April 26, 2025

The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights

Building Radical Democracy

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AN EQUAL PAY VICTORY FOR AMERICA’S MOST DOMINANT NATIONAL TEAM

A landmark union agreement for the U.S. women’s soccer team offers a blueprint for equity — even for those of us who aren’t professional athletes.
By  | June 1, 2022

Three years ago, the U.S. women’s soccer team filed a $24 million gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. This May, after a prolonged and public battle, the players association for the U.S. women’s and men’s national teams negotiated a groundbreaking collective bargaining agreement.

The agreement enshrines a number of new protections for both teams. But most importantly, the agreement creates equal pay structures and requires the U.S. Soccer Federation to share World Cup prize money equally between both the men and women’s national teams.

It’s a first for any soccer federation in the world — and an inspiring victory for fairness in any industry.

Consider the women’s team’s impressive record — which includes four World Cup wins, four Olympic gold medals, and FIFA’s world No. 1 ranking for five straight years. The men’s team, by comparison, failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2018 and hasn’t made the quarterfinals or better in the World Cup since 2002.

Under the previous rules, had the men’s team qualified in 2018, they would have likely received first-round exit prize money worth $8 million — double what the women’s team took home for winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

Now the two teams will get equal pay for equal success.

This agreement would not have been possible without decades of tireless activism from players who have decried the double standards present in U.S. and global soccer.

Whether it was turning their warm-up jerseys inside out to obscure the U.S. Soccer Federation crests or kneeling in support of racial justice, the U.S. women’s team embodies a culture of protest that reflects the ongoing struggles of women and marginalized groups across the world.

It’s not hard to see the parallels in the broader economy.

Men, for example, make up an overwhelming majority of top earners across the U.S. economy, even though women now represent almost about the country’s workforce. At the top 0.1 percent level, women make up only 11 percent.

But there’s another important parallel in how the teams corrected this imbalance: unions.

This equal pay for equal success victory could not have been achieved without the collective strength and solidarity that a union provides. By coming together in their contract negotiations, the men’s and women’s teams both inspire and benefit each other.

In the latest collective bargaining agreement, for example, athletes on the men’s national team will now have access to paid child care, a benefit the women’s team has enjoyed for over 25 years. This agreement is a testament to how everyone can win when you fight for those at the bottom.

Even beyond soccer and beyond the United States, the contract is groundbreaking.

It provides a roadmap to equity for other national sports teams, like basketball and hockey, which face similar challenges. It could also be replicated in places like France or Germany, where teams have an even higher level of success and larger budgets than the U.S. Soccer Federation.

But it’s also a roadmap for those of us who aren’t professional athletes.

As unionization efforts take flight at Starbucks, Amazon, and other big, profitable employers, America’s most dominant national sports team is showing how the workers who make companies successful can claim their fair share of the rewards.

Goal!

Brian Wakamo is an Inequality Research Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org. This op-ed was adapted from Inequality.org and distributed by OtherWords.org.

OVERCOMING THE DISTORTED NARRATIVE OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

I grew up in a church community that pitted people against each other and called it “Christianity.” As a pastor now myself, I know there’s another way.

By Aaron Scott | June 1, 2022

I grew up in rural upstate New York, where life was difficult and often isolating. Folks in our community were very poor, but we took care of one another. Neighbors lavished affection and support on my family.

Still, there was a deep undercurrent of abandonment and anger.

Far from the South, Confederate flags pierced the landscape. And at church, there was often little help for people struggling to overcome isolation, daily struggles, or poverty. Instead, the focus of church life for many people around me was the sin of sex — especially homosexuality.

Now, my dad was a minister, and my mom and grandma were hard-working union organizers. So even at age 9, this hyperfocus on homosexuality made no sense to me. People didn’t have heat in the ice-cold New York winter. But instead of trying to change this, the church focused on sex?

Instead of directing people’s anger at our unequal political system, the church directed this rage at love: men loving men, women loving women. And at people realizing that they had a different gender from the one assigned to them at birth.

When it wasn’t about that, it was about some vague notion that people with different skin colors, languages, or religions somehow took jobs from rural white people, or were supposedly paid more for doing less work.

It was about the idea that poor moral character, rather than an unjust economic system, led some in our community to escape into alcoholism, drug use, and addiction. It led many of us to blame other struggling people — across race and religion — for our own legitimate suffering.

I grew up surrounded by this culture of anger and hate, which pitted people against one another and called itself, perversely, “Christianity.”

