Constructing Equity - Johnny Townsend

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Résumé :
We don't need affordable healthcare. We need universal healthcare. We don't need access to education. We need tuition-free college and vocational training. Let's erase the weasel words and get right to the point. The only way any of us can live in a safe, healthy society is if we all do.Freedom and equity aren't free. Neither is a stable society. We must reduce the extraordinary amount we spend on the military and demand that the ultra-wealthy and corporations pay their fair share toward the public good.The alternative is to live in a country filled with poverty, homelessness, division, and unrest.Every worker needs a living wage. But more than that, we need a thriving wage, and Universal Basic Income is a practical starting point.We also need universal taxpayer-funded childcare and pre-k education, fare-free public transportation, automatic voter registration, elimination of the Electoral College, ranked choice voting, plus nationwide vote-by-mail as well as in-person voting.We must provide training and new job opportunities for workers who will be displaced from fossil fuel industries as we confront an ever-worsening climate crisis. Because leaving them to fend for themselves only guarantees failure. We pay for our choices, one way or another. Let's use our resources wisely.

Biographie:
On Gay Pride Day in 1973, an arsonist set the entrance to a French Quarter gay bar on fire. In the terrible inferno that followed, thirty-two people lost their lives, including a third of the local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church, their pastor burning to death halfway out a second-story window as he tried to claw his way to freedom.A mother who'd gone to the bar with her two gay sons died alongside them. A man who'd helped his friend escape first was found dead near the fire escape. Two children waited outside a movie theater across town for a father and uncle who would never pick them up.During this era of rampant homophobia, several families refused to claim the bodies, while many churches refused to bury the dead. Author Johnny Townsend pored through old records and tracked down survivors of the fire as well as friends and relatives of those killed to compile the first full account of a forgotten moment in gay history. This second edition on the 50th anniversary of the fire includes additional research and information not available previously....