America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda...
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Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda...
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Report: In MN, Jobless Rate for Blacks is Nearly 4 Times Higher than Whites
Bring Me the News - March 5, 2015, by Adam Uren - Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country – with the jobless rate among blacks almost four...
Bring Me the News - March 5, 2015, by Adam Uren - Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country – with the jobless rate among blacks almost four times higher than among whites.
The figures come from a new study by the Center for Popular Democracy, which shows that the unemployment rate in Minnesota among black resident is 3.7 times higher compared to white people.
This is second only to the District of Columbia (5.6 times) and Wisconsin (4.6 times).
The gap in Minnesota has lessened since 2007 however, when 3.85 times
It also found that the jobless rate among Hispanic people is more than two times greater than for white people.
A rally will be held Thursday, WCCO reports, which will “draw attention to the racial differences between wages and jobs available” in the Twin Cities and Minnesota as a whole.
It is being organized by representatives of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economy Policy Institute, and held at the NOC offices in W. Broadway Ave., Minneapolis, starting at 3 p.m.
Unemployment falling, gap still wide
The significant disparity between black and white unemployment remains, even though overall unemployment has dropped in recent years thanks to the recovery of Minnesota’s economy since the financial crisis.
The unemployment rate among black people across the state fell to 11.9 percent in 2014, compared to 15.4 per cent in 2007.
However, the rate among white people stood at just 3.2 percent in 2014, down from 4 percent in 2007. The report also found that the unemployment rate among Hispanics stood at 7 percent in 2014, almost the same as it was in 2007.
The unemployment gap is even worse in the metro area, with the graph above showing that the black unemployment rate is 3.89 times higher than white.
The report features a case study of 23-year-old Minneapolis resident Tyrone Raino, who told the Center for Popular Democracy the only full-time job he could find is 40 minutes outside the city, and he works there 40 hours a week while taking a further 20 hours of classes every week.
Disparity is nothing new
Minnesota regularly features among the worst states for racial unemployment gaps.
In 2013, Minnesota was second only to Wyoming according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Star Tribune reports, when the black unemployment rate was triple the white rate.
And in 2011, MPR reported on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, which found the Twin Cities along with Memphis had the biggest white-black unemployment gaps out of the nation’s 50 biggest metropolitan areas.
When The Atlantic ran a piece last month lauding the metro area for its winning mix of affordability, opportunity and wealth, several publications responded by highlighting the gaps that suggest not everything is rosy in the Twin Cities.
It’s not just with unemployment either. WalletHub found Minnesota has the second-worst wealth gap between white people and people of color in the United States, as well as one of the biggest gaps for home ownership levels.
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Jeff Flake jokes about moment when sexual assault survivors confronted him on elevator
Jeff Flake jokes about moment when sexual assault survivors confronted him on elevator
Sen. Jeff Flake cracked a joke Saturday about the viral moment we was confronted by sexual assault survivors on an elevator last week over his support for embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett...
Sen. Jeff Flake cracked a joke Saturday about the viral moment we was confronted by sexual assault survivors on an elevator last week over his support for embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
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New Help for Poor Immigrants Who Are in Custody and Facing Deportation
New York Times – November 6, 2013, by Kirk Semple -
At about 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Maximino Leyva Ortiz, wearing an orange jumpsuit, his wrists shackled, stood before a judge in an...
New York Times – November 6, 2013, by Kirk Semple -
At about 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Maximino Leyva Ortiz, wearing an orange jumpsuit, his wrists shackled, stood before a judge in an immigration courtroom in Lower Manhattan, a lawyer at his side. The federal government was seeking to deport him.
He took an oath, lawyers’ identities were confirmed, and then Mr. Leyva told the judge he would not fight the order; he was prepared to be deported.
“You’re doing so voluntarily, sir?” Judge Brigitte Laforest asked.
Within minutes the hearing was over and Mr. Leyva was being led out of the courtroom by a bailiff; he was on his way back to Mexico.
The proceedings were quick and subdued. But the banality of the scene belied its significance. Mr. Leyva was the first client in a new program that seeks to provide public defenders for all poor immigrants residing in New York who have been detained and are facing deportation. The initiative is the first of its kind in the country.
