Why Labor and the Movement for Racial Justice Should Work Together
Why Labor and the Movement for Racial Justice Should Work Together
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has made tremendous strides in exposing and challenging racial injustice, and has...
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has made tremendous strides in exposing and challenging racial injustice, and has won real policy victories. The policies, while often imperfect, are a testament to the strength of the organizing and activism of the moment. Not coincidentally, this uprising comes at a time when income and wealth inequality are at peak levels and the economy for most black people looks markedly different than the economy for their white counterparts.
Just as we are in a critical moment in the movement for racial justice, we are in a critical moment for the right to unionize. Unions, which have been a major force for economic justice for people of color in the past 50 years, have been decimated to historically low levels.
Labor should work alongside the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition with more than 50 organizations, to usher in a radically new economic and social order. The path won’t be easy. But recent history has shown that one of the ways to get at this new reality is through union bargaining. Consider the example of Fix L.A.
Fix L.A. is a community-labor partnership that fought to fund city services and jobs alike, using city workers’ bargaining as a flashpoint to bring common good demands to the table. The coalition started after government leaders in Los Angeles drastically cut back on public services and infrastructure maintenance during the Great Recession. The city slashed nearly 5,000 jobs, a large portion of which had been held by black and Latino workers. Not only did these cuts create infrastructure problems—like overgrown and dangerous trees and flooding—but they also cost thousands of black and Latino families their livelihoods.
Fix L.A. asked why the city was spending more on bank fees than on street services, and demanded that it renegotiate those fees and invest the savings in underserved communities.
What was the result of this groundbreaking campaign?
The creation of 5,000 jobs, with a commitment to increase access to those jobs for black and Latino workers, the defeat of proposed concessions for city workers and a commitment from the city to review why it was prioritizing payment of bank fees over funding for critical services in the first place!
Bargaining for the common good
Fix L.A. may seem novel, but the context is no different from many places. We have seen massive disinvestment from public services in a way that disproportionately affects black people. This structurally-racist disinvestment is often driven by the corporate interests that bankroll elected officials’ campaigns and by Wall Street actors that use their influence over public finance to push an austerity agenda. Everywhere you look, public officials are making a choice between paying fees and providing critical services.
Chicago Public Schools paid $502 million to banks in toxic swap fees at the same time that it was slashing special education programs and laying off teachers to close a budget deficit. Detroit raised its water rates and paid $537 million in Wall Street penalties, setting the stage for mass water shutoffs when tens of thousands of poor residents of the overwhelmingly black city could not afford the higher water bills.
Wall Street and other corporations don’t hesitate to profit off of and perpetuate disinvestment in communities of color, and too often we forget to look up the food chain to see that at the other end of community crises there are rich bankers and billionaires lining their pockets. Campaigns, like Fix L.A., that involve direct actions targeting banks, hedge funds, corporations and billionaires are effective.
This sort of organizing can be hard. In order to isolate workers from their broader communities, the other side has done a terrific job of narrowly defining the scope of bargaining as wages and benefits. In many states, labor laws prohibit public sector workers from bargaining over issues that concern the welfare of the broader community or the quality of the services they provide.
The theory of “bargaining for the common good” seeks to challenge this status quo. As articulated by Joseph McCartin of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, bargaining for the common good has three main tenets: 1) transcending the bargaining frameworks written in law and rejecting them as tools for the corporate elite to remain in power; 2) crafting demands between local community groups and unions at the same time and in close coordination with each other from the very beginning; and 3) embracing collective direct action as key to the success of organizing campaigns.
These may seem like simple ideas, but they stand in complete opposition to the way the power elite expects union bargaining to be done. Therein lies their power.
Therein also lies the opportunity for unions to partner with the Movement for Black Lives. For all of their complicated racial histories, unions are some of the largest organizations of black people in the country. About 2.2 million black Americans are union members—some 14 percent of the employed black workforce.
That’s a huge number of black people who are already members of organizations with the capacity to organize and mobilize. And these black workers, like all black people in America, face real challenges of structural economic racism in almost all aspects of their lives. Their communities have been underfunded; their schools are being dismantled; they face massive poverty and are under economic assault; and they regularly encounter police violence.
Stronger together
Widening the scope of bargaining in Los Angeles led to real wins for the city’s black and Latino communities. The rest of the labor movement should take note. Imagine the power that could be added to the Movement for Black Lives if unions, recognizing the trauma that systematic racism wreaks on their membership, brought solutions that have been elevated by the Movement for Black Lives to the bargaining table in negotiations with employers ranging from the City of Baltimore to private equity giant Blackstone.
