"In the last four years, developers backed by private equity firms have acquired almost 75,000 rent-regulated apartments...These companies often make clear that raising rents is crucial to their financial goals. On its Web site, Normandy Partners states 'the increased institutional appetite for New York City rent-stabilized housing transactions' and adds: 'There is a near-term opportunity to increase cash flow by converting rent-stabilized apartments to market rate as tenants vacate units'...

"But the New York City Rent Guidelines Board says the vacancy rate on rent-regulated apartments is 5.6 percent each year. Buildings with vacancy rates far higher suggest resident harassment, tenant advocates say. Vacancy rates have risen above 20 percent in some buildings owned by Vantage Properties; in some Normandy buildings, the rates exceed 30 percent. If an apartment is rent regulated, yearly increases cannot exceed the amount set annually by the Guidelines Board. Most recently, it was 3 percent on a one-year renewal lease. When an apartment becomes vacant, rents can climb as much as 20 percent. When that rent rises above $2,000, regulations no longer apply, and tenants must pay market prices."

These predatory equity tactics pose a serious threat to affordable housing goals in New York. If there was ever a practice that warranted an investigation, it's this one.

Allow me to state the obvious: schools should be safe. And they should feel safe for the kids, their parents, and the teachers and staff who work there. But for the students at four Oakland schools and Berkley High School on Wednesday, school felt anything but safe. That day, rumors spread throughout the schools that ICE were nearby, possibly planning raids at the schools. Parents text-messaged their kids, warning them that ICE agents were close by so that the undocumented parents couldn't come to the schools to pick their children up. The Berkley school district became so overwhelmed with calls that they set up an automated voice message for parents, which according to the San Francisco Chronicle, stated that the administration would "not allow any child to be taken away from the school." The schools -- including Stonehurst Elementary, where immigration officials were parked across the street -- became a panic scene. Undocumented parents called friends and neighbors, asking them to pick up their children since the parents were afraid to come near the school. ICE spokespeople claimed that their intention was not to raid the schools but rather to make arrests at nearby locations.

Unfortunately, yesterday's Berkley and Oakland cases are not isolated incidents. ICE agents have routinely engaged in intimidation of workers -- both documented and undocumented -- and students. In Tucson, Arizona, a 17-year-old undocumented student at Catalina High Magnet School was arrested for possession of marijuana. Police came to the school, and then called the Border Control. When Border Control found out that the student was undocumented, they deported his father, who returned to Mexico accompanied by his wife and two sons.

The incident created an outrage in the school and community. The teenagers quoted in the Tucson Citizen article about the event state the facts that the adults around were apparently missing. "We think that shouldn't be allowed, because school is where we're supposed to be safe," said 16-year-old Mario Portillo. "No matter if you're an illegal alien, you have the right to an education." Eighteen-year-old Jorge Guerrero asked the somewhat obvious question, "How can we learn if we've scared the Border Patrol is going to come for us?" Araceli Sanchez, 14, said that she knew that the arrested student and his family were undocumented, but said that "he was just another student." And it was up to 14-year-old Ener Lopez to state the really obvious. "We should be safe in school," he said. Following a protest by more than 100 students in front of the Tucson Police Department headquarters, Tucson police have said that they will no longer call U.S. Border Patrol into schools or churches.

More recently, ICE agents in the raided 11 Taqueria El Balazo restaurants in the Bay Area, detaining 63 immigrant workers, including two 17-year-olds and a 15-year-old. Given the recent May Day protests by immigrant rights groups, it's unlikely that the timing of the raid was a mere coincidence. As Larisa Casillas, director of Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, said, “I don’t think it is a coincidence that this happened a day after May Day. It wreaks havoc on the community." She sees the target as a strategic one. “When they hit a popular taqueria with a series of raids it sends a message, and our message back is that we need immigration reform. These are people who are working and contributing to the economic health of our region,” she said.

Casillas, I think, hits the nail on the head. Not only are these incidents -- both the school and taqueria raids -- likely part of a purposeful campaign to intimidate the Latino community, but in both cases the intimidation is bad not just for undocumented workers but for their communities at large. School raids cause widespread fear among students, parents, and teachers, and, at the very least, cause serious disruption in the ability of students to learn and feel safe in what should be a guaranteed safe environment. And, as Casillas says, immigrants -- even undocumented ones -- are vital to the economies of the regions where they live.

