Rage Against the Scheduling Machine
The Boston Globe - December 21, 2014, by Dante Ramos - Most of the time, it’s a cop-out to blame technology for the...
The Boston Globe - December 21, 2014, by Dante Ramos - Most of the time, it’s a cop-out to blame technology for the human misbehavior that it enables. It isn’t PowerPoint’s fault that your co-workers add too many slides to their presentations. It isn’t Facebook’s fault that “friends” whom you barely know make odd comments on your photos. It isn’t Auto-Tune’s fault that Paris Hilton thinks she’s a singer.
But when the stakes are much higher, even software engineers should do some soul-searching. Late last month, just as shoppers around the country were girding for Black Friday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a “retail workers bill of rights” designed to give workers at retail chains more predictable schedules and discourage last-minute scheduling changes. It was a direct response to a powerful new employment trend: Increasingly, major retail and restaurant chains fine-tune their staffing — and hold down labor costs — via sophisticated software that looks at a store’s past performance, weather patterns, and real-time sales data.
The software plays an integral role in so-called just-in-time scheduling systems, which help ensure that a store won’t have eight cashiers working when there’s only enough business for four. For workers, though, these systems have serious downsides: irregular shifts, significant schedule changes on short notice, and huge variations in hours from week to week.
Earlier this year, The New York Times profiled part-time Starbucks barista Jannette Navarro, a San Diego single mom who couldn’t arrange child care or take classes because her hours fluctuated so wildly. Workers at chains from Walmart to Jamba Juice have gone public with their frustrations. “These hours don’t match the basic realities of people’s lives,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy. The burden for workers with families is particularly heavy, she added. “Kids need routine, but when you work in retail routine doesn’t happen.”
The market leader in this workforce-management industry is Chelmsford-based Kronos Inc.; other players include SAP, ADP, and Oracle. What these firms have to decide is whether their products can be a force for greater equity in the workplace — or will remain one more way, in an uncertain economy, to shift more of the risk onto low-wage employees with little leverage.
The world’s richest man says we need to shorten the workweek. Who really wants to disagree?
Strikingly, none of the researchers or labor advocates whom I contacted blamed Kronos or its competitors for schedules that, ultimately, reflect the employer’s values. Still, all the evidence suggests that relying on faceless algorithms makes it easier for employers to casually jerk workers around.
If you worked in retail 20 years ago, your manager would post a handwritten schedule on the back of the bathroom door every week or two. She might have expected you to work every other Friday night, because spreading unpopular weekend shifts around helps morale. If you worked Tuesday and Thursday last week, she might give you the same shifts this week, because reinventing the schedule from scratch would be a hassle. She made judgments about which inconveniences you might grumblingly accept — and which ones were too burdensome to demand.
A robo-scheduler doesn’t recognize such objections unless it’s programmed to. “The algorithm did it,” a manager might rationalize — especially when headquarters is keeping a close eye on staffing at every store.
It also can’t be a coincidence that, as scheduling software proliferated over the last decade, so did the widespread use of on-call shifts, which require part-time employees to check in an hour or two beforehand to see if they’re needed. For workers who need to arrange child care, or work a second part-time job, being called in with a couple of hours’ notice is a disaster.
The workforce-management industry is a little cagey about how its products affect workers. “Reduce labor costs by efficiently scheduling, monitoring, and managing your workforce,” promises an Oracle marketing website. “Provide outstanding customer service as you control labor costs,” says the pitch for a Kronos product . But in a recent interview, Kronos’s vice president for business development, Charles DeWitt, argued that minimizing labor costs is “an afterthought in the calculation.” As he tells it, it’s hard enough just to match the mix of skills and certifications that a retailer needs at a given time (fluency in Spanish, the capacity to perform certain management duties) with the availability of workers, whose time constraints vary greatly.
In our conversation, DeWitt sounded genuinely interested in addressing some of the problems worker advocates have raised. Kronos is developing metrics for how often the hours an employee works differ from what’s on the original schedule, how well staffing respects workers’ preferences, and how widely a given employee’s hours vary from week to week. This is encouraging, but also unsettling: Shouldn’t such considerations have been part of the equation all along?
