blind people up all over the world oh me yes yes. if you read your jihad so i'll bet i think. you're muslim you're if you're not us why are you a bunch of me so very sad especially considering how salim is the furthest thing from a muslim extremist here's what he had to say in response. amused of a sergeant serve. acidifies my wife. i'm not artist. i'm a muslim i'm american. i mean it's our. it's truly a shame what's even worse is that the ignorance and bigotry from the perpetrator is shared by many people in this country take for instance a very west county commissioner in tennessee who recently posted this on facebook yep how to wink at a muslim no not a terrorist a muslim yeah parents should be aiming a double barrel shotgun in every muslim in america now of course according to good

old barry it's just a joke it's been a lax this is the exact same kind of joke that incites people to turn a hate speech into action and this sort of intolerance business you have to join me because we've got a whole lot of stats to break. yesterday's may day protests brought to light the extent of the workers' rights struggle in this country and one of the issues on the forefront is the minimum wage last november wal-mart workers staged a walkout in the busiest shopping day of the year black friday five months ago new york saw hundreds of fast food workers strike for better benefits and just last week hundreds of chicago fast food and retail workers at some of the country's largest corporate chains took similar actions and went on strike to demand higher wages and union rights accorded the bureau of labor statistics the minimum wage should be ten dollars to fifty six cents today when accounting for inflation but

currently the federal minimum wage is only seven dollars and twenty five cents and hasn't been raised since two thousand and nine in fact in the last thirty years congress has only raise the minimum wage three times just to give you an idea working full time at minimum wage surmounts to an annual salary of fifteen thousand dollars hardly a living wage for anyone hoping to live a comfortable life but there is a serious campaign by many employers who say that raising wages for low income workers would actually cause more unemployment and a less stable economy well that's exactly what i talked with less leopold about director of the labor center of new york i asked for his response to the argument against raising it and here's what he had to say. the minimum wage i ring the sixty's in real terms and it's better than one hundred sixty x. fifty years ago it was on a very real but then the argument is that somehow if you raise the minimum wage you'll cut down jobs but study after study has been done about every. the same kind

of business for the state with a higher minimum wage than the lower men on wages you would find is when you have a higher minimum wage your workers become more can work less left from the lower left leaving the job less training costs to be employed and on and on not. you know makes a good point of business is gave workers a living wage then there would be more incentive to do a better job as the cost of living gets higher and higher by the year it only makes sense that minimum wage would reflect the cost of living doesn't seem like too much to ask so on the heels of may day let's take a moment to think about this issue and the plight of workers who make this country function because their struggle is far from over. guys have made it is a day that holds profound significance for workers worldwide stems from the

workers' rights struggle here in the us the government has since whitewashed its meaning to distance people from its true origin but over the last century mayday has come to represent an international workers struggle and they celeb are groups and movements like occupy wall street the true meaning of made is and reinvigorated here in this country millions of people all around the world yesterday protested from d.c. all the way to bangladesh demanding better workers' rights and l.a. thousands of people peacefully march for immigrant rights and better employee benefits but in seattle a may day protests turned violent resulting in seventeen people arrested so here to join me now to discuss the may day events around the country in the state of the labor movement in general i'm joined by artie's honest churkin are new york city a remote from our l.a. studio thanks so much for coming on both of you ramon i want to start with you what yesterday l.a. saw thousands of people marching give us a sense of what it was like on the ground and what people's demands were. sure it was a day tons of people on the streets shutting down many city blocks in downtown los

angeles we saw union workers we saw students we saw undocumented immigrants and of course there's a show of solidarity with workers around the world demanding better working conditions but obviously main focus of yesterday's march was a push for him. gratian reform people are letting you know that they want immigrants to be able to work here in this country without having to worry about being deported or worry about being taken advantage of so a large focus on that yesterday here in los angeles of course reckoning back to the origin of made in general where a lot of immigrants did ridgeley protests and. in the original it made events not going to turn to you what are your was there more of a presence this year than last year and it was kind of on the heels of the occupy wall street movement didn't center around immigration as well or was it more diverse well abbie we definitely saw a lot less people this year than we did last year of course like you mentioned on

the wings and inspired and largely organized by the occupy wall street movement where thousands and thousands of people really flooded the streets of new york yesterday on may day we definitely saw hundreds maybe a thousand but nothing compared to the events last year even though there were marches and rallies organized throughout the city and definitely immigration reform was in the spotlight by dozens of other issues really brought up by folks who decided to come out and voice their discontent starting from wealth inequality corporate greed you know the situation on wall street the slogan of ninety nine percent versus the one percent the sky high student debt and speaking people speaking out against most so you know a wide range of issues lots of discontent but all of these issues obviously forming one system that these people see as flawed and ramona i want to go back to you i read seventeen protesters of course were arrested in seattle's may day protests and what what exactly happened there and you know of any other incidents of police brutality that happen around the country. sure well from looking at most of the

