(Photo by Art Cummings/Flickr)

Everyone likes a good deal.

And for that reason, most of us have flocked to clothing stores like H&M and Old Navy for the unbelievably cheap and expansive selection they offer.

T-shirts for five bucks; jeans and dresses for under $20. It’s almost like you can’t afford to not buy it.

Clothing is cheaper now than it’s ever been: today average Americans spend less than four percent of their total income on their wardrobes, about half what was spent 50 years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s almost cheaper today to buy a whole new wardrobe than to pay to wash your old one (a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but really not all that far off).

But you know the saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Same thing goes with your $5 t-shirt – it comes with some steep hidden costs. There’s no possible way retailers like H&M could be making billions in profits selling clothing at such low prices without there being some catch.

So what are we, the consumers, not seeing?

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The answer became painfully clear last month when an eight-story factory building in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1,100 garment workers who were manufacturing clothing for American and European retailers.

Bangladeshi garment workers, the majority of whom are women, receive among the world’s lowest wages – as little as $37 a month. They often work 15-hour shifts in unsafe, sweatshop conditions. Workers rights are few, and labor activism is commonly – and sometimes violently  - squashed. More than a few major factory owners are either government officials or have close political ties, allowing the industry to commonly ignore safety and labor standards.

The collapsed Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, which killed more than 1,100 garment workers last month. (Wikimedia Commons)

Rana Plaza, the building outside of the capital Dhaka that collapsed on April 24, was owned by a local politician who illegally built three additional floors onto the structure and installed heavy textile machinery (he’s currently being detained).  The building housed five different garment factories and more than 3,500 workers. Even after large cracks were found in the walls the day before the disaster, factory supervisors – under pressure to fill orders – ignored warnings to vacate the building, and ordered workers to continue production.

This was the deadliest industrial disaster in Bangladesh’s history, but certainly not the only one in recent memory. Just last November, 112 garment workers were killed in a factory fire near Dhaka, when supervisors ignored fire alarms and prevented workers from leaving their sewing machines. Roughly 500 Bangladeshis have died in similar disasters over the past decade. And even since the Rana Plaza collapse, a factory fire on May 8 killed at least eight more workers.

Why Bangladesh?

Simple: labor and production costs are dirt cheap. Making clothes in Bangladesh costs less than just about anywhere else in the world. Check out the graphic below to see just of just how dramatic the contrast is.

If you take a quick look at the tags on the clothes in your wardrobe, chances are good that at least some of them were made in Bangladesh.  Since the 1990s, Bangladesh’s ready made garment industry has exploded: it now generates close to $20 billion a year in exports.  More than 25% of these garments go to stores in the U.S. and close to 60% are shipped to to Europe, according to a report by the International Labor Right Forum (ILRF) Major retailers that look to Bangladesh for much of their clothing manufacturing include H&M, The Gap, Walmart, Benetton, J.C. Penney and Zara.

Bangladesh’s textile factories have popped up like gangbusters in the last decade. There are now about 5,000 of them, employing nearly four million people, according to the ILRF. It’s become one of the largest clothing exporters in the world. In fact, it’s second only to China, which has actually lost a good deal of textile manufacturing contracts because it’s no longer the cheapest place to do business.

The Dark Side of Fast Fashion

It used to be that most clothing stores had seasonal fashion lines that would remain on the shelves for at least few months. But go into an H&M store today and then go back again a week or two later, and you’ll likely find a completely changed inventory. This is the concept behind fast fashion, pioneered over the last 15 years by European brands like H&M and Zana, and to a lesser extent, The Gap, Benetton, Urban Outfitters and Forever 21. The idea is to capture the latest design trends and whisk them from the catwalk to the store, quickly producing trendy but generally low quality garments in the fastest, most cost-effective manner possible.

This business formula has proven remarkably successful, with many of the big brands posting record profits (the founders of H&M and Zana are both among the richest people on the planet). And they’ve done it by providing a nearly unlimited selection of super cheap, fashionable clothing that consumers reliably devour.

In a recent interview with NPR, Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Fast Fashion, explained that stores like H&M produce hundreds of millions of garments per year. “They put a small markup on the clothes and earn their profit out of selling an ocean of clothing,” she says. H&M has about 2,800 stores in 48 markets and it’s growing fast, especially in China and the United States.

But if these companies are making billions and consumers are getting great deals, the cost has to be absorbed somewhere. And that’s where developing countries like Bangladesh come into the picture. Because there’s no way the fast fashion model could exist without an army of extremely low-paid workers to quickly turn massive orders around.

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Unfortunately, the insatiable demand of the fashion model has also encouraged harsh working conditions: garment workers toil around the clock to quickly meet ever changing orders, while factory owners pay paltry wages and often avoid necessary safety improvements in order to keep production costs low. If conditions were improved and workers paid even a few cents per hour more, production costs would rise, and the retailers would likely look to cheaper suppliers.

See a NY Times slideshow on Bangladeshi factory workers

This, of course, is not unique to the fashion industry. A slew of other Western industries – food included – also rely on global supply chains. One prime example is electronics companies, which depend heavily on cheap production lines in developing countries. The issue came to light last year after worker abuses were reported at a Chinese factory that made products for Apple.

So who’s to blame?

There’s no simple answer. It’s easy to blame the big clothing companies, many of whom reap enormous profits, fully aware of the decrepit conditions where their products are made.  After the huge factory fire last November, a number of major clothing brands and retailers rejected a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh’s garment industry, the Associated Press reported. Instead, companies expanded a patchwork system of private audits and training, which labor groups allege do little and lack any real enforcement mechanism.

The textile factories are almost all locally owned and managed, allowing Western retailers to maintain a distance from them and turn a blind eye to factory floor conditions.   And blame, of course, can also be directed at the factory owners and Bangladeshi government officials who knowingly exploit and endanger the workforce.

