Milwaukee faces historic opportunity to transform schools. Here’s how.
Milwaukee faces historic opportunity to transform schools. Here’s how.
Milwaukee spends a greater fraction of its general fund on policing than many other major cities. A 2017 report from...
Milwaukee spends a greater fraction of its general fund on policing than many other major cities. A 2017 report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives, and Black Youth Project 100, compared 11 other cities and found they devoted 25 to 40 percent of their general fund expenditures to policing — Milwaukee spent 47 percent, or nearly $300 million.
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Major donors consider funding Black Lives Matter
Some of the biggest donors on the left plan to meet behind closed doors next week in Washington with leaders of the...
Some of the biggest donors on the left plan to meet behind closed doors next week in Washington with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement and their allies to discuss funding the burgeoning protest movement, POLITICO has learned.
The meetings are taking place at the annual winter gathering of the Democracy Alliance major liberal donor club, which runs from Tuesday evening through Saturday morning and is expected to draw Democratic financial heavyweights, including Tom Steyer and Paul Egerman.
The DA, as the club is known in Democratic circles, is recommending its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement. And the club and some of its members also are considering ways to funnel support directly to scrappier local groups that have utilized confrontational tactics to inject their grievances into the political debate.
It’s a potential partnership that could elevate the Black Lives Matter movement and heighten its impact. But it’s also fraught with tension on both sides, sources tell POLITICO.
The various outfits that comprise the diffuse Black Lives Matter movement prize their independence. Some make a point of not asking for donations. They bristle at any suggestion that they’re susceptible to being co-opted by a deep-pocketed national group ― let alone one with such close ties to the Democratic Party establishment like the Democracy Alliance.
And some major liberal donors are leery about funding a movement known for aggressive tactics ― particularly one that has shown a willingness to train its fire on Democrats, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“Major donors are usually not as radical or confrontational as activists most in touch with the pain of oppression,” said Steve Phillips, a Democracy Alliance member and significant contributor to Democratic candidates and causes. He donated to a St. Louis nonprofit group called the Organization for Black Struggle that helped organize 2014 Black Lives Matter-related protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police killing of a black teenager named Michael Brown. And Phillips and his wife, Democracy Alliance board member Susan Sandler, are in discussions about funding other groups involved in the movement.
The movement needs cash to build a self-sustaining infrastructure, Phillips said, arguing “the progressive donor world should be adding zeroes to their contributions that support this transformative movement.” But he also acknowledged there’s a risk for recipient groups. “Tactics such as shutting down freeways and disrupting rallies can alienate major donors, and if that's your primary source of support, then you're at risk of being blocked from doing what you need to do.”
The Democracy Alliance was created in 2005 by a handful of major donors, including billionaire financier George Soros and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay to build a permanent infrastructure to advance liberal ideas and causes. Donors are required to donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups, and their combined donations to those groups now total more than $500 million. Endorsed beneficiaries include the Center for American Progress think tank, the liberal attack dog Media Matters and the Democratic data firm Catalist, though members also give heavily to Democratic politicians and super PACs that are not part of the DA’s core portfolio. While the Democracy Alliance last year voted to endorse a handful of groups focused on engaging African-Americans in politics ― some of which have helped facilitate the Black Lives movement ― the invitation to movement leaders is a first for the DA, and seems likely to test some members’ comfort zones.
“Movements that are challenging the status quo and that do so to some extent by using direct action or disruptive tactics are meant to make people uncomfortable, so I’m sure we have partners who would be made uncomfortable by it or think that that’s not a good tactic,” said DA President Gara LaMarche. “But we have a wide range of human beings and different temperaments and approaches in the DA, so it’s quite possible that there are people who are a little concerned, as well as people who are curious or are supportive. This is a chance for them to meet some of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and understand the movement better, and then we’ll take stock of that and see where it might lead.”
According to a Democracy Alliance draft agenda obtained by POLITICO, movement leaders will be featured guests at a Tuesday dinner with major donors. The dinner, which technically precedes the official conference kickoff, will focus on “what kind of support and resources are needed from the allied funders during this critical moment of immediate struggle and long-term movement building.”
