Blog
At the start of October, CPD’s Justice Transformation team held the first ever ‘Freedom Lab’ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In partnership with Law for Black Lives and Policy Link, the two day event brought together CPD affiliates and allies, including including BLOC, LIT and the Liberate MKE campaign––which is calling for a $20 million divestment from the police department and investment into community priorities.
Nearly 25 organizers from Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, and Detroit joined us to discuss challenges, opportunities, and lessons from ongoing and anticipated campaigns to demand municipalities shift resources away from policing and prisons towards community investments in health and well-being.
Attendees discussed city budget analysis, and had a fishbowl conversation about campaign experiences––in which LIT staff masterfully presented their recent victory at the Milwaukee school board redirecting money from school-policing to trauma care. They did a deep dive into communications strategies, engaged with electoral politics/elected officials, and facilitated breakout sessions on lobbying, storytelling, participatory democracy, budgeting, and power mapping; a visual tool used by social advocates to identify the best individuals to target to promote social change.
Together they developed a range of budgetary, campaign, narrative, organizing resources and tools to share together, with the anticipation of creating a more robust toolkit for affiliates and allies to use in their localities. The CPD Network will continue it’s vital work to end discriminatory and oppressive policies that marginalize Black people and other communities of color and we cannot do this work alone. Please make a donation to support this important work today!
For more than three decades, Black and Latinx young people, parents, educators, and communities have organized to dismantle the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline. Ahead of the 2020 election, Black and Brown young people across the country are demanding that those running to be the next president listen and engage with them on critical education and racial justice issues. Youth leaders are seeking a firm commitment from candidates to permanently dismantle the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline by signing on to the Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates: Permanently Dismantle the School-to-Prison-and-Deportation Pipeline (referred to as the Youth Mandate).
The eight-page political mandate, which was developed by the youth organizers and youth leaders at our sister organization CPD Action, and the Alliance for Educational Justice outlines transformative, anti-racist policies to guide the nation towards building supportive and inclusive learning environments for all students and families. It also seeks to redress the harm created by past policies. It has been endorsed by 130 youth-led organizations and allies across the country.
Among its key demands, the mandate calls for divesting from police and criminalizing infrastructures in schools, strengthening students’ civil rights, and ending the private takeover of the school system. It also builds on a growing grassroots movement calling for the repeal and replacement of the 1994 Crime Bill, which gave way to the largest source of direct federal dollars to put police in schools.
“When I go to school it’s not a welcoming place. There are security guards rushing us through metal detectors. It makes the day start off really badly. This is my education, I shouldn’t have to feel like this. I wish I could feel happy walking through the doors every day like students in the more white suburban districts probably feel,” said Saniya B., a 16-year-old youth leader with Leaders Igniting Transformation in Milwaukee, WI. “Young people coming together can really change things. I just turned sixteen this week and I am already making my voice heard. I need a President who will listen to young people like me and makes sure we end the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline now.”
The Youth Mandate represents a critical opportunity for candidates to engage young people from across the country who comprise a growing share of the electorate that feels unrepresented. Youth are looking for an acknowledgment from candidates that they understand how young people of color in the United States experience our systems and institutions differently because of our racial identity and because of the foundational racism of this country. This means that candidates need to proactively talk about race and institutional racism in all its forms.
“Youth of color are running a race for a better life, but the way schools treat us keeps us ten steps behind,” said Aryana Brown, Fellow at Florida Student Power Network. ”This Youth Mandate should be read by each candidate because it’s time for students of color to be heard. It presents the true facts about the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline. It asks those seeking office, ‘Will you stop the practice of criminalizing schools? And, what are you going to do to fix the broken education system?’”
The mandate lays the groundwork for centering youth voices in places that are already key political battlefields in the 2020 presidential race. The groups are slated to host candidates in upcoming roundtables and direct engagements on the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline over the next couple months. Read and share the full youth mandate here
Local Progress (LP), a movement of local elected officials advancing a racial and economic justice agenda through all levels of local government, held its first convening on Housing Justice in Durham, North Carolina in October. Nearly 50 LP members from Spokane, WA, and Berkeley, CA, to Portland, ME, Austin, TX, and dozens of localities in between, came together for two days of transformative learning and community building with CPD staff and other local electeds across the country.
