Media clips

---

• It’s time for a Black New Deal

  Then consider the kind of professions Black people work in. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute notes that Black workers are more likely than those of other races to be in front-line job sectors: grocery, convenience and drugstores, public transit, trucking, warehousing, postal services, janitorial services, child care, social services, and, of course, health care workers—what we’re now calling “essential services.”

  Nation of Change June 11, 2020
• McDonald’s #BlackLivesMatters Ad Was Shortsighted and Hollow

  McDonald’s did not bother to note in the video that for years, it paid lobbyists millions of dollars to combat the push for a $15 federal minimum wage. Lower wages are at the heart of the systemic oppression McDonald’s notes in the ad. Currently, there is a 30% pay gap between white and Black workers across the U.S, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Ad Week June 11, 2020
• New EPI Study Examines How Racism & Economic Inequality Hurt Black Workers During COVID-19 Pandemic

  There’s been significant discussion about systemic racism since Floyd’s death, but new research from our friends at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) illustrates how racism has also meant Black workers have been disproportionally impacted by the pandemic.

  EPI’s Elise Gould and Valerie Wilson find that “racial disparities in health status, access to health care, wealth, employment, wages, housing, income, and poverty all contribute to greater susceptibility to the virus—both economically and physically.”

  Black workers make up one in nine workers overall, about 11.9 percent of the workforce, EPI reports. But Black workers account for one in six “front-line-industry workers,” including 26 percent of public transit workers, 18.2 percent of trucking, warehouse, and postal service jobs, 19.3 percent of childcare and social service workers, and 14.2 percent of grocery, convenience, and drug store workers.

  Alliance for American Manufacturing June 11, 2020
• New unemployment claims decline, but economists project long, slow recovery from outbreak

  “Policymakers need to do much, much more to fight this recession and set our economy up for a strong recovery, which will not happen without intervention,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Department of Labor economist who now serves as director of policy for the Economic Policy Institute, in a statement Thursday, estimating that about 25% of the American workforce is now either on unemployment benefits or waiting to receive them.

  KCBY 11 News June 11, 2020
• Progressives Have Good Chance to Move a ‘Receptive’ Biden to the Left, Says Sanders

  The need for Biden to push a more progressive policy agenda should now be apparent to former skeptics in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, suggested Sanders. The public health and economic crisis caused by the outbreak has so far pushed more than 16 million Americans off their employer-sponsored health insurance, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and has caused an explosion in demand at food banks across the U.S. as many unemployed people began struggling to afford basic necessities after missing just one or two paychecks.

  Common Dreams June 11, 2020
• 12 charts that show how Black Americans face alarming economic inequality — and suggest it could worsen due to the coronavirus pandemic
  Valerie Wilson, the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy, says the existence of racism erects systemic barriers within the economy that harm the financial wellbeing of Black people.

  Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates Black households had $8,762 cash on hand on average — starkly lower than the $49,529 that white households had amassed on average.

  While Black workers make up one in nine workers (11.9%) in the labor force overall, they account for one of every six frontline industry workers, or 17%, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.
  Business Insider June 11, 2020
• 9 startling facts that show just how hard the student-debt crisis is hurting Black Americans

  Black college graduates ages 21 to 24 earn $3.34 less per hour than their white peers, reported Jillian Berman for MarketWatch, citing an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That contributes to a $7,000 annual difference.

  Business Insider June 11, 2020
• A New Amityville Horror Only Billionaires Can Stop

  This impending fiscal horror story extends, to be sure, far beyond Suffolk County’s borders. Localities across the United States are facing massive budget shortfalls. In April, notes Economic Policy Institute analyst Elise Gould, the nation’s public schools lost more jobs than they lost over the course of the entire Great Recession a dozen years ago.

  Counterpunch June 11, 2020
• A top Trump economic adviser says he doesn’t believe systemic racism exists in the US and adds ‘law and order is good for growth’

  “Racism generates exclusion, discrimination, oppression, exploitation in a number of ways,” Valerie Wilson, the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy, recently told Business Insider. “It’s not just physical violence.”

  Markets Insider June 11, 2020
• AS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION RESTRICTS LEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT’S EXPANDING A CLASS OF VULNERABLE GUEST WORKERS

  “Many of the advocacy workers on these issues see the guest workers as being even worse off and more indentured,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. That’s because H-2A workers are completely dependent on the individual employers who sponsor them. If they lose their job—if they’re fired for complaining about working conditions or become too sick to work—they can be forced to leave the country immediately. Terrified of losing the chance to support their families, they’re unlikely to speak up about abuses.

  “Sonny Perdue is really a lobbyist for the [agricultural] industry disguised as a Trump cabinet member,” said Costa, the Economic Policy Institute research director. His opinion is that many big growers want the H-2A program to be administered by the USDA instead of the Department of Labor, for this very reason: “It’s a strategy for not having real oversight or enforcement in the program.”

  The Appeal June 11, 2020