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On Oct. 2, e-commerce behemoth Amazon sent shockwaves across the business world when it announced plans to raise the minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $15 an hour.

The move, set to take effect Nov. 1, was widely praised by workers and activists, and has now positioned the company as a nationwide leader on the issue of worker pay in America.

Many have credited Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for Amazon’s decision. Along with other progressive organizers, Sanders called out Amazon directly over the summer for its low pay and poor working conditions.

“It’s a huge victory for hundreds of thousands of workers,” Sanders told Mic in an interview. “The issue of non-living wages in this country is an issue we are going to stay fiercely on — that’s why we choose the $15 an hour minimum wage.”

The “Fight for $15” movement, which advocates for a $15 minimum wage nationwide, was launched by fast food workers in New York City in 2012, and picked up steam during the 2016 presidential election when Sanders made it a core campaign issue.

As recently as August, Sanders has been emailing his supporters and sharing videos on his social media channels that single out Bezos directly.

In September, Sanders went further, introducing the “Stop BEZOS Act” in the Senate. The piece of legislation aimed to require large companies like Amazon to pay the cost of public assistance such as food stamps, Medicaid and public housing that their workers receive. Although the bill was criticized — even by liberal economists such as Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist for former Vice President Joe Biden — Sanders said it helped generate attention to the issue of wage disparity nationwide.

“This is what we call a message piece of legislation to gain attention, to focus on the absurdity that the middle class has to subsidize the wealthiest person in this country,” Sanders said. “Ironically enough, their criticism ended up generating some more attention to the issue, which I think worked to our benefit.”

After Mason Parker finishes up his typical 10-hour shift as an assistant manager at a mattress store in Charlotte, North Carolina, he jumps in his car to make the half-hour trek back home — but not to rest. Instead, he might shower, change clothes and make the 80-mile drive to Winston-Salem for a daddy-daughter breakfast at his child’s school. After the breakfast and business meetings for his budding entertainment career, he rushes back to Charlotte to pick up his son for the weekend.

Parker, despite caricatures to the contrary, is not an anomaly. For many black fathers, his story is all too common. While the media and conservatives constantly repeat tropes from the Reagan era that were born out of the Moynihan Report, some of the men I spoke to said this generation of black single fathers are determined to outperform their fathers as parents and forge closer bonds with their children. Black men are often stereotyped in the media as deadbeats who are rarely involved in their children’s rearing. But, a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disproved the commonly held myth of absentee black dads. According to the CDC’s findings, black men are often more involved in the daily tasks of parenting than dads from other racial groups.

Their stories need to be a larger part of the narrative of black men and single fatherhood. In interviews with several black fathers, they all acknowledged the mistakes they’ve made in their journey as partners and parents. They admit to struggling with poor planning, immaturity and bad decision making. None of them is looking to be celebrated as a hero, but they were eager share stories about how fatherhood made them better men.

Dominic Rivera, a 39-year-old Afro-Puerto Rican former Air Force officer, is the primary caregiver to Dominic Jr., his 14-year-old son. Rivera’s ex-wife has experienced mental health issues and drug addiction, and is in and out of their child’s life. Rivera admits to having been frustrated early by his ex-wife’s lack of support, but clearly says, “I no longer have any animosity,” and has never prevented his son from seeing his mother. Dominic describes his relationship with his son as “strong,” though in the beginning raising a child alone was “overwhelming.”

“It’s the realest form of responsibility that can be bestowed on you,” he said. Dominic now laughs about his son’s independence and says that living with his son is like “two roommates who go to work every day.” Now that Dominic Jr. can be left alone, Dominic has pursued a new found passion for stand-up comedy and performs at open mics around the Washington, D.C., area.

Eugene Samuel is a Georgia-based 35-year-old father of four. He has three children from his ex-wife, including a 17-year-old stepson that he formally adopted. After his marriage dissolved, Samuel got involved with another woman with whom he had another child. She died by suicide, leaving Samuel with full custody of his youngest son, 8-year-old Jacob.

A typical day for Samuel and Jacob begins at 6:15 a.m. He drops Jacob off at before-school care at 7 a.m., then begins his hour-long commute to work. Jacob gets out of school at 2:30 p.m. and heads to an after-school program, where Samuel picks him up at 5:30 p.m. They come home and Samuel prepares dinner. After eating, Samuel helps Jacob with his homework, then it’s off to bed to prepare for another early morning.

Samuel had lived in Boston, but relocated back to his native Georgia to be closer to his older children. He credits the move with improving the relationship he has with his older children, though he still has difficulty mending the bond with his eldest son, Noah. Samuel said he feels that the fact that he is not his biological father plays a major role in their occasional discord, but is confident they can work through things.