Eventually, labor laws have to adapt as well. Earlier this year, US Representative George Miller of California introduced the Schedules that Work Act, which would compensate retail, food service, and janitorial workers for last-minute schedule changes. But nobody thinks the federal legislation will pass anytime soon. If history is any guide, liberal states like California and Massachusetts will enact some controls, while other states will blow the issue off entirely.
Worker advocates need to look for additional pressure points — and software makers ought to own up to their own role in creating the current system. If technology firms and the retailers who hire them are looking at the right data, over a period of time that extends beyond the current quarter, they’ll be able to verify what labor activists have long believed: that more stability for workers reduces turnover and improves customer loyalty.
Maybe it’s too simplistic to hope for a simple software tool that allows employers to upgrade their schedules from 1 (“sadistic”) to 10 (“workers’ paradise”). If nothing else, Kronos and its competitors can help simply by confronting retail chains up front with the sacrifices they’re expecting from their workers.
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Chicago Group Pushing For $15 Minimum Wage
Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an...
Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an ordinance that would increase the minimum wage for many workers in the third-largest U.S. city to $15 an hour.
The ordinance calls for corporations with more than $50 million in annual sales to increase worker pay to at least $15 an hour with a year of the law's effective date. Smaller businesses would be allowed more than five years to raise pay. Twenty-one of the council's 50 members have signed on as cosponsors, Crain's Chicago Business reports.
The current minimum wage in Chicago is $8.25 an hour, a dollar more than the federal minimum wage.
Several aldermen joined low-wage workers at a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday, before the meeting where the ordinance was filed. Home care worker Darlene Pruitt, a 55-year-old mother of three and grandmother of 22, said she earns $10.65 an hour after five annual raises of a dime an hour working for the Help at Home agency. It's not enough, the West Side resident told The Huffington Post.
Pruitt said she has sometimes turned to a food pantry to make sure her family has enough to eat. "It's hard out there," Pruitt said. "The cost to live in Chicago and meet your basic needs -- rent, utilities, food, medication, clothes -- is high."
Pruitt said she is not afraid of retribution from her employer from speaking out because she is optimistic her efforts will help other workers like her who are in a similar position. If she earned more money, much of it would go right back into her community, she said.
The Center for Popular Democracy, in partnership with Raise Chicago, an advocacy group pushing for the higher wage, released a study Wednesday claiming the higher wage would decrease worker turnover and stimulate the local economy.
The study said the higher minimum wage would be responsible for $616 million in new economic activity and would help create 5,350 new jobs in its first phase. The higher wage also would add $45 million in sales tax revenues, but would raise consumer prices about 2 percent, according to the study.
Voters overwhelmingly backed the $15 minimum wage in a non-binding ballot question on about 5 percent of the city's ballots in the March primary election.
Business groups, however, have yet to be swayed.
Doug Whitley of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce told DNAinfo Chicago the proposed ordinance is "a ridiculously excessive reach on the part of a local government to try to instruct private-sector employers how to manage their businesses." The chamber said in a previous statement with other business groups that employers "cannot afford another minimum-wage increase" of any amount.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced his support of a higher minimum wage, but for less than $15 an hour. Emanuel last week trumpeted the creation of a minimum wage "working group" tasked with creating a plan for increasing worker wages in the city and previously said he backed President Barack Obama's push for a $10.10 federal minimum wage.
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Top Fed Officials Field Questions From Activists Unhappy Over Monetary Policy
Top Fed Officials Field Questions From Activists Unhappy Over Monetary Policy
Top Federal Reserve officials defended their handling of monetary policy in a freewheeling meeting with liberal...
Top Federal Reserve officials defended their handling of monetary policy in a freewheeling meeting with liberal activists at the annual Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Much of the meeting centered on whether the Fed should raise interest rates, as it's widely expected to do before the end of the year, and the likely impact of a hike on poor and minority communities.
"The economy has recovered for much of white America, but for black and Latino workers it has not," said Rod Adams, of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change in Minneapolis.
"If you decide that we're at maximum employment now and you intentionally slow down the economy, you'll be leaving us behind, pulling up the ladder right after you've climbed it," Adams said.
