Blogs

Miami has topped another list in the U.S., this time for having the highest healthcare costs for private insurance. The survey confirms a previous study which reported that healthcare costs for Floridians are too high, whether insured or not. It’s only getting worse too with many employers putting more of the burden on employees to pay for their health care. Due to the rising cost, it’s only a matter of time before all employers end healthcare benefits for workers, thereby increasing the number of uninsured. (more…)

JPMorgan Chase may be facing a criminal probe from the Justice Department, days after they revealed a loss of $2 billion due to risky trading.  An inexcusable move, prompting CEO Jamie Dimon to say the losses were caused by “errors,” “sloppiness” and “bad judgment.”  The last thing the U.S. needs is another banking crisis, and JPMorgan is thanking the taxpayers for the bailout by practicing dangerous behavior despite warnings raised by some former employees. (more…)

As we reflect on Mother’s Day, 1Miami would like to take the time to recognize five historical social justice mothers who continue to inspire us every day. These women championed human rights, stood against social injustice and fought for what they believed in. We’re thankful for these remarkable mothers. (more…)

One in four Floridians postponed getting health care they needed because of  cost, according to a report released Tuesday. It’s a 16% increase from 2000, and it also makes Florida the third-highest state in the nation where medical needs went unmet. It seems rent, bills and groceries will trump medical problems which could unfortunately lead to larger more expensive and possibly life threatening complications. As an advanced nation, no one should ever be putting off a medical issue because of cost, access to affordable health care is a human right that we cannot afford to sacrifice. (more…)

Today community members and community organizations, such as 1Miami, will march with the Mardi Gras 10 and UNITE HERE! to demand that the ten employees who were wrongly terminated be rehired by the casino. The actions by the Mardi Gras Casino are yet another attack on the rights of the 99%. We must fight back against the destruction of the working class, or risk losing even further in these tough economic times. (more…)

Gov. Rick Scott has had a tumultuous first term, what with the “Pink Slip Rick” campaign contending he bought his election and overall doing just a terrible job for the 99%. Now it seems as if the governor is trying to appease everyone but failing to satisfy anyone, especially low-income Floridians. We have two more years of vetoed bills, cuts to budgets and controversial laws before we can say goodbye to Gov. Scott. All we can do now is spread the word that his policies and practices are harmful to the 99%, evident by his actions just this past couple of weeks. (more…)

Originally in Huffington Post

Teaching and artistry run in my blood. My mother was a teacher, and I taught drama to young people for over 20 years in New York. My father, Frank Kleinholz, was a world-renowned artist and guest lecturer at UM. I can tell you that there is nothing like waking up everyday, knowing that you are making a difference. That is why, after working full-time in the public library for seven years while studying part-time for a master’s degree in library sciences, I made the natural leap to getting my teaching credentials in Florida. I was forced to take this leap after budget cuts froze the Librarian Trainee program in the Miami-Dade County Library System.

read more here…

May 1st or May Day is International Workers’ Day and its origins lie in the fight for workers’ rights dating back to the late 1800’s. Due to the economic turmoil that most of the world is facing, May Day has become more than just the fight for workers’ rights but also a day for protest against other modern problems such as austerity measures and the growing income inequality harshly affecting the working class. (more…)

originally in the Huffington Post

Today, thousands of people are crowding around Wells Fargo’s shareholders meeting in San Francisco demanding, among other things, that Wells Fargo start helping out the homeowners it is foreclosing on the same way taxpayers helped Wells Fargo out when they needed help from us.

If you don’t know by now, Wells Fargo got one of the biggest bailouts from taxpayers out of any bank and paid a negative percent in taxes (between 2008-2010). Did I mention that it is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and lender, meaning it is one of the main banks that helps foreclose on American homeowners? In Florida, some of us call Wells Fargo one of “Florida’s foreclosure kings ” because it forecloses on more Florida families than almost any other bank. Just last week, a national organization filed a complaint against Wells Fargo saying that it took better care of foreclosed properties in white neighborhoods than it did in black and Latino neighborhoods.

A lot of this gets to me, because I think that the people who run Wells Fargo just don’t get the struggle that foreclosed families go through. They probably assume that we are lazy or made bad business decisions. Well I know a few things about foreclosure, I am fighting to keep my family home right now. And I’ll tell you one thing, I never got a billion dollar bail-out.

Even though Wells Fargo never owned my home, my story is not much different from the thousands of Miami folks trying to hold on to their homes. I lived in my home for 40 years. My father was a Pentecostal minister in Miami’s Liberty City, and my family never thought of the place we lived as a home, but as a community institution. If you were put out of your home, you knew to come to ours. If you had no food, you were welcome to our kitchen. If you were having problems at home, you could always talk them over in our living room.

After my parents died and the housing market crashed, my family has been fighting to preserve my home and the community’s institution. First, we were the victim of mortgage fraud. Then, my house was put on the auction block and sold to Joseph Dahan, a director of Greatest Enterprise LLC, for $27,000. That person thought that he would do me a “favor” and sell our own home back to us for three times that amount! We spent virtually every holiday, including Thanksgiving and New Year’s wondering whether or not we were going to be put out on the street. And we almost did too, until the community came together to defend our right to be in our home.

My family never turned our back on the community we live in, and we asked the people who stood up for me to use our home as a meeting space to help fight other foreclosures. We have also never been one to just ask for handouts. Even though the economy is rough, I try to make ends meet selling food out of my house to my neighbors.

There are probably going to be a hundred stories told at that shareholder meeting in San Franscisco, but I want people to remember one specifically. For every home that’s foreclosed on, it doesn’t just represent a vacant piece of property. It represents a family’s history, and for some neighborhoods, an institution. While people have fancy conversations about vacant homes, foreclosures and mortgage processing, stop picturing the homes that are vacant and start imagining the community institutions that have been foreclosed on.

For more of my story:

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/11/23/liberty-city-woman-may-lose-home-on-thanksgiving/

Wells Fargo is a bank like any other business, whose mission is to make profits. Instead of running an honest business, Wells Fargo swindled and ripped off a many of its customers to make billions in profits. The sad reality is that at a time when the “Great Recession” is still leaving after affects on Americans, corporations and big banks like Wells Fargo, are taking advantage of us, all the while paying almost nothing in income taxes. (more…)