Sept 21, 2025 – Aliquippa community comes together to remember 18-year-old shot and killed by ATF agent 02:17 The Aliquippa community both honored the life of 18-year-old Kendric Curtis and called for accountability and transparency during a vigil on Sunday.
An ATF agent shot and killed the Aliquippa High School student on Thursday after state police say Curtis shot at an officer in Aliquippa’s Linmar Terrace neighborhood.
The emotional vigil featured Curtis’ sisters and girlfriend.
“When I heard what happened, it felt like it ripped my heart out, and it took a part of my soul,” Curtis’ girlfriend said. “I just want answers for my boyfriend.”
While the event focused heavily on Curtis’s life, the bubbling anger in the community was also present.
Pennsylvania State Police say officers ahead of the shooting tried to make contact with Curtis before he ran away and shot at them. The ATF and FBI were working on a joint investigation when the shooting took place.
His sisters said their brother was being painted in a bad light, calling him a “good person” who “everyone loved.”
“I feel like my son was targeted and wrongfully killed by the police,” Curtis’ father wrote in a letter that was read aloud at the vigil. “I don’t know what happened, but I know my son is not here to share his side of the story.”
Neighbors told KDKA-TV on the night of the shooting that the ATF agent, whom they believed had shot Curtis, was in plain clothes.
Community leaders have asked for patience as more information comes out. Skeptical community members, some of whom don’t believe law enforcement’s version of what happened, want more information now.
“We demand an answer why, we demand that answer why. Give us that answer,” said organizer George Powell. “Give us those cameras, give us that man in handcuffs who took that little kid’s life. It’s been three days and we’ve heard nothing.”
Neighbors hoped to change more than just a narrative about Curtis.
“We have to stand up and show everyone that Aliquippa is not just about guns, drugs, death, murder, football, [or] sports,” said one of the speakers. “We got young men growing up and dying daily, and we’re going to stand up.”
Jaime Martinez, community defense organizer at Casa San José, coordinates with Rapid Response Network volunteers outside Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant in Gibsonia on June 17, after reports that federal agents were idling nearby in unmarked vehicles.
Casa San José has trained hundreds of volunteers to monitor and respond to immigration enforcement. Public Source followed them through raids, courthouse watches and late-night calls.
July 31, 2025 – As federal immigration enforcement intensifies across the country, a local response has quickly scaled up across the Pittsburgh region. In Beechview, the nonprofit Casa San José has built a Rapid Response Network of trained volunteers who monitor and document ICE activity across Allegheny County and beyond.
The network launched during the first Trump administration but has ramped up since January. As of July 30, it includes more than 250 trained volunteers — with nearly 175 more signed up for future training.
Casa San José, founded in 2013, focuses on immigrant rights and the Pittsburgh region’s Latino community — a mission amplified as the Trump administration rolls back protections for immigrants and directs federal resources toward a crackdown and mass deportations.
Organizers traverse city neighborhoods, gather in church basements and empty parking lots, and educate residents about their rights and federal immigration tactics. Along with trained volunteers, who are prepared to legally observe, document and accompany people at risk of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], they respond in real time to sightings, arrests and raids.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source spent more than a month embedded with Casa San José’s organizers and volunteers, tracking their efforts from the courthouse to restaurants as they responded to immigration enforcement and supported families under threat.
Photo: June 14 at the City-County Building, Downtown
Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San José, speaks to thousands of people gathered in front of the City-County Building in Downtown during a day of nationwide protest against the Trump administration.
“They are disappearing our people. This is our reality. Every single day. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. We cannot continue to allow this to happen in our communities,” said Casa San José Executive Director Monica Ruiz.
“Casa San José is the only organization on this side of the state that is doing this kind of work.”
Ruiz said she has received five death threats since November, forcing her to relocate Casa San José’s office and to reconsider speaking publicly.
Photo: June 17 at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant, Gibsonia
As volunteers monitor the scene, Jaime Martinez, community defense organizer at Casa San José, speaks by phone with nine workers sheltering inside the restaurant — part of the network’s effort to document enforcement activity and support those at risk.
Sharon Bonavoglia was the first to arrive at a quiet strip mall in Gibsonia late on June 17. She had received the call because she lives nearby, and because she’s one of a growing network of volunteers responding to reports of federal immigration enforcement in and around Allegheny County.