Our homes are the foundations for our lives. They are gathering spots, and places where we recharge, and connect with ourselves and our families. But too many people are forced to lay their foundation on shaky ground. Because of outrageous rent hikes, poorly-maintained and underfunded public housing, racial segregation of neighborhoods, increasing urban displacement, and corporate tax and land giveaways, more and more people in this country lack a home to thrive. CPD and our network of state-based affiliates are leading local, state, and federal campaigns to challenge the racist and corporate roots of our housing system, and build a model that works for us all. In the absence of federal leadership, it is local leaders who are at the forefront of ensuring that housing is a human right.
These elected officials took on challenging conversations about how often they find themselves in the crossfire of local fights on zoning and development, and how they work to navigate and address the tensions, pressures, and challenges directly experienced by residents. They discussed the need to produce new affordable housing and preserve existing homes, address a shortage of housing, and the growing need to confront exclusionary zoning. They also talked about the need to pair growth with much stronger, durable protections for existing tenants and homeowners to combat evictions and displacement.
On a broader level, LP members discussed how to can take advantage of the current political moment: a presidential contest in which candidates and members of Congress are beginning to talk about housing as a right.
Leaving Durham, their vision is straightforward and powerful. LP members want their communities to be at the forefront of redefining what it means to have an affordable, dignified home. At CPD, we believe housing is the bedrock of making communities safe and ensuring that all communities have e freedom to thrive. As elected officials, their role is to ensure that growth advances our values and happens with community at the center. Please make a donation to support the critical work today.
During the summer of 2016, residents of South Shore and Woodlawn, two historically disinvested Black communities in Chicago, learned the Obama Presidential Center would be built on land adjacent to their neighborhoods. Familiar with the potential risks of displacement and gentrification that all too often come from such high-profile developments, the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) went to work with two partner organizations to co-found the Obama Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) Coalition.
The CBA Coalition effectively spent the last three years engaging and activating their members around this issue––resulting in the political will and public support to introduce a city ordinance. The ordinance seeks to immediately address the rampant displacement of low-income and working families from these communities as a result of ongoing real estate speculation. Through this campaign, KOCO has built a dynamic coalition, and are identifying and igniting new leaders while growing their base of supporters – 91% of impacted residents voted in favor of the ordinance through a local referendum.
KOCO’s fight has just begun. The CBA ordinance currently sits within the Housing Committee of Chicago’s City Council, chaired by Alderman Harry Osterman, whose ward sits nearly 20 miles away from the impacted community. Despite 29 aldermen signing-on in support with 26 votes required for passage Alderman Osterman refuses to follow the council’s democratic process and allow a committee hearing or vote to enable the ordinance.
KOCO has no choice but to keep the pressure on Alderman Osterman and solidify support from the mayor’s office. Securing this victory, will allow thousands of vulnerable residents in these communities, including senior citizens and single moms to stay in their homes, and set an important precedent for how development should take place in low-income and working communities to protect residents from displacement.
Stand with this important campaign by following the coalition’s progress on twitter @ObamaCBA. You can also take action and tell Alderman Osterman to stop withholding democracy for the residents of South Shore and Woodlawn by tweeting your message to @48Ward.
Finally, none of this work would be possible without support from people like you! Please make a $10 donation to this campaign today and support KOCO’s fight for keep people in their homes!
Since the election of Donald Trump, immigrant communities have come under repeated attacks across the country. After a series of executive orders aimed at restricting legal immigration and expanding deportations, the announcement that the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program–– which provided temporary relief for over 800,000 immigrant youth––would be discontinued, came as a major blow on September 5, 2017. It was followed in quick succession by announcements of TPS (Temporary Protected Status) cancellation of effectively rescinding temporary legal status given to over 200,000 people from specific countries in central america, africa, and the carribean after natural disasters - some of them for more than 20 years. Over one million immigrants could stand to lose hard fought temporary legal status and work authorization in this country.