"In no way do I want to see the economy stall. In no way do I want to see the economy stop growing," said John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Since monetary policy takes a while to have an impact, the unemployment rate is likely to keep falling for a while, even if the Fed raises rates this year, Williams said.
"If we do wait too long, what happens is eventually the economy creates imbalances or overheats and we get into situations somehow where we have to react to that and when we react to that, that often leads to a recession or some other bad outcome," Williams said.
"I think the Federal Reserve is very much committed to having a set of monetary policies in place that achieve maximum sustainable employment over time. Where there are differences are: What's the precise interest rate settings to achieve that goal?" said William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The hourlong meeting was organized by Fed Up, a coalition of some two dozen community groups, labor unions and liberal policy groups that have sought to influence Fed policy.
An unusually large number of Fed officials attended the meeting, including Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, Eric Rosengren of the Boston Fed and Kansas City Fed President Esther George.
While the meeting, which was billed as a "listening session," was mostly cordial, some of the activists made their unhappiness over Fed policy clear.
Fed officials did not object when Kendra Brooks of the Philadelphia group ACTION United called out the central bank for the lack of diversity among its governors, boards of directors and staff members.
"I would be very surprised if anybody in the Federal Reserve system thinks that we've done well on that," Dudley said.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, said some progress has been made in diversifying his own staff and board of directors, but conceded more work needed to be done.
By JIM ZARROLI
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Fox Host Falsely Claims New York's Municipal ID Program Will Give Undocumented Immigrants Voting Rights
Fox Host Falsely Claims New York's Municipal ID Program Will Give Undocumented Immigrants Voting Rights
Media Matters - September 19, 2014, by Cal Colgan - Fox News co-host Steve Doocy claimed New York City's new law...
Media Matters - September 19, 2014, by Cal Colgan - Fox News co-host Steve Doocy claimed New York City's new law allowing municipal identifications to all city residents will allow undocumented immigrants to vote in state and local elections. But New York City's election law clearly stipulates that only U.S. citizens can vote, and experts explain that the municipal IDs provide much-needed services the city's residents.
New York City Mayor Announces Municipal IDs Will Give Free One-Year Access To New York Cultural InstitutionsNew York City Mayor Bill De Blasio Announces Municipal ID Will Give Free One-Year Access To City's Cultural Institutions. On September 19, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that residents who register for the city's municipal identification cards in January 2015 will receive free admission to the city's top cultural institutions for one year:
"The municipal ID is a powerful tool to bring more New Yorkers out of the shadows and into the mainstream. It is now also a key that opens the door for hundreds of thousands of more New Yorkers to our City's premier assets in culture, science and entertainment," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. "The Municipal ID Card embodies the values we cherish most about inclusivity and equality, and these memberships are another step forward on providing greater access and opportunity for our people." [NYC.gov, 9/18/14]
Fox Host Claims Municipal ID Program Will Give Undocumented Immigrants Voting RightsFox's Steve Doocy: Undocumented Immigrants Could Use ID Cards To Vote In Local And State Elections. In a September 19 segment highlighting de Blasio's municipal ID program, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy claimed that New York City's new municipal ID program will allow undocumented immigrants to vote in local and state elections:
DOOCY: Mayor de Blasio here in New York City ran on making sure that people in this country illegally who make New York City their home could get an I.D. card that they could use to, among other things, vote in local and state elections. Well, now, to try to get as many people as possible to get these cards, these New York City municipal I.D. cards, what they're doing is they're going to have incentives. Go ahead, get a membership for one year to 33 of the city's signature cultural institutions, like the Bronx Zoo, the Met, Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/19/14]
New York City's Election Laws Prohibit Non-Citizens From VotingNew York City Board Of Elections: Only US Citizens Can Register To Vote. According to New York City's Board of Elections, only U.S. citizens are eligible to register to vote in the city (emphasis added):
To register to vote in the City of New York, you must:
1. Be a citizen of the United States (Includes those persons born in Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands).