The groups that will be represented include the Black Youth Project 100, The Center for Popular Democracy and the Black Civic Engagement Fund, according to the organizer, a DA member named Leah Hunt-Hendrix. An heir to a Texas oil fortune, Hunt-Hendrix helps lead a coalition of mostly young donors called Solidaire that focuses on movement building. It’s donated more than $200,000 to the Black Lives Matter movement since Brown’s killing. According to its entry on a philanthropy website, more than $61,000 went directly to organizers and organizations on the ground in Ferguson and Baltimore, where the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in April sparked a more recent wave of Black Lives-related protests. An additional $115,000 went to groups that have sprung up to support the movement.
She said her goal at the Democracy Alliance is to persuade donors to “use some of the money that’s going into the presidential races for grass-roots organizing and movement building.” And she brushed aside concerns that the movement could hurt Democratic chances in 2016. “Black Lives Matter has been pushing Bernie, and Bernie has been pushing Hillary. Politics is a field where you almost have to push your allies hardest and hold them accountable,” she said. “That’s exactly the point of democracy,” she said.
That view dovetails with the one that LaMarche has tried to instill in the Democracy Alliance, which had faced internal criticism in 2012 for growing too close to the Democratic Party.
In fact, one group set to participate in Hunt-Hendrix’s dinner ― Black Civic Engagement Fund ― is a Democracy Alliance offshoot. And, according to the DA agenda, two other groups recommended for club funding ― ColorOfChange.org and the Advancement Project ― are set to participate in a Friday panel “on how to connect the Movement for Black Lives with current and needed infrastructure for Black organizing and political power.”
ColorOfChange.org has helped Black Lives Matter protesters organize online, said its Executive Director Rashad Robinson. He dismissed concerns that the movement is compromised in any way by accepting support from major institutional funders. “Throughout our history in this country, there have been allies who have been willing to stand up and support uprisings, and lend their resources to ensure that people have a greater voice in their democracy,” Robinson said.
Nick Rathod, the leader of a DA-endorsed group called the State Innovation Exchange that pushes liberal policies in the states, said his group is looking for opportunities to help the movement, as well. “We can play an important role in facilitating dialogue between elected officials and movement leaders in cities and states,” he said. But Rathod cautioned that it would be a mistake for major liberal donors to only give through established national groups to support the movement. “I think for many of the donors, it might feel safer to invest in groups like ours and others to support the work, but frankly, many of those groups are not led by African-Americans and are removed from what’s happening on the ground. The heart and soul of the movement is at the grass roots, it’s where the organizing has occurred, it’s where decisions should be made and it’s where investments should be placed to grow the movement from the bottom up, rather than the top down.”
Source: Politico
Black Lives Matter coalition issues first political agenda demanding slavery reparations
Black Lives Matter coalition issues first political agenda demanding slavery reparations
A coalition built on the Black Lives Matter movement has issued its first political agenda demanding reforms in the...
A coalition built on the Black Lives Matter movement has issued its first political agenda demanding reforms in the American justice system and reparations for slavery. Some 60 organisations in the Movement for Black Lives endorsed the platform calling for "black liberation" that had been forged over a year of discussions.
The agenda included six demands and 40 policy recommendations, including a reduction in military spending and a focus on protecting safe drinking water.
It also called for an end to the death penalty, decriminalisation of drug-related offences and prostitution, and the "demilitarisation" of police departments. It seeks reparations for lasting harms caused to African-Americans by slavery and investment in education, jobs and mental health programmes.
The agenda by the Movement for Black Lives came hard on the heel of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, which failed to satisfy members.
"On both sides of the aisle, the candidates have really failed to address the demands and the concerns of our people," said Marbre Stahly-Butts of the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table, which crafted the agenda.
He told the New York Times. "So this was less about this specific political moment and this election, and more about how do we actually start to plant and cultivate the seeds of transformation of this country that go beyond individual candidates."
The overarching mission of the group is to halt the "increasingly visible violence against black communities". Its agenda was issued just days before the second anniversary of the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Brown's death and the killing of other unarmed black men by white officers was the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform," said Michaela Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Bloc, one of the organisations that worked on the platform.
"As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable."