In the wake of this recent tragedy, a number of European designers including H&M, Zana and Benetton, signed a new legally binding agreement to pay for major safety improvements. But very few American brands have gotten on board: as of May 17, only two companies – PVH, parent to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger and Abercrombie & Fitch signed.  The Gap, Walmart, Sears and Target are among the major American clothing retailers that have refused to sign despite relying heavily on Bangledeshi suppliers. Some of these companies counter that they have their own safety improvement measures in place, while others, like Disney, have announced that they will leave Bangladesh altogether.

Western companies are often quick to argue that although working conditions in Bangladesh are far from ideal, they’re a whole lot better than they would be if the garment industry wasn’t there at all. Western demand has created jobs and training for millions of people, particularly women, offering a greater degree of independence and economic security. Since the arrival of textile manufacturing in the late 1970s, Bangladesh’s poverty rate has fallen from about 70 percent to less than 40 percent. And even though about half the country still lives on less than a dollar a day, income has risen markedly for large swaths of the population. Health and education have improved incrementally as well.

What role do you play?

And then there’s us – the consumers. Because the reality is that none of this would be happening if the demand wasn’t there to fuel it. Consumers in Western nations now buy more clothes than ever before, according to Cline, particularly cheap clothes that aren’t  made to last.  Factory conditions would likely improve if consumers were to demand it, especially if we were willing to pay more for our clothes and absorb some of the costs .

But doing so is a lot easier said than done. It’s one thing to be horrified by Bangladesh’s recent tragedy and to hope conditions improve. It’s quite another thing, though. to voluntarily pay more for your clothes at the register. With the exception of the worst tragedies that grab our attention, most of the inequities in this system are out of sight, out mind. It’s really easy to just pretend they don’t exist.

Which begs the question: how much more would you be willing to pay to know your clothes were being produced in an ethical manner?

NPR’s Planet Money show is documenting how t-shirts around the world are made.

Resources to further explore this issue

Lesson plan suggestions for using this issue in the classroom

• NY Times Learning Network
• PBS Newshour Extra

International labor rights advocacy groups

• International Labor Rights Fund
• Fair Labor Association
• IndustriAll Global Union
• International Labour Organization (a United Nations organzation)

Sites that help track product origins in the global supply chain

• SourceMap
• ImportGenius 
• Piers

Corporate responsibility statements from some major clothing retailers

• H&M
• Gap
• Walmart
• Target

The Haymarket affair, as depicted in a Harper’s Magazine engraving (Wikimedia Commons)

For some, May Day means prancing awkwardly around a feather-wreathed pole.

But that ancient Druid rite of Spring is likely not what today’s immigrant rights protestors have in mind.

In about 80 countries throughout the world, May Day is actually an official labor holiday, often commemorated with large strikes, rallies, and demonstrations in support of workers rights. The day’s roots date back to a heated struggle for something that most of us now take for granted: the eight-hour work day.

Also known as International Workers Day, May Day has become largely overlooked in the U.S.; we celebrate our own federal labor holiday four months later, which is pretty ironic, considering that it commemorates an event that happened on American streets.

A long tradition of income inequality and labor struggle

Income inequality in America (and most other places in the world, for that matter) is certainly nothing new. Dating back to colonial times, there has consistently been a fairly large chasm separating society’s small number of rich and powerful – those who control the means of production (who Karl Marx famously referred to as “capitalists”) – and the laboring masses who keep the machines humming (Marx called them the “proletariat”).

The actual size of the gulf between the two groups, however, has vacillated significantly over the course of America’s history. Today, that gap is pretty huge, a disparity that spurred the Occupy Movement protests two years ago, and heightened public demand for a more level playing field.

In the late 19^th Century, the income divide was similar in scope to what it is now, and the effort to mobilize working classes often resulted in explosive clashes with authorities, many of which  make most of today’s protests look more like, well, dances around the may pole.

A 1911 Industrial Worker publication illustraiton critiquing the capitalist system. (Wikimedia Commons)

In the period known as The Gilded Age, which stretched from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, America went through a period of dramatic economic growth and industrialization. This resulted in huge concentrations of wealth. The growth also demanded a larger workforce, which in turn fueled a sudden population boom in cities around the country, where millions of poor European immigrants  flocked in search of opportunity.

Chicago: A hub of industry and worker discontent

Chicago’s population, in particular, grew exponentially: in 1870, a mere 300,000 people lived in the city, but by 1900, it was home to roughly 1.7 million. German immigrants composed the largest ethnic group. The city became a major industrial hub and focus of labor organizing efforts. In the near complete absence of binding labor laws, newly arrived workers often toiled in wretched and dangerous conditions, working long hours for paupers wages. The eight-hour work day was still a distant goal, and challenges to the existing order were often met with repressive and violent retaliation from employers and authorities.

A brief period of economic slowdown in the early 1880s gave rise to successful organizing campaigns by militant socialist and anarchist labor leaders, who picked May 1, 1886 as the target date by which the eight-hour day would be established.

The convention resolved that:

“Eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labour organizations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.”

Labor unions in cities across the country prepared for a general strike in support of the demand, and on May 1, large rallies were held throughout the nation.

A flier promoting the the Chicago labor rally (Wikimedia Commons)

Two days later, strikers gathered outside Chicago’s McCormick Harvesting Machine Company Plant (known as “The Reaper Works”), which for months had locked out workers. A clash erupted between police and protesters, and two workers were killed.

The Haymarket Affair

In response, anarchist labor leaders quickly organized another rally the following evening in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. That night, a large crowd amassed to hear speeches from several prominent labor leaders. The event proceeded peacefully until large numbers of police arrived and ordered the remaining workers to disburse. As the police advanced on the crowd, a homemade bomb was thrown. In the melee that ensued, seven policeman were killed, mostly by friendly fire. Police then proceeded to fire on the crowd, killing at least four demonstrators and injuring scores of others.

