Jobs With Justice | San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, CA  – On May 10th, Senator Dianne Feinstein was greeted with a giant Mother’s Day card, puppets and a “Grease: the musical” inspired flashmob dance at a Noon rally outside her office in San Francisco’s Financial District.  The card was part of a larger press conference and demonstration led by the Bay Area Care Council in partnership with the Caring Across Generations campaign, a national campaign that aims to change the way America cares for seniors, supports people with disabilities, and values caregivers and in-home care workers.

This Mother’s Day, diverse community and labor groups came together to support the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (AB 241) and other campaigns that restore funding to childcare and in-home supportive services. These campaigns and the national Caring Across Generations campaign are a critical step in the process of protecting care workers, reforming long term care, and improving and expanding the social safety nets programs that serve the elderly and disabled community. So many care workers are mothers themselves, and this Mother’s Day event honored the work they do both in their own homes and at their workplaces. Continue reading →

Jobs with Justice led an action with Bangladeshi workers and activists, Kalpona Akter and Sumi Abedin at the GAP world headquarters in San Francisco yesterday.

The collapse of an eight-story building in Bangladesh which housed multiple garment factories was a huge shock this past Wednesday. The death toll is nearly at 300 today, and protests by thousands of garment workers have shut down factories in the industrial area of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. Hundreds of thousands walked out of garment factories on Thursday as a national day of mourning was declared.  Continue reading →

Join ACUDIR, (Alameda County United in Defense of Immigrant Rights) today, April 22nd for a county-wide call in day to put an end to S-Comm (“Secure Communities”) in Alameda County (see script and phone numbers below). Tomorrow April 23rd, support the press conference at 11am and hearing at 12pm, to pass the resolution against S-Comm. And sign the petition!

Get the update on comprehensive immigration reform at the national level here.

80,000 people have been deported in California since the start of the federal Secure Communities program, which required local law enforcement to share fingerprints of arrestees with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and gave ICE the power to detain and deport any undocumented immigrants who were arrested. 70% of those deportations have involved minor offenses, as minor as being pulled over for driving with a broken tail light, or no offense or conviction at all.  Continue reading →

Update 4/18: Bill is out! Here’s a useful summary of the bill and frequently asked questions and answers. The full text of the bill can be found here.

Update 4/16: The immigration reform bill will not be filed today and there will be no press conference release. The bill is still expected to go to hearing this Friday and next Monday in the Senate Judiciary committee. Details about the plan continue to emerge, see descriptions on Politico and the Washington Post.

A comprehensive immigration reform bill is expected to be unveiled as soon as tomorrow in D.C. Thousands of people rallied in the capital last week to advocate for immigration reform, a halt to deportations and a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million immigrants who live here already and are undocumented. Demonstrators are also seeking protection for immigrant workers and support for family re-unification, including of LGBT families. Over a thousand people in the Bay Area joined the April 10th national day of action, with protests in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose.   Continue reading →