But thanks to my family, who fought for the rights of hard-working people, I knew there was another way besides this distorted moral narrative of Christian nationalism. I didn’t know if I could find it within the church, but I wanted to try.

I obtained a scholarship to a parish in Central America, where folks were also quite poor, but where Christianity looked very different. It was a Christianity that sought liberation from all forms of oppression.

This experience prompted me to follow my calling to become a pastor. I wanted to find paths that healed rather than blamed. As part of my personal healing, I accepted the God-given revelation that I am a man, despite being raised as a girl — something I’d known deeply since childhood.

Blessed with this grace, my pastoring eventually led me to another rural impoverished community full of the same struggles — but also the same wisdom and leadership — as my home community.

I co-founded Chaplains on the Harbor in Grays Harbor County, Washington, with other liberation-minded pastors. We walk alongside people who live in poverty, struggle with addiction, and seek connection. We walk alongside them as they make the journey from detoxing on the floor of the county jail to testifying about their experiences and insights in the halls of power.

Now I’m a proud, loving father and part of a national, faith-led movement called the Poor People’s Campaign. We are hundreds of thousands of people strong, working for justice for the 140 million of us in the United States who are poor and low-income.

We work to transform systems of inequality rather than blame people for struggles outside of their control. We don’t identify sexuality, gender, race, or religion as the source of evil. We identify the political choices that create suffering — and work to change them.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth, Marsha P. Johnson, and my own mom and grandmother, we love, testify, and march. We’ll be marching in Washington, D.C. for transformation on June 18th. Please join us — in person or virtually.

When we bring everyone in with grace and love, we can truly be free.

Aaron Scott is a co-founder of Chaplains on the Harbor and a member of the Washington State Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. He grew up in Mechanicville, New York. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Class War: The Jacobin Board Game

The MPI is a proud sponsor of the new game, Class War. Find out more information at:
https://jacobinmag.com/store/product/73

 

CANCEL STUDENT LOAN DEBT. BAIL OUT REGULAR PEOPLE.

Even writing off every penny of student debt would cost less than Trump’s tax giveaways for corporations and the rich.

By Robert P. Alvarez | May 24, 2022

I borrowed money to pay for college. Like 45 million other Americans who did the same, I owe student loan debt.

My generation was sold a pipe dream about what a degree could mean for our future. I wanted so badly for this dream to come true that I leapt at the opportunity to take out loans.

What I didn’t know then was just how much the cost of higher education was soaring — and that colleges were hiking prices to take advantage of the federal government’s willingness to help poor and low-income students like me cover tuition.

I remember talking to my college counselor about how she paid $240 a year to attend one of the best universities in my home state. Since my counselor attended college, inflation has risen 645 percent. Meanwhile, tuition at the college she attended has risen 11,820 percent.

If you ask earlier generations how they paid for college, they say things like “I worked a part-time job after school.” Yeah, I did that, too. You know what that money went toward? Rent, gas, and bills. My McDonald’s job was barely enough to keep me afloat, let alone pay for my tuition and other expenses.

It was either take out student loans or drop out of college. I chose not to drop out.

I graduated and eventually got a job in my field. But with the rising cost of housing and everything else, that loan debt, which is already inflated by skyrocketing college costs, now feels suffocating. It prevents me from qualifying for a good mortgage loan and makes me second guess whether I can afford to have children.

My loan is just a tiny fraction of the national student loan debt. The $1.7 trillion student loan borrowers owe is a massive policy problem affecting everything from housing to the job market to retirement savings and so much more.

That’s why there’s a growing movement calling on the federal government to cancel some or all of this debt.

If the federal government canceled $50,000 worth of student loans, it would give 36 million borrowers a new lease on life. It could enable them to buy a house, start a family, or open a business.

I know it sounds like a radical idea to cancel up to $50,000 worth of student loan debt. It’s not.

If you’ll remember, former president Donald Trump and the Republican Party passed a $1.9 trillion, high-end tax cut in 2017 that’s been called “socialism for the rich.” It led to billionaires paying a lower average tax rate than the working class for the first time in U.S. history, and is directly responsible for corporate tax revenues plunging to near record lows.

That sounds a lot more radical to me than helping regular people. Even writing off every penny of student debt would cost less than Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

President Biden has expressed interest in forgiving some student loan debt, although he’s indicated he may not cancel more than $10,000.

I’d welcome any amount being knocked off my loan. But I fear if Biden cancels only $10,000, he would fumble an enormous opportunity to improve millions of lives and give the economy a desperately needed shot in the arm.

The precedent is there. The U.S. has a long history of economic bailouts dating back to 1792.