2. Be a New York City resident for at least 30 days.
3. Be 18 years of age before the next election.
4. Not be serving a jail sentence or be on parole for a felony conviction.
5. Not be adjudged mentally incompetent by a court.
6. Not claim the right to vote elsewhere (outside the City of New York). [Board of Elections in The City of New York, accessed 9/19/14]
Municipal IDs Provide Much-Needed Services For Undocumented ImmigrantsCenter For Popular Democracy: Municipal IDs Improve Undocumented Immigrants' Access To Community Services And Increase Community Participation. In a 2013 report on municipal ID programs, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) explained that the "ability to provide proof of identity is a basic necessity" that affects "almost every aspect of daily life." According to CPD, having access to identification cards improves overall community safety by giving undocumented residents better access to local authorities, allows cardholders access to "basic services" like cashing checks and seeing a doctor, and decreases problems of racial profiling. CPD explained the goals of municipal IDs in their report:
Improve community safety by making it easier for those without state-issued ID to interact with local authorities. Improve access to financial services by providing a form of ID that will allow those without other forms of identification to open bank accounts. Mitigate impact of racial profiling. Make symbolic statement of welcome and solidarity to immigrant residents. Promote unity and sense of membership in the local community among all residents. [Center for Popular Democracy, December 2013]Catholic Legal Immigration Network: "Offering Municipal ID Cards To All City Residents Is Fundamentally Fair." In an April 14 memo, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) asserted that cities throughout the US should issue municipal ID cards to all residents and that doing so would allow marginalized residents access to basic necessities like community safety, housing, health care at local clinics, and financial services:
All residents deserve the right to be identified. The ability to prove one's identity is a fundamental human right - not a privilege. Municipal ID cards allow all residents the opportunity to participate more fully in the economy and meet their basic needs such as buying groceries. Paying for purchases with a check, credit card, or debit card often requires an ID. Identification will enable card holders to access services essential to their families such as renting apartments, obtaining utilities, accessing health clinics, filling prescriptions, acquiring insurance, and picking up their children at school. Enabling individuals to open bank accounts so that they don't have to carry their savings protects them from theft. Access to banking services allows people to save to support their families and to participate more easily in the economy.[...]
The ability to prove one's identity increases the likelihood that an individual will report a crime and file a police report. In particular, those without immigration status will be less fearful of detention and deportation. Law enforcement will spend less time and fewer resources identifying individuals when all residents are eligible for municipal ID cards. Police will be able to focus on protecting the public. When all city residents can prove their identity, city employees such as firefighters and EMTs can better serve everyone. [Catholic Legal Immigration Network, April 2014]CNN: San Francisco Implemented Municipal ID Program To Address Public Safety Concerns For Immigrants. On February 24, CNN reported that San Francisco city officials implemented a municipal ID program to address the "serious public safety problem" that occurs when immigrant victims are unable to report crime to local police:
"Residents without access to bank accounts often carry large amounts of money on them or store it in their homes, making them targets for crime. And, those who can't produce proof of identity are often reluctant to report crimes to the police," said Megan A. Caygill-Wallach of the San Francisco city administrator's budget and planning office.
Although immigrants are victimized by crime at rates similar to or greater than the general population, they report crime at lower rates, according to studies. The underreporting of crime poses a serious public safety problem and erodes the ability of law enforcement to function effectively in the city. [CNN, 2/24/14]
Other Marginalized Residents Also Benefit From Municipal IDsCatholic Legal Immigration Network: Municipal IDs Help Other "Vulnerable Residents" Like The Elderly. In its 2014 memo, CLINIC argued that municipal IDs also help the elderly, low-income residents, the homeless and the recently incarcerated:
Municipal ID cards will help our most vulnerable residents, including undocumented immigrants, victims of domestic violence or natural disaster, the homeless, low-income senior citizens, and the formerly incarcerated. The ability to prove one's identity fosters a sense of pride, belonging, and shared community and facilitates integration and participation in civic life. When residents can access the services necessary to take care of themselves and their families, communities become socially and economically stronger. [CLINIC, 4/2014]Source
Supreme Court Deadlocks on Immigration, Leaving Millions in Limbo
Supreme Court Deadlocks on Immigration, Leaving Millions in Limbo
The U.S. Supreme Court has deadlocked on President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration. The 4-4 tie on United...
The U.S. Supreme Court has deadlocked on President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration.