Unlike in the nation’s criminal court system, defendants in immigration court have no constitutional right to a court-appointed lawyer. Fear and ignorance conspire with language barriers and poverty to keep detainees from securing legal counsel.
The new initiative, called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, emerged from several years of study and lobbying among immigration lawyers and immigrants’ advocates. They were concerned that the absence of competent legal representation for many of New York’s immigrant detainees was resulting in unnecessary deportations that ruptured families and put an undue financial burden on government.
Last summer, the New York City Council allocated $500,000 to help pay for a pilot program to test the viability of the initiative. The project’s organizers said that money, plus a supplementary contribution from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, would allow them to provide representation to 190 immigrants.
“At its core, it’s a justice issue,” said Peter L. Markowitz, a professor at Cardozo who helped lead the initiative. “Most excitingly, it’s a chance to mark a sea change in the treatment of immigrants in this country.”
The organizations behind the project are the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at Cardozo Law School, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the Vera Institute of Justice and Make the Road New York. They are ultimately seeking to provide representation for all indigent immigrants living in New York who have been detained and are facing deportation in immigration courts in New York City; Batavia, N.Y.; Newark; and Elizabeth, N.J. — an annual population of about 2,450.
Full funding would cost about $7.4 million per year, proponents said. But in a report to be released on Thursday, the advocates argue that by shortening detentions and reducing deportations, the full-blown program would save governments and private employers an estimated $5.9 million a year.
Though the pilot project opened on Wednesday with a deportation, Mr. Markowitz, who watched the proceedings from the gallery of the small, windowless courtroom, said the benefits of the program were immediately evident. Mr. Leyva had no legal relief from deportation, Mr. Markowitz explained, and to prolong his case would have meant postponing the inevitable, at great cost to the government and to Mr. Leyva.
“He didn’t spend needless time in detention,” Mr. Markowitz said.
By the end of the afternoon, 10 detainees had faced the court accompanied by lawyers from Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services, which are providing legal counsel for detainees in the pilot program.
The efficiency of the hearings involving public defenders stood in sharp contrast to the first case on the docket. The detainee, Lewis Spencer Taveras-Mejia, was not included in the pilot project because his family had retained a lawyer for him.
But the lawyer failed to show up for the hearing.
“They told me that they hired a lawyer and that she would be here today,” Mr. Taveras-Mejia told the judge. He said he had never met the lawyer or learned her name, and then he began to cry. The judge decided to schedule a new hearing for Nov. 19.
“That’s 13 days of detention that the taxpayers have to pay for and that he’s unnecessarily spending in jail,” Mr. Markowitz said. He tapped on his phone, calculating the extra detention cost: $2,067.
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Lobbyists Know the Fed Has Political Power
Your editorial is exactly right about the lack of impartiality with “The Federal Reserve’s Politicians” (Aug. 29). While created by Congress, the Fed continues to act as though it is completely...
Your editorial is exactly right about the lack of impartiality with “The Federal Reserve’s Politicians” (Aug. 29). While created by Congress, the Fed continues to act as though it is completely unaccountable to the people’s representatives.
As I pointed out to Chairwoman Janet Yellen during a congressional hearing last year, her own calendar reflects weekly meetings with political figures and partisan special-interest groups. Even more troubling, there is a long history of Fed chairs or governors serving as partisan figures in the Treasury or the White House before their appointment. So while the Fed is quick to decry any attempts at congressional oversight, it cannot credibly claim to be politically independent.
We need a rules-based monetary policy that doesn’t leave the Fed with the potential to push an ideologically driven agenda. To make the Fed truly free from politics, the Fed Oversight Reform and Modernization Act of 2015, which my colleagues and I have passed through the House, should be signed into law. The American people deserve transparency at the Fed and market-driven monetary policy that can finally restore confidence in our economy.
Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.)
Glen Rock, N.J.
Your editorial accuses Fed Up, a group representing low-income black and brown communities, of politicizing the Fed, when big banks have always had undue access and influence over the Fed’s policies.
