Support The Fair Pay Restoration Act

Equal pay day is the day of the year in which women catch up to men in earnings from the year before. This year Equal Pay Day is recognized on Tuesday, April 22nd. Currently in America white women working full time jobs make on average make only 77 cents to the males dollar. For minorities the disparity is even greater. African American women earn 63 cents per dollar while Hispanic women are making a mere 53 cents on the dollar.

At WWJV4.com Summer and I strongly believe that our nation needs to recognize this difference and work to correct it. In its recent Ledbetter v. Goodyear ruling the Supreme Court made it virtually impossible for women to fight against this pay discrimination.

This ruling imposed the unreasonable requirement that women discover pay discrimination and file suit within 180 days. Sadly Pay is almost always confidential and the effects of pay discrimination are generally incurred over a long period of time. Therefore this ruling effectively eliminates any possibility of a successful legal solution to pay discrimination.

This is why we are supporting The Fair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843) which will return women’s ability to fight for fair pay. Please join us in supporting equal pay for women by contacting your Senators and spreading the word about this bill.

Thanks.
William and Summer
WWJV4.com

[youtube width="500" height="394"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_c5K7Jdw9E[/youtube]

A MyBlogLog reader Cooper sent me a message letting me know that my website and RSS feed was broken. The fact that she took some of her own personal time to send me a message means a lot to me. More importantly she did so without any expectation of payment or any other selfish motives. This may seem like a minor deal for many, but I am leaving town to go to a funeral and had she not said anything my site would have been down all weekend, potentially costing me quite a bit in terms of readers and ad revenue.

Of course she had no way of knowing that I was leaving town, or even if I was aware of the problem. Thats the amazing part of doing small acts of kindness for strangers; you never know how one of them may make a huge impact on someones life. So I want to take this time and send out a huge thank you to Cooper and invite each one of you to check out her websites. Thanks!

• Wonderland or Not – Personal blog with a little social, political and pop cultural commentary added.
• Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth – Solely about humanitarian causes, in this case mainly Darfur.
• Should Be Famous – About Blogs and Bloggers who should be famous

#10 Subscribe to RSS Feeds – Keeping informed is the single most difficult and time consuming part of becoming active. There is simply so many great sites that there is no way to visit them all regularly enough to keep up. This is where RSS feeds and a free RSS Reader like Google Reader comes in handy. With Google Reader you can get all your news in one place and it automatically updates so you never have to go out looking for news. Try it out by subscribing to my feed here.

#9 Comment on Blogs – Joining a discussion on one of the many great liberal blogs is an excellent way to get involved and start making a difference. This can take as little as a few minutes a day and will help get you involved in the community. Look through my blogroll and find a site that interests you and get involved. Of course I welcome everyone to comment here as well.

#8 Make a Donation – Not a ground shattering suggestion but one that is still badly needed. If you have more money than time giving even a small monetary donation can really help out. If you have even a few hours to spare there are many charities that always need help. So whether you are donating money, items, or time it is very rewarding knowing that your efforts are appreciated.

#7 Attend a Local Rally – Getting involved with local groups is one of the most rewarding parts of getting active for a cause. My wife and I try to find as much time for this as possible and we never regret it. The rallies and vigils are always great fun and the media attention these rallies generate will greatly help your cause. Last month my wife and our 3 youngest attended a vigil for SCHIP and they had a wonderful time, met some great people, and helped raise awareness in the community.

#6 Write a Letter to the Editor – Taking 20 minutes and writing up a good letter to the editor of your local newspaper can have an enormous impact. Even a small newspaper has a circulation of thousands of readers who are informed and interested in local events. The return on time for writing a letter is huge as a well written letter can bring in lots of support.

#5 Contribute to Liberal Blogs – Many liberal blogs, including this one, allow contributions from readers like you. Best of all these blogs often have daily readership of tens of thousands of progressives who are open to your ideas and thoughts. Daily KOS is the largest liberal site on the internet with hundreds of thousands of daily readers and they allow you to set up a diary for free where you can write about your cause. Take advantage of these offers to get your message out there.

#4 Tell Your Friends and Family – Many people overlook the simple act of talking with their friends and family. Oftentimes you will find that the person you least expected to be interested is in fact very receptive to your ideas. In fact quite commonly you will find that some of your friends and family are more than willing to join forces with you to help out.

#3 Start a Personal Blog – While this seems intimidating for many people, in reality it is as simple as filling out a quick form. Blogger.com and WordPress.com are both excellent, fast, easy, and FREE. There is simply no easier and faster way to make a difference than starting your own blog. In less than 2 months we have had almost 50,000 visitors and you can easily do better than that.

#2 Get Involved Locally – The more local the cause the more of an impact you can make on your own so get involved with the local government. Take advantage of open forums and contact your local representative. You will be surprised at how much even one person can accomplish working at the local level. So even if all the time you have is to write a letter to your local representative that is time well spent towards making a difference.