But unions cannot do this unilaterally and expect unconditional support from the black community.
Unions must make the effort on the front end to build a real relationship with Movement for Black Lives groups and members, and partner with them in developing common good bargaining demands that start to go on the offense against Wall Street and the structurally-racist economic power structure. There are groups of people organizing for racial justice under the banner of the Movement for Black Lives near every union local in the country. The onus is on labor leaders and rank-and-file union members to reach out to those groups and start to build a strong relationship where one does not exist. This process will not be easy, especially because of the history of racism that plagues unions, especially police unions. But the truth remains that there is a real opportunity to leverage the power of both movements to win real gains for black people and other people of color through a strong partnership.
It is exciting to imagine potential bargaining demands major unions could undertake alongside racial justice organizations. For example, they could demand that their employers make a commitment to job training programs to strengthen the pipeline for black workers; city and state workers could demand progressive taxation measures that raise funds from corporate actors to fund schools and services in black communities; teachers could demand school districts enact restorative justice policies to stem the school-to-prison pipeline; hospital workers could bargain for targeted health care access programs in communities of color; retail workers could demand that their employers “ban the box” and let the formerly incarcerated work. The list is almost infinite.
Bargaining for racial justice is a radical idea and will not be easily won. It will require concerted direct action targeting the real decision makers in both the public and private sectors that have a vested interest in keeping racial inequities in place. The Movement for Black Lives has proven that it can execute effective and creative direct actions backed by solid demands. They are also innovating creative tactics that move beyond traditional marches and picket lines to new types of disruptive actions that make power holders directly confront those they are harming. By combining the vision and militant tactics of the Movement for Black Lives with the membership and resources of the labor movement, we can usher in a more just and equitable society
BY MAURICE WEEKS AND MARILYN SNEIDERMAN
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Yellen and Draghi Speeches to Highlight Jackson Hole Conference
Yellen and Draghi Speeches to Highlight Jackson Hole Conference
Central bankers and economists from around the world will gather in the mountain resort of Jackson Hole, Wyo.,...
Central bankers and economists from around the world will gather in the mountain resort of Jackson Hole, Wyo., beginning Thursday for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual economic symposium.
The theme of this year's conference, "Fostering a Dynamic Global Economy, " highlights the challenges of boosting economic growth during an expansion that has been marked by poor productivity gains, rising protectionism and demands for greater fiscal austerity.
Read the full article here.
Fed Officials Say a September Rate Increase Is Still on the Table
The comments, uncoordinated but generally consistent, suggested that some investors and analysts had been too quick to...
The comments, uncoordinated but generally consistent, suggested that some investors and analysts had been too quick to discount a September rate increase, particularly as global markets finished the week on a relatively quiet note on Friday.
“We haven’t made a decision yet, and I don’t think we should,” Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s vice chairman and a close adviser to the Fed chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, said in an interview with the cable network CNBC. “We’ve got time to wait and see the incoming data and see what exactly is going on now in the economy.”
The Fed’s policy-making committee is scheduled to meet Sept. 16 and 17.
Mr. Fischer offered an upbeat assessment of the domestic economy. He described job growth as “impressive” and said there had been a “pretty strong case” to raise rates in September before the latest round of global turmoil. He did not sound inclined to wait much longer than September to start raising rates.
“We’re getting back to normal and at some point we will want to show that, by beginning to normalize interest rates,” he said, speaking during a break at the annual conference hosted here by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a centrist on the Federal Open Market Committee, told Bloomberg that he saw roughly even odds of a September rate increase. But if the Fed did choose to wait, he said it wouldn’t be for long — he suggested that it could raise rates at its next meeting in October.
James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in an interview that he was reserving final judgment, but that he did not see strong reasons for the Fed to delay. “I would like to see the whole panoply of data before I make a decision but I’m certainly leaning in that direction,” Mr. Bullard said.
The march toward higher rates has inflamed some critics who argue that the central bank should continue or even expand its stimulus campaign.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate, said Thursday that the Fed was on the verge of repeating an old mistake by raising interest rates sooner than necessary to control inflation. He pointed out that the share of Americans with jobs remained unusually small and wages were rising only slowly.
“There hasn’t been a recovery for the majority of Americans and so to me this is a no-brainer,” Mr. Stiglitz told a coalition of community groups who call themselves “Fed Up” that met just outside the main conference to advocate against a rate increase. “I don’t even know why we’re talking about” tightening monetary policy, he said.
The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation was updated on Friday. The new data showed that prices rose just 0.3 percent during the 12 months that ended in July. A narrower measure excluding food and oil prices, which the Fed regards as more predictive, increased by 1.2 percent over that period. The Fed aims to maintain inflation at a 2 percent annual pace, a goal it has not achieved for several years.