Immigrants make up 15% of the civilian workforce, and account for half of the labor force growth in the past 10 years, according to a White House report. They pay a significant amount of taxes and produce goods and provide services that are vital to the American middle class. They're vital to keeping our social security system afloat, pumping $6-7 billion a year into the Social Security system, most of which they can't claim because of their immigrant status. According to the same White House report, immigrants increase the earnings and productivity of native-born workers a significant amount, estimated at $37 billion a year. The bottom line is, decent, humane treatment of immigrants isn't just good for immigrants -- it's good for the current and aspiring American middle class.

This kind of conduct by ICE is incredibly destructive to families as well. If schools continue to be a scene of ICE intimidation, undocumented parents are less likely to send their native-born children to school, fearing that raids could result in families being deported. With immigrant families already being hit hard by the current recession and recent crackdowns on undocumented workers -- according to a recent Times article, remittances to Latin America have dropped significantly, yet another sign of the economic squeeze on immigrant families -- worries about deportation because of their kids attending schools are the last thing that immigrant families need.

Notably, it's not all bad. When reading news reports of the raids, in between all the eye-rolling at the fairly inane things that ICE agents said, I've been impressed by how supportive mayors and local officials have been of immigrant rights. "In my view, that is the ugly side of government," Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums said. "No way children should ever be treated to that kind of harassment and fear." Mayor Dellum said that Oakland should be free from raids. "As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect." Vice Mayor Larry Reid said that local officials were never told about the raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."

These local officials get it. When will ICE and the Border Control figure out that schoolyard bullying isn't an effective -- or humane, for that matter -- route to immigration reform?

In recent months, however, some mortgage services such as Calabasas, California based Countrywide Financial Corporation have come under intense scrutiny for foreclosing homes prematurely only to pile on unnecessary and costly fees on borrowers during bankruptcy proceedings.

Steve Bailey, the Chief Executive for Loan Administration at Countrywide, however, disputed those allegations. In a prepared statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, he said, "Countrywide is committed to helping our borrowers avoid foreclosure whenever they have a reasonable source of income and a desire to remain in the property."

He also claimed, "Recent media reports alleging that mortgage servicers are systematically charging excessive fees and using the bankruptcy process to push borrowers into foreclosure or abusing the process more generally are inaccurate." Bailey attributed any perceived abuses to no more than run of the mill "individual employee errors."

Countrywide's track record of overcharging borrowers facing foreclosure and during bankruptcy proceedings, however, suggests otherwise. One New Jersey couple who owned their home for the last 10 years were served with foreclosure papers by Countrywide and were inexplicably charged expensive flood insurance that they could not afford and did not need. It took months to resolve the error. Meanwhile, they fell behind on her mortgage payments.

In several other instances, the mortgage company has also been accused by attornerys representing borrowers and U.S. Trustees in bankruptcy courts of inflating overdue mortgage payments and fabricating documents to bolster their claims and collect more money in bankruptcy court.

Robin and John Atchley's experience with Countrywide seems to be emblematic of these very same abuses. In 2004, the Atchley's moved from a mobile home to what Robin Atchley described as her family's dream home in Waleska, Georgia. After securing a home loan from American Freedom Mortgage her mortgage was sold to Countrywide. During Mrs. Atchley's grieving period after her sister's death, she took unpaid leave from her job at the U.S. Postal Service. Soon afterwards, the Atchleys fell behind on their mortgage payments by about three months worth.

Apparently, that was enough for Countrywide to initiate foreclosure proceedings against the Georgia family and create what Atchely called a "tug of war" over her home. The Atchleys hoped the bankruptcy court would allow her and her husband to pay off her debts and keep their home. But the Atchley said all Countrywide wanted to do was " take advantage of our predicament and to profit from our struggle." In fact, at one point, Countrywide alleged that the Atchley's owed an extra $14,000 on her home loan and $2,250 for other unspecified fees.

Neither of those extra charges were substantiated once they were vigorously challenged by her attorney.

