Blog
Make the Road New Jersey (MRNJ) won a significant victory this April when the New Jersey state legislature approved legislation that will give equal access to financial aid to undocumented and DACA-mented students. Thousands of young people who call New Jersey home will have a fair chance at going to college and pursuing their dreams.
At a moment when the Trump administration has launched unprecedented attacks on immigrant youth, young people in New Jersey are standing up and fighting back for their dignity and their future. MRNJ youth leaders have waged months of unprecedented action since the end of DACA in September, including a Thanksgiving-week hunger strike, civil disobedience, mobilizing 1,000 people to a statewide day of action on March 5 and dozens of rallies and sit-ins. This federal fight back has helped spark the effort to make New Jersey the ninth state to extend access to state financial aid to immigrant students – and the first in the Trump era. MRNJ also gives credit to and is grateful for its core coalition partners, including Wind of the Spirit, the ACLU of New Jersey, New Jersey Policy Perspective, the Latino Action Network and many more who have fought tirelessly to open the doors to education for Dreamers.
Of the financial aid bill, MRNJ youth leader Erika Martinez wrote, in a recent OpEd in the Bergen Record: “This legislation has given the Dreamers of New Jersey hope that if the federal government won’t give us an equal opportunity to persevere with our peers, our own lawmakers in this state will stand up and fight with us… We know we will get through these dark years and fight our hardest. In the meantime, I want to go to college and finish my education. When I graduate, I hope to live in a country that will finally welcome me.”
The bill now goes to Governor Murphy's desk to be signed into law, and Make the Road youth leaders are planning a comprehensive community outreach campaign to get the word out to Dreamers before the financial aid deadline closes in September. Please chip in to support MRNJ Youth Power organizing committee and to launch an outreach campaign to immigrant students by making a donation here.
On the 7 month anniversary of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rican communities held rallies across the country and pressured elected officials to support the housing needs of displaced or homeless families, many of whom are facing eviction or the expiration of their FEMA hotel vouchers, leaving families and students with nowhere to go.
On April 19 and 20, community-based organizations including Make the Roads from New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, New York Communities for Change and Organize Florida hosted press conferences, rallies, and lawmaker office visits to push FEMA to extend aid to displaced families and press local governments to provide resettlement support including housing.
Thousands of Puerto Rican families came to the United States seeking shelter after Hurricane María destroyed tens of thousands of homes on the island, and many others are still fleeing as the humanitarian crisis worsens. Many of those families now on the mainland are still struggling to find a home and are still waiting for the island to recover. Many have nowhere to go and FEMA hotel vouchers are about to expire for hundreds of families. FEMA has failed these families by threatening to cut funding for housing and providing little to no support for these families to relocate.
At the same time, states like Connecticut and New Jersey have introduced legislation to support families, including funding for housing and legislation condemning the foreclosure of homes on the island. Groups will advocate for these and other states to expand and introduce measures to assist Puerto Rican families fleeing the humanitarian crisis.
In recent years, billionaire pharmaceutical executives and hedge fund managers have made billions in profit by creating, feeding, and treating a crisis of opioid addiction in the United States.As the opioid crisis has turned into a full-blown national public health epidemic, CPD’s Opioid Network, in partnership with Hedge Clippers and P.A.I.N., traveled to Washington, DC on April 26 to take action and address the current overdose crisis.
The action convened in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute with famed photographer Nan Goldin and dozens of drug user activists from CPD affiliates including: Arkansas Community Organization, Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement, Action NC, Hoosier Action, Maryland Communities United, and Rights and Democracy VT & NH. After the action, the group held a press conference and lobby day on Capitol Hill to lift up newly introduced legislation from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings called the CARE Act that the CPD Opioid Network helped to create and advance.
CPD’s Opioid Network formally launched in November of 2017 and has organized our affiliates, harm reduction activists, labor organizers, academics and allies who are interested in ending the current overdose crisis. This network includes people who use drugs, people who suffer with pain, family members who have lost a loved one to overdose, medical providers, activists, and allies. The Opioid Network insists that this epidemic is a political crisis that is a direct result of our inadequate healthcare system. This crisis is further exacerbated by the longstanding policies that view substance use disorder as an issue easily addressed with law enforcement solutions. We stand firm that the provision of more and better healthcare is the only effective solution to opioid crisis.
