This is a cross-post, by Doug Foote, from Working America's Main Street blog. 

This week, Minnesota state Rep. Jason Metsa (D) is taking the Working America Minimum Wage Challenge—living on the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He’ll report his experience back to the Minnesota legislature, where they are considering a bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.95.

On Wednesday, Metsa’s challenge was to find a place to live. Why a challenge? His budget that he set out on Monday allowed for only $359 a month for housing.

On one side of the rope, students, workers, a polar bear, a walrus and Robin Hood stood. On the other side, a series of fancily dressed Wall Street executives.  The tug-of-war was over a proposed half penny tax on Wall Street transactions designed to raise billions of dollars to pay for education, climate change mitigation and the improvement of public infrastructure. That was the scene Thursday when working family activists who are part of the U.S. Robin Hood Tax Campaign rallied at Hotel Palomar in Washington, D.C., where finance and environmental ministers of select developed countries met.

Forty faith, labor and community activists prayed, sang and protested outside Manchester’s Norris Cotton Federal Building this afternoon to express outrage about recent actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in area homes and businesses.

As the bipartisan Gang of Eight continues to draft comprehensive, commonsense immigration policy legislation, thousands of activists, families and supporters of all ages and nationalities flooded the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday for the “April 10: The Time Is Now” rally for immigration policy reform with a road map to citizenship.

This is a cross-post from Working America's Main Street blog. 

With 12 votes needed, only 11 members of the Philadelphia City Council were willing to override Mayor Michael Nutter’s veto of the sick leave bill. For the second time in three years, corporate interests defeated a measure that would allow more than 180,000 Philadelphians to finally earn sick days.

“I’m very disappointed,” said city councilman Bill Greenlee, who tried but failed to get the 12 votes needed to override Mayor Nutter’s veto.  “I’m particularly disappointed for the 180,000 workers who could have had a benefit that other cities are providing.”

In case you missed it, AFSCME President Lee Saunders and AFSCME members who were part of the sanitation strike in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968 were interviewed on "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." 

Watch the video in the blog and check out the USA Today column, Renewing King's Fight for Black Justice, by Saunders, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. 

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), whose disdain for working people is no secret, last month told state Labor Department hearing officers, who decide unemployment benefit appeals, that they better start deciding more of those cases in favor of employers who want those benefits denied, the Maine Sun Journal reports.  

At that gathering, LePage scolded about eight administrative hearing officers and their supervisors, complaining that too many cases on appeal from the Bureau of Unemployment were being decided in favor of employees. He said the officers were doing their jobs poorly, sources said.

Missouri's working families are speaking out about a paycheck deception bill that is moving through the state legislature.  We Are Missouri launched a new Tumblr blog, Working Voices, that showcases personal messages from Missouri working families to their elected representatives, asking them to reject the anti-worker agenda of the state legislature.  In this year's session, Republicans in the legislature have pursued an agenda that includes paycheck deception, attacks on prevailing wage laws, and "right to work" for less proposals that are part of what We Are Missouri describes as a larger national plan to assault the rights of workers.

Listen to teachers and utility, grocery store and factory workers (and more) talk about how paycheck deception will hurt working people. 

Check out We Are Missouri's Working Voices Tumblr for more stories. 

We Are Missouri is asking state residents to call their state representatives and tell them to reject the paycheck deception bill at 1-888-907-9711.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent the following message about Social Security to her supporters:

My brother David has always had the special spark in our family.

Like our two older brothers, David served in the military. When he got out, he started a small business—and when that one didn't work out, he started another one. He couldn't imagine an America where he wasn't living by his wits every single day.

The budget that President Obama released today is drawing intense criticism for its cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called those cuts “wrong and indefensible.”

A president’s budget is more than just numbers. It is a profoundly moral document. We believe cutting Social Security benefits and shifting costs to Medicare beneficiaries—while exempting corporate America from shared sacrifice—is wrong and indefensible.