By MARY PAPENFUSS
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A National Solution
New York Times - June 25, 2014, by Peter Markowitz - For too many years our nation’s discourse around immigration has...
New York Times - June 25, 2014, by Peter Markowitz - For too many years our nation’s discourse around immigration has been distorted by anti-immigrant activists who have advanced bold but regressive state immigration policies. State laws in Arizona and elsewhere have powerfully, but inaccurately, framed the immigration issue through the lenses of criminality and terrorism. While these laws have not generally fared well in court, their impact on our national perception of immigration has impeded federal immigration reform. Meanwhile, states like New York continue to suffer the consequences of our broken immigration laws. Our families continue to be fractured by a torrent of deportations. Our economic growth continues to be impeded by the barriers our immigrant labor force faces. And our democracy continues to be undermined by the exclusion of a broad class of New York residents.
The New York Is Home Act, recently introduced by New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera and Assembly Member Karim Camara, with support from the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York, charts a path forward on immigration — a path that like-minded states and ultimately the federal government could follow. The legislation would grant state citizenship to noncitizens who can prove three years of residency and tax payment and who demonstrate a commitment to abiding by state laws and the state constitution.
The bill is an ambitious but sensible assertion of a state’s well-established power to define the bounds of its own political community. Unlike the Arizona law, this legislation is carefully crafted to respect the unique province of the federal government. As misguided and brutal as the federal immigration regime is, New York cannot alter federal deportation policy. However, it is absolutely within New York’s power to facilitate the full inclusion of immigrants in our state. By granting state citizenship, we would extend the full bundle of rights a state can deliver — the right to vote in state elections, to drive, to access higher education, among others — and we would define the full range of responsibilities that come along with citizenship, including tax payment, jury service and respect for state law. By reorienting our national conversation on immigration around the more accurate and productive themes of family, economic vitality and political inclusion, this legislation will move us toward a real solution to our nation’s immigration quagmire.
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For Many Americans, the Great Recession Never Ended. Is the Fed About to Make It Worse?
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid,...
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science, completing a series of related internships, and presenting original research across the country, Reid could not find a job in her field and, instead, pieces together a nine-hour-per-week tutoring job and a 20-hour-per-week cosmetology gig. The 25-year-old knows that an interest-rate hike will hurt her chances of finding the kinds of jobs for which she has trained, and earning the wage increase she so desperately needs.
A Fed decision to raise interest rates, expected sometime this year, amounts to a vote of confidence in the economy—a declaration that we have achieved the robust recovery we need. “We are close to where we want to be, and we now think that the economy cannot only tolerate but needs higher interest rates,” the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress during a July 15 policy briefing.
But for many millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive, and for them, a rate hike will be disastrous. It will put the brakes on an economy still trudging toward stability; stall progress on unemployment, especially for African-Americans; and slow wage growth even more for the vast majority of American workers.
The general argument for raising interest rates is that it will prevent wage costs from pushing up inflation. However, there is no data suggesting price instability; nor is there any indication that wages have risen enough to spur such inflation. For the overwhelming majority of American workers, wages have stagnated or even dropped over the past 35 years, even as CEOs have seen their compensation grow 937 percent. During the same period, wage gaps between white workers and workers of color have increased, and black unemployment is at the level of white unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the labor-force participation rate is less than 63 percent, the lowest in nearly four decades, suggesting that many Americans have simply given up looking for work.
Yellen has herself often urged the Fed to look at the broadest possible employment picture. Yet, during her recent congressional testimony, shedownplayed the Fed’s ability to address racial disparities, saying that the central bank does not “have the tools to be able to address the structure of unemployment across groups” and that “there isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do” about it. She cited, rightly, a range of other factors, including disparate educational attainment and skill levels, that contribute to economic and social disparities between racial groups. But she also glossed over the importance of the economic environment in shaping workers’ unequal chances.
One defining metric in shaping workers’ chances is the unemployment rate. A high unemployment rate facilitates racial discrimination. When there are too many qualified job candidates for every job, employers can arbitrarily limit their labor pool based on unnecessary educational requirements, irrelevant credit or background checks, or straightforward bias. A tight labor market, by contrast, makes it much harder for employers to succumb to prejudices and overlook qualified workers simply because of bias. When the number of job seekers matches the number of job vacancies, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, injured veterans, and formerly incarcerated workers finally get their due in the workforce.