#1 Vote – I cant stress enough how important getting out and voting is. In our great country the will of the people is represented by elected officials. By taking part in this process you validate your own freedom and help to ensure that the best candidate is the one in office. So please get out and vote because your one vote does make a difference.

Bonus Tip: Focus on a Single Issue at First – Often times we can get distracted by all the important causes and we start trying to do too much. This just leads to a lot of wasted effort and eventual burnout as we spread ourselves too thin. Pick the issue that you are most passionate and invest only as much as you can spare. This way you will maximize your efforts and combined with the 10 tips above you can start to really make a difference in the world.

There you have it, 10 simple tips to getting involved and making a real difference. I could have easily listed more but I wanted to keep this short and sweet. The single greatest threat is apathy so please bookmark this list and send it to all your friends because only by becoming active can we expect anything to change. Thank you so much and please feel free to comment and add to the list.

~ William ~
http://wwjv4.com

You can get their Take Action Kit here which includes more information on the movement as well as ways to get involved. Women have made great gains but there is still a long long way to go. Please join us over the next 15 days as we work to spread awareness on this issue. As our time is very limited right now (I’m working 2 full time jobs, plus school full time) we will be unable to contribute as much as we would like, so hopefully our readers can help pick up the slack. Thanks in advance.

The Take Action Kit includes a file named Suggested Actions: 16 Ideas for 16 Days that we will be going through day by day. Since were a day behind here are day 1 and 2.

Day 1: Educate Yourself.
There are lots of exceptional blogs that focus on womens rights every day. I highly recommend visiting each and every one of them. For your convenience here is a list of the blogs that I subscribe to. I know there are more so if you have any suggestions please post a comment. I will be updating our blogroll this week with these sites as well.

• Feministe
• Feministing
• Hoyden About Town
• Trailer Park Feminist
• Womenstake.org

Day 2: Spread the Word.
That’s what I’m doing here. I will also post to both my personal and WWJV4 MySpace profiles to get my friends and family involved. At the least I would ask you all to do the same. We would also love to have you as a MySpace friend so we can work together on these issues and get to know you all better.

Ok, that’s the first two days. It gets better and better from here. Tomorrow we will discuss organizing an event or activity. Come back tomorrow and find out how we plan to stay involved on a tight time budget. Good stuff.

Thanks for taking part in this important event. Please comment with your favorite blogs, websites, and stories about feminism and gender violence.

~ William ~
http://wwjv4.com

“The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported,” said the 21-page draft report, obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.

The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment” by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.

Washington Post – 11/13/07 – ‘Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say

This is expected to be presented to Congress later today, and from there we will see how seriously the Mainstream Media takes it. They have hardly blinked an eye at the current costs, but finding out that the actual costs may be well over a Trillion dollars is significantly different. One thing I would love to see the MSM take up is how our fiscally responsible president can waste 1.5 Trillion on an unnecessary war of choice but can’t spend a few Billion to provide health insurance to millions of our working class children.

Gotta love those nutty pro-lifers and their crazy priorities. War > Children. I’ll post more on this issue as the story unfolds.

* Notice: This story is pending editing but I wanted to push it out as Summer is running errands this morning. So don’t be surprised when all my spelling and grammar issues are fixed later On the bright side you get to see how much better my writing is after Summer fixes it. *

This morning I read on BBC News that Samina Malik, a 22 year old poet, was found guilty under UK’s anti-terrorism laws of having articles “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. This comes after being found not guilty of the serious crime of “possessing an article for a terrorist purpose”. You see Samina Malik committed the grave crime of writing poems and possessing books supporting Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and Jihad. So despite having no proof of any intent to act on her feelings and thoughts the UK has found her guilty of having those feelings and thoughts.

Let’s focus for a second on the crime she was found guilty of; having articles “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. Keep in mind she was found innocent of “possessing an article for terrorist use”, so her crime lacked any intent and was based solely on possession of these books and poems. I can think of hardly any crime that has greater impact on civil rights and freedoms as criminalizing the possession of a book. Through history the worst tyrannies always started by censoring the people and restricting their freedoms of expression.

When books are challenged, restricted, removed, or banned, an atmosphere of suppression exists…. The fear of the consequences of censorship is as damaging as, or perhaps more damaging than, the actual censorship attempt. After all, when a published work is banned, it can usually be found elsewhere. Unexpressed ideas, unpublished works, unpurchased books are lost forever. ~ Robert P. Doyle

For us here in America the threat is even greater. Unlike the UK where Samina Malik faces jail for owning books and writing poetry we live under threat of imprisonment without even those weak charges. At the word of our government any of us could be denounced as an enemy combatant and imprisoned or tortured, without any legal recourse. So I guess the bright side of this story is that Samina Malik lives in the UK and not America. There she gets a public trial where the world can hear her story. Had Samina the misfortune of living in America she would have disappeared into Guantanamo or been flown to Egypt or Syria for torture.

