At Colorlines, Seth Freed Wessler uncovers illegal employment practices at many fast-food restaurants, and the underpaid workers who suffer the consequences.  The U.S. Department of Labor found a couple years ago that 40 percent of fast food outposts in the country fail to consistently pay their employees a minimum wage or overtime. And a recent study from New York…

Colorlines‘ Seth Freed Wessler weighs in on the latest troubling comments from Republican Sen. Charles Grassley that confuse the two issues. As news from Boston continues to break, the Senate Judiciary Committee moved ahead this morning with a hearing on the comprehensive immigration reform bill introduced earlier in the week. As I noted after the…

Living life always looking over your shoulder has become a way of life for many New York Muslims, writes Seth Freed Wessler at Colorlines. Police officials have denied the human impact of the surveillance, claiming that because it was conducted in secret, it didn’t affect people’s day-to-day activities. But many of the Muslims quoted in…

If Latino Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is the one promoting a Tea Party idea, does that automatically mean the policy is helpful to Latinos en masse? Not according to Colorlines contributor Seth Freed Wessler, who writes that the deciding factor is reality, not rhetoric. “My parents immigrated here in pursuit of the opportunity to improve their…

As President Obama pushes his gun reform, many in the field of mental-health care worry about how the changes will affect their patients, writes Seth Freed Wessler on Colorlines. Advocates for people with mental illness find themselves in a bind: on the one hand attempting to fend off the blind conflation of people with mental…