The late 1990s, when unemployment was at about 4 percent, bear out this thesis. During that rosier era, black unemployment was 7.6 percent, and the ratio of black family income to white family income rose substantially.
As the guardian of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has a number of tools for encouraging a tight labor market, and one of those tools is to keep interest rates low. By keeping rates low, the Fed creates a hospitable environment for job growth by lowering the borrowing costs for consumer and business spending—including hiring new workers. By contrast, raising rates deliberately suppresses spending by consumers and businesses. In the process, it slows job growth, holds down wages, and unnecessarily maintains racial disparities.
With so many workers still struggling, there is no need to cut off this recovery prematurely. Inflation remains below the Fed’s already-low 2 percent target, unemployment and underemployment are too high, and wage growth and labor-force participation are too low. In fact, the Fed should be doing everything within its power to keep nudging the recovery forward for the workers still caught in the slipstream of the Great Recession.
The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates this week, nor when it meets again six weeks after that. It should not raise rates at all in 2015. Doing so would cause tremendous harm to the aspirations and lives of tens of millions of working families, and would disproportionately hurt African-Americans.
MyAsia Reid knows the difference that a full-employment economy can make. She is ready to participate in the economic recovery. And she will be watching as the Fed decides whether to hold to a strategy of strengthening the recovery or pursue a new strategy that jeopardizes her chances and her community.
Source: The Nation
AFT’S $2.6 Million Bayou State Pay
Tuesday’s Dropout Nation analysis of American...
Tuesday’s Dropout Nation analysis of American Federation of Teachers’ 2014-2015 financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor certainly offered plenty of insight on how it is buying influence on the national level. But the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union’s applies its influence-buying most-fervently on behalf of its locals, especially in big cities that are the battlegrounds in the battle over the reform of American public education. This is especially clear in Louisiana, where the union has spent $2.6 million to oppose the reforms in New Orleans and the rest of the state that run counter to the union’s very mission.
Since the damage from Hurricane Katrina (and the longstanding failures of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that levies surrounding the city could stand up to potential disaster) a decade ago, the Crescent City has become the epicenter of one of the nation’s most-important systemic reform efforts. Thanks to the Louisiana state government’s takeover of failing schools run by the Orleans Parish district, and the move to transform them into charter schools (as well as open new ones), New Orleans has now become the model of sorts for expanding school choice. Charter schools serve 79 percent of the city’s children (as of 2012-2013), according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The transformation hasn’t been perfect by any means. There is still lingering anger among residents over how the state essentially implemented the reforms without their input. The quality of public education, though improved, is still nowhere near it should be, especially in Orleans Parish-run schools. As the Center for Reinventing Public Education also points out, the need for building out the infrastructure for families to exercise choice in informed ways also remains; this includes addressing transportation issues that result in kids traveling for as long as two hours from one part of town to another just to go to school.
All that said, the results for kids have been amazing. As Tulane University Professor Doug Harris determined in his assessment of public school performance in New Orleans, the improvements in student achievement were greater than those made by traditional districts in other cities and even better than those that could be achieved by tactics traditionalists tend to tout such as class-size reduction schemes. This is good for kids in the Crescent City and for their families, who have been subjected to the abuse of both the educational and criminal justice systems of the Bayou State for far too long.
None of this is good news to the ears of AFT, its Crescent City local, United Teachers New Orleans, or the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, the union’s state affiliate. After all, if children in New Orleans are getting higher-quality education through a Hollywood Model style of delivering teaching and curricula, than there is no need to keep the obsolete traditional district model upon which AFT (along with National Education Association) derive its influence and ideology. As it is, charters have become the dominant players in cities such as Detroit, and Washington, D.C., in which AFT operates. Given that unlike NEA, AFT has little penetration in suburbia, propagandizing against growth of charters in New Orleans — along with stopping the expansion of choice — is critical to the union’s long-term survival.
