Category: Essays

Essay: What if you had to live on $7.25 an hour?

Essay: What if you had to live on $7.25 an hour?

Originally published by Firebrand Progressives   An average screen-printed T-shirt costs around $15. Someone earning the current federal minimum wage would have to work more than two hours to buy one. And while prices for nearly everything consumers purchase continue to go up, minimum wage rarely increases. From September 1997 to July 2007, the federal…

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Essay: Nine Years Later

Essay: Nine Years Later

A lot happens in nine years. For instance, nine years ago, I was a youthful 27. I was living in Colorado, wasn’t married, and probably thought I never would be. We were deep into a brutish second term of George W. Bush. “Twerking,” as far as I know, wasn’t a word. YouTube had just launched.…

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The Triangle Factory Fire and Labor’s Legacy

The Triangle Factory Fire and Labor’s Legacy

Originally published by Firebrand Progressives   It was quitting time when someone noticed the fire in a scrap bin on Saturday, March 25, 1911. Inside the Triangle Waist Company factory, eight stories above New York’s Greenwich Village, hundreds were preparing to leave work for the day, but unbeknownst to most people in the factory, the…

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