In fact, commercial banks literally own the Federal Reserve. Unlike nearly every other central bank in the world, the Fed isn’t a public institution but instead operates as a joint venture with the banking sector. It is not true that as long as this status quo of Wall Street domination continues, then the Fed is “independent,” but when the Fed Up campaign’s low-income people of color dare to join the monetary-policy conversation, then the Fed’s “independence” has been compromised.
You mention that retirees living off their retirement plans are suffering from a decade of near-zero interest rates. Presumably this refers to retirees who might have a hundred thousand or two tucked away for retirement. This is already far more than the low-wage workers who have joined our campaign will be able to accrue over a lifetime of working.
But let’s take the argument at face value. Even if the Fed were to raise interest rates up to 2%, that’s a mere $2,000 on $100,000 savings over a year. That won’t make much of a difference to how well a middle-class retiree lives, but hiking rates to that level prematurely could cut off struggling families—who are disproportionately people of color—from the added jobs and higher wages they so desperately need.
Shawn Sebastian
Fed Up Campaign
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Lobbying the Federal Reserve as if it is a legislature began with the Humphrey-Hawkins legislation and the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977. The chair of the Fed became politicized and conflicted as the act included mandated congressional grilling of the Fed chair, who is now required to stabilize prices, moderate long-term interest rates, while at the same time delivering low unemployment. These lofty goals can’t necessarily be simultaneously executed, as Paul Volcker showed so well when he attacked inflation, effectively saying that employment would rise with a solid economy that had price stability.
Mr. Volcker had the courage to take the abuse and address his critics as he followed a logical path and publicly explained it, but successive chairs have gradually focused more on pleasing the president who appointed them.
Rep. Kevin Brady’s idea for a commission to rethink the idea of the Fed is a good start. We now have about 40 years of increasing monetary, fiscal and employment messes, with a paralyzed Fed, unsustainable deficits and underemployment because politics tramples economic common sense.
Larry Stewart
Vienna, Va.
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NYC Youth, Council Members Call on City to Address Bullying and Conflict in Schools by Increasing Social and Mental Health Support, not Policing
10.30.2017
...
10.30.2017
Onyx Walker, Youth Leader from Urban Youth Collaborative alongside Council Members Daniel Dromm and Mark Levine at the steps of City Hall before the NYC Council hearing on bullying to demand social and mental health support for NYC public schools, not policing.New York, NY - On Monday, October 30th, young people from the Urban Youth Collaborative, along with NYC Council Chair of Education Committee Daniel Dromm, Council Member Mark Levine, and organizations -- including Dignity in School Campaign New York and the Center for Popular Democracy--held a press conference in front of City Hall to call on New York City to address bullying and conflict in schools by increasing social, emotional, and mental health supports, not policing and punitive zero tolerance policies. The young people are calling for drastically increasing the number of guidance counselors, restorative practices and mental health supports in schools.
The press conference coincided with the release of a new report, “Young People’s Vision for Safe, Supportive, and Inclusive Schools,” written by the Center for Popular Democracy and Urban Youth Collaborative, whose organizational members include young people from Future of Tomorrow, Make the Road New York, Sistas and Brothas United. The report recommendations were developed by youth leaders who have spent years organizing to transform their schools and their communities. In response to calls to return to discriminatory and ineffective school climate strategies, young people are advancing solutions that reimagine school safety and reduce bullying and discrimination by prioritizing and allocating funding for meeting their social, emotional, and mental health needs. Study after study shows policing and exclusionary discipline does not create safer schools, and in fact, can make students feel less safe and harm our most vulnerable students. In contrast, the supports students are calling for reduce bullying and create safer schools. Immediately following the press conference there was a a New York City Council hearing on Bullying, Discrimination, and Harassment in Schools.
Young people are uniquely situated to lead the dialogue in developing truly safe and inclusive learning communities. The blueprint highlights key priorities for all NYC schools, including: increasing the number of trained and supervised full time guidance counselors and social workers; implementation of restorative justice practice in all underserved schools and; comprehensive mental supports for young people. Young people are at the forefront of a growing movement to demand New York City divest from ineffective, costly and racially discriminatory policing practices – and instead invest in creating schools that respond to student needs and create truly safe and inclusive schools. .