The seven anarchists initially sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer during the Haymarket incident (Wikimedia Commons)

In the event’s aftermath, labor activists, particularly anarchist agitators, were viewed by authorities with heightened suspicion, as were many immigrant workers, and a number of subsequent organizing efforts were violently suppressed by police. In a desperate effort to identify the perpetrators of the Haymarket incident, Chicago authorities captured and convicted eight local labor leaders, despite any concrete evidence of their involvement in the incidents. Four were hanged, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned six years later by the governor of Illinois. The bomber was never found.

The Haymarket Affair, as the incident became known, spurred a fresh wave of labor activism around the world, particularly among younger generations of workers. Membership in labor organizations spiked.

The first May Day

Responding to ongoing pressure for an eight-hour day, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) resumed the fight and set May 1, 1890 as the date for a general strike. AFL president Samuel Gompers enlisted the support of European socialist labor leaders, proposing an international day of action to demand a universal eight-hour day.

Workers in countries throughout Europe and America rallied in the streets. The following day, the New York World’s front page was devoted entirely to the event, according to Philip Sheldon Foner, author of May Day: A Short History of the International Workers’ Holiday.

The headlines proclaimed:

“Parade of Jubilant Workingmen in All the Trade Centers of the Civilized World”

and

“Everywhere the Workmen Join in Demands for a Normal Day”

The Times of London listed 24 European cities where demonstrations had occurred. It also noted events in Cuba, Peru and Chile.

Commemoration of May Day became an annual event, as workers in a growing number of nations each year participated. Today it still retains strong international political significance in a number of countries throughout the world – especially those with socialist or former-socialist governments.

Interestingly, though, America’s observance of May Day became increasingly obsolete in the 20th Century.  In 1894, riots erupted during the longstanding Pullman Strike near Chicago. The incident, in which several workers were killed by federal authorities, drew national attention. Under pressure to appease labor, Congress unanimously voted to approve rush legislation to make Labor Day a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law six days after the end of the strike. Eager to distinguish Labor Day from the more radical activities associated with May Day, Cleveland agreed on a September date for the holiday — one that  trade unions had identified a decade earlier as a worker celebration day (separate from May Day).

So what ever became of the eight-hour day?

The American labor effort for the eight-hour day persisted through the turn of the century, with ongoing, and sometimes violent, strikes and demonstrations. Incrementally, though, a number of key industries agreed to adhere to shortened. And in 1916, Congress enacted the Adamson Act, officially establishing the eight-hour work day — the first federal law to regulate the hours of workers in private companies.

Two decades labor, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the maximum workweek at 40 hours for a wide range of industries, it also required employers to pay overtime bonuses.

Check out the following PBS video (in three parts) on the history of the incidents that you can partially thank for your 9 to 5 work schedule:

Haymarket Martyrs–Origin of International Workers Day

A gas-mask wearing demonstrator during the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. (Associated Press)

 

Happy Earth Day!
To start, a quick quiz:

1. Who said the following quote:

“Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they, more than we, will wreak the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.”

2. Which organization contributed the most money and support to the first Earth Day?

(Yup, you guessed it: you gotta read the post to find the answers.)

A planetary shout-out

From its scrappy beginnings 43 years ago as an effort to teach the public about America’s environmental crisis, Earth Day has evolved into a major international event. It’s now the largest secular celebration in the world, with millions of activists simultaneously participating in countries around the globe.

Right now the earth needs all the love it can get. But even in the face of today’s catastrophic environmental crises, like climate change and the vast destruction of natural habitats, environmentalism has become a staunchly partisan issue in Washington, where lawmakers repeatedly shy away from legislative action to address very urgent problems. This is evident not only in Congress’ failure to enact any comprehensive legislation on climate change, but also in the alarming number of elected officials who consider the mere suggestion of stricter environmental regulation anathema, a plot to kill jobs and weaken our economy. In fact, many lawmakers now consider the Environmental Protection Agency among the most reviled and distrusted agencies in the federal government. This was evident last year, when several Republican presidential candidates repeatedly called for the agency’s termination.

Have Americans always been so apprehensive about environmental laws and regulations? And has it always been so controversial and partisan?

The first Earth Day

Back in 1970, the environmental outlook was not so shiny either.
After decades of unfettered industrial and economic growth in the absence of strong federal environmental laws, America had managed to majorly muck up its air and water resources. Toxic effluent from factories spilling into streams and rivers was not an uncommon site in industrial areas. Countless open spaces and waterways throughout the country had become dumping grounds, and air pollution was so bad, it frequently left urban areas shrouded in thick blankets of smog.

Consider this timeline of events:

• November 1966: In New York City, 168 people die of respiratory-related illnesses over a 3-day period due largely to horrendous air quality.

• March 1967: Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, announces the first official list of endangered wildlife species in the U.S. 78 animals are named, including the symbol of American itself: the Bald Eagle.

• January 1969: A blowout at an offshore oil rig near Santa Barbara spills upwards of 10,000 gallons of crude oil for 10 days into the Santa Barbara Channel and onto nearby beaches. At the time, it’s considered largest oil spill in American history (sadly, it now ranks third, overtaken by the 1989 Exxon Valdez and 2010 Deepwater Horizon).

• June 1969: A particularly fetid industrial stretch of the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland bursts into flames (seriously) when oil-soaked debris in the water is ignited by sparks from a passing train.

“If the people really understood that in the lifetime of their children, they’re going to have destroyed the quality of the air and the water all over the world and perhaps made the globe unlivable in a half century, they’d do something about it. But this is not well understood.”

That’s a quote from Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, who spearheaded the first Earth Day organizing effort.

