Practical Progress: Top Wonks: The Environment Launch...Ending the Invisible War...4DEZ13

BOLD Progressive news updates from PRACTICAL PROGRESS: The Agenda Project Action Fund's actually 'brief' briefing on the most Important news from the Progressive Movement.
TOP WONKS: THE ENVIRONMENT LAUNCH -- Monday, the Agenda Project launched TOP WONKS: The Environment, an on-line guide to the country's preeminent environmental policy experts. The site features comprehensive profiles of each expert including up to the minute writing, media appearances, analysis, and tweets searchable by dozens of issue areas. Environment Top Wonks are now featured alongside the Economic Top Wonks and Democracy Top Wonks. Agenda Project Erica Payne tells PP: "These leading thinkers will show the way to a better American future." CONTACT Top Wonks Managing Editor David Berman at dberman@agendaproject.org with recommendations for future experts.
READ: "The Road Ahead (And Some Bumps Along the Way)" by Sierra Club Executive Director and Top Wonk Michael Brune and "A Wink and a Nod Won't Save a Declining Species" by Defenders of Wildlife President and CEO and Top Wonk Jamie Rappaport Clark. Check out more recent works by the environmental wonks HERE.
ENDING THE INVISIBLE WAR -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is backing Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-NY) Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), which would remove the oversight of sex crimes from the chain of command. Reid joins Protect our Defenders, the Center for American Progress (CAP), The National Women's Law Center, 19 our of the 20 female members of the U.S. Senate, conservatives Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) and countless others in supporting the bill.
HELP undecided senators make the right choice by TWEETING #passMJIA and CALLING 1-888-907-6886. Undecideds include John Barrasso (R-WY), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Gillibrand says it best: "IT'S THE LEAST WE CAN DO."
READ: "The Gillibrand Amendment Will Root Out Rapists" and "Kirsten Gillibrand Won't Take No For An Answer."
THE HUNGER GAMES -- Over 110 people were arrested at 1,500 Black Friday protests when workers joined to demand a living wage from Walmart, the country's largest private employer. The groups were led by the union-backed group OUR Walmart. As Amy Traub, Demos Senior Policy Analyst and co-author of the new brief "A Higher Wage is Possible," states: "Walmart's low wage model winds up costing all of us."
The New York Times, The New Yorker, Huffington Post, AlterNet, and Salon covered the story.
VA RIGHTS RESTORATION -- Over 450,000 Virginians -- roughly seven percent of the voting population -- have had their voting rights revoked, according to Advancement Project's new infographic. Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne Davis: "Virginia has an alarmingly bloated corrections population that, coupled with having one of the harshest felony disenfranchisement laws in the country, continues to strip hundreds of thousands of people of their right to vote... This is a statewide crises on which the next governor must act." WATCH Advancement Project's new video informing Virginians how to get back their vote HERE.
The Justice Policy Institute also released a new policy brief surveying the feeble state of Virginia's justice system.  READ: "Virginia's Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective, Unfair."
DIGNITY DENIED -- The Center for American Progress (CAP) published a new report analyzing the treatment of LGBT immigrants in U.S. immigration facilities, finding that LGBT immigrants face an substantially increased risk of abuse in detention centers. READ: "Dignity Denied: LGBT Immigrants in U.S. Immigration Detention."
FROM THE WONK WIRE ...
... BLACK FRIDAY, CYBER MONDAY, OH MY!: Former Secretary of Labor and Top Wonk Robert Reich uncovers the hidden cost of online holiday deals.
... COMMON CENTS: Nobel Prize winner and Top Wonk Joseph Stiglitz bemoans the insanity of US food policies.
... POLITICAL PIÑATA: Demos Fellow and Top Wonk Robert Kuttner reveals how the ACA was an unexpected gift to the Republicans.
... SPRAWLMART -- Jared Bernstein and CEPR Co-Director and Top Wonk Dean Baker released Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People, a follow-up to The Benefits of Full Employment. READ the full book, available free for online download HERE.
Find out more at www.TopWonks.org.
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E-mail tips, news, and reactions to Hannah Hendler at hhendler@agendaproject.org.