June 11, 2025 – The state House voted along party lines Wednesday to raise the minimum wage to $15 for most Pennsylvanians, and to $12 for those working in smaller, rural counties.
It’s a significant step in the latest effort by Democrats to get it above the federal rate of $7.25.
Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has not been hiked since 2008 and is lower than all surrounding states — New York, Ohio, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
The measure’s sponsor, House Labor and Industry Committee chair Jason Dawkins (D-Philadelphia), said the bill is in an attempt to compromise with Republicans who have long warned about the potential impacts on businesses, especially in smaller counties with a lower cost of living.
“Since I’ve been chair, we’ve been trying to figure out a different approach to get this done,” Dawkins told the Capital-Star. “This time around, we had a little bit more insight into where our challenges lie, one particularly being that some of our counties were worried about moving too quickly, and some were not comfortable going over $12.”
A previous bill sponsored by Dawkins passed the House in 2023, but died in the Republican-controlled Senate. And in 2019, the Senate passed a Democratic-led bill to raise it to $9.25, which died in the then-GOP-controlled House.
Dawkins’ latest bill would see the minimum wage rise gradually each year, reaching $15 in most counties on Jan. 1, 2028. It would also raise the tipped minimum wage from $2.83 to 60% of the minimum.
Counties with populations below 210,000, with the exception of Centre, Monroe and Pike counties, would only see the minimum wage rise to $12 in the same timeframe. A spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus said the three smaller counties were put in the $15 bracket at the request of Democratic members who represent them.
One exception to the gradual rise to $15 would be Philadelphia County, which Dawkins represents. There, the minimum wage would rise to $15 on January 1, 2026.
“Philadelphia has the highest population of folks who are in what we call deep poverty levels,” Dawkins said.
He added there is particular urgency given the possibility some of those people may lose access to federal benefits like Medicaid and food assistance under a proposed bill moving through the GOP-controlled U.S. Congress.
“We wanted to have some type of safety net there because we know those folks might be losing benefits and other services,” he said.
But Dawkins’ attempt to offer an olive branch to GOP lawmakers in the form of gradual wage hike and a lower target in small counties appears to have failed in his own chamber. Every House Republican voted against the bill, and many criticized it during a two-hour debate on the floor Wednesday afternoon.
“Not every wage is designed to be a livable wage,” Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R-Bedford) “My 16-year-old son is not working for a livable wage. Someone who is retired and is helping out part-time, that is not necessarily a livable wage.”
He also warned that raising the minimum wage could result in the elimination of low wage jobs and harm small businesses in particular.
Others opposed the very provisions Dawkins said were intended to earn bipartisan support.
Rep. Kate Klunk (R-York) warned that creating different minimum wages across counties could lead to confusion for businesses that cross county lines, or encourage business owners to set up shop where the wage is lower.
“This county-based patchwork of minimum wages is going to be a mess,” Klunk said. She used examples of businesses with locations in York and Adams counties as examples, including golf courses that straddle the border between them.
“This bill is truly unworkable,” she said. “It is a compliance nightmare.”
Rep. Mike Jones (R-York) was one of few Republicans to signal openness to raising the minimum wage during debate, but said he could not support Dawkins’ bill.
“I do commend the majority chair for what I think is a good faith attempt at a reasonable compromise,” he said.
However, he added that he would want to see exceptions to the minimum wage for nonprofits and high-school aged employees.
‘Potential to find middle ground’
To become law, the bill will have to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said that there may be room for compromise on a minimum wage increase, especially if paired with Republican-backed deregulation efforts he said could help grow “maximum wage jobs.”
“Making sure working families have access to good, family-sustaining jobs is key to helping our commonwealth grow and thrive,” Pittman told the Capital-Star in a statement. “There is potential to finding [sic] a middle ground for an increase, but any possible action would need to be a commonsense adjustment, and sensitive to the impact changes would have on small businesses and non-profit organizations.”
Republican Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie), who has previously introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15, commended the House’s effort, but said he would not support a bill with a county-by-county approach.
“While I appreciate that the House is trying to advance the conversation, I do not support HB 1549 in its current form,” Laughlin said in an emailed statement. “A minimum wage tied to county size just deepens the economic divides we’re supposed to be addressing. If we’re going to get serious about raising the minimum wage, we need to do it uniformly across the state, not with a patchwork approach that leaves people behind based on where they live.”
Laughlin was an early Republican supporter of raising the minimum wage to $15 in Pennsylvania. But national trends may indicate more openness from members of his party this time around.
