I Speak
Essential Workers Deserve $15 An Hour
I’m one of America’s millions of essential workers. We’re working in your children’s schools, at your grocery stores, and at drive-through windows. We’re cleaning your homes. And we’re struggling so hard to make ends meet. Congress is debating whether to raise the...
The Union Bond
Dave Dell Isola, the son and grandson of union members, grew up grateful for the family-sustaining wages and benefits that organized labor won for working people. But he never fully grasped the might of solidarity until he and his wife, Barbara, and their two sons...
A Letter to a Young Organizer
There’s no getting around it. Organizing is hard. But the context you are organizing in right now? It’s a whole different thing. When I was coming up, the expectations felt big. People in the neighborhood were being screwed seven ways to Sunday. So, each night we’d...
We Don’t Need Another Liar-In-Chief: Biden Must Tell The Truth About Medicare For All
I’m an Iowan, a father, and a voter. And I’m just plain tired of the lies too many candidates tell us about health care. They say we don’t need Medicare For All, when I know that we do. These candidates parrot lines they’re fed by big pharma, big insurers and big...
Building Power And Raising Voices Of Rural Women
Here in North Carolina, like many other rural areas around the country, reactionary forces have used trends like the decline of jobs, infrastructure, and public services to consolidate power, advance racist and misogynist narratives, and erode public confidence in the...
Migrants Are Iowans, And We Stand With Them
How it would feel to walk fifty days to save your unborn child, only to be locked in a cell so cramped you and a dozen other pregnant women had to sleep standing up? WATCH: the full story of @JulianCastro escorting José Robinson to his ICE check-in. “If I...
We Can Create The World We Want To Live In
People's Action congratulates Adrienne Evans, executive director of United Vision for Idaho, on receiving a 2020 Roddenberry Fellowship. The program, whose alumni include Alicia Garza, Michael White and Judith LeBlanc, seeks to empower activists to “think, question,...
Iowans Won't Be Fooled: We Need #MedicareForAll Now
Last week I took over the lobby of the Master Builders of Iowa in Des Moines with 30 other members of Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement Action, the largest progressive organization in our state, with members in all of our 99 counties. Why, you might ask, did...
We Dare Defend Our Right To A World Without ICE
Photo credit: Hometown Action / cc Last week, I dropped my kids off for their first day of school in our small Alabama town of not even 7,000 people. The kids were excited, but I was a nervous wreck. My kids - eight and eleven - are my heart and joy. Would they have...
The Soul of a Union Man
Leo Gerard, a longtime contributor to OurFuture, retires Monday after 54 years as a union man and 18 as the International President of United Steelworkers (USW). We thank Leo for his leadership and tireless efforts for working people around the world. I was raised in...