Arrie Woodard could relate to Samuel’s experience as the primary provider for a son. The 39-year-old Navy veteran and father of two co-parents with the mother of his second son, but says he is “there before anybody else” with regard to anything having to do with his son, “little Arrie.” They have forged an inseparable bond. He has been involved at every turn, from coaching his sports teams, helping with homework and going to amusement park getaways.

Woodard, who lives in Springfield, Virginia, is also trying to re-establish a relationship with his first son, Macai, who is only a few months older than Arrie. He said that he is thankful that, while their relationship was strained, Macai’s mother’s husband, Jermaine, was there to be a male figure in his life.

A problem only arose with Woodard’s second son’s mother when she was in a violent, abusive relationship.

“My thing was, they were unteaching the lesson I was trying to teach my son,” Woodard said. “I’m telling him not to hit women and to respect them, then he goes to his mom’s house and sees it.” Woodard’s second son’s mother recently had another child by her ex-boyfriend. Arrie is serving as a father figure for that child, too, though he and the mother have been divorced for eight years.

Like any parent, these dads want better for their children than they had. They all said they want their sons and daughters to make responsible decisions and refrain from having children until they have significant life experience and are prepared for the difficulty of maintaining a lifelong relationship.

However, if their sons were poised to become young fathers, they would not pressure them to get married. Many traditionalists and political conservatives believe that marriage would be the saving grace for black families and think unwed couples automatically entail an absent, undedicated and uncaring father. These men are among several single fathers who disprove that idea and show that good parenting doesn’t have to mimic long-held assumptions about the nuclear family.

According to Samuel, the keys to successful and healthy parenting are “patience and communication” — whether inside or outside of marriage.

Many, many dozens of Trump supporters turn out to March 4 Trump in New York City

In what participants described as a counter-protest against the nationwide anti-Donald Trump rallies, many dozens of the president’s supporters gathered outside Trump Tower on Saturday. 

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the Women’s March, but look, here’s a protester.

Here’s another one.

They didn’t even need to close the road to traffic. That’s nice.

Wait — maybe this is just the line for Shack Shack? 

Most members of the U.S. Senate have had little to say about the Israel Defense Forces’ violent response to protests in Gaza that left more than 50 Palestinians dead. But there has been one notable exception.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has stood out for his forceful condemnation of the Israeli government’s actions and the U.S. response.

The progressive firebrand’s public remarks are the latest in a series of condemnations against Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces, as Palestinian protesters have been participating in a series of protests at the Israel-Gaza border since March.

So far only a handful of Democratic representatives in the House have joined Sanders in strongly condemning the violence. In the Senate, the response has been characterized by either silence or unlikely praise for the Trump administration.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement on Monday. Schumer applauded Trump for his decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that played a major role in sparking the protests.

Sanders’ response might appear in keeping with the socialist senator’s record of taking positions far to the left of his Democratic colleagues. But his recent emphasis on and attention to the issue marks a major turn from his position as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

In April of that year Sanders’ campaign hired Simone Zimmerman, a founding member of the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow to be his campaign’s Jewish outreach coordinator. But shortly after that decision, the campaign fired Zimmerman when it was revealed that she had written a 2015 Facebook post condemning IDF violence. In the post, she attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by saying, “Fuck you, Bibi.”

The incident was representative of what many anti-occupation activists saw as the Sanders campaign’s attempt to try and align the candidate with the anti-occupation movement while not engaging with the issue on a level that could exact a political toll further down the line.

Zimmerman, who now lives in Tel Aviv, said in an interview with Micthat Sanders’ new energy around the subject has given her a new sense of optimism about the future.

“Seeing Sen. Sanders come out and lead out front on this issue is of course personally vindicating, but has more importantly given myself and others a sense of hope,” Zimmerman said.

With just seven months until the November midterms, the movement to put progressives in power has largely been about which candidates will face Republicans to take back the House. But in one of the country’s most deeply Democratic districts in Hawaii, candidates are jockeying to define what it means to represent the left of the American left.

Five candidates are vying for the Democratic nomination in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District to fill the seat currently held by Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who declined to seek re-election in order to run for governor. (Republicans have yet to declare a candidate in the district.)

The open race to replace Hanabusa in an election year many believe could bring a Democratic wave represents a major opportunity to elect a new standard-bearer for progressives in Congress. Though it was briefly represented by a Republican after a special election in 2010, Hawaii’s 1st District has a reputation as safe Democratic territory. Hillary Clinton won the district by more than 30 percentage points in 2016.

Kaniela Ing, a 29-year-old progressive state representative and the youngest legislator to hold a leadership position, is determined to not let that opportunity be wasted on a more centrist candidate.