issues missives it does appear that most of them were peaceful just to bring you up to date as far as what happened in seattle several of those people who were arrested were arraigned today on destruction of property charges and resisting arrest it seems like is that most of the day there was peaceful demonstrations later on in the evening and artists and police faced off there were some bottles throwing and obviously video has shown that needs gas was used on the side of police so there's a destruction to some property. and while the violence and the arrests are making headlines many in the seattle community and in the north west point out that you know this is kind of goes to show that there is a very strong dissident community still in the pacific northwest northwest and in seattle and people have to remember that you know maydays origins does go back to anarchy is history here in the u.s. so in many ways people who are working an eight hour day and get paid overtime have

an arc is to to pay back for you know to make that progress their origin of rebellion and that haymarket protest. and non-sterile you know let's talk about kind of the call from workers that are asking for more rights i mean despite a growing awareness about workers' right especially in light of the night percent versus one percent occupy wall street movement unionization is in decline which i thought was really interesting where do you think this disconnect is stemming from that's absolutely true abby and fact united nation is that an old at a ninety seven year low i mean that's almost a century we have a situation right now where only over eleven percent of people in the united states in the united states are in unions and most of that eleven percent is made up by a large chunk of those that are part of the shrinking public sector so certainly the situation with unions is quite radical compared to to what this country i guess is used to and what we've been see. you know over the last several years is a certain extent of you know union busting on

a state by state level this is certainly something that we saw being addressed at the protests on may day here in new york city certainly this general attitude i think has a lot to do with the general narrative that unions are kind of bad and people who are demanding more through unions are lazy and this is certainly something that we've seen on a state by state basis from politicians and from corporations and certainly this attitude and up being reflected in the way and making it really harder for unions to in fact get together and even though many are saying that certainly unions are a large impact have a very positive impact on the way the economy runs and operates that are saying that certainly recession is a very good time for people to be able to organize to kind of get the ball rolling again but certainly that's not the case there definitely goes in to be a concentrated effort to crush unions and especially with the whole wisconsin debacle and really when you look at these right to work states which is choosing whether or not you can join a union it is interesting to see that those states actually have higher instances

of safety workplace death less safe standards and ramon i mean speaking of just this instance i mean west texas texas is of course is a is a right to work state a horrible explosion in the west texas fertilizer factory and as we know the occupational safety and health administration has an inspected the plant for years i mean you were there on the ground in the immediate aftermath of this have you been following up are there any sort of initiatives coming out of the tragedy demanding for better workplace safety and full funding of this administration. sure advocates of worker rights such as unions and some convers conservation groups there in texas are trying to raise some of the alarms as far as what was going on the lack of oversight but we do have to remember that texas is a very pro-business state the are not very receptive to new regulations and that. seems to be even the attitude even after this tragedy when governor rick perry was asked about it he you know said that any new regulations or new over say we

wouldn't prevent anything like this now a lot of people would argue the other way around in when we think about osha which hasn't been to that plant since one thousand nine hundred five and we have to think that this is obviously a regulatory agency that may not be getting the proper funding or even have the proper power to really crack down on places like this so definitely something to look at but in the immediate aftermath it doesn't seem like you know worker conditions in dangerous places such as fertilizer plants like this is getting increased scrutiny at least in the short term yeah definitely hard in texas with it with someone like rick perry and lastly let's talk about the other aspect of this struggle which is of course the minimum wage or better benefits for workers not you are in new york i mean when this fast food workers strike kind of on the heels of the other strikes we've seen in the wal-mart and chicago we're seeing it spread to other cities what was the outcome of that that happened five months ago were they

able to elicit any change in that strike. well i think it's a work in process at this point definitely you know the thousands of people who work in fast food joints here in new york making minimum wage and like you said federal law seventy seven point twenty five cents an hour are have been fighting against this they've been saying that we want an increase to at least fifteen dollars we want the right to be part of unions because we need somebody to defend our rights and this is certainly this was quite an unprecedented fight in a sense for new york it was a huge effort last year to you know to try to kind of galvanize this movement surrounding that we have to say that some fast food joints listen to others didn't the fight is certainly continuing and certainly spent spreading to other states but you know importantly old ready at the end of even a second time happened at the end of the beginning of april this year where people working at fast food joints held a one day strike again calling for this to messages of their message to be heard

and certainly it's still continuing some have succeeded others haven't but definitely this is something that people are going to keep fighting because so many people you know these are adults we're talking about working at a fast food joint for ten fifteen years making minimum wage simply unable to support their families. just the beginning of a long struggle thank you so much for both of you for your time and room for shit. if you want to know what i'm doing i'm not on the air and on twitter and out in martin you can follow me there you'll find all my treats linking to segments from the show as well as random thoughts i have throughout the day and also please help us get a break in the run being on twitter and hashtags we can get trending on the twitter sphere but only with your twitter check me out at abby martin take a break my preaching for now but stay tuned here at the ag gag laws in the prosecution of animal rights activists happen across the country.