The 4-4 tie on United States v. Texas (pdf) sets no precedent, but leaves in place a previous ruling by a lower court that blocks the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) order from going into effect, meaning five million undocumented immigrants are now at risk for deportation and being separated from their families.
In a press conference following the decision, Obama said, “This is a very clear reminder of why it’s so important for the Supreme Court to have a full bench,” castigating Republicans for refusing to meet with his Judge Merrick Garland, his nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement Thursday, “Today, we mourn the Supreme Court deadlock on President Obama’s executive order. The lack of a decision allows the politically motivated ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stand. Millions of immigrant families have lived in limbo for the past 18 months and this decision prolongs their agony.”
“If the highest court in the land cannot find a majority for justice and compassion, there is something truly broken in our system of laws, checks and balances,” she said.
The ACLU’s Immigration Rights Project director Cecillia Wang added, “Today’s non-decision in the DAPA case leaves the legal questions about the president’s immigration authority unanswered. But by leaving in place the injunction issued by the district judge, today’s 4-4 tie has a profound impact on millions of American families whose lives will remain in limbo, and who will now continue the fight.
“In setting the DAPA guidelines, President Obama exercised the same prosecutorial discretion his predecessors have wielded without controversy, and ultimately the courts should hold that the action was lawful,” Wang said.
According to SCOTUS blog, there will be a later appeal, so the Obama immigration policy “will be revived if [Hillary] Clinton wins and a Democratic nominee provides the 5th vote.”
Several cases have deadlocked since Scalia’s death in February.
DAPA was an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevented the deportation of undocumented youths brought to the U.S. as children.
Texas led 26 Republican-controlled states in challenging the order, announced in November 2014. The previous ruling by a New Orleans federal appeals court stated that the Obama administration lacked the authority to shield the millions of immigrants from deportation and make them eligible for work permits without Congressional approval.
By Nadia Prupis
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Report: Threat of Foreclosure on Calif. Homes Disproportionately Affects Minorities
National Journal, The Next America - March 15, 2013 - Leading mortgage lender Wells Fargo is urged to be more...
National Journal, The Next America - March 15, 2013 - Leading mortgage lender Wells Fargo is urged to be more transparent about relief reporting and to grant principal reductions. An overwhelming majority of homes in California’s major cities that are in danger of foreclosure are also in majority-minority ZIP codes, according to a report released this week.
The report focuses particularly on homes with mortgages serviced by Wells Fargo. Of the 21 major California cities examined, more than eight in 10 homes in danger of foreclosure are in areas where at least half of its residents are minorities—evidence, the report’s authors say, that further supports the idea that the housing crisis has been particularly harmful to African-American and Hispanic homeowners.
The findings come on the heels of the housing-market decline and the ensuing Great Recession that ensnared many homeowners who have been fighting to maintain their financial standing and retain their homes. While the report focuses on the California economy, other Americans are in similar circumstances. Across the nation, homeowners—many of them minorities—struggle to stay afloat as they watch their savings plummet and their dreams of maintaining a middle-class American lifestyle disappear. In its place are notices of default and the impending threat of bankruptcy.
In California, a total of 65,466 homes are in the pipeline for foreclosure, many of them purchased before the housing market crash in 2007.
Coauthor Ady Barkan, of the Center for Popular Democracy, a national organization based in New York, said the report focuses on Wells Fargo because the bank is responsible for the highest number of homes in California’s foreclosure pipeline—in addition to being headquartered in the same state. As leading lender, the bank is responsible for mortgages for 11,616 California homes—nearly 1 in 5 homes in the pipeline.
The “foreclosure pipeline” refers to homes that have received a notice of default or a notice of trustee sale. While some homeowners eventually pay back the debt, more often the homes are foreclosed, Barkan said.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Vickie Adams took a contrary view, saying that the term “pipeline” can be overused and doesn’t take into consideration the complexities of the mortgage-lending industry. She added that the bank offers various programs and workshops to help educate its customers on their options to prevent losing their home.
“It’s always challenging to articulate some of the specifics of what some perceive to be a pipeline of sorts,” she said. “The facts are when a home has come to foreclosure, there are oftentimes that a customer is able to find options to prevent [it].… In foreclosure, no one wins. What we do is try to provide a great deal of support to the community in a number of ways.”