On Tuesday, conservative U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 for all Americans.
He told NBC News, “If we’re going to be a working people’s party, we have to do something for working people. And working people haven’t gotten a raise in years. So they need a raise.”
His comments reflect an openness to his party’s increasing appeal to working class voters that was made apparent in the latest general election, which saw them move away from their traditional support of Democrats.
Dawkins, the Pennsylvania bill’s sponsor, is also aware of the shift, and hopes that it will help the bill earn the support that it needs to pass.
“I’m excited by the prospects, but I’m also disappointed that there could be a federal minimum wage that’s gonna be higher than the state minimum wage — and it’s being offered by one of the most conservative members of Congress,” he joked. “But I’m hopeful it’ll help folks come around to the idea.”
“This is what I believe we got elected to do,” he added.
Ian Karbal covers state government for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. He’s particularly interested in the influence of money in politics and how arcane policies affect Pennsylvanians across the state.
Over the course of the first 100 days, appropriate attention has been paid to Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, law firms, universities, philanthropy, non-profit groups and the media as dangerous in their own right, but more importantly as essential elements of authoritarian consolidation. Yet almost no one has mentioned the attacks on an equally proven constraint on oligarchy and autocracy: unions. Trump and Elon Musk’s destructive ransacking of our government should remind us of what previous generations of Americans understood intuitively: that “we may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it. Like other attacks on civil society, the Trump regime’s attacks on unions and working people do not just injure those directly targeted, but all of us, as the labor movement is one of the most essential bulwarks against authoritarianism.
If we all have a stake in unions as bulwarks against authoritarianism whether we belong to one or not, the same is true because of how unions foster shared prosperity and a healthy society, which I elaborate on here and here. In that regard, it is crucial to recognize the Trump actions as coming from the same playbook as Reagan’s decisive firing of over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. It was more than punitive—it communicated a clear, aggressive stance against unions nationwide. The immediate aftermath saw corporate America follow Reagan’s lead, significantly increasing anti-union activities and adopting overt union-busting strategies.1 Reagan further entrenched anti-unionism by reshaping the NLRB into a body less protective of labor rights, reversing precedents that had previously safeguarded union activities.2
As it did then, today’s federal war on working people comes at a key inflection point. Then it was the rush to globalization, coupled with financialization and deindustrialization. Now it is the imminent transition to artificial intelligence in the workplace. Musk’s firings are providing a new playbook for that transition—fire everyone so as to be able to start from scratch with AI with as little friction from a legacy workforce as possible. And, although not the topic today, it’s important to note here that with respect to DOGE cleaning house to make way for AI, it’s also cleaning house to make way for even more of the government to be privatized—providing a vast market for the tech companies’ AI products and services. Although this future is not certain, it seems to be Musk’s plan: first trash the government, then when the government fails, privatize.
Today, I’ll lay out some of the most egregious actions taken by the Trump regime in the first 100 days to attack unions and working people in both the public and private sectors. Much of this is based on indispensable research by the Economic Policy Institute and its just released 100 Days, 100 Ways Trump Hurt Workers. (For more great reports like this, you can subscribe to EPI here.)
Then I’ll document the robust pushback unions are mounting against the Trump regime’s war on working people in the courts. Unions have also been in the forefront of mobilizing public action, most notably the AFL-CIO’s Department of People Who Work for a Living, which in addition to leading and participating in protests3, has organized town halls across the country.4 AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler declared:
The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an unelected billionaire destroy what we’ve fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being.
And, significantly, even sectors mistakenly thought to be pro-Trump like the Building Trades powerfully responded to Trump’s executive order eviscerating collective bargaining for federal workers:
This executive order is an unprecedented assault on worker freedom and a direct attack on those fundamental rights. Americans know that patriotic blue-collar workers built this country, not billionaires. They also know that one of the last best chances to make it to the middle class is collective bargaining. NABTU and our affiliated unions will stand shoulder to shoulder with the entire labor movement to fight this head-on — and we will not back down.
Photo: La Roche University, Friday, Feb. 10, 2023, in McCandless. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
By Maddy Franklin Public Source
April 11, 2025 – Here’s how President Donald Trump’s administration has roiled higher ed, and how the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and other local colleges and universities have responded.
This timeline will be updated as developments occur.
April 11 A visa held by an undergraduate student at La Roche University is revoked, a university administrator shared with PublicSource.