Nelson formed a congressional steering committee, invited California Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair it and hired 25-year-old Harvard Law School dropout Denis Hayes to direct the undertaking. Borrowing from the Vietnam War protest model, the mission was to organize environmental teach-ins throughout the nation, all during the course of a single day.

With a very limited budget and no email or internet access (didn’t exist yet), Hayes and his small group of young organizers mailed out thousands of letters to high school and college student body presidents across the nation requesting their participation. The group successfully brought together volunteers in dozens of cities and college campuses to organize local events.

Denis Hayes in the Earth Day campaign office (Associated Press)

The Earth Day organizing effort caught on like “gangbusters,” said Nelson.
On November 30, 1969, the New York Times reported: “Rising concern about the ‘environmental crisis’ is sweeping the nations campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam.”

Hayes, who was interviewed in the recent PBS documentary Earth Days, recalls the sentiment:

“Lord knows what we thought we were doing. It was wild and exciting and out of control and the sort of thing that lets you know you’ve really got something big happening … What we were trying to do was create a brand new public consciousness that would cause the rules of the game to change.”

 

In all, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, marking the single largest demonstration in U.S. history.

Recalls Hayes: “It was a huge high adrenaline effort that in the end genuinely changed things. Before (that), there were people that opposed freeways, people that opposed clear-cutting, or people worried about pesticides, (but) they didn’t think of themselves as having anything in common. After Earth Day they were all part of an environmental movement.”

A rally in Philadelphia as part of the first Earth Day celebration (AP)

And that brings us to the second question of the quiz: The group that was most supportive – financially and otherwise – of the first Earth Day organizing effort was the United Auto Workers.

An organization not generally known for championing environmental causes, the UAW donated money, provided volunteers across the country, and paid the printing costs of promotional materials.

UAW President Walter Reuther pledged his organization’s full support for Earth Day and for subsequent environmental legislation.

In one speech, he said:

“The labor movement is about that problem we face tomorrow morning. Damn right! But to make that the sole purpose of the labor movement is to miss the main target. I mean, what good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down? What good is another week’s vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can’t swim in it and the kids can’t play in it? What good is another $100 in pension if the world goes up in atomic smoke?”

UAW-sponsored flier

Soon thereafter, General Motors’ president Edward Cole promised “pollution free” cars by 1980 (that didn’t quite pan out).

The era of environmental regulation

Before we get to that, here’s the answer to the first question of our little quiz. The quote was by none other than (drum roll, please):
President Richard Nixon … during his State of the Union address in 1970.

Yes, that Nixon, best remembered as the conservative Republican who appealed to the “silent majority,” prolonged America’s involvement in Vietnam, and resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal.

Nixon, however, also oversaw and approved the most sweeping environmental regulations in the history of our nation – the very ones responsible, in part, for the fresh air and clean water we enjoy today.

Even before the first Earth Day, Congress and the president began taking action. On January 1, 1970, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which among other things, required environmental impact statements for major new projects and developments.

Environmentalism had never been one of Nixon’s big political priorities, but his administration recognized the growing media attention and public pressure around the issue. In other words, he realized that pushing forward strong environmental regulation was, at that point, a prudent political move.

Three months later, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

By the end of 1970, he had signed an extension of the Clean Air Act. Now considered the single most important piece of air pollution legislation in American history, it required the newly formed EPA to create and enforce regulations on airborne pollution known to be hazardous to human health, and, among other things, led to the universal installation of catalytic converters in cars.

By the end of 1972, the Clean Water Act, the Pesticide Control Act (which banned DDT), and the Marine Mammal Protection Act had all been signed into law by Nixon. A year later, he signed the Endangered Species Act and soon thereafter the Safe Water Drinking Act.

Most of these bills were approved with bipartisan support in Congress, some almost unanimously.

In a televised speech in 1972 Nixon said:

“I have sent to Congress today a sweeping set of proposals to clean up our nation’s air and water. This is the most far reaching and comprehensive message on conservation and restoration of our natural resources ever submitted to the Congress by the President of the United States. We are taking these actions not in some distant future, but now, because we know that it is now or never.”

By and large, the regulations worked. Environmental conditions vastly improved. America had been on the brink of ecological disaster, and we did something about it while we still had the chance.

The next decade — through the presidencies of Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter — was somewhat of a heyday for environmentalism in America. Which is not to say that there weren’t strong voices of opposition and major lingering environmental problems. Nonetheless, during this era legislators on both sides of the aisle agreed that protecting the environment simply made the most sense.

In 1979, just before the price of a barrel of oil hit $30, President Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof in support of his Federal Solar Research Institute. He said: “We must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources.”

 The end of the green honeymoon

And then, with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the environmental honeymoon came to a swift conclusion. By the end of the first year of his presidency, Reagan had issued an executive order giving the Office of Management and Budget (OMB ) the power to regulate environmental proposals before they became public. He also cut the EPA’s budget by almost half. In his second term as president, Reagan even took the symbolic action of dismantling the solar panels on the White House roof.

And since then, a unified political drive to protect the environment has never quite been revived.

The benefit of tangible problems

Organizers of the first Earth Day had a key advantage: the problems they were trying to tackle were clearly visible and impacted everyday life. Kids couldn’t swim in public lakes and rivers because they were too polluted; parks and open spaces were strewn with trash; people were getting poisoned by pollution in the air. And because of those very tangible problems, there was a clear and urgent connection made between environmental policies and quality of life.

Today, many of the issues at play are perhaps even more threatening – on a global scale – but also more abstract. The idea, for instance, that human action can be the cause of a couple of degrees increase in the global temperature, and that in turn can cause massive disasters is a much harder idea to convey to people who haven’t yet felt the impact.

Interestingly, though, in the wake of the many natural disasters that swept through the U.S. in 2012, the percentage of Americans who said they believed in the concept of climate change has risen slightly. And in his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama broke his long-held silence on the issue and urged Congress to begin to address the problem.