The wide variety of data sources that reports use can often create conclusions that aren’t necessarily in line with standard industry practices, Adams added.
“We all understand everyone’s right to raise issues they believe are important, but I think it’s really important, again, to look at the data and understand what the data says and use the measures that are appropriate for the industry,” she added.
According to the report, the opaque nature of Wells Fargo’s reporting data has made it difficult to track who is receiving the help. The report’s authors urge the bank to practice more-transparent reporting practices that include race, ZIP code, and income data for all foreclosures, short sales, and principal reductions.
According to Adams, the data for relief efforts and other information is available through industry publications such as RealtyTrac and Inside Mortgage Finance, as well as government sources.
Last year, the bank settled a lawsuit with the Justice Department, which alleged that the financial institution had discriminated against minority borrowers during the housing bubble, charging higher fees and rates to minorities than whites, even when they had the same credit risk.
The Wells Fargo case wasn’t unique: Lawsuits surrounding discriminatory housing practices and predatory sub-prime mortgage lending hit major banks everywhere.
(RELATED: Big Banks, Racial Discrimination Linked in Housing Crisis)
Using data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Database, the report found that between 2007 and 2009, Wells Fargo was 188 percent more likely to put African-Americans into riskier sub-prime loans than white borrowers with similar credit history; the risk for Hispanics was 117 percent.
Adams maintains that Wells Fargo is a “fair and responsible lender” that adheres to regulations according to the Fair Lending Act. She added that the bank works closely with various advocacy and real estate organizations to help minority and low-income borrowers.
The report, co-authored by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Center for Popular Democracy, and the Home Defenders League, asks Wells Fargo to commit to principal reductions in the interest of saving homeowners from complete financial ruin.
Between 2009 and 2012, Wells Fargo granted $6.3 billion in principal forgiveness; their goal is to hit $7 billion by 2014, Adams said.
“We take it very seriously, and we work very hard at it. We really are focused on excellence, helping our customers succeed financially, and we have a culture of continuously improving our home-lending activity,” Adams said.
The report argues that allowing all 65,466 homes in California to be foreclosed would be a detriment to the state and local economy. Foreclosure would cause the homes to lose 22 percent of their value, at an estimated cost of $7.6 billion. Maintenance costs for vacant homes would cost the government $19,227, resulting in a total cost of nearly $467 million for taxpayers.
“Communities have already sustained significant harm from the foreclosure crisis; unless Wells Fargo changes its practices, more harm will be done in coming months and years. New homes continue to enter the pipeline, inflicting tremendous stress and damage on homeowners and communities until Wells Fargo adopts significant new policies,” the report states.
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Hundreds of New Yorkers gather at MOMA PS1 to raise money for Puerto Rico
Hundreds of New Yorkers gather at MOMA PS1 to raise money for Puerto Rico
The movement to help hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico continues. Hundreds of New Yorkers attended a fundraiser at MOMA PS1...
The movement to help hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico continues. Hundreds of New Yorkers attended a fundraiser at MOMA PS1 in Long Island City Wednesday night.
According to organizers, all the money raised for the Hurricane Maria Community Relief and Recovery Fund will go towards relief work and supplies on the island.
Watch the video and read the article here.
Hundreds of people showed up to thank Ford for testifying
Hundreds of people showed up to thank Ford for testifying
Tracey Corder, an organizer with the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, said she has been meeting with...
Tracey Corder, an organizer with the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, said she has been meeting with Republican members of Congress in recent days and urging them to take Ford’s allegations seriously.“Survivors are being retraumatized by all of this, and we’ve been telling [senators] that we need a Supreme Court justice who is a fair and decent person,” said Corder, who flew in from Oakland, California, to join the demonstrations. “If this were an episode of Scandal, [Kavanaugh] would have withdrawn by now,” she continued. “That’s our current politics —it’s even more absurd than television.”
Read the full article here.
Meet the lefty club behind a blitz of new laws in cities around the country
Like many new organizations, Local Progress sprang from the...
Like many new organizations, Local Progress sprang from the ashes of a crisis.