Revocations and wipes of international students’ records through a Department of Homeland Security system have been widespread over the week. Much of this is occurring, schools and students report, without communication from the government and with no reasons provided.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that there’s “no right to a student visa” and argued that visas would be cancelled in cases the government finds “appropriate,” such as participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Without legal status, students with terminated visas risk deportation.
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April 9 Visas held by two recent graduates and one current Pitt student are revoked, according to an email sent by a university administrator. The administrator said no known immigration agencies or authorities have been on campus, and the students were offered unspecified “support.”
PublicSource reached out to Duquesne, Point Park, La Roche, Carlow, Chatham and Robert Morris universities to ask if students or recent graduates have been impacted by sudden visa terminations. Spokespeople for Duquesne, Point Park, Carlow and Chatham said there haven’t been any changes. RMU did not immediately respond.
April 7 Visas held by five recent graduates and two current CMU students are revoked, following a trend seen at universities across the country. The university reports that no immigration authorities have been on campus, and the students were connected with legal resources.
March 19 A congressional committee sends letters to six universities, including CMU, requesting information regarding Chinese students to assess national security risks. The letter states that U.S. higher ed institutions “are increasingly used as conduits for foreign adversaries to illegally gain access to critical research and advanced technology” and sets an April 1 deadline to turn over the details.
March 14 The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights opens investigations into CMU and 44 other universities nationwide for alleged Civil Rights Act violations following the guidance set out in the department’s “Dear Colleague” letter. The department said these institutions engaged in “race-exclusionary” practices within their grad programs by partnering with The Ph.D. Project, which “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”
March 13 After Pitt paused faculty and staff hiring, administrators say that federal actions are not the only reason for the freeze. At a university faculty assembly meeting, Pitt’s Chief Financial Officer Dwayne Pinkney says enrollment trends, inflation and flat state funding were also behind the decision. The freeze would’ve happened “a little later” if not for recent events, he says — federal funding uncertainty was simply the catalyst.
Photo; PA Rep Malcolm Kenyatta speaking to protestors in Harrisburg. By Bethany Rodgers
Protests against President Trump and his agenda, including the involvement of Elon Musk, took place nationwide.
Many protestors believe there is a renewed sense of urgency to oppose Trump’s policies in his second term.
By Bethany Rodgers USA TODAY NETWORK
Feb. 5, 2025 – HARRISBURG — Scores of protestors gathered outside the Pennsylvania state capitol Wednesday as part of nationwide demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s administration and the Project 2025 agenda.
The gathering was part of a nationwide wave of protests coordinated by the 50501 movement, short for “50 Protests, 50 States, One Day.” In Pennsylvania, demonstrations were also planned for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Attendees waved signs calling for Trump’s impeachment, rainbow banners and American flags. A number of them also aimed their ire at Elon Musk, the billionaire who has assailed federal government agencies in recent days with the immense powers Trump has granted him.
Mari-Beth DeLucia, of Harrisburg, said she knows someone who works for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a government humanitarian arm that Musk has called a “criminal” organization and sought to dismantle. Employees at the agency are being placed on administrative leave, and Trump’s team has frozen foreign aid distributed by the office.
The damage Trump and Musk are doing will reverberate through charities, businesses and communities across the U.S., DeLucia predicts. But up to this point, she thinks people have been too stunned to mount the type of protests that spilled into the street when Trump was elected for his first term in 2016.
“Why aren’t we marching? Where is everybody?” DeLucia said she’s wondered lately. “I think it was kind of shell shock.”
More:’Don’t let democracy die’: Anti-Trump protesters rally in cities across US
She’s hopeful that Wednesday’s gathering is a sign that people are again raising their voices.
Savannah Bellem, a volunteer who brought snacks and drinks to the Harrisburg demonstration, said it was her first time participating in a protest. Back in 2016, she thought the answer was to wait out Trump’s term.
Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, speaks to a group of protestors in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 5, 2025. The demonstration against President Donald Trump’s administration was part of nationwide rallies coordinated by the 50501 movement. “It’s four years — what can happen?” the New Cumberland resident remembers telling her husband.
She now sees that attitude as naive, and this time around she feels a heightened sense of urgency. A gay couple in her family are frightened they could lose their child. She said she is angry that her young daughter now has fewer rights than she did at the same age.
“We’re not going to stand for it,” she said. “We need to get back more into taking care of our community and each other.”
