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OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas


Jun 28, 2018

This week on Off-Kilter, over the past 40 days, more than 2,000 people have been arrested across the country as part of nonviolent civil disobedience through the Poor People’s Campaign. Many of those activists came to DC this past Saturday to mark the completion of the campaign’s first phase as it continues the work that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who founded the original Poor People’s Campaign began 50 years ago. Rebecca talks with Greg Kaufmann, editor in chief of TalkPoverty.org, about the activists fueling this growing movement and where it goes from here.

Next, this week marks the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which put in place the first-ever federal minimum wage and much more. But 80 years later, key parts of the law remain unchanged—including an obscure provision that allows people with disabilities to be paid pennies on the dollar for their labor. For a look at the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act—and how 80 years on, it’s still leaving workers with disabilities behind—Rebecca speaks with Rabia Belt, an assistant professor of law at Stanford Law School. 

Later in the show, as June comes to a close, another Pride month is wrapping up. But the celebrations in places like San Francisco and New York look very different from those in places like rural Mississippi. In a state that helped put Mike Pence and his ideology into the White House, people like painter Jonathan Kent Adams are still finding ways to celebrate themselves and their communities. Rebecca (joined by David Ballard, one of Off-Kilter’s producers, in his on-air debut) talk with Jonathan about how he uses art as a tool for LGBTQ activism, what it was like growing up gay in rural Mississippi—and what marking Pride in the era of Trump looks like there.

But first, the Supreme Court continues its all-out assault on workers with the Janus decision; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rides to victory running on a platform of universal health care, abolishing ICE, and more; Michigan Governor Snyder signs a cruel bill putting 700,000 Michiganders’ Medicaid at risk; and in a rare piece of good news, the Clean Slate Act—first-of-its-kind legislation to enable people with minor criminal records to have their records automatically sealed once they’ve remained crime-free—becomes law in Pennsylvania; and more… Jeremy Slevin returns to unpack the news of the week ICYMI.