Mr. Stiglitz said the Fed should try to keep inflation at about 4 percent a year. Even with a stated target of 2 percent a year, he said, actual inflation is significantly lower. “We wind up with a monetary policy that has been consistently too tight,” he said.
Most Fed officials say they expect inflation to increase as the economy expands. Mr. Fischer said on Friday that his confidence was “pretty high” that inflation would rebound.
Still, Mr. Fischer said there was a continuing “discussion” among Fed officials, some of whom see the strength of domestic growth as a reason to raise rates, while others argue the sluggishness of inflation means there is no reason to rush.
Mr. Bullard, a member of the first camp, said that he viewed recent global economic developments as unlikely to change his economic forecast. The sharp fall of oil prices and the decline of long-term interest rates should increase growth, while a stronger dollar and a weaker global economy are likely to have an offsetting impact.
“I want to take the time I have between now and the September meeting to evaluate all the economic information that’s come in, including recent volatility in markets and the reasons behind that,” Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, told The Wall Street Journal. “But it hasn’t so far changed my basic outlook that the U.S. economy is solid and it could support an increase in interest rates.”
Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, reiterated his contrasting view that the Fed should not raise interest rates this year. Instead, he argued, the central bank should consider expanding its stimulus campaign to address the persistence of low inflation, which can harm consumer spending and business plans for expansion. Mr. Kocherlakota said the volatility of financial markets should be seen as further evidence of the weakness of the economy.
Both camps, however, agree that the Fed should not start raising rates in the middle of market volatility. William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said this week that the gyrations of financial markets made the case for raising rates in September “less compelling.”
Mr. Fischer in his interview Friday said he did not want to judge the current situation, because it was new. But if volatility persisted, the Fed would be less likely to move.
“If you don’t understand the market volatility, and I’m sure we don’t fully understand it now — there are many, many analyses of what’s going on — then yes, it does affect the timing of a decision you might want to make,” he said.
Both Mr. Dudley and Mr. Fischer, however, noted that the current situation might be fleeting. Mr. Fischer said markets “could settle down fairly quickly.”
And Mr. Fischer emphasized that Fed officials could not afford to wait until all of their questions were answered and all of their doubts resolved. “When the case is overwhelming,” he said, “if you wait that long, then you’ve waited too long.”
Source: New York Times
Warren leads crusade for diversity at Fed
“I’m judging John Williams based on the last several years of him being wrong about the levels of maximum employment...
“I’m judging John Williams based on the last several years of him being wrong about the levels of maximum employment and pushing for additional [interest rate hikes] prematurely because that mistake puts millions of jobs at risk,” said Shawn Sebastian, who co-leads the Fed Up coalition comprising advocacy groups and unions.
Read the full article here.
2013 Race for Mayor: Low-Income New Yorkers
WNYC - March 1, 2013 - Brian Lehrer hosted a forum with seven mayoral hopefuls "2013 Race for Mayor: What's in it for...
WNYC - March 1, 2013 - Brian Lehrer hosted a forum with seven mayoral hopefuls "2013 Race for Mayor: What's in it for Low-Income New Yorkers?" sponsored by The Community Service Society (CSS) sponsored the event in partnership with Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, the Center for Popular Democracy, and United New York.
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CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism. And who would know that better than...
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism.
And who would know that better than Cherokee Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a letter out complaining that there are too many white men on the board of the Federal Reserve. The letter is co-signed by the usual clown show of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus.
The first signature belongs to John Conyers whose wife pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit bribery. Also present are the likes of Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson, Gwen Moore, former Nation of Islam supporter Keith Ellison, Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Bernice Johnson and Alcee Hastings, who was impeached for bribery.
Bernice Johnson had her own ethical issues.
Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide's two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers' causes. Eddie Bernice Johnson
The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member's district.
What's This?
And Maxine Waters? She's got a record.
The influential congresswoman has helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper.
A few years ago Waters was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for steering $12 million in federal bailout funds to a failing Massachusetts bank (that subsequently got shut down by the government) in which she and her board member husband held shares.
Waters has also come under fire for skirting federal elections rules with a shady fundraising gimmick that allows her to receive unlimited amounts of donations from certain contributors. For years the veteran Los Angeles lawmaker has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in short periods of time by selling her endorsement to other politicians and political causes for as much as $45,000 a pop instead of raising most of her campaign funds from individuals and political action committees.
Then there's Alan Grayson who has his own hedge fund.
Rep. Alan Grayson manages hedge funds that use his name in their title, a practice prohibited by congressional ethics rules designed to prevent members from using their elected post for financial gain.
