a higher percentage of our overall wages.
The Senate’s proposal also has a second advantage. My employer misled me about my entitlement to paid family leave, which prevented me from claiming these advantages to look after my latest child. The Senate proposal, unlike the Governor’s and Assembly’s proposals, would make it illegal for employers to achieve this. Paid family leave would make a huge difference in getting the time I deserve to bond with my child.
But New Yorkers need comprehensive paid family and medical leave. Pregnant New Yorkers need break day to address their very own health needs, especially those of us combating complicated pregnancies or postpartum depression. Like countless other New Yorkers combating their very own health issues, comparable to cancer or serious injury.
In the event of a medical emergency, families like mine shouldn’t have to choose from putting food on the table and paying rent. We deserve more on this yr’s budget. We’ve waited long enough.
Politics and Current
During the NABJ-WHYY panel, Harris showed us once again that she won’t let Trump define the conversation.
“Sometimes your adversaries will try to turn your strength into weakness,” she said. “Don’t let them. Don’t let them.”
In that moment, she’s portrayed her joy and laughter as strengths, and Trump as someone who would attempt to idiot her and all of us into pondering they weren’t strengths. She’s portraying Trump as a thief of joy — almost a cartoonish Grinch-like villain — but without actually or overtly saying anything provocative. The Trump campaign is filled with attempts to attract Harris into ridiculous conversations, corresponding to whether immigrants eat pets in Springfield, Ohio. Harris has been steadfast throughout her campaign in refusing to let Trump frame the conversation or select the setting of the moment. She’s not here to reply to his madness. She’s running her own race.
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She then responded to Gaynor’s query by adding more commentary on the subject of joy. “I find joy in the American people,” she said. “I find joy in the optimism… I find joy in the ambition of the people.” She listed several places where she found joy, poetically linking each with the words, “I find joy in…” It was the type of repetition you would possibly expect from a black preacher. She ended the list with, “I find joy in believing that the true measure of a leader’s strength is not who you knock down, but who you lift up.”
All of this jogged my memory that it is a campaign based on optimism, not pessimism, regret, anger and fear-mongering.
At one point she was asked about Springfield, Ohio, home to immigrants Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance falsely accused of eating pets. She didn’t let Trump lead the conversation. When asked about the city, she modified the subject to people. She said it was school picture day they usually needed to evacuate the kids. She began talking about the kids. Harris again insisted on fascinated by people and refused to follow Trump’s conversation. Watch her do that during the race — it’s clearly her selection. Harris is deliberate in avoiding responding to Trump. She doesn’t follow the conversation into the mental gutter he wants to guide her to. Instead, she comes across as a babbling old geezer, and she’s above the argument and above him.
Stevie Wonder is embarking on a 10-city U.S. tour to coincide with the upcoming presidential election.
The “Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart” tour, titled after Wonder’s latest politically themed single, will happen it stops in key states, reports. The 25-time Grammy Award winner will kick off the tour on October 8 on the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with stops in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Greensboro, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Minneapolis, before wrapping up on October 30 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The official announcement says the tour calls for “joy over anger, kindness over resentment, peace over war.” It also notes that “as a special thank you,” Wonder will offer quite a lot of free tickets to “those in our communities who are already working tirelessly to mend the broken heart of our nation.”
The tour announcement comes a month after Wonder gave an electrifying performance and speech on the Democratic National Convention on “the importance of action.”
“It’s time to understand where we are and what it’s going to take to win: win the broken hearts, win the disappointed, win the angry souls — now is the time,” the legendary singer told the group.
“This is the moment to remember, when you tell your kids where you’ve been and what you’ve done… We have to choose courage over complacency. It’s time to stand up!” he said, changing his tone to an appeal, “and go vote!” He then launched into his 1973 classic, “Higher Ground.”
Stevie Wonder’s “Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart” tour dates are listed below:
- October 8: Pittsburgh, PA, PPG Paints Arena
- October 10: New York, New York, Madison Square Garden
- October 12: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Wells Fargo Center
- October 15: Baltimore, Maryland, CFG Bank Arena
- October 17: Greensboro, North Carolina, Greensboro Coliseum
- October 19: Atlanta, Georgia, State Farm Arena
- October 22: Detroit, Michigan, Little Caesars Arena
- October 24: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fiserv Forum
- October 27: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Target Center
- October 30 Grand Rapids, Michigan, Van Andel Arena
Politics and Current
Michael Eric Dyson slams congresswoman Nancy Mace’s claims he flirted with her in text, accuses her of trying to ‘exploit the situation’
Michael Eric Dyson has slammed suggestions that he was flirting with Congresswoman Nancy Mace after she accused him of calling her a racist in an interview with CNN last month.
The interview with the South Carolina lawmaker and Vanderbilt professor made headlines after Mace repeatedly mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’ name during the interview and refused to correct herself. Dyson never called her a racist on air, but he explained why her behavior was problematic.
“When you disrespect Kamala Harris by saying you can call her whatever you want, I know that’s not your intention, that’s the history and legacy of white disregard for the humanity of black people,” Dyson told Mace in the interview.
During a congressional hearing Thursday, Mace showed her fellow lawmakers a screenshot of a message Dyson sent her that included a photograph the pair took after a CNN interview that portrayed them as flirtatious.
“He says in this piece, after he called me a racist on CNN, ‘Don’t tell anyone we look good together,’ and he sent me a kissy face emoji,” the South Carolina lawmaker said at a hearing Thursday. “Then the guy says I’m gorgeous in all these pictures. I don’t think he’s that bothered by how someone pronounces Kamala. And if we’re going to have that standard, it has to be applied to both sides, not just one or the other.”6
Dyson posted a response on Instagram, fuming over Mace’s behavior during the hearing. He read the entire exchange with Mace and explained that he was joking about how united they looked in photos taken after the CNN interview, given their very different political positions.
“I’m not hitting on Nancy Mace. This is a woman trying to take advantage of a situation, trying to pretend I’m trying to hit on her,” Dyson said. “You’re trying to generate meanness and cruelty because you’re so bitter about getting your ass kicked that night because I told you that night what you were doing was wrong,” he said of Mace.
He also condemned Mace’s characterization of the intentions behind the lyrics as “malicious”, “misleading” and ultimately “racist”.
“Your attempt is sad and pathetic, but your bigoted and racist attempt will fail,” Dyson noted. “There was no attempt to do anything other than be nice to you, but you have proven to be what I said you are not — a cruel, white supremacist racist who is incapable of accepting the generosity and kindness of a black man. You are a pathetic, sick soul.”
While some web users found the text flirtatious, others got here to Dyson’s defense.
“This is a very strategic framing of this interaction for her to do exactly this. Why didn’t she share the entire exchange?” one person said.
“She’s clearly trying to extend her 15 minutes of shame on TV. Time to let it go,” one other comment read.
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