In the midst of all the national attention to the immigration crisis, voters in our Nation’s Capital went to the polls on Tuesday to vote on an initiative to eliminate the tipping exemption and raise the minimum wage to $15 over time for all workers.  Regardless of your particular position on Initiative 77, there are lessons to be gleaned from Tuesday’s results that saw it pass overwhelmingly throughout the city.  The ten-percentage point spread was not close – it was a landslide in politics.

The partisan bickering in the Legislature has claimed another victim: Clean Elections.

In 1996, Maine voters decided they’d had enough with how campaigns were funded, and they passed the Maine Clean Election Act. Candidates who choose to run “clean” can accept only a certain number of contributions to start, and only $5 contributions from voters in their district qualify the candidate to receive public funding.

Throughout slavery, Reconstruction and the movement for civil rights, African Americans in the U.S. have faced racism, social disparities, and oppression. While things have advanced for us significantly, black Americans still encounter subtle and blatant social disenfranchisement.
For instance, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the people behind bars in the U.S.

In the latest episode of "Deconstructed," IVN Principal Political Analyst TJ O'Hara talks with Dr. Lenora Fulani, the first African American independent and first female presidential candidate to qualify for the ballot in all 50 states. She is also an American psychologist, psychotherapist, and political activist.