The specific ethics provisions tied to the funds Grayson manages, two of which are based in the Cayman Islands, sit in a sort of gray area and have never been examined by the House Ethics Committee.
Sure. Let's let these people dictate diversity at the Fed.
By Daniel Greenfield
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De Blasio’s Executive Order Increases, Expands Living Wage
Amsterdam News - October 9, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an...
Amsterdam News - October 9, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order to increase and expand the living wage to benefit more New Yorkers.
At City Hall, while announcing the signing of his executive order, De Blasio said “$13.13 for those without benefits, $11.50 for those who have health insurance and other benefits. This applies to employers, excuse me, employees, I should say, of large groups of employers who do business with the city. Meaning, there’s a lot of companies that do business with the city, that come to the city for subsidies. We think if you want a subsidy, you can prove the need for a subsidy. We want to help you achieve your goals, but we have a standard we hold.”
De Blasio continued, “We need to make sure people are paid a living wage. That’s a fair exchange for that subsidy. What it means—let me put this in real terms—what this means, is the difference between the $8-an-hour minimum wage right now, and the $13.13 that will take effect immediately for those employees of companies that get subsidies going forward. That is a difference of over $10,000 dollars in earnings a year. $10,000. Someone who would have made $16,000—not enough to get by—will now make over $27,000 a year. And that’s a difference maker.”
According to de Blasio, any project that gets more than a million dollars in city subsidies qualifies, stating that it will reach people in lines of work like retail, food services and construction.
Advocates for a raise in the minimum wage have said this action was a long time coming. Shantel Walker, a Papa John’s employee who makes $8.50 an hour and who is a member of Fast Food Forward, praised de Blasio’s actions.
“Nearly two years ago, 200 fast-food workers in New York City walked off our jobs, calling for $15 and union rights,” said Walker in a statement. “Our demand may have sounded crazy at the time, but more and more, $15 is becoming a reality for workers across the country. As we’ve gone on strike again and again and a movement that started here in New York has spread to 150 cities, $15 suddenly doesn’t seem so impossible. From Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco and now New York, cities are raising wages so we don’t have to rely on public assistance to support our families.”
Walker also stated that the recent developments are a sign, to her, that minimum wage advocates are on the right side of history.
“While he works with Gov. Cuomo to raise wages for all New Yorkers, Mayor de Blasio’s move today to put workers at city-subsidized projects on a path to $15 is a sign that we are winning,” Walker said. “It’s a step in the right direction and helps push us forward in our fight for $15 for workers across the entire country.”
While the city’s working class has achieved a major victory, the state’s working class is still making the push collectively. Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, pushed for Albany to follow suit in a statement.
“The Albany wage board should eliminate the tipped minimum wage to make this vision a reality and end the wage segregation that traps workers in poverty—workers who are overwhelmingly female and of color,” said Friedman. “Partnering with progressive local, state and federal leadership means we can work together to afford a dignified life for all residents, which means comprehensive policies that include a $15 minimum hourly wage, a predictable and fair workweek, paid sick days and a healthy macro-economy that nurtures equity, creates viable new jobs and protects us from risk-taking by financial institutions.”
Back in the five boroughs, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams praised de Blasio for the executive order, citing it as another example of New York City leading the pack. He said that de Blasio had “reaffirmed his commitment to civic innovation and our residents’ welfare by raising the living wage and furthering its reach to thousands more workers. This is a measure that recognizes the cost of living challenges that New Yorkers face and builds a meaningful bridge over the inequality gap we have sought to close across Brooklyn and the rest of the five boroughs.
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Warren met privately with 'Draft Warren' supporters
Elizabeth Warren says she has no intention of jumping into the 2016 race, but she recently met behind closed doors with...
Elizabeth Warren says she has no intention of jumping into the 2016 race, but she recently met behind closed doors with members of a movement that’s urging her to run.
The Massachusetts senator held a private meeting April 22 with a small group of progressive leaders from across the country — including some vocal “Run Warren Run” supporters who continue to hold out hope that she’ll enter the presidential race.
In an hourlong meeting with her staff and a 30-minute meeting with Warren, the group of about a half-dozen top progressive activists — including three who are active in the movement — did not discuss the draft campaign. Instead, the conversation focused on issues of social and racial justice. The activists highlighted specific issues the senator can use to influence the presidential debate in 2016 and, they hope, push Hillary Clinton to the left on issues including police brutality, immigration reform, prison privatization, and reducing fees to promote naturalized citizenship, among others.