In 2012, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, who represents Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, and Nick Licata, then Seattle council chair, had a phone call about how to deal with the tidal wave of foreclosed homes that had swept the country. A few loosely organized collectives had emerged around the challenge of blight, with some cities trying innovative and legally risky strategies like using the power of eminent domain to seize the foreclosed mortgages. But there wasn’t a place to convene like-minded local officials around that issue — or any other. “It really grew into 'hey, there should be something like this,'” Lander says.
Rather than creating a new organization, Lander reached out to the Center for Popular Democracy, another young outfit that secured grants to support a few staff members for the project. They first gathered in 2012, at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington. The group has grown — with annual convenings and ones that are more ad hoc, like a forum in support of Seattle’s first-in-the-nation vote to raise its minimum wage to $15 in 2014. The show of solidarity helped. “One thing they said was, 'make it look like we’re not crazy,’” Lander says, of Seattle’s council.
Many cities have a klatch of liberal legislators who push for higher minimum wages, paid leave mandates, taxes on plastic bags and the like. By putting them in contact with one another and other community groups, Local Progress has in recent years created a policy feedback loop that’s accelerated the spread of new laws in municipalities across the country. In the absence of federal action on many issues, it’s trying to make local government into something that doesn’t just pick up the trash — but solves some of society’s biggest problems as well.
City-level cooperation, of course, isn’t a new idea.
Its first iteration came about a century ago, during the Progressive era, when urban leaders fought for home rule for cities in order to establish construction codes, health and safety standards, and the architecture of good government through state-based alliances called Municipal Leagues. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created programs that bypassed the more conservative governors and state legislatures, filtering aid for infrastructure projects through local Democratic machines.
That relationship started to weaken through the 1970s and ‘80s, when some Democrats migrated to the suburbs, urban politics became more racialized, and the flow of money slowed to a trickle.
“What’s new in the last 30 years is that federal role has been eroding, and by now it’s really difficult to get anything done,” says Margaret Weir, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in urban politics. "The Reagan administration signaled to cities that 'you’re pretty much on your own.’"
Meanwhile, the old Municipal Leagues had evolved into bodies like the National League of Cities and the National Council of State Legislators, which serve as convening entities — but don’t tend to push the policy envelope that much, so as to remain all-inclusive. Licata, in particular, was frustrated that there seemed to be more focus on issues of greater concern to small towns, rather than those of large cities; he also wanted to see more emphasis on issues of social justice and racial equity than the existing organizations were willing to take on.
"The old ones got defined in more nonpartisan terms,” says Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard. “Today’s progressives want a harder edge."
Creating an organization of self-described progressive elected leaders serves another purpose: It creates an easy and fast way for liberal activists to access the people most likely to take action.
"There wasn’t a place where you could find progressive elected officials in the aggregate. You’d find one here and you’d find one there,” says Angela Glover Blackwell, president of Policylink, which focuses on equity for communities of color. Local Progress “was a gold mine.”
So far, Local Progress has appealed to reform-oriented elected officials like D.C. City Councilmember Elissa Silverman, whom the organization recruited last year. In October, she made a quick trip to Los Angeles for the group’s first large convening, where she found about 100 people like her trying to think creatively about what local officials can do within the law — like require predictable schedules for retail employees, for example, or crack down on non-payment of freelancers.
"I was not totally sold on the value of going out there, but I said ‘what the hell,’ and I’m really glad I did,” Silverman says. Now, when she wants to workshop a new policy idea or learn what others had experienced with proposals that crop up in D.C. — like funding a new arena that will be used by a professional sports team, which Silverman opposes — she can tap into the network with one email to a listserv, or look up a policy toolkit that Local Progress’ small staff has put together on the issue.
A few months later, while introducing a proposal for public financing of municipal elections, she mentioned the experiences of three young council members she met at the conference: Antonio Reynoso, Ritchie Torres, and Carlos Menchaca of New York, all of whom had triumphed in unlikely campaigns against powerful opponents.
"Antonio in particular said 'Hey Elissa, if it wasn’t for public financing, I wouldn’t have been able to win,’ and that was very important for me to hear,” Silverman recalls. ”I was already convinced, but to have all three of them say that made a big impact.”
In trying to push a progressive agenda in cities, Local Progress hasn’t escaped opposition.
