EarthDay.png I’m old enough to remember when Earth Day was mostly about planting trees and recycling. Since then, it’s taken on a whole new urgency as we’ve ( most of us , anyway) realized that this climate change thing is real, it’s our fault, and it’s serious. So it’s strange to realize that on...

Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and eloquent slave woman Sojourner Truth represent countless thousands of anonymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and confining gender roles throughout our nation’s history.

Members of Congress and workers’ advocates today renewed their push for an increase in the hourly federal minimum wage to $12 – a move that would reflect the recent frenzy of state and local movement on the issue and would mean larger pay checks for 35 million Americans. Originally sponsored one...