This minor shift in public opinion has clearly not been enough yet to inspire any substantive legislative action in Washington. But it does suggest that when faced with the threat of environmental disaster, Americans grow more willing to accept the idea of regulation. That’s at least, what led to major changes in the 1970s.

What degree of environmental degradation will be powerful enough to inspire real change today?

A mural by Anton Refregier depicting San Francisco’s 1916 bombing and the two men wrongfully accused of the act. The mural is on public display at San Francisco’s Rincon Center.

Although incredibly infrequent, bombings in crowded public places are unfortunately not a new phenomenon in America. This week’s Boston Marathon explosion harkens back to an often forgotten local tragedy nearly 100 years ago, when a bomb tore through downtown San Francisco during a major public event, killing 10 people and leaving scores of others seriously wounded.

The Preparedness Day Bombing, as it became known, was the worst act of terrorism in San Francisco’s history. It occurred just after 2 p.m on July 22, 1916 during a huge San Francisco parade that had been organized to drum up public support for the United States’ imminent entry into World War I. Not long after the 50,000 person march began, a huge blast echoed through the streets, set off by a pipe bomb filled with explosives and steel slugs that was hidden inside a suitcase and placed near the intersection of Steuart and Market streets, a stone’s throw from the Ferry Building.

The following film, produced by the Hearst-Pathe News Service and shown to local audiences shortly after the tragedy, opens with a set of propagandist animation triumphing American prosperity and decrying the lawlessness and chaos that, it suggests, inevitably stem from radicalism. The film goes on to show actual footage of the parade and the chaotic scene in the explosion’s aftermath.

Like the Boston bombing, authorities had few concrete leads. Investigation was initially focused on local extremist political groups, who in the wake of labor unrest and the rise of Bolshevism, had spoken out vociferously against U.S. involvement in the war, and who the city’s conservative business leaders eyed with growing concern.

With scant evidence, police arrested Thomas Mooney and his assistant Warren K. Billings, two well known radical labor leaders who had previously both been been arrested on attempted terrorism and civil disobedience charges (Mooney’s wife was also arrested but later acquitted). The trial was hastily carried out in a lynch-mob atmosphere, in which the suspects were denied counsel. Both men were quickly convicted, with Mooney sentenced to death and Billings to life in prison.

In 1918 a commission reexamining the case, found no clear evidence of Mooney’s involvement in the incident and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. But over the next two decades, overwhelming evidence of perjury and false testimony during the trial prompted California Governor Culbert Olson to issue a pardon to both men.

Although theories among historians abound as to who the actual perpetrators were, the identity of the bomber has never been determined and will likely remain a mystery.

Anton Refregier, a New Deal artist, captured the scene of the bombing and subsequent trial (the composition at top). It’s one of 27 murals depicting landmark events in California’s history that the artist was commissioned to paint on the walls of a downtown San Francisco post office (now the Rincon Center) in the early 1940s. All of the murals remain on public view today. For a detailed audio tour of the works, including historical context, download KQED’s Let’s Get Lost app.

PBS

Remember that “binders full of women” comment made by Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate last October?

That infamous blunder – the subject of countless tweets and memes – was in response to a question about gender wage disparities, an issue that still receives relatively little political attention despite its prevalence.

Although earnings rates have gradually narrowed since the Equal Pay Act was signed into law 50 years ago, the gap is still significant: in 2010, female full-time workers made only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, as calculated by the National Women’s Law Center (which used 2011 U.S. Census American Community Survey data). That year, the median (middle) wage for full-time male workers was $48,202. And for women: $37,118.

The earning gap between men and women is narrowest for younger workers and grows consistently wider for older workers.  

Women make up about half of the U.S. workforce and are the main breadwinners in roughly 4 out of 10 households, according to NWLC. Today women also earn more college and graduate school degrees than men do. Yet, on average, women earn less than men in almost every occupation for which there is sufficient wage data.

Why?

The reasons behind the gap are still hotly contested. Some academic studies argue that the disparity is due mainly to non-discriminatory factors involving a division of labor in the home — including childcare — that often falls more heavily on women. Because of family-related circumstances, women are also more likely than men to have interrupted careers and to work part-time, both of which generally result in lower wages. Additionally, women still tend to be employed in a greater number of “helping” and support professions that are often compensated at lower rates than jobs that are still more typically performed by men.

However, many studies point to evidence that the gender wage gap still persists even after these expected factors like family leave are taken into account, leading to the conclusion that systemic discrimination is still a primary factor in explaining the disparity.

Republicans in Congress recently blocked a House vote on legislation known as the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill, which has been introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) in the last eight consecutive congresses, would expand the Equal Pay Act to close specific loopholes and allow employees to share salary information with their coworkers. It would also require employers to demonstrate that pay disparities between male and female employees are based on job performance, not gender.

Wage Gap by State

Click on each state in the map below to see what a woman makes for every dollar a man makes (the ratio of female and male median earnings for full-time, year-round workers). The “wage gap” is the additional money a woman would have to make for every dollar made by a man in order to have equal annual earnings. The map uses data collected by NWLC. Download the data here.

Leading the pack in 2011 was Washington D.C., where full-time female workers made, on average, 90.4 cents for every dollar that full-time male workers made. In California, which ranked fourth, women made 84.9 cents for every dollar made by men. At the bottom of the list was Wyoming, where women made a mere 66.6 cents for every dollar men made.

How has the wage gap changed over time?

Although the pay gap between men and women remains fairly wide, it has narrowed significantly over the last half century. When the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, the median wage for a woman working full time, year round was about $22,000, as compared to roughly $37,000 for men (or 59 cents for every dollar a man made).  By 1973, women, on average, made only 57 cents to every dollar made by men, a gap of 43 cents, the widest since the Census Bureau began tracking earnings. Since then, the gap has gradually narrowed, although it’s remained fairly stagnant for the past decade.