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta also emphasized the importance of local action in a speech to the crowd, urging them to focus on city councils and school boards in addition to politicians in Washington, D.C.
“There is no one, and I mean it, no one, coming to save us,” the Philadelphia Democrat said. “But here is the good news, my friends: We are going to save ourselves.”
Bethany Rodgers is a USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania capital bureau investigative journalist.
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said during an event in Harrisburg Monday that his administration will not work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Our news partners at the Trib said Gainey’s comments come amid heightened concerns from local immigrant communities about ICE raids.
“My administration will not work with ICE,” Gainey said during a Pennsylvania Press Club event Monday. “We will do whatever’s necessary to make our city more welcoming. That’s what we’re built on.”
President Donald Trump has issued “quotas for the immigration enforcement agency to ramp up arrests,” the Trib said, attributing the Washington Post. Trump’s remarks include enforcement at schools and other “sensitive sites.”
“ICE is not going to end the situation of a failed immigration policy — it’s not going to do it,” Gainey said. “What it’s going to do is create more situations where people feel scared, where people don’t feel safe, where people will do things that they normally wouldn’t do.
“If the federal government wants to be serious about what they want to do to reform the immigration law, then they need to create a pathway to citizenship.”
Vanessa Caruso, a Pittsburgh-based immigration attorney, told the Trib that she has been taking calls “all day, every day” from people who are worried about ICE actions.
“The concern is real,” she said to the Trib, and it’s growing as the Trump administration looks to crack down on immigration.
Gainey’s press secretary, Olga George, said in a statement to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 on Monday evening that the city was unaware of any ICE raids.
“Currently, the city of Pittsburgh has no evidence of ICE activity occurring within city limits and has not been asked to assist the agency in any way,” the statement said. “ICE is a federal law enforcement agency that works outside of city control. Public Safety and the Bureau of Police will adhere to bureau policies.”
According to the Trib, the policy says city police are unable to arrest someone just to investigate their immigration status.
In a statement posted to the @PGHController X account on Tuesday, City Controller Rachael Heisler said, in part, “The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has long upheld a policy of not arresting or detaining people solely to investigate immigration status. PBP officers are not immigration agents, and enforcing federal civil immigration warrants is not the job they’re trained to do.
“Pittsburgh police will follow procedure for criminal warrants regardless of immigration status. But under current PBP policy, police do not arrest or detain people based on civil immigration or administrative warrants in NCIC.”
Photo: Jasmine Rivera was an organizer with the Shut Down Berks Coalition, and curated the exhibition “Queremos Justicia: Cómo cerramos Berks,” at the Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia in 2023. (Peter Crimmins/WHYY)
By Jeffrey Lichtenstein
One PA
Jan 7, 2025 – We’re holding several big questions as we move into 2025 that we hope to learn and struggle through together with our funding partners. All of our work, especially our organizing, advocacy, and outreach efforts, will be working through these questions.
Quality vs Quantity of Doors
Where and when can we initiate and join conversations about the quality of field work rather than simply the quantity of door knock and phone call attempts? The efficacy of canvassing in low-salience elections is statistically unquestionable but in presidential election cycles there is suddenly a great amount of noise. Some of this noise is the result of large-scale vended field programs with weak quality control practices or very low contact rates.
What could it look like to move toward an eco-system wide model for field work that prioritizes the number and quality of conversations, volunteers recruited, and leaders trained? One PA prides itself on high contact rates and rigorous quality control but we still have much to learn. We hope to share and leverage best practices across locally rooted partners and begin to shift the paradigm around field work from quantity alone, to quality and quantity.
Making organizing power more legible
Even the strongest most rigorous electoral field program faces structural challenges with management, hiring and training under conditions of limited funding and time. These efforts also, by their nature, are demobilized and dismantled after an election, even when we know there is another election just around the corner, not to mention countless other opportunities for voters to flex their voice in government and strengthen their civic participation. Political and civic organizing, unlike electoral campaign mobilizations, grow rather than diminish in efficacy and power over time. What would it look like to quantify, validate, resource and scale the civic power of organizing? One PA was successful in 2024 in using every door conversation to begin an organizing pathway. We identified 33,000 hot leads to join One PA. We’re proud of this work, but we have real areas of growth in learning how to maximize the conversion between hot leads and new volunteers.