Since its launch, the Opioid Network has continued to meet weekly and in in-person strategy sessions. The network chose to focus its advocacy on the following goals:
- As the cornerstone of substance use treatment, prevention and services, Medicaid funding must be preserved, expanded and increased.
- As the public health crisis of our time, the Opioid Epidemic requires a comprehensive public health approach that empowers the people directly impacted to make the decisions about where funding goes. Increased funding for or policies that strengthen law enforcement increase the rates of overdose and are not helpful. An important example for such comprehensive legislation that creates "planning councils" where the people directly impacted are deciding how to use the funding is the Ryan White CARE Act.
- Producers of opiates, such as Purdue Pharmaceuticals, should contribute towards the cost of this public health crisis. Congress should include a "windfall tax" on profits made by producers to help fund comprehensive legislation.
- The Opioid Network provides a place for organizations and activists to strategize and support each other to pass state and perhaps even regional campaigns for effective public health solutions such as widespread access to Naloxone, clean syringes, Medicated Assisted Treatment and safe consumption sites. These solutions should be expanded in every state.
Last week, the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, Enlace International, and the Strong Economy for All Coalition released a report, “Bankrolling Oppression: How Wall Street Corporations Finance the Private Prison and Immigrant Detention Industry.” This report investigates the influential role that major Wall Street corporations - including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and BlackRock - play in maintaining and expanding the private prison and immigrant detention industry. As the Trump administration advances a “law and order” agenda and anti-immigrant policies, private prison companies are taking advantage of new opportunities to benefit from potential increases in incarceration and detention rates. Companies like JPMorgan, Wells, and BlackRock, are ready and willing to finance their operations and expansion, regardless of the cost in human suffering.
Specifically, the report shows that:
- After Trump’s election, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and BlackRock saw a significant in shares in the private prison and immigrant detention industry. Comparing stock holdings now to those before the election, JPMorgan, Wells, and BlackRock’s shares in the private prison and detention industry have collectively increased 28.3 times.
- GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private prison companies, have borrowed billions of dollars from corporations like JPMorgan, Wells, and BlackRock to maintain and expand their facilities. At the end of 2017, nine of every ten dollars CoreCivic had on hand were borrowed. For GEO Group, it was nineteen of every twenty dollars.
- In exchange for funding private prisons, Wall Street banks earn hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and fees. In 2017, lenders earned $217.5 million in interest.
Executives of Wells, JPMorgan, and BlackRock have publicly articulated a commitment to human rights, social responsibility, and the welfare of immigrants, and yet their financial entanglements clearly indicate otherwise. By continuing to finance the debts that enable GEO Group and CoreCivic to operate and expand, and by continuing to invest in the industry, these companies are facilitating the abuses of the private prison and detention industry—and, by extension, the hateful policies of the Trump administration. Read the full report on our website.
Wall Street is taking over America’s biggest employers and bankrupting them – destroying jobs and hurting local economies. When Toys R Us recently announced it would close all of its US stores and lay off 30,000 workers, CPD’s Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI) and CPD affiliate Organization United for Respect (OUR) jumped into action. OUR is supporting thousands of Toys R Us workers across the country whose families are in crisis facing these layoffs. We are calling for severance pay and calling on members of Congress to prevent this happening to other hard-working people in retail.
More than 27,000 supporters have already signed petitions to get severance from Toys R Us’ private equity owners – KKR and Bain Capital who raked in hundreds of millions while workers are left empty-handed. Together with progressive elected leaders, we are working with our network and other advocacy organizations, including Make the Road NJ, Good Jobs Now MI, Hedge Clippers, and Strong Economy for All Coalition, on a number of strategic actions to lift up workers’ voices and to call for justice for workers hurt by Wall Street greed. Since Toys R Us announced its closure, stories from OUR worker leaders have made headlines in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Reuters.
We are also working with partners and allies around the country to escalate the public debate over unregulated Wall Street speculation and its role fueling economic instability in our communities. Standing with Toys R Us workers, we are promoting a bold policy and regulatory agenda that holds Wall Street accountable for itsexplosive profits at the expense of workers. It’s not good for our economy when Wall Street owns America’s biggest employers – and chooses short-term profits instead of creating jobs for working families.