"Too often, I have seen a lack of support for students, myself included, because there is a lack of guidance counselors in schools. On average there is one full time guidance counselor for every 407 students. We need to significantly increase the number of guidance counselors. By having one guidance counselor for every 100 students, a counselor’s workload will not only lessen, but the depth of the relationships they have with students will deepen" said Maybelen Navarro, Youth Leader, Urban Youth Collaborative.
“We don’t have to look very far to develop solutions that create safe and inclusive school communities. Time and time again we are reminded that young people are the best resource we have for developing successful and sustainable policies for every school in every neighborhood.” said Roberto Cabanas the Coordinator for the Urban Youth Collaborative. “Today we release this Policy Brief to share young people’s vision for their schools. We need more counselors, restorative practices, and mental health care.”
“The city must be bold enough to reimagine safety so that it is rooted in effective and humane practices of support rather than policing” said Kate Terenzi, Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Center for Popular Democracy. “Young people hold the answer to how to create inclusive and safe schools. Their solutions - guidance counselors, mental health services, and restorative justice - are proven effective by research and young people’s own expertise in navigating school environments. Placing more police and metal detectors won’t make school safer, social and mental health support will do that. ”
"It is imperative that we bolster social, emotional, and mental health support structures in NYC public schools," said NYC Council Education Committee Chairperson Daniel Dromm. "Metal detectors, increased policing and zero tolerance policies do nothing for the thousands of children affected by bullying year-round. These measures only contribute to the problem, creating hostile school climates that are not conducive to learning. To effectively push back against bullying, we must increase the number of school guidance counselors, employ restorative justice practices and offer comprehensive mental health services across the five boroughs. As Chairperson of the NYC Council Education Committee, I am committed to doing all that I can to end school bullying by moving our schools in this direction"
In addition, the report calls the city to reverse policies that have proven ineffective at creating safe and supportive environments for students policies that promote the exclusion and criminalization of Students. In particular, New York City should end arrests, as well as the issuance of summonses and juvenile reports, in schools for non-criminal violations and misdemeanors; institute a moratorium on the installation of new metal detectors in schools, and remove existing metal detectors; and, remove police officers from schools.
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PHOTOS: LINK
LIVESTREAM VIDEO: LINK
TESTIMONIES: Young People’s and the Center for Popular Democracy’s
Contact: Roberto Cabanas, Urban Youth Collaborative 973.432.2406 or Roberto.Urbanyouthcollab@gmail.com
www.urbanyouthcollaborative.org
The Urban Youth Collaborative is led by students young people and brings together New York City students to fight for real education reform that puts students first. Demanding a high-quality education for all students, young people struggle for social, economic, and racial justice in the city’s schools and communities. Organizational members include: Make the Road New York, Sistas and Brothas United, and Future of Tomorrow
www.populardemocracy.org
Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda
U.S Workers say the economy needs more support
BetaWired - November 15, 2014 - Jean Andre an American activist decided to visit the Federal Reserve Board’s headquarters on Friday to express his concerns about getting a decent job. Janet L....
BetaWired - November 15, 2014 - Jean Andre an American activist decided to visit the Federal Reserve Board’s headquarters on Friday to express his concerns about getting a decent job. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, agreed to meet him together with about 30 workers concerning the plight of Americans searching for work and struggling to make a living.
Accompanied by Fed’s board of governors officials; Stanley Fischer, the vice chairman; Lael Brainard; and Jerome H. Powell, the jobless Americans had a chance to express their views for about an hour.
Ady Barkan, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group based in New York that orchestrated the meeting said “The Federal Reserve is too important of an institution to be insulated from the voices and perspectives of working families, we think that the Fed needs to listen more and be more responsive, and we’re very grateful for this first opportunity.”
The Fed declined to comment, citing a policy of silence about private meetings but the workers described what they said in the meeting that was closed to the media. Ady Barkan’s group is campaigning for the Fed to carry on with its stimulus program, citing the high level of unemployment, particularly in minority communities, and the slow pace of wage growth. The group further argued that the Fed could help drive wages up by keeping interest rates low.
According to Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, “monetary policy would be “the single most important determinant of wage growth” and that he was glad to see workers recognize the Fed’s importance. A conservative group, American Principles in Action, criticized the meeting as “highly political” and inappropriate expressing that it would seek a related meeting to share its view that the Fed’s stimulus campaign is damaging the economy.