Dimensions and Cost of Building Precinct Based Structure
The term ‘organizing’ has been stretched in recent years to mean all manner of engagement. At One PA we are working with multiple battle-tested organizing models in an attempt to integrate the best practices of each in a way that can be quantified, studied and validated at every stage using contemporary data tools and tech. Our model combines dues-based membership, structure based organizing units, systematic leadership development, polarizing campaigns and experimentation. We are proud of our work in 2024 to launch a guardians of democracy and elections captains program.
In the year ahead we plan to scale the program by a factor of five, and are holding questions about what level of resource and training this will require at each level of the organizing structure. Independent Voice It is clear our movement must get upstream of elections in the battle to make meaning out of our communities’ lived realities. By the time candidates win their primaries, the ability to shape what that election will be about is out of the hands of most people except the elite few with an extraordinary amount of influence on the candidates. We are asking ourselves the question: what capacities and practices do we need as a movement to help frame the questions in front of people long before an election?
How can we roll into a cycle with voters broadly knowing already that housing is too high because of slumlords and rollbacks on government investment, not because of immigrants? We know part of the answer is an independent voice for Black and multi-racial working class communities, to help compensate for brand weakness in the Democratic party, to ensure voters feel they are heard, and to guarantee a more healthy mix of ideas about what it will take to fix this country. How can we build the power and independence of this voice in a way that our more traditional and conservative allies won’t attempt to smother in its cradle?
Winning the Internet
We’re also holding questions about how to respond to the reality that the Internet is increasingly becoming a place our communities rely on for social and political queues. Cynical or hateful voices have a head start in offering narrative frames in the digital space. We are holding questions about what it looks like to bring an organizing approach and significant investment in mass communications to organize our base in digital space, win over leaders and taste makers in non-legacy media, and contest for narrative primacy on the internet.
Training to Win next quarter and next decade
Training is critical for nearly every aspect of our plan, especially the proposition that we grow in capacity and power over time, and the responsibility to rebuild a majority. We are clear that we must level up the rigor and scale of our training program, and sit with the question about what kind of training school and content will meet the need. We know curricula must include a breakdown of the structures and histories of power and resistance; song, poetry and other forms of culture that bring people together at an emotional register; practical application of ideas through repetition of organizing, storytelling, writing and other skill practice. We’re sitting with the question: how can all those pieces best fit together and what kind of resourcing will it take to hold a training program sustainably that can meet these goals?
A renewed tech advantage
We’re also holding a question about technology. For about 20 years, democratic institutions and networks held an advantage in the use of tech in politics – the VAN, click-to-call tools, ActBlue and early P2P text platforms are all examples. But today republican networks and institutions have caught up or surpassed. What kind of tools allow us to easily give an inspired volunteer a list of the 50 closest target people to them, to register them to vote, get them to sign a petition, or have a persuasive conversation about candidates? How do we move away from site-based voter registration only, and use contemporary data to scale door to door registration programs? How do we use new models, like the Steven Phillips “New Majority Index,” to help us assess opportunities and threats?
Cities: Most of our base lives in cities.
Cities are the places where the housing and homelessness crises are worst. Cities are some of the places with the highest income inequality and violent crime. It’s difficult to live in cities unless you’re rich. There is a relationship between our bases’ weakened sense of political agency and their perception of the corruption of government on one hand, and the way our cities are being run on the other. What does it look like to have an intentional plan to broadcast positive accountability messaging when city leaders accomplish something that improves peoples lives? How do we combine that with real resourcing for primary campaigns to support candidates who are committed to using the government to deliver material gains for working class people.’ And what does it look like to add real resourcing for advocacy and pressure campaigns to encourage local leaders on the fence to move toward policies that will demonstrate in real terms how democratic governance is good for people?
Alignment
Last, we’re holding a question about how to build alignment between progressive base-building organizations to have sufficient power to help win the fights that each of us aren’t strong enough to win on our own. We’re proud of the work that we’ve done to build unity through the cycle of the last several races with several partners, especially PA United , Working Families Party , APIPA, Make The Road, 215 People’s Alliance and UniteHERE. How do we strengthen and build on these existing relationships?
For months the proposed sale of USSteel to Nippon Steel has been front page news. The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), that reviews the national security implications of these global transactions is reportedly at an impasse and unable to come to a determination.