Some of the most formidable comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative membership organization that helps Republican state senators and representatives pass laws confining the size of government,often to tremendous effect. In 2014, liberals formed the State Innovation Exchange to try to serve as a counterweight, but its influence is so far fairly limited.
ALEC doesn’t have to fight Local Progress’ members directly. Instead, the group has favored “pre-emption” laws that enforce uniform rules across a state -- preventing a city on its own from passing stricter gun laws, or higher minimum wages. Pittsburgh’s new paid sick days ordinance, for example, was just thrown out by a court on the grounds that the city didn’t have the authority under state law to enact it.
“As cities step out and move the ball forward, states have come in to take away their power to do just that,” says Andrew Friedman, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, where Local Progress is housed.
About a year after Local Progress had its first meeting, ALEC formed the American City and Council Exchange, also focused on local jurisdictions. The group’s director, Jon Russell, met with LocalProgress co-founder Nick Licata, who had joined as a member to learn more about the group. Russell thinks they could find common ground on some issues, like openness and transparency in local government. But that doesn’t usually include the question of what cities should control, and what should be left to the state.
“There’s some situations where the state does a better job, and wants to have consistency,” Russell says. “What we tend to tell our members is to focus on what we do best — making sure our budgets are effective and efficient. Don’t get tied up in these political issues that more recently have crept into local government.” He thinks that local officials shouldn’t listen to environmental groups, for example, trying to ban fracking or keep coal trains from coming through town.
“If they want to work on state issues, they should run for state government,” Russell said, of the policy entrepreneurs. "People want their trash picked up. They want their police to respond to calls. They want their fires put out.”
The central idea of Local Progress, however, is that no issue is out of bounds for city government. Besides environmental groups, it has heavy involvement from the labor movement; an AFL-CIO vice president sits on the organization’s board, and the conference in October had a session on the Service Employees International Union’s Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign, along with numerous appearances by union officials. Those outside groups are essential to getting new policy ideas into practice.
In time, Lander sees the direction of policy innovation starting to flow in reverse: From pioneering cities up to state and federal lawmakers, who might take cues from what appears to be a groundswell of support. He recently wonthe passage of a bill banning credit checks for employment, for example.
“Eventually that should be a national law or a CFPB regulation. That’s not going to happen until a lot of cities and states do it,” Lander says. “And if there’s a competition for who can do the strongest law, eventually it’ll make sense for businesses to say 'we should have a national law.'"
But right now not all cities are able to adopt the kinds of path-breaking new laws that councils can pull off in liberal enclaves on either coast. Take something like allowing Uber drivers to unionize, which could entail years of litigation while courts decide whether it’s kosher — as the mayor of Seattlepointed out in a letter to council members after they voted unanimously in favor of it. Being the first takes both political will and financial resources to enforce new mandates and weather the inevitable legal hiccups or unforeseen consequences that might require adjustments down the road.
That’s also where the leaders of Local Progress think a central clearinghouse of information could come in handy: It might help a city councilperson in Terre Haute, Ind., or Tempe, Ariz., avoid having to design an inclusionary zoning ordinance from scratch. Moreover, it makes members feel connected to a larger movement, rather than just slogging away in the trenches.
“It’s a question of looking at a progressive issue, and understanding that progressive issues do reflect the interests of everyone,” Licata says. “As an additive to the gas, we’re able to get more mileage and oomph on this issues.”
Source: Washington Post
What Happens After the Progressive Revolution Comes to a City Like Durham
What Happens After the Progressive Revolution Comes to a City Like Durham
“Coalitions are coming together throughout the country. “Increasingly, what we’re seeing is cities and municipal policy...
“Coalitions are coming together throughout the country. “Increasingly, what we’re seeing is cities and municipal policy-makers working together to build alternatives in policy and governance,” says Sarah Johnson, co-director of Local Progress, a network of progressive city officials staffed by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. In Texas, for example, a group of local governments—including Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, and the border town of El Cenizo—collectively sued the state over a crackdown on sanctuary cities. (That lawsuit is ongoing.) “When it’s just one city fighting by itself,” Sarah Johnson says, “it’s obviously a very different calculus.”
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5 days ago
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