The labor and community groups at the meeting wore green T-shirts that said “What Recovery?” on the front, with a chart demonstrating meager wage gains on the back. They also compelled Yellen to change the way the Fed chooses the presidents of its regional banks.
On Thursday, The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas stated that its president, Richard W. Fisher, would step down on March 19 2015. Furthermore, Charles I. Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, plans to retire at the beginning of March.
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Many residents stand against Donald Trump
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election.
“It was a rally and a march called together primarily by immigrants rights...
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election.
“It was a rally and a march called together primarily by immigrants rights groups to provide a space for immigrant communities, people that are undocumented to be able to raise up the voices and the perpsectives of immigrant communities,” DRUM — South Asian Organizing Center Executive Director Fahd Ahmed told the Chronicle, adding that Sunday’s march would not be the last that they attend.
According to the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York, more than 15,000 immigrant New Yorkers and their supporters attended the event.
“Well, basically we were marching because we will not tolerate the hate agenda, we’re here to stay and we reject that,” Ozone Park resident Julissa Bisono said. “We want to make sure that New York City continues to be a sanctuary for immigrant families and that’s why we decided to march yesterday, to make sure that President-elect Trump hears our message.”
Kenneth Shelton, a St. John’s University student, organized the march on Saturday from Union Square to Trump Tower with the news outlet BlackMatters US.
“It was just for people to vent their frustration, get out there and protest but also to show that we’re unified,” Shelton said. “We need to organize ourselves into a movement socially, politically and economically.”
“We reject his hate and refuse to live in constant fear under a president who does not regard us as human,” Queens resident Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a prepared statement. “[Sunday’s] rally and march marks our first, though certainly not last, line of resistance against Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant regime.”
Queens is believed to have more unauthorized immigrants than any other borough, nearly 250,000, who could face deportation.
“The immigrant communities here, they’re real hard-working families and they’re scared,” Bisono said.
According to Bisono, there is a serious fear among immigrants that they could be harmed after last week’s election.
“We had kids that came who didn’t even go to school because they were afraid to not come back the next day,” she said. “We shouldn’t be living in fear.”
For people who feel like they may be threatened by the Trump administration, the protests were an opportunity to stand in solidarity with others who are as worried.
Ahmed, whose group is based in Jackson Heights and used to be called Desis Rising Up and Moving, said that the protests are “to get people out of fear, to get them out of isolation and to build with each other.”
Although Trump has urged his supporters to not hurt others and commit hate crimes, those have spiked nationwide in the days following his election victory.
“The large number of people that came to these actions have been black communities, Latino communities — the people explicitly being told that they need to watch out and will be targeted,” Ahmed said.
By Ryan Brady
Source
Hillary Clinton just endorsed serious Federal Reserve reform
Hillary Clinton embraced an ambitious proposal for reforming the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, according to a statement her campaign gave to The Washington Post.
Five of the 12 Fed...
Hillary Clinton embraced an ambitious proposal for reforming the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, according to a statement her campaign gave to The Washington Post.
Five of the 12 Fed officials who decide the course of monetary policy at the national level are selected by six of the nine governors that run each regional bank in the Federal Reserve system. Three of those six governors are effectively picked by the banking industry in each region. The three who don't pick the officials for the national Fed board are drawn directly from the banking industry, but they still wield considerable influence.
Leftwing reform campaigns have argued for removing the financial industry's influence in the Fed system, and that's what Clinton endorsed. "Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue," said campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson.
This effectively puts Clinton in the same ballpark as Bernie Sanders on the issue. It also arrives the same day 111 representatives in the House and 11 senators — including Elizabeth Warren — released a letter calling for more diversity among Fed officials. Those officials are overwhelmingly white men, and the letter noted that racial minorities are disproportionately affected when the Fed prioritizes low inflation over high employment.
By Jeff Spross
Source
Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the speech. Much like Trump, they say raising rates again will harm working people’s...
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the speech. Much like Trump, they say raising rates again will harm working people’s chances of getting jobs and better pay. The protesters wore green T-shirts reading “The Fed wants more of us unemployed.
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4 days ago
4 days ago