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Support Walmart Workers

Nation Action on December 13, 2012 - 6:47 PM ET

As The Nation’s new labor blogger Josh Eidelson details, the campaign confronting Walmart in the United States is planning an international escalation for Friday, December 14. In partnership with the global union federation UNI, the union-affiliated group Making Change at Walmart is supporting a “Global Day of Solidarity” with participation expected from Walmart workers in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, Nicaragua, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Zambia.

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Right-to-Work Is Wrong for Michigan

Nation Action on December 11, 2012 - 4:27 PM ET

Legislation limiting the power of unions is headed to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s desk, where the Republican is expected to sign the so-called “right to work” bill into law after it was approved by a vote of 58-52 in the Michigan House. But union organizers say they can still undo the contentious legislation, which bars the mandatory collection of labor dues. The idea, according to the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, is that opponents of the law could file petitions with signatures of registered voters equal to 8 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. The legislature would then either enact or reject the petition — presumably the latter. After that, it would go on the ballot for the next general election in 2014.

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Feed the Hungry—Pass a Just Farm Bill

Nation Action on November 30, 2012 - 3:22 PM ET

Who is the real beneficiary of US food aid—those suffering from chronic hunger worldwide, or American agricultural corporations? For too long, the US has been buying millions of tons of grain from US-based agribusinesses and dumping it overseas. The US needs to help countries move toward true food security, by passing a reformed Farm Bill that will put funding where it is most needed—in the hands of the vulnerable, and away from US agricorps.

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Ad Policy

Say No to Fracking

Nation Action on November 29, 2012 - 3:28 PM ET

Elizabeth Royte’s major new investigative report in The Nation gives voice to the urgent cries of farmers and ranchers raising alarms about the risks of fracking to human health. As her reporting makes clear, the early evidence from heavily fracked regions suggests that drilling and fracking operations represent a serious threat to the nation’s food security.

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President Obama: We Had Your Back. Do You Have Ours?

Nation Action on November 26, 2012 - 4:08 PM ET

Election Day was a rousing victory for progressive and middle-class populism. In the face of this mandate, the “grand bargain” would lower top rates on the wealthy and corporations, target Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for cuts and inflict job-killing austerity.

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End the War on Drugs

Nation Action on November 16, 2012 - 4:56 PM ET

As filmaker Eugene Jarecki notes in The Nation, over forty years of prosecuting the “war on drugs” has cost a trillion dollars and accounted for 45 million drug arrests. Yet, for all that, America has nothing to show but a legacy of failure and increased addiction. The answer? End the war on drugs.

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Overturn Citizens United

Nation Action on November 16, 2012 - 3:38 PM ET

John Nichols argued this week in The Nation that one thing the recent elections showed was that voters do not want corporate money to dominate our politics any more than they want corporations to dominate our lives. As Nichols pointed out, this was especially evident in Senate elections, where some of the biggest winners were outspoken backers of a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited and anonymous campaign contributions in US elections.

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No Grand Bargain

Nation Action on November 14, 2012 - 7:37 PM ET

As Katrina vanden Heuvel writes this week at washingtonpost.com, at a time when the country desperately needs Congress to have the courage to take on the powerful entrenched interests that now threaten our future—big oil, King Coal, Big Pharma, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the medical complex—politicians are strutting about their courage in cutting programs for the elderly, the disabled, the ill and the vulnerable.

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Do the Math: Help Halt Climate Change

Nation Action on November 5, 2012 - 5:29 PM ET

As Naomi Klein writes at thenation.com, the reconstruction from Hurricane Sandy is a great time to start recognizing “the limits of political pressure and going after the fossil fuel companies directly, as we are doing at 350.org with our “Do The Math” tour.”

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Help the Victims of Sandy in Haiti

Nation Action on November 2, 2012 - 5:03 PM ET

Haiti is still suffering dearly from the 2010 catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and gave rise to what Kathie Klarreich and Linda Polman writing in The Nation call the “NGO Republic of Haiti,” in which the Haitian people are trapped in a recovery effort that has all too often failed to meet their needs. Hurricane Sandy has made things even worse. Three days of fierce rain and wind flooded about 100 camps where some 325,000 people, still homeless from the 2010 earthquake, continue to live.

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