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for a membership i mean like. have you ever seen what goes on at the water houses and how animals are treated before they're butchered if you have them you know how horrific these images are they're so disturbing that they often incite public outrage and in some instances garner enough support to put an end to some of those any humane animal practices but it's become nearly impossible to shine a light on the school treatment due to new state initiatives which many refer to as ag gag laws so legislation cracks down on those who report or distribute and images taken within the factories the language though even goes as far as labeling animal rights activists as terrorists which could tack on a much more serious sentence if found guilty one state that's an act of this legislation is utah where it's now headed to take undercover videos photographs or

any sort of recording of animal buz and recently a woman named amy mayer became the first person to be arrested under this new law so here to talk about amy's case where it stands ag gag laws and label activists as terrorists i'm joined now by amy and based upon an animal rights activist and co-founder of the sparrow project andy thanks so much for coming on thanks for having me so talk to us about the case of amy mayer what happened why did she get arrested and where does her case stand right now. so recently amy myers who is an activist in utah was on a public easement adjacent to a factory farm where she noticed that a an animal livestock was actually being transported on a tractor a piece of large equipment it was a down down a mole so for people to donors there was a down animal is down animal is an animal that can't get out of his own record either because it's too sick or its legs are broken that it can't fend for itself so these animals were being kind of just slaughter this animal couldn't fend for

itself and was being. pushed along with the tractor and so amy did what most people would do and that was reach for her cell phone she had no phone she took it out and started recording it upload the video to you tube shortly after she was recording a farm manager came out and told her to stop local police came the farm manager tried to argue that she was actually on private property not public property the local police officer didn't cite here at the time but then some time passed and she learned that she was being cited by the state prosecutor as the first individual being charged under utah's ag gag law now will potter broke this story two days ago when he broke the story it instantly shot to the front page read it and it was all over the internet democracy now reported upon it and there was tremendous public pressure to say this this is an outrage the ag gag laws specifically talk about people that undercover go undercover and film inside factory farms themselves amy

on the other hand was on a public easement she was on public property filming towards private property something that was plain view and that something is protected for all journalists now what the prosecutor was trying to do was trying to push the envelope even further than what the gag law allows for to test the boundaries in this first prosecution because there was so much public outrage the prosecutor two days later dropped the charges against amy so it's a victory for the activists definitely a victory and even as you point out i mean this is even farther than any of the ag outline i mean just standing on a public sidewalk simply filming a down animal being pushed by a tractor is shocking talk about the seriousness of these laws because miers case was dismissed which is great but what is the extent of the penalties if someone is charged under this legislation. well the penalties vary from state to say sometimes it's little as two hundred fifty dollars in fines other times it could be up to five years imprisonment depending on what state you're in some states go as far as

saying that individuals that film undercover footage and pass it off to journalists could. we registered as terrorists and that's some of the most chilling language as you hear within these laws but in order to understand these laws fully you kind of have to go back to the template that they were built upon and that template was written in two thousand and three by the american legislative exchange council and they penned a law at the time called the animal ecological terrorism act not the animal enterprise terrorism act that we're familiar with today but was this larger bill that incorporated things like undercover filming and undercover investigations and journalists that report on cruelty inside factory farms and in order to criminalize such whistleblowers or criminalize such journalism that reports on the cruelty inside factory farms the reason why the industry in the lobbyists for focusing on this method was that after nine eleven a lot of the very radical elements of the animal rights movement the animal liberation front the earth liberation front really tone down their direct actions it was that they stopped happening but i think

a lot of people were concerned about having their activism conflated with terrorism so they stopped doing these more aggressive directions and shifted more towards a very effective tactic of filming what goes on inside these factory farms and then delivering it either via social media or mainstream media to the public and what people were learning and what activists were learning was that a lot of people are concerned about where their food comes from and concerned about the welfare of animals they may or may not be vegan or vegetarian but a lot of people do not want to be supporting agree just cruelty to animals and so when they were seeing this footage it was changing their shopping habits it was changing their dietary choices and this was hurting the bottom line of a lot of these farms tremendous organizations came up during this time period mercy for animals compassion over killing recent years the humane society of the united states has done tremendous work when it involving undercover investigation and certainly it certainly ended there is a dangerous trend of criminalizing activists who are giving immunity to corporations who are practicing this and humane treatment against animals or you