NWLC also has created charts listing the wider wage gap that exists between African-American and Latino women over time, as compared to white males.

Gender Wage Gap by Race/Ethnic Group

Although the gender wage gap among whites and Asians is greater than among African Americans and Latinos, it should be noted that African-American and Latino men and women both make significantly less overall than their white counterparts. In 2012, Asian women full-time wage and salary workers had higher median weekly earnings than women of all other races/ethnicities, as well as African-American and Latino men.

The current pay gap grows significantly wider when comparing average annual wages made by women of color to those made by white men. For instance,  African-American women working full time, year round were paid only 64 cents, and Hispanic women only 55 cents, for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, according to NWLC.

Mouse over the following chart, produced by Catalyst, to explore the data.

Pay Gap by Profession

Even within the same professions, women today are still paid significantly less, on average, than men. But the pay gap varies dramatically for different jobs. That’s according to an analysis that NPR’s Planet Money did of the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The chart below, by Lam Thuy Vo, shows the jobs where the wage gap is the smallest and the biggest (based on comparisons of full-time workers).

Part of the gap in pay, Vo notes, results from professional decisions some women make voluntarily, even within some individual job categories. She writes: “Among physicians, for example, women are more likely than men to choose lower-paid specialties (though this does not explain all of the pay gap among doctors).”

It’s also interesting to note, writes Vo, that the jobs where the gap is biggest are the one’s that pay more, on average, than the jobs where the gap is lowest.

Percentages are based on the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. Not all jobs have enough workers for BLS to calculate a meaningful ratio.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The last time the Supreme Court took up a case on marriage equality was 46 years ago when about one-third of all states in the country still had laws that banned people of different races from marrying each other. This week all eyes are on the High Court as it prepares to hear oral arguments on two cases related to same-sex marriage. At issue is whether gay marriage bans violate the rights those couples have to equal treatment under the law, as guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The Court’s rulings on both cases – expected by June – will likely be considered landmark decisions, ones that could potentially result in a dramatic widening of marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout the country … or a preservation of the status quo. The issue, though, harkens back to another, often forgotten, landmark civil rights decision from 1967 that similarly addressed marriage equality and the concept of equal protection of the law,  long before the notion of legalized same-sex marriage was considered even a remote possibility. Appropriately titled Loving v. Virginia, the case before the Court concerned the fate of its two plaintiffs: a black woman and a white man who had married each other in Washington D.C., but lived in Virginia, one of almost 20 mostly southern states in the late 1950s that still enforced anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting whites from marrying people of color. (Virginia, it turns out, hasn’t always been for all lovers.) In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that such bans were in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, ending the last piece of explicitly legalized segregation in America.

The plaintiffs

In 1958 Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in Washington D.C. Upon retuning shortly thereafter to Virginia, police raided their home in the middle of the night, arresting the couple on felony charges for breaking the state’s anti-miscegenation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act, which made it a criminal act for any white person to marry any person of color. In January 1959, the two –- a bricklayer and a homemaker — pled guilty in state court. A trial judge sentenced them both to one year in prison, suspending the sentence on condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years. In considering his verdict, the judge wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Lovings moved to Washington D.C., where their union was legally recognized. They had no intention of becoming activists, but longed to return to Virginia. In 1964, as Congress debated passage of the Civil Rights Act, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking if the new law could help them. They were referred to the American Civil Liberties Union, who took up the case, filing suit in federal court against the State of Virginia. Three years later, after several appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court.

Anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Almost every state in the country has had some form of anti-miscegenation law in its history. By the end of World War II, about 40 states still had active anti-miscegenation laws on the books, including California. In 1948, the California Supreme Court ruled In Perez v. Sharp that the state’s anti-miscegenation statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It became the first state since Ohio in 1887 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. Throughout the 1950s, numerous other states followed California’s lead, and by the start of the Loving’s Supreme Court case, the remaining 16 holdouts were almost all in the South.

The Court’s Ruling

The Court unanimously overturned Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, rejecting the state’s defense that the statute applied equally to both blacks and whites. It held that drawing distinctions based on race were generally “odious to a free people,” and should therefore be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court stated, had no legitimate purpose except blatant racial discrimination as “measures designed to maintain white supremacy.” Delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

The decision effectively overturned all state laws that prohibited any kind of interracial marriage. In several states, though, some of the statutes remained on the books, even though they were no longer legally enforceable. Alabama in 2000 was the last state to officially remove an anti-miscegenation provision from its state constitution. The ballot measure passed by a 60 percent margin. But nearly 526,000 people voted to keep the provision in place. In 2007, on the 40^th anniversary of her Supreme Court case, Mildred Loving – who died the following year at age 68 – mentioned same-sex marriage in reference to the ongoing struggle for imarriage equality:

I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry… I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Beneath the presentation is a diagram by the NY Times illustrating the various outcomes of the case.

Note: the presentation is best viewed in full-screen mode; use the arrows to advance and zoom in/out on any text or image

Possible outcomes

Source: New York Times. Click to view original image.

On March 20, 2003 U.S. forces invaded Iraq under the false pretense that its government was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Intended to be a brief mission to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime and find the weapons, the Defense Department estimated the effort would cost about $60 billion.  Today, 10 years later, Iraq is still reeling from a prolonged conflict that, according to a recent study, has cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion (and growing) and brought a death toll of nearly 190,000 civilians, soldiers, journalists and aid workers.

While the U.S. occupation did lead to the overthrow of Hussein and the semblance of a fragile democracy, it also launched the country into a state of civil war, fueled by an ongoing period of political instability and intense sectarian violence. The U.S. occupation officially ended in December of 2011, but today the bloodshed continues on a nearly daily basis as large swaths of Iraq remain mired in conflict.

This collection of visualizations illustrates some of the war’s cold hard facts, the big milestones, and the many layers of miscalculation and deception.