Katherine Porter, a bankruptcy law expert who has studied 1700 bankruptcy cases, told the Subcommittee that the Atchleys suffered an all too common fate. Porter said of the bankruptcy cases she researched "mortgage servicers disregard(ed) bankruptcy law" more than half the time.

Mortgage services frequently misapply payments during the bankruptcy case or fail to disclose post-bankruptcy attorneys fees and property inspection charges or simply not itemized their fees at all in an effort to overcharge borrowers. Porter contends that such a pattern of falsifying or withholding documentation demonstrates a deliberate attempt to manipulate a system intended to help those trying to avoid financial ruin.

An unpersuasive defense from Bailey of Countrywide's treatment of the borrowers like the Atchleys led Senator Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Subcommittee, to conclude "Companies know that the hapless homeowner is too poor, too unsophisticated or too overwhelmed to challenge often blatantly fraudulent demands for payment."

The Atchleys eventually lost their home and are currently living with other family members until they can save enough money to rent a place of their own.

A recent study has shown that, faced with thinning profit margins, neighborhood supermarkets are declining in numbers in New York City. Although the problem affects communities of all kinds, low- and moderate-income areas, which already have higher obesity rates and fewer fresh food options, are taken an even harder hit.

While the City has combated related health issues, like its restaurant ban of trans fats and supports community based agricultural efforts, the need for fresh food options in low- and moderate income areas and neighborhoods of color is far outstripping the efforts to meet that need. Nonetheless, a burgeoning food security movement gaining slowly stream throughout the City, consisting of initiatives like community gardens, food coops and community supported agriculture (CSA) projects, offer some hope that when policy makers and the supermarket industry can't do enough to provide neighborhoods with healthy options, communities can do for themselves.

Several cities in Massachusetts have their own new reality show, called Energy Smackdown!, which pits teams of ten households against each other to see who can make the biggest energy reduction. Unfortunately, Energy Smackdown! -- you can watch episodes from last season online -- is decidedly less sexy or dramatic than America's Next Top Model or Survivor (I mean, we're talking energy-efficient freezers, biking to work, and compact fluorescent light bulbs here). But the creators of the show bring up an important point. In the absence of a solid national policy for decreasing carbon emissions and an energy policy that won't heat up the globe in the next several decades, cities have picked up the slack.

In an article in Sunday's Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin writes that environmental policy is increasingly becoming the domain of not the federal government, but of states and cities. "Even though national politicians are beginning to eye a federal carbon cap more seriously, the flurry of activity in state and local jurisdictions highlights a little-noticed reality: Most of the measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will be enacted outside the nation's capital," she writes.

Cities and states are fighting global warming in a variety of ways. Eilperin gives a few examples:

"In Massachusetts, the state demands that developers calculate and disclose the climate impact of their projects. In California, Attorney General Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. has sued communities and power companies for failing to offset the greenhouse gases generated by their expansion plans. And Washington, D.C., officials are installing a new trolley line and bike rental kiosks in an effort to cut back on car trips within the city."

Pegeen Hanrahan, the mayor of Gainesville, Florida, echoed the importance of cities in her MayorTV interview. She said that Gainesville needs to expand upwards and not just turn into a mess of suburban sprawl. She envisions a kind of sustainable growth that includes widely-available public transportation and high-quality public schools in the city. "The only hope for doing it [growing sustainably] in any sort of way that doesn't decimate the natural environment is to use our cities more effectively and to build more like a Boston or a Washington or a New York than an Orlando, quite frankly," she said of sustainable growth in her city.

"Certainly it's become clear that cities are on the front lines of climate change issues, with over 730 mayors agreeing to the Kyoto Protocol, as Gainesville has, and yet still not having any kind of organized regulatory or even market-based programs at the federal level," she said.

What does the future hold? It's great that cities are picking up the federal slack, but will a new administration usher in a new climate policy? There's hope -- both Clinton and Obama have outlined fairly comprehensive energy plans and committed to reducing carbon emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (the amount scientists say is necessary to keep global warming under control) through a cap-and-trade system with 100% of permits auctioned off. McCain has been slightly more slippery on climate change issues, refusing to commit to specific targets or numbers, and even repeatedly missing crucial votes on important climate change legislation. For the present, it looks like saving the planet is up to the cities.

