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equality

Pop Culture

Here’s a paycheck for a McDonald’s worker. And here's my jaw dropping to the floor.

So we've all heard the numbers, but what does that mean in reality? Here's one year's wages — yes, *full-time* wages. Woo.

Making a little over 10,000 for a yearly salary.

I've written tons of things about minimum wage, backed up by fact-checkers and economists and scholarly studies. All of them point to raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting folks off of public assistance. It's slowly happening, and there's much more to be done.

But when it comes right down to it, where the rubber meets the road is what it means for everyday workers who have to live with those wages. I honestly don't know how they do it.

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Democracy

How fed-up flight attendants paved the way for women in the workplace

The Stewardess Rebellion changed way more than just the airline industry.

Stewardesses from the 60s

Of course there are more glass ceilings to be shattered, but a ton of notable progress has been made for women in the workplace—from actively addressing sexual harassment, to lessening the gender pay gap, to providing better maternity support and access for women to start their own businesses.

And to think, we can largely thank a mass stewardess rebellion for that.

Back in the 1930s, when the few career options available to women were domestic in nature—like teaching or secretarial roles—working as a flight attendant, aka stewardess, promised a more glamorous and exciting life. A chance to see the world, one flight at a time.

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Identity

He asked her to turn down a promotion to spare his ego and the story went viral

Things are changing and it's time we all get with the program.

Photo by Mike Lloyd on Unsplash

The times are changing... slowly.

Twitter user Kimber Dowsett was bored and waiting to catch a flight when she caught wind of a couple arguing.

Like most of us would (though we might not admit it), she quickly found herself listening in on the juicy drama.

When she realized what the argument was about, she pulled out her phone and began documenting the scene on Twitter for the benefit of her 24,000 followers.

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Democracy

Minority faiths are bravely campaigning to reclaim the swastika from Hitler's Nazi legacy

Before it was corrupted by Hitler, the swastika was a sacred symbol of good fortune.

The swastika is a staple of Diwali in India

Odds are, seeing a swastika invokes only the most unsavory images of hatred, fascism and flagrant racism—both of Nazis and death camps from WWII, and, sadly, of white supremacy groups of today. There's good reason that many note it as a physical manifestation of evil.

However, even if it isn’t widely talked about, it’s no secret that this symbol once had a far more sacred and benevolent meaning among the cultures that actually created it a millennia ago. And as the diaspora of minority faiths continues to diversify the West, these cultures are speaking out in an effort to reclaim the swastika’s original intent. It’s a conversation worth having.

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