What happened at Toys R Us? Contrary to popular narratives of pressure from Amazon and changing habits of millennial shoppers, the so-called “retail apocalypse” is a Wall Street-made disaster. Toys R Us is the third largest bankruptcy in US history, despite $11 billion in profits. In 2005, private equity firms Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust bought Toys R Us in a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout through which they saddled the toy seller with a reported $5 billion debt. Despite solid profits, Toys R Us had struggled to service this overwhelming debt and, on March 15, announced plans for liquidation. More than 30,000 working people across the country will lose their jobs in the coming weeks.
Who is hurt by the “retail apocalypse”? Private equity buyout deals like what happened with KKR and Bain with Toys R Us account for over 130,000 jobs lost in the last 2 years. Women are paying the biggest price, facing the vast majority of this mass job loss. A retail rust belt is emerging in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where vulnerable communities with embattled economies feel the greatest pain from shuttered storefronts - losing both jobs and a vital commercial tax base.
Now is the moment where we can come together to support Toys R Us workers in their movement for justice. Stand with Toy R Us families by signing this petition for severance pay, and join us in moving Congress to stop the “retail apocalypse” by holding Wall Street accountable.
Young people in Milwaukee, led by a youth organizing group, Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT), launched a campaign last week calling on the city’s public school district to radically rethink and change its approach to school policing and discipline. LIT developed their Youth Power Agenda, which calls for the removal of metal detectors and police officers in schools and more investments for teachers, social workers, guidance counselors, and jobs programs. You can support their platform by signing on here!
The campaign comes as Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) move to implement a resolution agreement from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to change their policies after an investigation revealed racial disparities in discipline. In the 2016-2017 school year, 80 percent of the students MPS suspended were Black, while they make up only 53 percent of the student population.
The systemic criminalization of youth of color, youth with disabilities, and youth of color with disabilities in schools is one of the most egregious examples of structural racism and violence in this country. The presence of police officers, guns, handcuffs, and metal detectors in schools creates hostile teaching and learning environments that are reinforced by harsh, punitive, and exclusionary school discipline policies. LIT aims to end this oppressive system in Milwaukee.
The pressure is already working. After the launch of a petition that generated over a thousand emails to the school board and a press conference outside the school board meeting, the district agreed to hold six public meetings on the DOE agreement.
This campaign comes as young people across the nation face an onslaught of proposals that aim to reconstruct the school-to-prison pipeline by effectively militarizing schools with armed teachers, police officers, and metal detectors. This campaign, along with similar ones in New York and cities across the country, seek to underline how such policies disproportionately affect students of color. There is a better way. Policy makers must listen to young people by following the Youth Power Agenda and other proposals like it that can pave a new national model for school safety, centered on support like guidance counselors, support services, and restorative justice, rather than criminalization.
On March 15, CPD Wisconsin affiliate Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) moderated a conversation with Former Attorney General Eric Holder about the importance of redistricting and the upcoming WI Supreme Court race. BLOC has been working with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee for the last several months.
Over 60 people joined BLOC’s Angela Lang and Holder to discuss the significance of redistricting, particularly to African American communities, and what is at stake in the upcoming state Supreme Court race this fall. General Holder mentioned the importance of supporting groups like BLOC and talking to people about elevating our collective voices in the political process, no matter how difficult it may feel. BLOC was able to spend a few minutes talking to the Attorney General about the work they are accomplishing on the ground, and stories from the community.
Watch the event livestream on BLOC’s Facebook page, and read about it in the Milwaukee Courier, CBS, and WPR.
CPD’s newest initiative, the State Power Project (SPP), is designed to build the grassroots organizational strength of nine state affiliates by engaging and recruiting the public to join as members and engage in individual and collective action. The program launched in LA last month, working with our Sustainability Initiative to train these CPD affiliates to build field membership and canvass programs that will recruit new members and raise essential funding. Organizers came to LA from New Florida Majority, Good Jobs Now, Organize Florida, LUCHA, Make the Road Nevada and Make the Road PA, One PA, New Virginia Majority, Maryland Communities United, Action NC, and CASA (MD, VA, PA).
In it’s next phase, SPP partnered with our Organizing & Capacity Building team to train affiliate staff in essential organizing skills from March 21-23. Twenty organizers and nine supervisors from Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina participated in the three-day training in Phoenix, AZ, home of CPD partner and SPP participant - LUCHA.