A friend sent me the following news clip over the weekend:

Is anyone else frustrated by this? I feel like I have been repeating myself to a brick wall. Long Island WINS had a panel discussion a few weeks ago called "Lessons from Riverside, NJ in the costs of attacking immigrants" which tried to establish with the people in the audience that attacking immigrants is bad for local economies. People don't want to live where they aren't wanted. And when they leave, so do their contributions to the culture and local economy.

The coverage of the event has stretched across the blogosphere. Why? Because this is something that our lawmakers and anti-immigrant opponents haven't gained an understanding of yet. The people who stand against these anti-immigrant bills aren't making-up their information....they are using other governments who have already passed and implemented these sorts of bills as examples.

Anti-immigrant legislation doesn't work. Governments that were part of the first wave of these bills now find themselves in the position of repealing them. Elected officials find themselves on the receiving end of criticism when local economies go sour and often lose re-election.

When local governments pass anti-immigrant laws no one wins. Plain and simple.

These shockingly high arrest rates offer no demonstrable reduction in serious crime, but they do have an impact on the everyday lives of New Yorkers.

The racial bias of the hostile arrest policy mapped out in Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in NYC is stunning: Blacks are five times more likely to be arrested, and Latinos are three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites. Though men and women use marijuana in roughly the same proportions, men account for more than 90 percent of the arrests in New York City.

As we grapple with the complex racial web of the Sean Bell case, it’s important that we take a step back and look at the bigger picture: The NYPD’s marijuana arrest practices are not an isolated problem. The NYPD routinely targets young men based on their skin color and where they live.

The marijuana arrests, which cost taxpayers up to $90 million a year, are indicative of the NYPD’s “broken windows” approach to law enforcement, in which police focus on minor offenses as a method of reducing overall crime. This approach, also called quality of life policing, has resulted in a dramatic spike in stop-and-frisk encounters between police and city residents.

In 2007, the NYPD stopped, searched or interrogated nearly half a million New Yorkers – about 1,300 people every day. Eighty-eight percent were found completely innocent of any wrongdoing and released with a charge or even a ticket. The racial disparity in these stop-and-frisk encounters is almost identical to the disparity in marijuana arrests: Though blacks make up only a quarter of the city’s population, more than half of those stopped were black. Another 30 percent were Latino.

Similarly, according to an investigation by the Daily News, though blacks and Latinos account for fewer than half of subway riders, 90 percent of the citizens stopped and questioned on the subway are black or Latino.

Clearly something is wrong with how policing is conducted in our city. Laws are being enforced selectively, and there are devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of black and brown New Yorkers who are unfortunate enough to get caught up by the NYPD’s racially skewed street tactics.

New Yorkers – overwhelmingly young black and Latino men – are being pushed into the prison pipeline. Walk into any high school classroom in Brooklyn or the Bronx and ask who’s been stopped by the police and it’s a sea of hands. The racial police tactics that target these kids do not create safer streets. Instead, they foster distrust between the police and the community, and strip hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers of their dignity.

Beyond the countless personal tragedies this creates, our society as a whole pays a price, too. For each stop-and-frisk, for each trumped-up marijuana arrest, the NYPD’s vast database of black and Latino New Yorkers’ personal information expands.

Sadly, even today we do not know the full extent of New York’s two-tiered justice system. The NYPD continues to stonewall advocates, policy makers and even the City Council from discovering the breadth of the racial disparities in their stops and arrests in New York City. The New York Civil Liberties Union has even had to sue for access to the stop-and-frisk database, and still the city insists on hiding the record of its racial profiling.

Until the NYPD commits to an open and honest dialogue about these issues, we cannot know for certain just how deep these problems go. It’s time for the city to stop giving the police the benefit of the doubt and figure out what’s really happening here.

This report cries out for serious review by the City Council, by the State Legislature, by the Attorney General and by the Distract Attorney’s office in every county in the state: It is time that we demand an explanation from Mayor Bloomberg and an end to these racially biased street tactics.