1. By the numbers: charting an expensive, bloody decade

This infographic, produced by The Guardian, details the high rate of fatalities and expenses associated with the Iraq War. Use the tool below to zoom in on details.

2. A chronology of war

Produced by the Council on Foreign Relations this timeline documents the major milestones of the War in Iraq, from the initial invasion on March 20, 2003 to the final exit of U.S. troops on Dec. 18, 2011.

3. Counting the fallen

Total deaths

A recently released report from Brown University’s Costs of War project, estimates that close to 190,000 people have died in Iraq since the war effort began. That includes close to 4,500 U.S. troops and upwards of  134,000 Iraqi civilians (about 70 percent of all deaths).

Source: Costs of War project

Using data from Wikileaks, the Guardian in 2010 created this interactive map detailing every recorded death in Iraq between 2004 and 2009.

U.S. soldiers deaths

This interactive, produced by CNN, shows the nearly 4,500 fatalities of U.S. armed forces in Iraq, with details on each soldier’s hometown and place of death in Iraq.

4. The tab

When the Iraq War began, the Defense Department anticipated that the effort would cost about $60 billion. While the U.S. price tag still remains a matter of speculation, even the most conservative estimates now place it at well over $1 trillion. The recent Brown University study estimates the current tab at around $2 trillion, and predicts it will eventually reach $6 trillion when accounting for residual expenses .

This animation, produced by Good Magazine – which places the current U.S. tab at a figure higher than most other estimates – details the elements that made the war so costly.

5. The spin and its deadly consequences

The U.S. invaded Iraq on the false stipulation that it had weapons of mass destruction. A mix of faulty intelligence and deception from the highest ranks of government resulted in an occupation that lasted longer than World War II. The first visualization below, by the Center for Public Integrity,  highlights the false statements made by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion. The subsequent interactive, produced by the left-leaning Mother Jones Magazine details the many layers of deception that led us into Iraq.

Center for Public Integrity

Photo by: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

In our hyper-connected world, where success is often measured by the number of “followers” and “friends” we have, becoming pope is pretty much the holy grail.

I mean, think about it: you become pope, and just like that, you’ve got 1.2 billion followers. Take that Twitter!

That’s about how many Roman Catholics there are in the world today, according to Vatican figures. That’s more than 1 in 7 people on the planet who subscribe to the belief that the pope is one of the closest mortals to God. And it makes the papacy an incredibly powerful global force.

Among those ranks, a steadily growing majority live in the global south, more than 40 percent of whom hail from Latin America. Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, and three other Latin American countries are in the top 10, according to the the World Christian Database (as reported by the BBC). Roughly three-quarters of Latin America’s entire population — about 483 million — is now Catholic.

Click through the map below – produced by The Globe and Mail, using 2010 data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life – to find the size of each country’s Catholic population as a percentage of its overall population.

So it wasn’t mere coincidence that the College of Cardinals on Wednesday chose Jose Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be the church’s first Latin American leader and its only non-European pope in more than 1,200 years. In electing Pope Francis – as he’s now known – the cardinals made a statement that the future of the Catholic Church is based in the global south.

“As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome,” the newly anointed pope said from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as throngs of ecstatic followers cheered below. “And it seems to me that my brother cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to find one. But here I am.”

Born to Italian immigrant parents and raised in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis – a Jesuit – is not likely to lead the church in any radically different philosophical direction from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The two leaders are both conservative and fairly consistent in their opposition to divisive social issues like birth control and homosexuality.

Nevertheless, Pope Francis’ ascendancy marks a major turning point in the trajectory of the church, an acknowledgement that the demographics of its congregants have changed dramatically over the last century, and even in the past several decades.

In 1910, 65 percent of Catholics were European, 24 percent were from Latin America and the Caribbean, and less than 1 percent were from Africa, according to the Pew Forum. A century later, in 2010, only about 24 percent of Catholics were Europeans, while roughly 40 percent were Latin American. Africa, meanwhile, now has the fastest growing Catholic population in the world – rising from 45 million in 1970 to 176 million in 2012 – with Asia a close second.

The U.S. has entered the dreaded sequester, a very costly consequence of the federal government failing to reach a budget deal by their self-imposed deadline (March 1). This is one for the history books -  the largest, automatic across the board spending cuts in American history.

But if this latest government crisis hasn’t been keeping you up at night, you’re certainly not alone. A recent study found that the vast majority of Americans have paid little to no attention as the sequester drew near; many dismissed it as a poorly made sequel to last year’s more compelling fiscal cliff thriller (along the lines of the The Hangover Part II, if you will).

But despite the lack of popular interest, the sequester is actually a pretty big deal – and real pain will be felt. While it won’t lead to across the board tax hikes – as the fiscal cliff threatened to do – it will result in sweeping cuts to government services that millions of Americans rely on.

In the days leading up to the deadline, Obama referred to the sequester as “a meat cleaver approach” to reducing the deficit, making dire warnings about the damage it would inflict on the economy and individual states.

“Across the board spending cuts mean that hundreds of thousands of Americans won’t get services they rely on from the government,” he said.

So … what is it?

Source: NY Times

Let’s start with the good news:

It’s not a bird flu epidemic.

Now the bad news:

The sequester means more than $85 billion in automatic across the board spending cuts to military and domestic programs over the next seven months ($42.7 billion from each).

This is the first phase of the $1.2 trillion in total cuts set to take place by the end of 2021 (spread over the next nine years), sliced evenly and indiscriminately from a range of mostly discretionary spending programs (programs that Congress renews funding for every year). Defense programs will be cut by about 8 percent and domestic programs by about 5 percent.

In anticipation of the looming cuts, immigration officials have already started releasing detainees from detention centers to reduce costs.