“We’ve been so solidly Democratic for so many years, multinational corporations like Monsanto or industry developers like Howard Hughes or defense contractors who would normally support Republicans are forced to support Democrats financially,” Ing said while describing the state of Hawaii politics. “One can argue that because we’re so solidly Democratic, our Democratic Party is more conservative than anywhere else.”

(Hawaii state Rep. Kaniela Ing speaks at a public meeting about labor conditions for foreign fishermen in Hawaii’s commercial fleet.)

Ing, a Native Hawaiian and self-described Democratic socialist, is running for Congress in Hawaii’s 1st District on a bold progressive and populist platform — and he believes his background and community ties make him the best candidate to represent those values.

Ing is one of four children born to a working-class Hawaiian family. His father, a hotel waiter, died unexpectedly when he was 11, leaving only his mother, a Macy’s suit clerk, to provide for him and three his siblings. Ing recalled watching his mother skip meals to ensure her kids were fed; when he was older, he worked in some of the island’s most physically demanding jobs to help her make ends meet.

“My first job, I had to work in the pineapple fields from 4 a.m. with two water breaks,” Ing said. “It’s still hard to talk about that. ... You had to wear these gloves and put this T-shirt around your face like a ninja under your safety glasses, just to not die from the pesticides. You’re just walking through the muddy fields and [duck walking] the whole time, chasing this machine to make sure you’re keeping up.”

His time in the fields gave him a greater appreciation for the state’s many low-income workers, many of whom spend their entire lives in those jobs. That period in his life, he said, helped him better understand the importance of the social safety net programs that helped his family survive.

“I relied on Medicaid, free school lunch, Social Security, supplemental income or disability — pretty much every program,” Ing said. “At the time, we needed help, a lot of help, from our teachers, our community and these programs that were a gift.”

Ing wants to expand such programs in the 1st District and believes his presence in the race is already pushing his opponents left on key progressive issues, like single-payer health care. He’s also joined the growing chorus of progressive candidates calling for a radical restructuring of America’s immigration system. Congress should work to either abolish or defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said.

“I was one of the first to come out in support of abolishing or defunding ICE,” Ing said. “I don’t know why people think that’s a radical stance. It’s as radical as having some American Gestapo, breaking into people’s families, homes in the middle of the night and separating parents from their kids.”

In addition to his unabashedly progressive platform, Ing hasn’t shied away from addressing issues of race and ethnicity in the state. He’s using his Hawaiian name, “Kaniela,” in campaign materials instead of “Mark,” his legal first name.

Less than a week after President Donald Trump gave his State of the Union address touting the strength of the American economy under his presidency, the stock market saw one of its worst trading days in recent history, with stocks falling by about 1,175 points.

With the markets in turmoil and the fate of the U.S. economy under Trump looking more uncertain than ever, a new report has given lawmakers an easy guide on how to alleviate the economic pressure on 44 million Americans, while also lowering unemployment and growing the economy with one painfully simple policy. The answer: cancel all student debt.

A report from a group of economists at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College finds that there would be huge benefits if the federal government were to forgive all existing student debt. This would ripple out from young people struggling to pay off massive college loans to the economy as a whole, according to the report.

“The idea of canceling student debt is not just some crazy idea out of left field, but is actually something that could be done, and done in a way that has a moderately positive economic impact,” Marshall Steinbaum, a fellow and research director at the Roosevelt Institute and a coauthor of the report said in an interview.

“The way this and similar polices are often discussed is in a mode of ‘well can we really afford this?’ and the answer is definitely yes,” he added.

The report finds that canceling all student debt would likely lead to an increase in U.S. GDP between $861 billion and $1,083 billion over the course of 10 years. It would also lead to an increase of 1.18 to 1.55 million additional new jobs over the same period — that’s about 50% to 70% more jobs per year compared to an average of recent years.

This new analysis comes at a time when more than 44 million American have a collective $1.3 trillion in student debt — higher than both auto U.S. debt and credit card debt.

At the same time, the Trump education department has worked against student debt activists by suspending loan forgiveness applications for more than 65,000 borrowers who claim they were defrauded into taking out high cost loans by predatory for-profit schools. Prior to taking office, Trump settled a lawsuit over his for-profit educational institution, Trump University, which was accused of defrauding students across the country.

“What our report shows is that you get a greater macro economics impact, bigger bang for the buck, and that student debt cancellation has about half the budgetary effect of the Trump tax cuts.”

The report also finds that total loan forgiveness would cost the U.S. government approximately $1.4 trillion over the course of 10 years — a number that is almost exactly the same as what the CBO recently projected the Republican’s new tax bill would cost.

But researchers said that the positive impacts of canceling student debt would likely be more broadly felt than those of the tax bill.