Unless you earn more than $100,000, America is just not the place to live. Over the last 30 years, your share of GDP has gone down consistently. It used to be that your salary just didn't go up. Now, with automation and outsourcing, your job is much more likely to leave forever. Griff Witte of the Washington Post takes a hard look at what this really means for the Americans failed by the economy.

Click here for the report. [Free, one-time registration is required.}

Workers at the only maquila factory in El Salvador with a democratic trade union need your immediate support.

Just Garments was founded last year after an international campaign succeeded in reversing the closing of Tainan Enterprises' factories after workers asked for contract negotiations in 2002.  After a hard struggle, Just Garments has secured its first commercial order from No Sweat for khaki pants, which markets only union-made products.

The size of No Sweat's initial order will be determined by orders placed over the next ten days on its website at www.NoSweatShop.com. The size of the order - and therefore its impact on employment at Just Garments - depends on anti-sweatshop activists and consumers placing orders by September 24, 2004.

Precedent-setting agreement reached; Mt. Olive Pickle boycott over   [9-17-04]

After five years of a public action boycott by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (FLOC), it has reached a precedent setting agreement with the North Carolina Grower's Association (NCGA) and the Mount Olive Pickle Company.

The media have reported widely on the "success" of WTO trade talks in Geneva, which came to some agreements: The US, the European Union and Japan agreed to reduce the subsidies to farmers which have been harmful to agricultural producers in developing nations. In exchange, developing nations have agreed to cut the tariffs that many of them impose on agricultural and industrial imports, thus offering more market opportunities for exporters from the wealthier nations.  One such report, for example, was in the Washington Post.

Two respected sources have recently argued that the growing inequality in American society poses a serious threat to our democratic political system, and to the well-being of our nation as a whole.

Bill Moyers, in an address at a June conference at New York University on the theme "Inequality Matters," said "The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us." Read the transcript of his keynote address.

A message through an information network of the National Council of Churches.  Dated June 18, 2004, posted here 6-19-04

Looking for a new way to get involved in your community? The Great American Bake Sale is a fun and easy way to make a difference in the lives of the 13 million children at risk of hunger in the U.S.

Participation is simple:

1) Register at www.greatamericanbakesale.org or by calling (800) 761-4227. It's free and easy. The Great American Bake Sale will send you a wall poster with tips and recipes to get you started.

2)Plan and hold your bake sale anytime between April 4th and July 25th. This year, as an official Great American Bake Sale Community Partner, The National Council of Churches has helped develop tips and materials for faith-based teams interested in participating.

3)Send in your funds on or before July 25th and receive a Great American Bake Sale treat. Funds are distributed to quality child hunger organizations in your state and across the country.

Nearly 7,000 teams, including about 600 faith-based teams, have already registered to participate in The Great American Bake Sale 2004. Information on participation and tips for bake sale success are available at www.greatamericanbakesale.org.

With coffee prices plummeting, there is more need than ever to send more revenue back to farmers and communities in crisis. Co-op America's Fair Trade Supermarket Campaign calls on individuals and communities across the country to get involved in grassroots action to make supermarket shelves full to the brim with Fair Trade Certified coffee.

We recently pointed you to reports on Wal-Mart's use of its vast wealth in its pursuit of more wealth.

Walton wealth undercuts public education

In These Times carries an article by Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, detailing the Walton family's investment of its money (the five Waltons "occupy positions six through 10 in the Forbes billionaires rankings, twice as rich as Microsoft's Bill Gates") to apply $20 billion in support of the Bush administration's attack on public education through the support of "alternative" forms of education, through voucher programs and charter schools.

Costco, with better labor policies, achieves better profits

Jonathan Tasini, president of the Economic Future Group, considers "The Wal-Mart Myth" on TomPaine.com. He looks more analytically at the vote against Wal-Mart's planned building in Inglewood, California, and also notes the interesting fact that rival discount retailer Costco has more enlightened policies, has unionized employees, pays better wages - and better profits. Yet Wall Street is punishing its stock.

So, he says, "In today's economy (or, for that matter, yesterday's economy), whether a company treats its workers fairly and satisfies consumers does not matter to Wall Street. Stock analysts don't reward such a feat -- preferring instead that a company conform to Wall Street standards by wringing out every cent from regular people's wallets."

Bob Herbert in a recent New York Times column reported on a study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, entitled "The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits . . ."

Wal-Mart wants to build a superstore in Inglewood, California. The city council doesn't want it. Wal-Mart has spent over $1 million to bypass the council and the zoning regulations of the city, but the ballot initiative it forced on the city has been defeated by a 60-to-40 percent vote. A coalition of religious leaders, community activists and unions worked to defeat the initiative.

CNN has a report on the vote, and Sojourners links to another report, plus a report on Wal-Mart's spending over $1 million to influence national parties.

From Sojo Online:

When it became clear to Wal-Mart that plans for a superstore in Inglewood, California, would not be approved by the local city council, they spent more than $1 million to promote a ballot initiative that, according to The New York Times, would have made the uber-chain "essentially exempt...from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning, and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules." Though Wal-Mart paid signature gatherers for the initiative more than the average wages of its stores' clerks, opponents of the measure, with the support of elected officials, community groups, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Nation of Islam were able to defeat the measure by more than a three-to-two margin in yesterday's vote.

Read more at: http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/4676390/

Wal-Mart is also investing in politics at the national level. Last year, the company's political action committee was the number one corporate donor in the country, with over $1 million in contributions. You get one guess as to which party receives 85% of its donations. Read more at: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=39854#3

Noelle Damico, National Coordinator of the Taco Bell Boycott for the PC(USA), has sent us a message from Oxfam, urging those who care for justice to send an e-message to the CEO of Yum! Brands, David Novak, before Yum!'s annual meeting on 5/20/04. The message includes a link for e-action, through which you can send a quick-and-easy message.

Noelle Damico participated with others in an Oxfam press conference in Immokalee on Monday, coinciding with the release of an Oxfam report called "Like Machines in the Field." They also called upon Yum! to be an industry leader in ensuring their supply chain is exploitation-free.

You'll find reports of the press conference at pcusa.org/boycott, ciw-online.org, oxfamamerica.org or ncccusa.org.

Click here for the Oxfam note.

And click here to jump directly to the e-action link.

The Rev. Noelle Damico, Coordinator of the Taco Bell Boycott for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), notifies us that the farmworkers from Immokalee, Florida, will be holding a Truth tour from February 25 through March 5th. In Louisville on February 27 the workers and supporters will march from the PC(USA) headquarters to Yum! Brands (Taco Bell's parent company). And beginning March 2 workers will march from East LA down to Taco Bell's headquarters in Irvine, CA arriving on March 5.

In an article published on Christmas eve, the Christian Science Monitor posed the question: "Inequity: Is it a sin?"

The rich-poor gap in the United States has doubled in 21 years and is set to widen further under new tax cuts. People of faith say society has a moral responsibility to narrow that gap. So economists note that the society that has prided itself on being an egalitarian model for the world has become more unequal than "aristocratic" Europe.

Ron Sider, head of Evangelicals for Social Action, is quoted as saying, "It's a scandal that the richest society in human history has the highest poverty level of any industrial nation."

Thanks to Bruce Gillette.

The American dream is dead

And for another take on the growing inequality in American society, Paul Krugman cites that "leftist rag," Business Week, which declares that the American "Horatio Alger" dream is dead.

Krugman writes: "The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society. And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of 'class warfare.' "