Only a handful of services are exempt from the cuts, including some basic safety net programs like Social Security, retirement programs, veterans’ benefits, Medicaid, and refundable tax credits.

How much is this gonna hurt?

Brace yourself – it might sting pretty bad. That’s according to congressional budget experts and a recent report from the White House, detailing the widespread impact the sequester will have across the country. Of course, there is some dispute over the extent of the damage, and a number of conservative groups – particularly those advocating for smaller government – argue that the consequences have been grossly exaggerated. While seemingly large, they say the cuts are still only a tiny percentage of the federal budget – just over 2 percent.

However, a series of independent analyses have made clear that these cuts will have significant impact throughout the country. Click on the image at right to see an interesting multimedia breakdown produced by the Texas Tribune that shows the extent of various cuts in each state, as well as the impact-per-person.

Generally speaking, the sequester is expected to stunt America’s already sluggish economic recovery by reducing our growth (in terms of GDP) and killing approximately one million jobs over the next two years, according to estimates by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Most immediately, the cuts will impact millions of jobless Americans whose unemployment checks will be reduced by upwards of 10 percent beginning as early as mid-March.

It will also result in widespread service cuts, furloughs, and layoffs across government agencies.

These are some of the key cuts you may notice in the coming months (as reported by the NY Times):

• Air Traffic: To meet the scheduled $600 million cut to its budget, the Federal Aviation Administration will likely furlough about 10 percent of its work force each day, including air traffic controllers. This will result in reduced air traffic throughout the country and increased delays. Travelers have already begun to experience some effects of this.

• Early childhood education: The scheduled $424 million in cuts could mean an estimated 70,000 children losing access to Head Start programs and layoffs of roughly 14,000 teachers and other employees. Parents of about 30,000 low-income children could also lose child-care assistance.
• Health: To meet its scheduled $350 million cut, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will likely perform significantly fewer preventative health screenings and STD tests and significantly decrease the availability of crucial vaccines. Facing a $120 million cut, community health centers will treat roughly 900,000 fewer patients who lack health insurance.
• Food safety: A three-week furlough of all food safety employees could result in a shortage of meat and dairy, and lead to higher food prices and greater public health risks.
• Environment: Several air-monitoring sites will be shut down, as will more than 100 water-quality projects around the country. In addition, roughly $100 million will be cut from the Superfund program that regulates the nation’s worst polluters.
• Recreation: National parks will have shorter hours, staffing reductions, service cuts and a decrease in firefighters and law enforcement.
• Criminal justice: The nearly $1 billion in combined criminal justice cuts will significantly reduce the number of federal prison employees and F.B.I. officials. Additionally, federal prosecutors will likely handle 2,600 fewer cases each year.
• Research: The National Science Foundation will cancel or reduce nearly 1,000 grants for research in things like clean energy, cyber-security, and education.
• Defense: The sequester will likely impose numerous furlough days on civilian employees and force major cuts to the military’s health insurance program. It would also curtail military operations, including an immediate shutdown of four naval air wings and cutbacks to satellite and missile warning systems. Additionally, the Army and Air Force both plan to significantly reduce training, allowing large numbers of units to fall below acceptable levels of combat readiness.

For more on how the sequester’s impact in California:

Why’s all this happening now?

Well, first thing to know is that the whole sequester situation is self-imposed. Yeah, you heard that right – this didn’t have to happen; the government created it all.

The whole thing derives from that perennial debate between Republicans and Democrats over spending and taxation (kind of like those old “Taste great, less filling” commercials, but much less entertaining). Both parties want to reduce America’s huge budget deficit (the big gap between what the government takes in as revenue and what it spends). But Republicans argue that this should be done by dramatically reducing government spending. Democrats, however,  insist on preserving funding for most government services by increasing revenue through moderate tax increases. A middle ground, apparently, is hard to find to find.

Back in 2011, House Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling (the amount that the U.S. is allowed to borrow to meet its spending obligations) without significant reductions to the massive deficit.

A bipartisan committee was tasked with coming up with a plan to reduce the deficit in a way that both parties could stomach.. And to force the process along, negotiators came up with a brilliantly sadistic self-discipline strategy: they created a set of consequences so undesirable it would push them to quickly agree on a reasonable solution.

It’s kind of like pledging to burn your house down unless you get your homework done by a certain deadline. Obviously, you’d figure out a way to get your work done on time and save your home from being reduced to ashes.

Right?

Not so much with the government. For every self-imposed deadline negotiators have run up against since 2011, little has been resolved – they’ve just managed to narrowly avert economic disaster by repeatedly postponing the hard decisions.

In short, the sequester is an outcome that almost no one – Republican or Democrat – is happy about.

But what about that whole fiscal cliff thing – didn’t we already resolve this?

The fiscal cliff would have raised just about everyone’s taxes, and we narrowly averted plunging off it when Congress came up with a last minute deal on New Year’s Eve. But while that compromise prevented big tax increases, it didn’t resolve the looming threat of huge spending cuts – it just kicked the can down the road a few months. And now here we are again.

Put it in perspective: how big is $85 billion?

Over the course of a full year, $85 billion in cuts comes to roughly 5 percent of domestic programs and 8 percent of defense programs. But because it’s hitting in the middle of the fiscal year (ending in September), the cuts will be about double that rate for the next 7 months.

Is there anyway to make this right?

There is, but that would involve the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House finding some budgetary compromise, which they don’t seem inclined to do. Obama wants a 50-50 mix of spending cuts and tax increases to replace the sequester and allow more time for to negotiate a better deal. But most Republicans remain staunchly opposed to the idea of any new tax increases.

The one action that both sides do seem willing to take is a measure to continue government funding through the end of the fiscal year – if they fail to do so by the end of March, the federal government will shut down.

Oy vey!

Alright – I know I’m going a bit overboard with the Daily Show clips, but this train analogy is just too brilliant to ignore.