certainly have a unique perspective since you were actually prosecuted. charge under the animal enterprise protection act of course later that was changed the animal enterprise terrorism act what happened in your case and what the penalties have been different under the newly revised animal enterprise terrorism act for you. well yes the penalties would have been different the initial law that was used against me was written in one thousand nine hundred two it was designed to target individuals in the l.f. that targeted for farms and set me free and destroyed breeding cards what they did in two thousand and four was then augment that existing bill to cover the conduct that was involved with a group that i volunteered with called stop huntington animal cruelty usa and what they said was that because we were causing financial damage through legitimate boycott it through direct action to stop protests and civil disobedience all nonviolent that we could then be charged underneath this law because what we're doing is creating a fiscal disruption or physical disruption in excess of ten thousand dollars so

when the government there indictment against us they said our campaign was so effective that over a short period of time we could have caused this much damage as three hundred eighty million dollars in lost revenue to an animal testing facility called huntington life sciences which is based in new jersey it had three facilities in the u.k. as a result when we went to court we had nothing to argue besides the fact that what we did should have been protected speech and protected conduct under the constitution but these new laws in the way they're all demented really left us with with nothing to stand on besides we believe this law is illegal and we shouldn't be charged this way unfortunately we were convicted we were sentenced and upon sentencing we didn't receive an official terrorism and had spent but underneath the a.p.a. it creates a space for a violation called animal enterprise terrorism and so i was branded as a terrorist from that point forward and it actually changed the designation i had once i was in prison i wasn't assigned to

a minimum security prison like the judge initially recommended but instead the bureau of prisons. sent me to a medium high security prison for the majority of my stay and then finally to a high security prison a secretive unit called the communications management unit in marion illinois where in the individuals there are about seventy six percent muslim but all of them are political prisoners and all of them have political cases and all of them are prisoners of inspirational significance as well and if i have it thank you for still fighting after they try to crush that dissent and and crush your activism i really appreciate your time animal rights activists co-founder of the sparrow media project and check it out. i. i i it seems that for months all i kept hearing on the corporate media was the impending sequester the apocalyptic scenario looming over all of our heads perhaps the most glaring example was the cuts to the f.a.a. check it out and then we had to try and find

a way to pay six hundred million dollars between now and september and as a result they had to they had to sort of lay off. ten percent of as nothing can show that this is in that time that lawmakers are clearly irritated because f.a.a. furloughs are causing massive travel headaches the chairman of the house committee blasted the f.a.a. administrator for not warning lawmakers about these cuts to the f.a.a. one hundred forty nine small and midsized airport towers were said to be shut down beginning this sunday to seek restoration the shutdown is over for at least another few weeks and it was a really quick vote believe it or not after all the name calling and posturing on both sides last few days there were no objections today the house of representatives voted for a bill ending the furloughs that went into effect sunday because some three thousand flight delays so crisis averted a little too easy for a do nothing congress. perhaps it's because when it comes to the f.a.a. cuts representatives could be feeling the pinch too here's why what they're really

doing is helping themselves because there's i'm sure you know there is no more pampered class of traveler than members of congress themselves who have extraordinary benefits and some of these benefits are just unbelievable there's a free parking lot for that national airport which results so big your colleagues will say that's about eight hundred thousand dollars a year seventy thousand dollars a year in terms of taxpayer money going to free parking you heard that right all congress cares about is that free parking so wait we're talking about eighty five billion dollars in federal spending cuts and if the f.d.a. didn't get the burn if it didn't get the burn then who. this sequester hit surprise surprise it's affecting the pores in the us they have those that need the most help are being heard the least for example meals on wheels the cherry program that delivers food to people in need is facing nineteen million dollars in cuts that's nothing compared to head start the federal program that provides educational services for low income preschoolers will sacrifice four hundred million dollars in

cuts and these are just a few of the many examples of services being cut to the poor so that those who can actually afford it because heaven forbid the representatives whose salaries we pay for with our tax dollars pay for their own parking like the rest of us. but to be fair yes they did actually take a hit the congress decided to take money that was allocated for future airport repairs you know like fixing potholes and runways and making sure planes don't crash now guys keep in mind we knew about these automatic spending cuts for months before they went to in fact i mean come on this is the sole reason obama appointed the supercommittee so how do you do nothing congress actually done their job this all could have been avoided you know what i do but what i do know about protecting the least fortunate among us of not as important as free parking.

the supercell to the surface of truth is he's a lawyer there's something in you. so

you know. when you hear what he was getting you know who it was or where he was.

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independence party makes huge gains in local elections the hearing over twenty percent of the boat sending a message to warring governing conservative. say you sad america is now considering fending weapons to rebels in syria i made reports of an alleged government led village massacre. in seven i killed anybody lost their legs deaths in iraq which was some pretty wild ways of violence since it was true all of us troops two years ago.