“Tell me if I’m missing something:” minimum wage a hidden boon for corporate interests (COLUMN)

July 15, 2021July 27, 2021 Eric Puryear

Increasing minimum wage won’t help workers. But it will increase prices, especially for items that those very workers consume. For those people making minimum wage, their real costs of living will stay about the same. But when their salary doubles because of minimum wage, so will the cost of everything they consume. Consider my straightforward reasoning, using the example of a fast food worker making a cheeseburger. A cheeseburger made by someone earning $15 an hour costs more than a cheeseburger made by someone earning $7.25 an hour. The only…

New “Long Live Community!” showcases events, performers, audiences and organizers

June 22, 2021September 19, 2021 Christine Hawes

What’s a great way to honor and inspire community? Showing other communities in action! Long Live Community! is The Real Mainstream‘s new section devoted to pics and videos of intersectional, LGBTQ-affirming and progressive community events across Iowa and Illinois. Our first photo packages are from Davenport, Iowa City and Sioux City in Iowa, and Belleville, Buffalo Grove and Moline in Illinois. Take a peek at the event of your pick: In this new feature, you can submit pics and video of events you attended. You can submit pics and video…

Juneteenth in Davenport (NEW: Long Live Community!)

June 22, 2021July 10, 2021 Christine Hawes

WHAT: Juneteenth Celebration WHERE: Davenport, IA WHO: Black-owned businesses and community groups celebrating the formal abolition of slavery in 1865. Coordinated by the Friends of MLK Davenport. WHEN: June 19, 2021 PHOTOS BY: The Real Mainstream Team

Misguided anti-meth bill has regressive, anti-art, anti-business impacts

March 18, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

Add yet another Republican-driven, over-reaching, and misinformed piece of legislation to the Iowa Legislature’s list of bad ideas this year: a 40 percent tax on glass pipes, plus several more increased costs and licensures. Proposed under the guise of slowing the damage of highly addictive methamphetamine, the bill if passed would instead hurt hundreds of small businesses across the state, opponents say. They predict it would drive out the glass art industry altogether, and further marginalize Iowa in the budding cannabis industry as states around Iowa move toward embracing the…

Groups ramp up, seek help, to fight Iowa’s anti-LGBTQ bills

February 12, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

DES MOINES — If you’d like to join the fight against a rash of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed by Republican state legislators this year, two of Iowa’s leading civil rights groups are providing three chances to get involved within the next week. “Moral Mondays Iowa: The State That Loves to Hate” will feature State Rep. Liz Bennett, D-Cedar Rapids, and leaders of Iowa Safe Schools and One Iowa Action. They’ll educate Iowans Monday on the 14 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year in the Iowa State Legislature. Then, on Wednesday, the One…

Progressive businesses across Iowa buck #COVIDKim, recommit to facial coverings

February 9, 2021April 5, 2021 Christine Hawes

IOWA — Progressive and LGBTQ-identified establishments across Iowa are making their distaste for “#COVIDKim” known by firmly reminding customers: masks and facial coverings, and other common-sense efforts to fight the still-raging coronavirus pandemic, will be followed with or without the governor’s leadership. Entities from Orange City to Des Moines to Iowa City to Davenport are using social media to defy Gov. Kim Reynolds’ decision late last week to end Iowa’s formal coronavirus prevention efforts as of Sunday. More than a dozen entities — many of them LGBTQ-identified bars — are…

“Basic ethical principle that is equally good for everyone” is focus of two-parter

January 14, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

Please partake of the information in this two-part attempt to close out The Real MainStream‘s commentary and analysis on the topics covered below! It’s been a tough conversation, but one focused (as the “Careless Whispers” blog states) on “a basic ethical principle that is equally good for everyone, including you.” Links provided: “Iowa City, Put Down Those Pitchforks:” Original Jan. 9 editorial Also, for broader context about The Real MainStream, here are links to other recent articles about other topics: • “Kindness Queers,” “queerantine kits” provide relief to LGBTQIA youth…

Konnexion controversy: Just the facts!

January 13, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

UPDATED JAN. 15: See end of piece for additional Fact #7 We’ll keep this brief: Facts only! Below are six essential facts that hopefully put the Konnexion controversy to bed, once and for all. In addition, we are blanking out the names of all posters in these screen shots, to protect their privacy and to shield them from undue embarrassment. #1: Stucker shared her actual reason for being in Washington, D.C., in a text with her friend three days before the insurrection. “I’m going on my own to protest the…

EDITORIAL: Iowa City, let go of your witch hunt ways

January 9, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

I love how the universe works. Just the other day, over the holidays, I took the time to watch “Richard Jewell.” It’s a movie about the over-zealous, low-self-esteem, naive 30-ish guy whose unusual personal views left him the perfect target to be accused of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing from which he actually saved scores of people. Jewell was manipulated by law enforcement and mistreated by the media; the very cops he idolized and cared for turned on him publicly as an easy scapegoat. We have a slight parallel developing…

Fresh Feel Fade team brings family feel to contemporary style

January 5, 2021May 6, 2021 Christine Hawes

IOWA CITY – When Johanna Lopez-Velador began receiving chemotherapy in November and needed to accept the temporary loss of all her hair, she knew where to turn. Johanna and her wife Karla immediately texted Angie Corbin and Molly Quast at Fresh Feel Fade Salon and Spa, where they’d been clients for three years. Corbin handled the administrative side, finding an immediate opening somewhere in the packed schedule of her wife Molly Quast, the haircut and color guru behind Fresh Feel Fade. On the big day, Lopez-Velador said, Quast gently walked…