Climate change grant programs can provide multiple benefits, including improved air quality, lower electricity costs, improved health outcomes, and green job opportunities. However, these benefits often fail to reach low-income communities of color—even though these communities tend to live in the most polluted neighborhoods and stand to greatly benefit from the improved environmental and economic conditions that clean energy resources can provide. Climate change grant programs represent one way to level the playing field and make clean energy benefits reach all communities, but they must be designed intentionally with equity. Grant programs must clearly define their social equity goals and develop evaluation criteria to track success. The analysis should indicate the strengths and areas for improvement in meeting equity goals and should be used to inform the direction of the program moving forward. Programs must plan proactively to collect the data needed to evaluate their success or shortcomings in meeting social equity goals.

The State funding in the Ohio Civil Rights Commission's budget fell by a great amount. Such budget cuts make employee numbers fall, foring the agency to introduce low efficient online reporting systme. The agency is getting more efficient year by year but fewer staff may prolong the average time resolve probelms.

This fact sheet describes the functions and use of pretrial assessment tools and makes recommendations for their use in the courtroom.

In addition to disenfranchising people through law and policy, felony disenfranchisement laws create additional barriers to voting. The complexity of these laws and a lack of awareness about them have caused confusion and misinformation among formerly incarcerated communities as well as probation officers and the general public. Many who are actually eligible to vote do not know they are eligible and therefore refrain from voting. This report unpacks the issue of felony disenfranchisement in California by studying the issue from the community’s perspective, asking questions about the importance of voting among the formerly incarcerated, their current knowledge and awareness of who can vote, what their primary barriers are to voting and what suggestions they have for how to improve both access to voting and access to information about who can vote.

This issue brief analyzes the inclusion of people of color in the workforce, contracting networks, and supply chains from 2014-2016 of eight federal government offices: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Housing Finance Agency, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the US Department of the Treasury Departmental Offices.

This publication explains the critical role of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the fight for racial justice. It forms the foundation for our forthcoming toolkit, which will provide resources to companies, advocates and others seeking to utilize DEI in advocacy to create jobs for communities of color. Buzzwords like “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion” receive more attention than ever. From Oscar nominations to the president’s cabinet, major new headlines and social media hashtags make one thing clear: Their absence is bad, and people care. What remains uncertain, however, is 1) these values’ relevance to larger social movements and 2) how to go beyond “moving the needle” to make significant gains.

This article outlines a piece of model legislation, known as the Public Participation Act that would afford citizens and group a uniform standard of protection against SLAPPs enacted at the federal level. SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) are meritless lawsuits used by opponents of citizens and groups who speak out on issues as a means to stifle that party's ability to speak publicly. This model bill extends a federal right to absolute immunity for those who petition the government against any civil claim. It also provides uniform procedural protections against SLAPPs including the ability of the defendant: to remove the case to Federal court, to move for early dismissal of a frivolous suit of a protected activity, and if dismissed, to recover the fees, costs, and damages incurred in defending against the SLAPP. For the plaintiff, these costs would be non-tax-deductible and non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. In addition, this article provides some context for the emerging, speech-stifling SLAPP lawsuit phenomenon.

This report presents data on the discrimination that transgender individuals face in education, employment, housing, public accommodations, health care, public safety, ID documents, and in the family. The report presents data from a survey of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming study participants.

This ordinance requires all employers in the City of Chicago to offer employees the opportunity to earn and accumulate sick time. The ordinance requires employers to provide one hour of sick time for each 30 hours worked, with a cap of 40 accumulated hours for small employers and a cap of 72 hours for all other employers. The ordinance prohibits employers from requiring employees to find a replacement for themselves as a stipulation for using sick time. Employers are also prohibited from retaliating against employees for valid sick time usage. Employers are exempt from this requirement if there is a valid collective bargaining agreement in place or if they offer paid leave that can serve the same purpose as sick days. Employees may receive no reimbursement for sick days upon termination and must provide advanced notice of plans to use sick days to the employer when possible. The ordinance lists several civil penalties for violations of this ordinance.

This toolkit is designed to help strengthen the sanctuary and refugee rights movements by providing a platform to look at and strengthen sanctuary campaigns and policies through an anti-war lens. The goal is to highlight the role of the U.S.’ actions in producing migration; the multiple systems of oppression, both in home countries and in the United States that impact refugees and immigrants; and the challenge of working to support refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in the context of on-going parallel threats to the safety and security of other vulnerable people, particularly in Indigenous and Black American communities. This toolkit includes several resources, including articles and discussion questions on migration, articles on U.S. militarism domestically and abroad, film suggestions related to refugees and immigrants, a guide to getting a sanctuary resolution passed in your city, outreach language including sample op-eds and press releases, and lastly, a list of relevant immigration/refugee/anti-war organizations.