It also about the cold hard cash and power of its local. Before Katrina, UTNO had a stranglehold over education policies and practices within Orleans Parish, and had the ability to forcibly collect dues from 7,500 teachers and other employees working for the district. But with all but a smattering of schools still operated by Orleans Parish — and charter schools having the ability to not bargain with the union if they so choose — UTNO no longer has the bodies or the money necessary to oppose systemic reform. Some 1,000 teachers and others now likely make up the union’s rank-and-file, 87 percent less than the numbers on the rolls a year before Katrina reached landfall. This, in turn, isn’t helpful to AFT, whose own revenue is derived from the per-capita tax collected from every teacher and school employee compelled to pay into its units.
But AFT isn’t just concerned about New Orleans alone. After all, the Bayou State has been among the foremost states in expanding school choice and advancing systemic reform. This includes outgoing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s successful expansion four years ago of the state’s school voucher program, which now serves 7,400 children attending 141 private and parochial schools. Eight seats on the Bayou State’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the department run by Supt. John White, are also up for grabs. There’s also the possibility that the Recovery School District, which oversees systemic reform in New Orleans, could also end up taking over failure mills in Baton Rouge and other cities. Particularly in Louisiana’s capital city, just 50 percent of kids attending traditional public schools there met proficiency targets in 2013-2014.
Another hotbed, until recently, was Jefferson Parish, whose board was under the control of a reform-minded majority. Back in 2012, the board decided to ditch its contract with AFT’s Jefferson Federation of Teachers and negotiate for a deal that would give the district more flexibility in operation. This didn’t sit too well with the unit, which then sought national’s help in putting the district back under its thumb.
So AFT has put a lot of energy and money into demonizing Crescent City reform efforts — and stopping reform in the rest of the state.
The union subsidized UTNO to the tune of $134,593 in 2014-2015, four times levels given to the unit during the previous year. At the same time, the union kicked another $59,294 into the organizing project it controls along with the local; the union also paid teachers’ union-oriented law firm Rittenberg, Samuel & Phillips $57,654 to handle a variety of lawsuits, including one filed against Orleans Parish over the layoff of black teachers working in the district before Katrina reached shore. Over the past two years alone, AFT poured $754,878 into propping up UTNO and helping it rebuild its membership.
AFT’s work in New Orleans goes beyond subsidizing UTNO. The union has spent big on events and meetings. This includes dropping $80,490 on meeting space and “reimbursable expenses” at the swanky Loews New Orleans Hotel, $9,840 at the more-humble Homewood Suites, and $7,700 at one of the several Marriott hotels in town. Expect AFT to have dropped even more money this fiscal year for this week’s “Advancing Racial Justice” gathering, which will feature several of the union’s prime vassals, including the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Center for Popular Democracy and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, all of whom are making the trip as condition of being beneficiaries of the largesse the union gets forcibly out of the pockets of teachers. AFT also spent $10,843 on materials printed by Simmons Press, a local outfit, for print materials, paid $7,500 to Lamar Media for billboards, and dropped $17,921 on ads in the Times-Picayune.
But never forget that AFT will play all the political angles. This includes going so far as to attempt to unionize the very Crescent City charters it opposes. The union subsidized its New Orleans Charter Organizing Project to the tune of $244,070 in 2014-2015. As with a similar effort in Los Angeles, AFT hopes that it can get teachers working in charters to forget all the bad things the union says about them and let it collect dues out of their precious paychecks. Lovely.
Meanwhile AFT put plenty of dough into efforts in the rest of the Bayou State. It subsidized Louisiana Federation of Teachers and its various political action funds to the tune of $462,965. While 13 percent less than in 2013-2014, it still means that AFT has sunk $995,790 into the state affiliate over the past two years. The union also paid $20,000 to lobbyist Haynie & Associates for its work at the statehouse. AFT also backed the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers and its organizing project to the tune of $222,420, while spending another $10,501 on so-called “Member-related costs” at a Doubletree hotel in the city. In the state’s northeast sector, AFT subsidized an organizing project focused on helping an affiliate in Monroe at a cost of $104,363. In Caddo Parish, where the AFT got involved in stopping an effort to create a new school district, the union put $224,002 into an organizing project there.