On top of this, the Trump administration attempted to further drive immigrants into the shadows by threatening to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, threatening to restrict access to legal immigration for those working class families who might be deemed a "public charge," and funnelled money into private prison industries by scaling up detention for families, children, recent border crossers, and anyone else possible.
At CASA, these repeated attacks were devastating to their membership of 100,000 ––the vast majority of them first generation immigrants. But CASA members are resilient by nature and fought back, returning to the nation’s capital over a dozen times in 2017 to rally, march, and protest. They fought back at the ballot box, registering thousands of voters in 2018 and mobilizing Latinx voters across their locale. And they fought back in the courts, filing five lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Leading the marches and suing in court were powerful working class immigrants. CASA members like Maya Ledezma; a leadership council member, Mexican immigrant, and small business-owner from Riverdale, MD who was deposed in CASA's lawsuit against the administration for pushing the citizenship question on the census. On June 27, 2019 the Supreme Court decided not to erase millions of immigrants across the country in the upcoming 2020 census––a major victory for Maya, CASA, and millions of other immigrants across the country.
Misael Garcia, a longtime CASA member, DACA holder and teaching assistant in Baltimore, MD, had just become a new dad weeks before the program was cancelled and decided to join CASA's lawsuit against the Trump Administration to preserve DACA. He was thrilled to be seated in the gallery at the House of Representatives when legislation was passed that would provide a permanent path to citizenship for millions of DACA holders like him.
Now, without a senate vote, TPS and DACA continue to hang in the balance, and federal courts will make important decisions in the next few months. The 9th circuit is expected to rule this fall on the fate of TPS, and the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the termination of DACA in November. Learn more and join CASA in their work here!
On October 22, the Milwaukee Public School Board of School Directors held a public hearing on a proposed $217,600 contract with ADANI Systems, Inc. that would provide airport-style x-ray machines in more than a dozen Milwaukee public high schools.
Following months of pressure and advocacy, LIT mobilized to make sure youth voices were heard at the hearing. They had more than 15 young people testify at the hearing, helping drive home the fact that the contract that would further criminalize students of color and highlighting the lack of evidence showing metal detectors do anything to make schools safer. They conveyed that what is truly needed is investments in trauma-informed schools and mental health care.
via @LITMKE
In a letter to addressed to the Board’s Committee on Accountability, Fiance, and Personnel in the final hours before the vote, LIT stressed:
“The x-ray machines from ADANI Systems, and ones like it, are part of a larger trend of policing Black and Brown young people across the nation and often result in students being funneled into the criminal legal system rather than a learning environment. The first two types of clients ADANI Systems markets its X-Ray screening equipment to are Prisons and Correctional Facilities, and Customs and Border Crossings. Authorizing the contract allowing for the purchase and maintenance of these machines will further a racist system of school security and companies profiting off of public fear for children’s safety without providing honest solutions.
via @LITMKE
Not only is policing and punitive discipline ineffective and discriminatory it is also an incredibly expensive drain on public funds that could be used to fund supports and resources for young people... While X-ray machines, surveillance cameras, and more policing perpetuate the school-to-prison-and- deportation pipeline, studies have shown that the best way to ensure school safety is to create an inclusive learning environment where students can grow."
The group also garnered support from advocates across the country, including Dr. Rosalind Osgood, a Broward County School Board member and Local Progress member in Florida, who penned a powerful letter to the school board on their behalf.
via @LITMKE
After their press conference and testimony, the Committee voted NO on the proposed contract!
As LIT celebrates this incredible victory, they’re also prepared to continue the long fight. There is still a deeply seeded school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline in Milwaukee that must be dismantled.
LIT also recently endorsed the Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates, calling on presidential hopefuls to commit and take concrete steps to permanently dismantling the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline. In the coming months, LIT will continue working with CPD, other CPD affiliates and movement leaders to engage with presidential hopefuls on the issue at a national level.
Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) is a youth of color-led organization focused on developing the leadership of young people through civic engagement and advocacy to create political power that meets the needs of young people. LIT believes MPS students of color face MPS’ challenges most directly and therefore have the best solutions. Back in July, they also achieved a $600,000 divestment from police and school security into funds that now support six new mental health positions focused on trauma-informed care.
From September 9-13, the CPD Network held a week of action to Welcome Back Congress from its summer recess. Birddoggers and CPD affiliate members from over 20 states greeted elected officials as they arrived at the airport to demand that they move on legislation we need in this country, advocated for affordable housing, protested the nomination of more ultraconservative judges, and put their bodies on the line for criminal justice reform. The key message: Members of Congress must work for the people who elected them to office. These series of actions made headlines in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Reuters, Curbed, NowThis, The Huffington Post, Newsweek and many more.
A few key highlights from the week of action include:
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CPD affiliates gathered with over 300 people to attend a hearing on housing policy. After, activists and tenants visited the offices of some of Congress’s worst perpetrators of the affordable housing crisis. More recently, presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced his housing platform that is largely based on the federal housing platform that CPD affiliates spent over a year crafting. A few days following Sanders’ announcement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced A Just Society legislation to Congress which includes CPD’s historic housing bill that, among other provisions, calls for the Federal government to implement universal rent control for the first time since World War I and for a massive investment in affordable housing.
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Hundreds joined CPD affiliates to read from Ady Barkan’s book, Eyes to the Wind, in several offices of progressive Congressional members and senators, including Elizabeth Warren’s and Sanders’s offices. The group delivered thank you letters from Ady for its support of his healthcare and financial reform activism and asked those who have not signed on to Medicare for All to do so. Activists also shared their own stories of battling an ineffective and unaffordable healthcare system.
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Immigration activists from Make the Road NY, PA, NV, and CT all lobbied their members of Congress followed by a visit to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters to protest and share stories of family separation. The group then made its way to the home of Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, to shut down the street, deliver him flowers, and demand that he stop supporting ICE.
The CPD Network is gearing up for more sustained action throughout the remainder of the year and leading into 2020. Our communities are on the front lines of the fight to legislate a progressive agenda that can create needed structural change in our country and motivate people to engage civically. From immigration justice to workers’ rights, universal healthcare to affordable housing, climate justice to justice transformation, CPD’s affiliates and allies will not stop until our federal agenda becomes reality. Please make a donation now to support this critical work.
In 2017, CPD launched the María Fund (MF) to provide emergency funding to Puerto Ricans devastated by Hurricane María and raised over $7 million to help community-based groups. Earlier this year, the MF Advisory Committee, MF staff, Puerto Rico affiliate Taller Salud, and CPD leadership met to celebrate the accomplishments of the fund and to discuss its future. There, a decision was made to transform the fund from a short-term project housed at CPD to a stand-alone, Puerto Rico-based, permanent organization—a long-term resource mobilization vehicle for the Puerto Rican people.
The fund was launched in partnership with, and at the request of Puerto Rico CPD affiliate Taller Salud, and allies on the ground in Puerto Rico on the anniversary of the day that Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico. Their vision was to build the kind of fund that’s desperately needed in moments such as these, and based on extensive climate disaster experience throughout the years in the CPD family of organizations.
The María Fund was created intentionally knowing that Hurricane María would most impact communities of color and low-income communities. Furthermore, those communities would likely have been excluded from immediate relief and long-term recovery efforts, and corporate powers and corrupt elected officials would aim to orchestrate a large-scale disaster capitalism plan after the storm. The CPD Network knew that local organizing groups would need to massively step in as the main providers of short-term relief and as the resistance to longer-term power grabs. We wanted to make sure that decisions about Puerto Rico were made by Puerto Ricans, with nearly 100% of the funding dedicated to organizing groups to transform the root causes of racial capitalism, colonialism, the climate crisis, and more.