Only when we do will justice in New York be truly just.

"As you read this, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with 8 million people, do you ever shiver with the strange feeling that you are being ignored? No wonder. We city dwellers are forgotten: The presidential candidates pay lip service to urban America while Congress argues about a farm bill on swine genome research and the Domestic Pet Turtle Equality Act (really).

Though we have learned quite well to fend for ourselves, the federal government and, in particular, our presidential candidates have all but ignored urbanites.

After 24 debates, the closest the Democratic presidential candidates have come to addressing urban issues is vague statements about fighting inner-city poverty and limiting gun control. The urban issues bullet points buried in the nether regions of their campaign Web sites have rarely seen the light of day and have rarely been “speechified,” unlike almost every insignificant issue imaginable. Meanwhile, Sen. McCain appears oblivious to city dwellers’ existence."

Read the rest of the op-ed here. For more about cities and urban issues, check out MayorTV, especially the new interviews with the mayors of Scranton, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey.

Net metering is simple. At its most intuitive level, it works by allowing your electric meter to “run backwards” when your house, or business, or farm is producing more renewable energy—via solar panels, wind turbines, biomass projects, etc.—than you yourself are pulling from the State energy grid. Net metering then allows ratepayers to receive credit at market rates for the renewable energy they are generating.

Net metering is one of the simplest programs to incentivize the use of renewable energy at the micro level. While larger scale wind farms or solar power plants are critical in the effort to decrease our use of fossil fuel generation, small-scale projects are just as important.

However, the current policy is extremely limited in scope—so limited, in fact, that the Network for New Energy Choices gave New York State a “D” on a Net Metering report card. Current law only requires utilities to provide net metering for biomass projects at farms (400kW or less), residential solar systems of 10kW or less, residential wind turbines of 25kW or smaller, and farm-based wind turbines of 125kW or smaller.

Current policy excludes every other category of energy customer—including small and large businesses, schools, and non-profit organizations. As you might expect, this limitation is severely inhibiting the growth of small-scale renewable energy projects. Businesses, more so than residents, often have the necessary capital to build a renewable energy system on site. Next to farmers, they have the most potential to grow small-scale projects in our State.

Bills to expand net metering to all categories of energy customers would have an enormous impact on the development of renewable energy in our State and our competitiveness in the increasingly important “green” economic sector.

As an example, think about this. As summer approaches, and our schools empty their classrooms and get ready to sit idle until September, wouldn’t it make sense for these schools to use solar panels and wind turbines to offset their heavy energy use during the school year?

There are bills in the legislature currently that could make such an example financially feasible. And I, along with dozens of other leaders in clean energy and environmental advocacy, will be in Albany today urging the legislature to pass them.

PowerPAC.org founder Steve Phillips and New York City Councilwomen Melissa Mark-Viverito will be honored as well.

Most importantly, this event is NOT a sit-down rubber-chicken dinner. It's like a cocktail reception plus - great mingling, passed food and drink, music, and the inspiration brought by our honorees. The event will be held at Cipriani 23 on Tuesday, May 20 from 6:30-8:30.

*Activist/student/blogger priced tickets are available.*

To purchase tickets or for more information, go to www.drummajorinstitute.org/benefit

Judging from the ten-fold increase in pot arrests over the past decade, you’d think New Yorkers suddenly started toking up on every street corner and subway platform from Flushing to Chelsea.

Not so fast.

According to a new New York Civil Liberties Union report, Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in NYC, the majority of the people arrested for possessing marijuana were not openly carrying or smoking the drug in public. Most people simply had a small amount of marijuana in their pocket or backpack.

But then why so many arrests? Carrying less than an ounce of pot out of public view was decriminalized more than 30 years ago by the New York State legislature, fearing young people would be unfairly tagged with a criminal record for something so common even Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg admit to doing it.

So how is it possible that for committing a violation akin to riding your bike on the sidewalk or rolling through a stop sign, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have been arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, and added to the NYPD’s vast and growing database? How has this relatively minor violation forced these people to serve de facto jail sentences of up to three days?