The benefits are there. Studies show forgiving student loan debt would create jobs, grow the economy, and have the added benefits of helping to narrow the racial and gender wealth gaps.

And, importantly, student debt forgiveness has broad public support, including among people without a college degree and without student loan debt, as well as young people.

It’s time for the federal government to bail the people out. It’s time to cancel student loans.


This article originally appeared on OtherWords.org.

A PANDEMIC OF THE POOR

As we mark 1 million COVID-19 deaths, Americans in poorer counties have died at double the rate of wealthier counties.
By  | May 12, 2022

This op-ed was originally published on April 13, 2022 and updated on May 12, 2022.

As our country passes the once unthinkable toll of 1 million deaths from COVID-19, it can feel impossible to wrap our heads around such a devastating figure. But it’s essential if we want to treat the pre-existing conditions that made it so deadly.

In the beginning, many thought the pandemic would be “a great equalizer,” since the virus doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor. But the tragic reality is that our economic and public health systems do discriminate.

A coalition of researchers convened by the Poor People’s Campaign recently published a report making this reality plain.

The researchers define poverty to include all those living up to 200 percent of the official poverty measure, which has long been considered too low to capture those who struggle the hardest to make ends meet.

Using this measure, they found that COVID-19 death rates in poorer U.S. counties were nearly double those wealthier counties.

The gap was even bigger during the worst phases of the pandemic. During the dark winter of 2020-2021, four and a half times as many people in poorer counties died. During the Delta phase, that number shot up to five times.

Vaccination rates tend to be somewhat greater in wealthier counties, but this study looked at counties where vaccination rates topped more than 85 percent. So vaccination can’t account for the disparity.

What can account for it is poverty. The over 300 counties with the highest death rates had average poverty rates of 45 percent.

These counties include 30 million Americans of every color. Latinx Americans make up about a quarter of their population, while their Black population is about double the national average. What’s more, these counties are home to nearly 30 percent of all Indigenous people in the United States.

They’re also home to many poor whites. Although COVID-related deaths fell disproportionately on people of color, these poorer white people suffered the most deaths.

Experts and impacted people testified recently about these findings in Washington, D.C.

“At times, our county’s rate of COVID hospitalizations and deaths led the nation,” said Bruce Grau of Wausau, Wisconsin. “In the first six months of the pandemic, nearly all of the residents in just one nursing home died penniless and alone.”

“Because I don’t have money, it was 17 days before they told me I had COVID,” testified Tyrone Gardner of Goldsboro, North Carolina. “We were slaughtered for the almighty dollar, and we won’t be sacrificed anymore,” declared Pamela Garrison of West Virginia.

“It was hard for us to get the vaccine,” recalled Vanessa Nosie, a member of the Apache Stronghold in New Mexico. “Our lives aren’t valued. They look at us like it doesn’t hurt that we don’t survive.”

“The findings of this report reveal intentional decisions to not focus on the poor,” summed up Reverend William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “We cannot say that this is because of individual choices or behaviors.”

Instead, he declared, “something deeper is at work: systems that prey on the poor — poor white people and poor people of color.”

The lessons of this pandemic are brutal and myriad. One of its most important is that when a public health crisis runs headlong into systemic inequities in wages, wealth, and health care, the result is mass death among those the system is rigged against.

The Poor People’s Campaign has been mobilizing Americans across the country to un-rig this system. “This data is a wake-up call for this nation to heed the calls of the Poor People’s Campaign,” said John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies.

This summer, the campaign is organizing a mass mobilization of poor and low-income people in Washington, D.C. to fight back. On June 18, thousands of poor people and their allies will arrive in the capital, calling on lawmakers to treat the pre-existing conditions of a pandemic that’s killed 1 million Americans.

They welcome all to join them.

Originally published on OtherWords.org. 

Exit Capitalism, Stage Left Episode 10 Out Now!

The tenth episode of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left is out now. This podcast is supported by The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights.

In this episode, I discuss the premature re-openings, lifting of mask mandates, and the long-term effects of COVID on people who catch the disease – vaccinated or not. I myself am not a scientists, but I am a researcher and in this podcast we go over scientific sources analyzed by experts on what’s going on in the U.S. as far as COVID-19 goes.

In this episode, we also talk about:

  • Elon Musk buying Twitter
  • Don’t Say Gay and anti-Trans medical recommendations in the state of Florida
  • Intercepted – a podcast by The Intercept
  • The Maggie Phair Institute’s Instagram
  • And why do people keep asking me questions about Elon Musk?