Since its founding, the María Fund has moved resources to grassroots efforts that show a strong commitment to organizing historically marginalized people at the intersections of the deepest inequalities in Puerto Rico. To date, it has moved more than $4 million in funding to 49 initiatives and organizations working on crucial short- and long-term projects. See the newly released María Fund impact report for more. The María Fund has also activated major and grassroots funders. Over half of the $7 million raised came from 36,000 individual donors.
Going forward, the María Fund will focus on strengthening a powerful and aligned ecosystem of power-building movement leaders, organizations, and initiatives in Puerto Rico—vital work anywhere and especially in Puerto Rico at this critical juncture. As a first step, the María Fund will be moving from CPD to Tides Foundation and will create the infrastructure necessary for an independent entity with a long-term vision for intentional and responsible resource distribution. Continue to follow the María Fund by signing up for its mailing list here.
CPD is thrilled to support the future of the fund and excited for how it can continue to support the beautiful and incredible organizing of the Puerto Rican people.
Earlier this month, CPD, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), and Hedge Clippers released a report which showed how corporate landlords are contributing to and profiting from California’s housing crisis. Titled Billionaire Corporate Landlords: Exacerbating California’s Housing Crisis, the report focuses on two of the largest and wealthiest corporate landlords in California: Invitation Homes, which is controlled by The Blackstone Group, one of the largest private equity and asset management firms in the world, and Equity Residential, which is also the third largest apartment owner in the United States. Millions of Californians are rent burdened, or paying over 30% of their income on rent, which often means not having enough money for food or health care and can put people at risk of housing instability, eviction, and homelessness.
This crisis is particularly acute in low-income communities, which overwhelmingly pay a large portion of their already-small income on housing, and communities of color, who have faced decades of legal and extra-legal residential segregation, housing discrimination, predatory lending, and exclusionary lending practices, such as redlining. Meanwhile, Invitation Homes and Equity Residential report hundreds of millions of dollars in profits while also benefiting from tax loopholes, allowing them to pay less than their fair share of taxes. The report outlines what these tax loopholes look like and also how corporate landlords, like Invitation Homes and Equity Residential, spend millions on lobbying and campaign contributions in order to maintain a rigged system that permits ever-increasing rents, burdening renters and leaving them with few protections.
The report supported ACCE’s successful organizing efforts to pass the Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which caps yearly rent increases to no more than 5% plus inflation and expands protections to 7 million renters. The bill passed the California State Assembly on September 11 and is waiting for Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature, which he has pledged. Read the report here.
Leadership from CPD are connecting with allies from the community, labor, and movement organizing sectors to launch a new, online journal for organizers. The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice went live September 27 and features articles, videos, and interviews from an array of organizers from across the country.
To get connected, you can follow The Forge on Twitter at @ForgeOrganizing or click here to be added to our list. Built by a committee of organizers, The Forge will tackle questions of strategy, methodology, movement history, and more. But in the digital age, publishing is no longer a one-way street. To foster interaction, The Forge also aims to help organizers build community, share ideas, and strengthen their practice.
The founding issue includes seventeen pieces of content, including:
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Lead essays from some of the key organizers of the Kavanaugh fight a year ago, including CPD’s own Ana Maria Archila and Jennifer Flynn Walker, Shaunna Thomas from Ultraviolet, Kelley Robinson from Planned Parenthood, Ilyse Hogue from National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and Fatima Goss Graves from the National Women’s Law Center
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An article by Kate Hess Pace from Hoosier Action (Indiana) on building rural and small town organization in the Trump era
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Book reviews by organizers on Naomi Klein’s new book on the Green New Deal, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, and Ady Barkan’s Eyes to the Wind; more than just reviews, these pieces will ask organizing questions raised by the books in question.
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Interviews with two up-and-coming organizers about their work, as well as with University of California, Santa Barbara Anton Vonk Professor Hahrie Han about the new Center on Democracy and Organizing
Read more on The Forge’s website! The editors invite all organizers and interested folks to sign up HERE to be added to the list for The Forge.