The meeting’s purpose was to see “how Elizabeth Warren, with her platform, could work with us to move a progressive vision for the country and really engage with communities of color,” said attendee Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change. “That goes hand in hand with what she’s already doing.” Warren is addressing problems that are “part and parcel of what we believe is wrong with this country,” he said.
An aide to Warren maintained that the senator did not know the group she was meeting with had any connection to the Run Warren Run campaign until POLITICO informed her office. “The point of the meeting was to discuss economic and social justice issues,” the aide said. “As Sen. Warren has said many times, she does not support the draft group’s efforts and is not running for president.”
But Westin is a vocal supporter of the campaign to draft Warren and, as a co-chair of New York’s Working Families Party, voted last February for the political party to join the “Run Warren Run” coalition. Just weeks before the sit-down with Warren, he wrote a blog post for MoveOn.org calling for her to run for president. His co-author on the piece, Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Chicago’s Action Now Institute, also attended the sit-down with Warren.
“Elizabeth Warren is not the only candidate who could ensure a robust presidential primary, but she is the best,” they wrote. “[Warren] is the one who can truly give Clinton a run for the money and yes, even has a shot to win the nomination. We urge Warren to acknowledge the importance of this political moment and enter the race.”
At the meeting with Warren, they were also joined by Daniel Altschuler, managing director of the Make the Road Action Fund, which is also on the advisory council of the Working Families Party and supports the draft Warren movement. But no effort was made during the meeting to urge the senator to enter the race.
“This was about someone who we want to be sharing the issues that are affecting communities of color and working-class communities to make her the strongest possible champion on those issues,” Altschuler said. “The senator has been a tremendous champion on issues of the financial system run amok and income inequality. We think that a lot of the issues affecting our communities are tied to those big financial systems; we wanted to share some of the issues we’re working on.”
Some in the group — which included Shabnam Bashiri from Rise Up Georgia; Bill Bartlett from Action United, a Pennsylvania group; and Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy — privately pointed out that November 2016 is a long way off and insisted there is still plenty of time for Warren her to get in the race if she decides to do so.
If Warren wants the group to stand down, the meeting with some of its diehard supporters did little to advance that goal.
“I would still love to see her run for president,” said Westin, speaking after the meeting. “Connecting with the grass-roots groups is a very big piece of how we continue to amplify her message. People are getting away with murder — literally and figuratively, on Wall Street.”
The Run Warren Run campaign was launched in December by Democracy for America and MoveOn and coordinates with Ready for Warren, another group urging the senator to run. In a letter to the Federal Election Commission from her attorney last August regarding the Ready for Warren PAC, Warren said she “does not, explicitly or implicitly, authorize, endorse, or otherwise approve of the organization’s formation or activities.”
But many who met with her last month share the position that Clinton needs a serious primary challenger.
“The Democratic Party needs a contested primary,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, director of Wisconsin Jobs Now, who also was in the Warren meeting. “Black folks in our communities have been systematically attacked. It’s not simply about police brutality. Our goal in talking to Warren was to make those connections the same way we did during the civil rights movement.” She said her goal is to get Warren “to be talking about racial justice as part of her progressive message.”
While she is not part of the movement to draft Warren, Epps-Addison added, “We feel that many Democrats are not speaking truthfully to the values that many of the base and voters are concerned about, including black folks.”
In the absence of a competitive Democratic primary, however, some progressives are hoping they can at least push Warren to be the party’s agenda-setter.
“For Sen. Warren, you’re seeing her evolve from a very effective advocate on a set of issues into more of a movement leader and a party leadership role,” said Kettenring. “We’re all evolving, and she is, too. That’s part of the dynamic at work here. Some of the people I know who were in the ‘draft Warren’ movement are people we work with and know, because they’re part of the broader progressive ecosystem. I’d say more of us are stepping up to define the terms of the debate.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/warren-met-privately-with-draft-warren-supporters-117671
Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic...
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic university investments. The New York-based Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and partner organizations including three Make the Road branches will hold six protests along the East Coast, calling on Columbia, Harvard and Yale to pull their investments out of hedge funds that hold Puerto Rican debt and have advocated austerity measures in the U.S. territory, leading to mass school closings and higher tuition costs.
Read the full article here.
Groups launch 'people's filibuster' against GOP health bill
More than a dozen groups opposing the Senate GOP's healthcare bill will hold a "people's filibuster" for two days on...
More than a dozen groups opposing the Senate GOP's healthcare bill will hold a "people's filibuster" for two days on the lawn of the Capitol.
Activists and Democratic lawmakers will speak out against the ObamaCare repeal bill Monday and Tuesday and possibly later in the week.
Read the full article here.
5 days ago
5 days ago