Don’t forget to send us your questions for the last segment of our podcast at exitcapitalismstageleft@gmail.com. 

2022 Mimi Soltysik Memorial Scholarship is now open!

The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights is proud to announce that our Mimi Soltysik Memorial Scholarship is open for applications. This is the second year for the memorial scholarship.

Mimi Soltysik was the former educator for The Maggie Phair Institute and a former presidential candidate in 2016 for the Socialist Party USA. He was a known organizer, a socialist, and an activist who fought for human rights and democracy during his lifetime. In 2020, at the age of 45, we lost our comrade to cancer. The intension of this scholarship is to help his legacy live on.

This scholarship is designed to honor the memory of Mimi Soltysik, a community activist and presidential candidate. It hopes to help students combine an interest in democracy and human rights with their college studies.

There will be two winners of this scholarship and each winner will be awarded $500 to go towards their education. The application deadline is June 1st, 2022 by 8:59 p.m. PST. 

Exit Capitalism, Stage Left Episode 9 Out Now!

The ninth episode of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left is out now. This podcast is supported by The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights.

In this episode, I kind of go off about my love for Lucille Ball and her groundbreaking work on I Love Lucy in addition to the groundbreaking work her production company, Desilu Productions, did with the show Star Trek. It’s similar, but not perfectly paired up with the blog post on the MPI site also titled Leftists Should Love Lucy. 

In this episode, we also talk about:

  • The congressional questioning of Justice Jackson
  • Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 
  • White Reconstruction by Dylan Rodriguez
  • Booking a guest speaker through the Maggie Phair Institute
  • And why I hate Elon Musk so much

Don’t forget to send us your questions for the last segment of our podcast at exitcapitalismstageleft@gmail.com. 

Exit Capitalism, Stage Left Episode 8 Out Now!

The eighth episode of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left is out now. This podcast is supported by The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights.

We continue with our new format for this episode and have a special guest – Nina from Riverside Food Not Bombs. Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll find in this episode:

  • Human Rights in the U.S. News – Supreme Court discriminating against LGBTQIA+ will probably continue, NFTs and crypto currency are environmentally harmful and scams, and U.S. truckers are planning their own “freedom convoy” to replicate the trucker anti-mask protests in Canada. 
  • Good News – Elon Musk is being sued. Please sue Elon Musk. I will sue him with you. Email us at exitcapitalismstageleft@gmail.com if you want me in your Elon Musk lawsuit. 
  • Rent is actually kind of radical even if the music is kind of outdated. 
  • An interview with Nina from Riverside Food Not Bombs (@riverside_food_not_bombs on IG) on radical kindness.
  • New sharable quotes from past articles and podcasts are up on the MPI’s downloads page.
  • Listener question: what do I think of the phrase “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism?”

Don’t forget to send us your questions for the last segment of our podcast at exitcapitalismstageleft@gmail.com. 

Exit Capitalism, Stage Left – Episode 7 Out Now!

The seventh episode of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left is out now. This podcast is supported by The Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights. 

The seventh episode of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left follows a new format and features an interview with a former Starbucks employee. Within this interview, he speaks of problematic working conditions within the company, the disconnect between corporate Starbucks and the stores themselves, and he gives his opinion on the rise of unionizations taking place at Starbucks across the nation.

The format of the podcast has officially been updated! Now we not only have intro and outro music, but we have five fixed segments which are as follows:

1a. Human Rights News in the U.S.

This segment is where we’ll take a look at what’s happening within the U.S. news this month. Generally, this will cover two to three major stories related to human rights.

1b. Good News/Victories to Hold Onto

Inspired by Mimi Soltysik who said we always had to hold onto our victories, no matter how small, this segment looks at a victory in the struggle for human rights and democracy.

2. Recommended Reading

My degrees are in English and I teach literature and writing courses outside of my work at the Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, so this segment is really me sharing my day job and my training as an academic directly with the listeners through a book recommendation.

3. The Main Topic/Interview

What used to be the bulk of Exit Capitalism, Stage Left will now take place as the third segment of the podcast. This is where interviews or main topics will be explored. 

4. MPI Resources 

Since this podcast is sponsored and hosted by the Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, I figured it’d be good to include a small segment that highlights a resource the MPI has that relates to the main topic of the podcast for that month. 

5. Ask Me

Exit Capitalism, Stage Left now has an email address for readers to send in questions, comments, concerns, or topics you’d like me to address. If you have something big or small and you’d like it talked about on the show, please reach out: ExitCapitalismStageLeft@gmail.com.