The reality is that what CFIUS decides (or doesn’t) is irrelevant. Both the incumbent President and the President-elect have said they will not approve the deal. It’s slowly dawning on people that this deal isn’t likely to happen.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Opposing the Nippon/USSteel deal is the logical response to all that we have learned about the steel industry, the “free trade” model of global trade, the importance of maintaining domestic control over critical supply chains and how the big money vultures strip-mine our stable industrial/manufacturing enterprises. It isn’t, as Nippon/USSteel would like us to believe, something that must happen or USSteel will collapse. Once this bad deal is gone, we know there are a number of options to retain and enhance USSteel’s assets.
To understand what’s happening we have to start with the global steel overcapacity. The OECD reports a global steel overcapacity exceeding 500 million metric tons, with some estimates reaching as high as 630 million metric tons. This has nations with overcapacity (China in the lead) looking for places to dump their steel production. Our nation is a lucrative place to offload unneeded steel. Interestingly, Nippon is reportedly looking to do deals in other nations with lucrative steel consumption, as the USSteel deal falters.
It’s fantasy to believe that once Nippon owns USSteel it won’t use it to move its overcapacity here. Simply look at the cases that the USW and the Steel Industry have won at the International Trade Commission, to get a flavor of how blatant other nations have violated our trade laws to gain access our steel market. The failure of Nippon to offer credible and enforceable commitments to continue American domestic production, should convince us of their real intent. This is the heart of the national security concern. That if Nippon is allowed to own such a large part of American steel capacity, the will result will be steel shutdowns here and less ability to supply our own needs of this critical economic sector.
The University of Pittsburgh’s graduate student workers narrowly declined unionization in 2019, but this week’s overwhelming vote has the Oakland campus riding a wave of higher ed organizing.
Nov 22, 2024 – Throughout the week, more than 1,000 graduate student workers at the University of Pittsburgh made their way to a nondescript ballroom in the O’Hara Student Center to vote on whether to unionize.
Supporters sought everything from more transparency on the part of university administration to pay equity, better vacation time and health insurance.
The line outside the ballroom stretched, at times, down the stairs of the center. “People are so excited … I’ve never seen engineers this excited,” said Lauren Wewer, a materials science and engineering Ph.D. student and organizer at Pitt.
On Friday, organizers announced the results: a 1033-28 vote to unionize with the United Steelworkers [USW]. The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board had not yet confirmed the vote count as of mid-afternoon.
With this win, Pitt grad student workers become the latest employees to undergo a successful union bid at a U.S. higher education institution, continuing an upward trend in the sector’s organizing activity over the last few years. They also join faculty and staff at the university which unionized with the USW in 2021 and September, respectively.
Pat Healy, an information science Ph.D. student at Pitt, said the wide margin of support reflected in the vote, “aligns with how most of the grad union votes [in the country] have gone the last couple of years.” Healy has been organizing at the university since 2019, which was the last time grad student workers attempted to unionize. Then, the pro-union students lost by fewer than 40 votes. For them, the impact of this year’s vote stretches beyond Pitt’s campus.
“I’m happy for the movement [and] looking forward to some other grad unions popping up, I’m sure inspired by us, because that always happens,” Healy said.
After Thanksgiving, they said organizers will begin setting up for bargaining with Pitt’s administration.
In a statement after the vote count, the university said, “While first contract negotiations can be complex, please know that we will come to the table in good faith and be there to support all graduate students throughout and beyond the process.”
Immediately following the loss in 2019, any efforts to restart conversations about unionizing would meet with “a kind of extreme hesitancy,” Healy said, blaming “a lack of understanding of what a union was.”
This year felt different, Healy said. There are likely a few reasons why.
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A wave of change
From 2021 to 2023, nearly 64,000 U.S. grad student workers joined unions. By comparison, only 20,394 students unionized from 2013 through 2020. Today, four in 10 grad student employees belong to labor groups.
This trend was, experts say, driven in part by the pandemic and by the administration change from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2021, which ushered in a National Labor Relations Board more amenable to organizers.
Adrienne Eaton, professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, noticed COVID-19-driven layoffs and research funding losses on campus in New Jersey that eventually led to a faculty and grad student strike last year. She describes this time as an “active moment” in American higher ed, with students advocating for change across the board at universities and colleges. And with grad students, there’s another factor at play: “The faltering job market in academia.”
“A high percentage of students no longer [are] confident that they have a future as tenure-track professors, in particular, or potentially as academic faculty at all,” Eaton said. “So, I think it really changes the way that graduate students look at their assistantships that they get.”
By 
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 