The answer is downright scary: Police officers in New York City routinely coerce or intimidate people into showing marijuana in the open. By pulling the “good cop” routine (“C’mon. Just show me what’s in your pocket. We can work this out, but only if you’re straight with me”), police officers often trick people into taking their pot out of hiding. Once they do, though, the offense jumps from a minor violation to a misdemeanor, punishable by arrest and booking.

The authors of the report, Harry Levine and Deborah Peterson Small, spent years observing criminal court proceedings and conducting extensive interviews with public defenders, defense attorneys, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and those arrested for marijuana. The story was always the same.

The report identifies perverse incentives that cause the NYPD, as well as police nationwide, to focus on marijuana arrests: Marijuana arrests provide police officers a relatively safe and easy way to demonstrate productivity and generate additional funding, especially since police departments rely predominantly on arrest statistics to measure effectiveness.

These trumped–up charges have to stop. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are needlessly being dragged into the criminal justice system. Needless to say, the fallout doesn’t hit all New Yorkers equally. Cops are rarely patting down Upper East Siders for drugs, but routinely do so in Bed-Stuy or the South Bronx.

Check back tomorrow to find out just how the bad the fallout is for black and brown men in the city.

New Jerseyans will now be eligible to take up to six weeks of paid family leave to care for a newborn or adopted child or a sick parent, spouse, or child. Workers will receive two-thirds of their regular pay up to a maximum of $524 a week. Family leave will be paid for by a fund that workers will contribute an estimated $33 a year towards. Benefits will begin being paid after July 1, 2009 to allow the fund time to build sufficient resources.

What business leaders have to learn is that helping their employees deal with life isn't anti-business. California has shown that absenteeism and job abandonment decline when people can take time off of work to help their families. That should be a no-brainer. A worker who is distracted by thoughts of their sick child or ailing parent is not a productive worker. FMLA is a boon to families who can afford to take it, but there are very few families who can totally forgo a paycheck for an extended period. This is life in America in the twenty-first century. Fortunately, public policy in New Jersey is catching up.

The proposed legislation would include:

- An expansion of New York State’s Anti-Predatory Lending Law to protect a greater number of borrowers.

- A Requirement that brokers and lenders establish the borrower's ability to repay the mortgage and act in borrowers interest

- A Requirement that New York mortgage servicers be registered with the Banking Department.

- A clarification of mortgage fraud as a crime.

- A Mandate that lenders must "send pre-foreclosure notices to homeowners at least 60 days before initiating foreclosure proceedings. If the borrower engages a housing counselor or reaches out to the lender to negotiate a resolution, the lender will be precluded from initiating a foreclosure action against the borrower for 60 days. "

- A requirement that borrowers and lenders "participate in settlement conferences at the beginning of the foreclosure process, and gives the court the ability to assign counsel to negotiate in the conference on behalf of the borrower."

- A strengthening of the requirement the plaintiff in a foreclosure actually prove that they hold the mortgage note,

- A measure designed to prevent scammers from stealing property from homeowners through foreclosure rescue schemes.

In addition to re-unveiling Spitzer's proposals, the press announcement referenced foreclosure data and a recent New York State Banking study confirming that the foreclosure crisis is deepening; borrowers with subprime loans continue to fall behind on their payments even before their rates re-set; and that efforts to save homeowners from foreclosure - or lessen their losses - are outmatched by the pace of foreclosures.

Of course, because of laws stating that federally chartered banks are not subject to state banking regulations, the impact that this legislation will have on homeowners will be somewhat limited, but it is important nonetheless. If only Congress could get its act together, homeowners facing foreclosure across the country could have a real fighting chance.

From the book description on Amazon.com:

"Since September 11, 2001, most attempts at reasoned political debate in America have been severely limited by the violent language of the Right. In books and on television, it has become a regular ritual for conservative pundits and intellectuals to infuse violence—particularly against Democrats or liberals—into discussions of the major issues of the day, such as terrorism, immigration and gun violence. The result is the creation of a shrill discourse that silences opposition and destroys any chance for serious, civil debate.

In Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right is Poisoning American Democracy, political language expert Jeffrey Feldman analyzes the words of leading conservative figures Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, James Dobson, Wayne LaPierre, Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly to show how the Right’s language of violence is polluting our public discourse and limiting the free exchange of ideas. In addition to exposing the conservative obsession with violence, Feldman also shows how the civic discussion in America can be reshaped without the use of violent language, creating a healthier political climate."