Trainees developed essential organizing skills, including how to follow up with leads and how to conduct one-on-one meetings to deepen their activism and turn them into leaders. The training, led by CPD national staff, also focused on the use of a new organizing database created specifically to support CPDs SPP program.
On March 5, the CPD Network joined United We Dream, the Women’s March, and a number of other groups to organize a mass march and act of civil disobedience in Washington, DC. It was the self-imposed deadline for a crisis that President Trump created six months ago when he ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and left hundreds of thousands of young immigrants living in uncertainty – wondering if they will lose their jobs, have to dropout of school, be torn away from their families or uprooted from their home. Trump gave Congress until March 5 to solve this crisis and then – along with Republican Congressional leaders – sabotaged any bipartisan effort to pass the Dream Act.
Rallying behind a banner that read: “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t realize we were seeds,” a thousand immigrant youth and allies marched to the Capitol to denounce Trump’s political games and to demand that Congress take action to protect young immigrants – without harming their families or other members of the immigrant community – and reject Trump’s demands to fund a racist border wall and his mass deportation agenda. Nearly 100 people were arrested during acts of civil disobedience in the streets in front of the Capitol and in visits to offices of Members of Congress. The action made headlines in ABC News, NBC News, Univision, NPR, Associated Press, CNN, and Arizona Republic, among other local outlets. For real-time action, watch the event livestreams on BuzzFeed and Time.
CPD affiliates traveled from all over the country to participate in the DC action, including NYCC, Make the Road Nevada, LUCHA, Action NC, Sunflower, and Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement. Immigrant youth and families were joined by faith leaders, healthcare activists, and other allies. Many other CPD affiliates organized powerful local actions around the country. See photos on CPD Action’s Facebook page.
The New York Federal Reserve is choosing the second most influential monetary policymaking position in the country -- arguably the most powerful position in the U.S. that President Trump will not appoint. The next NY Fed President could be our last line of defense against another devastating financial crash, or they could let another one happen. That’s why, on March 12, ten years after one of the worst economic recessions in American history, a coalition of working families, labor leaders, and community organizations, led by CPD’s Fed Up coalition, gathered on Wall Street to tell the NY Fed that they can’t afford another crash.
This action marked the launch of the campaign’s ambitious effort at membership development and popular education, and called on the NY Fed to resist turning to Wall Street in its search for its next president. Using a report titled 10 Years After: the Financial Crisis and the New York Federal Reserve, Fed Up showed the extent of those consequences, examining the lasting impact of the crash in the NY Fed district, finding that more people in the NY Fed district live in poverty today than before the financial crash, while the top one percent of earners have captured a greater share of income.
On March 12, with this context, CPD affiliates SPACES, NYCC, Action NC, Our Walmart, One PA, New Georgia Project, Taller Salud and MORE, joined New Economy Project and New Yorkers still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, including those who lost homes and jobs, to demand the NY Fed prioritize working people over Wall Street interests with its next appointment. In 2008, when the entire financial system was melting down, the NY Fed met behind closed doors to funnel billions to the big banks. Ten years later, the banks are more profitable than ever, but New Yorkers are still living with the consequences.
This week, news broke that San Francisco Fed President John Williams is the frontrunner to become the next NY Fed President -- another white, male, hawkish Wall Street insider. Just days after the announcement, the Fed Up campaign quickly organized resulting in Senator Cory Booker weighing in with an op-ed in Bloomberg, Senator Warren calling for federal hearings on the process, the New York Times calling the process into question, and the Wall Street Journal noting that there was a "degree of public criticism rarely seen in the relatively obscure world of regional central bank chiefs."
Following the public support, Fed Up released an unprecedented compilation of opposition to the NY Fed's process and appointment that included statements from Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, Mayor Bill DeBlasio, 17 members of the New York City Council, 35 local upstate officials, the City Comptroller Stringer, State Comptroller DiNapoli, and four public representatives from within the Federal Reserve system. Reuters described it as "extraordinary public opposition" and Bloomberg described "intense scrutiny from city hall to Capitol Hill."
The Federal Reserve has never seen anything like this -- and it isn't over yet. Take action today and tell the NY Fed to start the process over, listen to the public and appoint a zealous advocate for full employment and a tenacious regulator as president of the New York Fed!
