Andrew Lee, Former Trustee + Ernest Tollerson, Former Trustee
Lance Lindblom, Former President & CEO + Rachel Durchslag, Former Board Vice Chair
“This morning, I awoke under the watchful eye of that certificate into a living nightmare. Reports about the shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, dominated my social media feed as texts from friends and colleagues poured in. Some expressed sorrow. Others shock. Yet, the most visceral feeling in my gut was rage. Nine bullets pierced the side of nine black bodies and in the process, shattered lives and any remaining illusion that there are spaces where black lives are protected in the United States. They were mothers, grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers crucified at the foot of the cross for embodying the virtue of hospitality. If, as a Christian, rage is absent from your analysis of what happened in Charleston, I am not sure we worship the same God.”
Claudine Brown, Former Director, Arts & Culture Program + Maurine Knighton, Former Director, Arts & Culture Program
The Nathan Cummings Foundation and other Southern Company investors publicly voiced concerns about the company’s board of directors ahead of its annual meeting of shareholders this month. One point of particular concern was Southern’s support for controversial climate change skeptic Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon.
On Labor Day last year, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti went to a celebration in a park on the south end of the city and announced what he called “the largest anti-poverty program in the city’s history”: boosting the minimum wage to $13.25 per hour by 2017. It was an ambitious move for a town that hadn’t recovered quite as strongly from the recession as two of its northern neighbors — Seattle and San Francisco. Legislators in those two cities had recently voted to go all the way to $15 an hour. But even L.A.’s more modest proposal still drew howls of resistance from corporate leaders, who predicted businesses would lay people off and flee the city in droves.
Secret money in politics, especially the corporate variety, has been controversial ever since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case. Now, about 70 charitable foundations are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to end that secrecy.
On Tuesday night, Chicago voters reelected Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a race that was widely perceived as a showdown between the neoliberal and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. However, the election outcome should not be seen as a rejection of a real progressive agenda with alternatives to austerity. Emanuel defeated Jesus “Chuy” Garcia at the ballot box by turning the election into a referendum on Garcia’s financial chops. Even though voters were weary of Emanuel’s “tough medicine” approach to the city’s financial problems, Garcia failed to lay out a fundamentally different view of the problems underpinning the city’s budget and the solutions needed to get the city back on a solid financial footing, and voters opted for the devil they knew over the one they didn’t.
Rachel Durchslag, Former Board Vice Chair + Amy Sorensen, Associate
Jaimie Mayer, Trustee + Danielle Durchslag, Former Trustee
Michael Cummings, Trustee + Jason Cummings, Associate
In the lead-up to the FCC’s pivotal net neutrality vote on Thursday, civil rights and media justice organizations across the United States are taking theirdemands for an open internet to the store-fronts of the telecommunications giants that continue to aggressively fight the protections.
James K. Cummings, Trustee + Ruth Cummings, Trustee
After more than a decade of debate and a record-setting proceeding that attracted nearly 4 million public comments, the time to settle the Net Neutrality question has arrived. This week, I will circulate to the members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed new rules to preserve the internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression. This proposal is rooted in long-standing regulatory principles, marketplace experience, and public input received over the last several months.