This brings us to the important question, what’s on your bookshelf? If the thought police bust down your door, or check your phone records, or snoop through your computer files and internet history, what can they find? Could they paint you as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer? You see, it doesn’t matter what the answer is, the fact that you had to spend even half of a second thinking about the answer is proof that our freedoms are far from secure. If we don’t start taking a stand and fighting for our rights as people this country will fall quietly to fascism, with the whole world ready to peacefully follow under the false pretense of safety and security.

So please hurry up and cast your votes.  We will be extending the deadline until 8am Monday morning to give more people the chance to vote.  As before if you wish to suggest a charity not listed on the poll just place a comment on this story or the prior story and it will be added.

Please help us support those who have lost everything to this terrible disaster.

~ William ~

P.S. Thanks to those of you who have already voted.

Across the country today women are wearing red to speak out against violence towards women of color. This is a problem in our country and across the world that needs serious attention. Click here or on the image to learn more about what you can do to help.

Here is what one woman, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, is saying about why she has chosen to wear red today..

I am wearing red because I am a survivor of incest and rape.
I am wearing red because I live in a City (Philadelphia) where a White Woman Judge Terri Carr Deni dropped all rape and assault charges in the case of a woman gang-raped at gunpoint. Because the woman was working as a prostitute, Judge Deni decided that she could not have been raped and changed the charge to “theft of services.” Deni later said that this case “minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.”
On Thursday, November 1, 2007, in Philadelphia, there will be a Press Conference at 1pm Outside Municipal Court (Criminal Justice Center)1301 Filbert St. On November 6, 2007, I will voice my opinion to Judge Deni by voting “NO!” on her retention as Judge in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia.

I am wearing red because I am very clear that it doesn’t matter if you’re a stripper, a prostitute, a lesbian, a bisexual woman, a heterosexual woman, a single mother (especially with several children from different fathers), on welfare, a high school drop out, college educated, working in corporate America, working at a minimum wage job with no health insurance, or working in the film/music/television entertainment industry. Yes, I placed what some people would view as very different/distinct categories of women of Color in the same category because history has consistently shown me and all of us that if any of the aforementioned Black women are at the wrong place at the wrong time (which could be at any time), we, women of Color, will be left to heal our very public wounds alone.

http://www.notherapedocumentary.org/

Your Part:
We are calling on all our readers to donate or volunteer for the charity of your choice to help out the relief efforts in California. There is a list below with several great organizations that have already done so much. Even a small donation will help out. If you know of any we missed please put them in a comment and we will add them.

Our Part:
As our way of putting our money where our mouth is we will donate all profits from all of October to the Charity of Your Choice. Any charity that is working to help in California is eligible so write in your vote in the comments below. Every penny earned over expenses by this website for October will be donated so make sure you get your vote in by 5:00 on Friday November 2nd as we will be making the donation sometime Friday night.

Charities & Volunteer Opportunities:

Important notice: In the wake of any natural disaster there are those who would take advantage of the natural outpouring of support. Sadly this time is no different, so please wherever you decide to lend your support be careful of fraudulent charities.

1. Habitat for Humanity: – A great group that works to eliminate homelessness and their services are likely to be very valuable as thousands of low income families have lost their homes.
2. Second Harvest: – Extraordinary group that works year round to help more than 25 million low income Americans get the food they need. Find out how to help here.
3. The Salvation Army: – There are many ways to donate to the Salvation Army and right now there will be shortages of everything.
4. California Volunteers: – If you live in the area and are looking for ways to volunteer there is no shortage of need. This group is a great start to get you hooked up with the people who can use your help. You can also make a donation by calling 1-800-750-2858.
5. Tzu Chi Foundation: – A Buddhist group which was founded by Dharma Master Cheng Yen in 1966 because she felt that “lack of love for others” has been the root of many problems in this world. “To save the world, we must begin by transforming human hearts.”
6. San Diego Humane Society and SPCA: – And lastly lets not forget about the animals who need our help as well. The San Diego Humane Society can really use all the help they can get right now. Keep an eye on this page for updates on everything they are doing to help animals affected by the fires.
7. The American Red Cross: – Using the online donation form you can choose the California Wildfires or any other area for your donation. I understand that many have problems with their operations but they are one of the big guys so they needed including. I would highly suggest that you earmark the donation to the California Wildfires if you are concerned with that money being used to support local churches.

There are of course hundreds and hundreds more but we wanted to cover some of the biggest as well as a couple of our favorites. There is a much longer list here, as well as more detailed commentary on the groups policies and practices. If you see any there you feel deserve mention here please list them in the comments.

~ William ~

P.S. Remember we are pledging all profits from October through this Friday to the charity of your choice so don’t forget to vote in the comments section below.