think-progress:
“Alabama Becomes 37th Marriage Equality State, Despite Resistance From State Judges“As of Monday morning, District Judge Callie V. S. Granade’s stay on marriage equality in Alabama has expired and, with the Supreme Court declining to...

think-progress:

Alabama Becomes 37th Marriage Equality State, Despite Resistance From State Judges

As of Monday morning, District Judge Callie V. S. Granade’s stay on marriage equality in Alabama has expired and, with the Supreme Court declining to issue its own stay, her ruling declaring the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is in effect. Though same-sex couples are preparing to marry, they may not be able to because probate judges may not abide the ruling.

nysaflcio:

“Dear Governor Cuomo: We are teachers. We have given our hearts and souls to this noble profession. We have pursued intellectual rigor. We have fed students who were hungry. We have celebrated at student weddings and wept at student funerals. Education is our life. For this, you have made us the enemy. This is personal.”

aspiravoces:

ASPIRA teachers wore stickers today showing support for their union by invoking the words of the network’s founder and union activist, Anotonia Pantoja: “Together, we make the future.”

Help ASPIRA educators have a voice in their schools and be real partners in advocating for the best possible future for their students.

Sign their petition: http://bit.ly/1BkvuCU

Legislators in 11 states–Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia–are pushing harmful and misleading “right to work” bills. While this video about why right to work is wrong is from New Mexico, the clear arguments it presents apply everywhere.

npr:

According to surveys by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there are more than 35,000 back and other injuries among nursing employees every year, severe enough that they have to miss work.

Nursing assistants and orderlies each suffer roughly three times the rate of back and other musculoskeletal injuries as construction laborers.

In terms of sheer number of these injuries, BLS data show that nursing assistants are injured more than any other occupation, followed by warehouse workers, truckers, stock clerks and registered nurses.

The number one reason why nursing employees get these injuries is by doing their everyday jobs of moving and lifting patients.

Hospitals Fail To Protect Nursing Staff From Becoming Patients

Photo credit: Talia Herman for NPR, (x-ray) Daniel Zwerdling/NPR

The title pretty much says it all. Robin Hood in Reverse, a new report from the Center for American Progress, explains why “portability"—the notion that states should be allowed to opt out of the current system of Title I that directs federal...

The title pretty much says it all. Robin Hood in Reverse, a new report from the Center for American Progress, explains why “portability"—the notion that states should be allowed to opt out of the current system of Title I that directs federal education funds to help low-income children—is a bad idea.

The result of portability, the report explains, is that the nation’s largest school districts could stand to lose millions of dollars. If Illinois opted for portable Title I dollars, for example, Chicago could lose more than $64 million, while the much more affluent suburb of Naperville could see allocations increase by more than $380,000. In California, students in the Los Angeles Unified School District could lose out on more than $75 million, while the Beverly Hills Unified School District could gain $140,000. These patterns are similar for every state. Portability would redistribute vast amounts of resources away from the students with the most needs to provide marginal new funding to other, more well-off students.

Read more about the problems with portability.

Union CPR training saves a life

Most members who take AFT training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation never get a chance to use it. 

That was not the case for Robin Herrin, a special education paraprofessional who saved a woman’s life on New Year’s Eve. She was ringing in the new year with her husband and sister-in-law at a resort casino when, after dinner, she heard a woman cry for help because her wheelchair-bound mother had slumped over and stopped breathing.

“I didn’t want the mother to die in front of her daughter,” says Herrin, a member of Red River United in Shreveport, La.

Herrin had taken CPR training at the AFT several years ago. She found the older woman without a pulse, her lips and nails turning blue. As she’d practiced in AFT training, Herrin stated that she knew how to do CPR, asked a bystander to call 911, and told another bystander to bring the hotel’s defibrillator.

It seemed like just a few breaths and a couple of rounds of compressions before paramedics arrived. By the time they did, the woman had resumed breathing.

“I was a little bit shaken up,” Herrin says, but “glad I was able to help.“

Get the full story.

beingliberal:
“From The New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake.
#vaccination 
”
The AFT is urging that children (and their parents) get vaccinated.
Here’s a fact sheet on measles we’ve put together.

beingliberal:

From The New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake.


#vaccination 

The AFT is urging that children (and their parents) get vaccinated. 

Here’s a fact sheet on measles we’ve put together.

aflcio:
“This Black History Month, join us as we highlight Black organizers from the past and the present.
BAYARD RUSTIN served the trade union and civil rights movements as a brilliant theorist, tactician and organizer. In the face of his...

aflcio:

This Black History Month, join us as we highlight Black organizers from the past and the present.


BAYARD RUSTIN served the trade union and civil rights movements as a brilliant theorist, tactician and organizer. In the face of his accomplishments Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten and fired from leadership positions because he was an openly gay man in a severely homophobic era. He conceived the coalition of liberal, labor and religious leaders who supported passage of the civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 1960s.  As the first executive director of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, he worked closely with the labor movement to ensure African American workers’ rightful place in the House of Labor. Rustin was posthumously awarded The Presidential Medal of Freedom for his brilliance in organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was the largest demonstration the country had ever seen.