Anne Branigin at The Root writes—Ayanna Pressley Introduces Sweeping Anti-Harassment Legislation:
Joined by workers, survivors, and advocates from across the country, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and other congressional Democrats have introduced new, comprehensive legislation that tackles harassment in the workplace. The multifaceted “Be HEARD Act” is aimed at bolstering protections for workers, particularly those in lower wage and entry-level jobs where employees tend to be most vulnerable.
The bill was authored by Rep. Pressley and four other Democrats, all women: Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-MA), Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL).
Introducing the bill on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, Pressley recalled the people who inspired her to help draft the legislation.
“I am thinking of the brave women of the Boston Fire Department who day in and day out risk their lives for the safety of our community and face harassment from male colleagues in their fire houses,” Pressley said in prepared remarks. “I am thinking about the hotel workers I worked alongside when I was scraping money together to help my family. I am thinking about the transgender men and women who face discrimination for living their truth. I am thinking of my mother Sandy and my daughter Cora—my past and this country’s future.”
The Be HEARD in the Workplace Act stands for “Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination,” and includes a sweeping array of proposals. This includes provisions that workplaces adapt formal strategies to prevent harassment (including nondiscrimination policies and trainings). The bill also clarifies protections for LGBTQ workers, eliminates the tipped minimum wage, and strikes the caps on compensatory and punitive damages workers win when they file harassment suits against their employers.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and "whites only" signs. These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, goodhearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners—and wished them well--nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation... Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.”
~~Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2012
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—Joe Wilson Responds to Washington Post Editorial:
The world awakened this morning to a puzzle of ridiculousness: a Washington Post op/ed that can only be described as a hit piece on Joseph Wilson's "absurdly over-examined visit" (the editorial's words, certainly not mine) to Niger, in which the editorial staff claims there was no effort at the White House to discredit Mr. Wilson ... while its news pages headlined an investigative piece on the front page entitled "A `Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic."
The ironic juxtaposition of the two articles was not lost on Mr. Wilson, who in a private communication to me this morning (sorry, no link) made the following statement:
Sunday's Washington Post lead editorial once again misrepresents the facts as the paper's own reporting in the Barton/Linzer article in the same edition makes clear. While I respect the separation of news and editorial function it might be helpful to the Post's readers if the editorial board would at least read the news before offering its judgments. One of the reasons my trip to Niger has been overanalyzed, as the Post editorial says, is because people like those who wrote the editorial continue to misconstrue the facts and the conclusions.