An expert on language and political messaging, Jeffrey Feldman is the author of Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections.) He is also editor of the influential blog, Frameshop, and teaches at New York University."

Jeff is trying to send the book to number one on Amazon! You can help him by buying a copy of the book here.

But first, the glamorous façade:

Like many of our modern holidays, May Day began as a pagan celebration: it marked the beginning of summer and a new pastoral season. It was a holiday that the Celts and Saxons referred to as “Beltane,” a festival distinguished by the lighting of bonfires at important ritual sites, overeating, and intoxication—a veritable reverie of merrymaking. Hewn tree trunks erected in town centers were adorned with garland and wreaths, around which revelers methodically weaved a colorful shroud of ribbons through dance. Not bad, really, as celebrations go—it sure beats grazing at a buffet of finger foods and drinking wine from a box at your office Christmas party. But far from awkward conversation with your boss after too many drinks, “May Day” celebrations in America today in some ways resemble the ancient celebration—only in September instead of May. Oh yeah, and we call it Labor Day.

The last Labor Day celebration I attended was a gathering of friends on a Saturday after working a seven hour shift making lattes. While we weren’t ushering in the summer or leading our sheep out to graze in the hillsides, the plethora of food and drinks certainly resulted in some overeating and intoxication. I’m sure there were people dancing, but not around a maypole and we might have had tiki-torches instead of a bonfire, but who’s counting? Our Labor Day festivities definitely resulted in a veritable reverie of merrymaking, but there wasn’t much celebration of labor at all, nor even a day of rest for Yours Truly. This is a fate I undoubtedly shared with many of the at least 110 million other service sector employees and non-union workers in America. But no one was rallying, giving speeches, talking about or even really thinking about labor—we were more worried that our chicken wings would burn on the grill. In much of America, this characterization of Labor Day stands dismally accurate. So really, our labor holiday isn’t always such a holiday for labor, but even the September date belies the tragic history of labor and May Day in America.

This is where it gets more sobering.

The meaning behind May Day was altered significantly after a series of massive, nation-wide strikes for enforcement of the 8-hour workday were called for on May 1st of 1886. In Chicago, 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue resulting in a lockout at McCormick Harvester Works two days later. Fifteen-hundred workers protesting the lockout became agitated when a group of temporary replacement workers arrived and began entering the factory. The fight between the locked out workers and their replacements escalated when police violently intervened and killed four of the protesting workers. Countless others were wounded. What ensued was the famous “Haymarket Massacre.” On May 4th, a large gathering of workers in Haymarket Square in Chicago gathered to peacefully protest the violent police oppression from the day before. As the protest was winding down, 176 police officers suddenly stormed the meeting, demanding that it disperse. It was in this intense environment that an unknown assailant threw an incendiary device into the crowd killing a police officer and wounding many others. Police began wildly shooting and clubbing the panicking mass of workers, killing seven of their fellow police officers, injuring sixty more and killing or maiming unknown numbers of the protesting workers. Following the massacre, prominent labor leaders were gathered up and jailed despite a lack of evidence linking them to the bombing—some were not even present at the protest. One committed suicide in prison. Another leader was sentenced to 15 years in prison while two were sentenced to life. On November 11, 1887, four of the labor leaders were sentenced to death and hanged. May 1st was declared International Worker’s Day a few years later. Congress, however, has since declared May 1st "Loyalty Day." Go figure.

While it’s been decades since a labor leader was executed or shots fired into a crowd of striking workers in the U.S., an anti-labor sentiment still pervades America today. Membership in labor unions has been suppressed by retail giants and super-chain stores—membership hangs at a low 12% while millions of non-union workers say they want a union at work. What’s more, minimum wages aren’t even close enough to cover the cost of living in today’s economic fugue, and millions of people cannot afford basic benefits. Days off for many are few and far between. And although unions played a major role in establishing America’s middle class, this May Day I don’t expect to see a celebration of labor or even a parade.

I guess we’ll have to wait for September.