AFT’s biggest spend –and best bang for the buck — came in Jefferson Parish, where its local had lined up a slate of candidates to take out the reform-minded majority. The union put down $669,135 to fund a so-called “Committee for School Board Accountability”, which ran adds backing the local’s favored candidates. It also subsidized an organizing project there (which, as you would expect, was partially tied to rallying members to vote on Election Day) to the tune of $186,837. The union also sent paid $23,911 for hotel and meeting space at a Sheraton Hotel in Metairie, where the district’s offices are located, as well as $5,553 for room-and-board at an Extended Stay hotel.
It was money well-spent. By last December, three of the four candidates AFT and Jefferson Federation of Teachers backed won seats, giving the union a five-to-six-seat majority on the nine-member board. AFT President Rhonda (Randi) Weingarten celebrated the victory with a press release as well as two tweets on Twitter. Eight months later, the district struck a new contract with the AFT local, albeit one that is a mere seven pages long (versus 100 pages for the previous deal), and requires teachers to resolve differences with school leaders before going to the union for help. At the end of the day, a contract with the district means dollars that continue to flow into AFT’s coffers. And for the union and its 229 staffers earning six-figure salaries, that’s always a good thing.
You can check out the data yourself by checking out the HTML and PDF versions of the AFT’s latest financial report, or by visiting the Department of Labor’s Web site. Also check outDropout Nation‘s new collection, Teachers Union Money Report, as well as for the collection,How Teachers’ Unions Preserve Influence, for this and previous reports on AFT and NEA spending.
Source: Dropout Nation
New Report Details Plans for Low-Wage Worker Justice
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013, by Jason Lewis - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to...
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013, by Jason Lewis - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his minimum wage salary doesn't allow for him to afford public transportation, that's a problem.
Low-wage workers across the city have stood up in the past year to demand that such insecurity be eradicated and to pressure employers to finally begin to provide them with just compensation for their labor.
Building on the progress generated by these worker-led movements--in industries such as retail, fast-food, airline security and car washing--UnitedNY, the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups held a symposium and released a report yesterday analyzing the state of the city's low-wage worker movement.
"It's very difficult to try and make ends meet on $7.25 minimum wage in New York City," Alterique Hall, a worker in the fast-food industry, said during a news conference following the event. "Some nights you want to lay down cry because you [feel] like 'what's the point of going to work and putting all of myself into a job, [if] I'm going to be miserable when I get off work, miserable when I go home...and don't want to wake up and go to work the next day...to get disrespected, treated poorly and paid poorly.'"
Hall, who's been active in the push for fairer wages in the fast-food industry, is the worker who is often forced to embark on the three-hour treks to work. Hall said that his boss will sometimes said him home as a penalty for his tardiness--without considering the ridiculous journey he has to travel just to get to there.
"Working hard, and working as hard as you can, isn't paying off for them," mayoral hopeful and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, said during the news conference. "They're being underemployed, They're being underpaid. They're being taken advantage of. They're being ignored. They're becoming a permanent underclass in the city of New York."
The UnitedNY and CPD report lays out four specific initiatives that workers and advocates must pressure the city to implement in order to help better the plight of low-wage workers. The reports calls on the city and employers to :
[Raise] standards for low-wage workers. [Regulate] high-violation industries where labor abuses are rampant. [Establish] a Mayor's Office of Labor Standards to ensure that employment laws are enforced. [Urge] the State to allow NYC to set a minimum wage higher than the State minimum--due to the higher cost of living in the City.The report pays close attention to the need for City Council to pass the paid sick-leave bill, and increase the minimum wage in the city to $10/hour--a salary that would net a worker with regular hours about $20,000/year in earnings.
"We can't continue to be a Tale of Two Cities, where the path to the middle class keeps fading for thousands of New Yorkers," said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. "We must break the logjam and pass paid sick leave in the City Council. We have to protect low-wage workers fighting union busting employers. We can't tolerate inaction any longer. It's time for real action to fight for working families."
During one of the symposium workshops, a panel of labor experts discussed the obstacles facing low-wage workers in their fight to obtain such rights.
"[We've] shifted from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy," Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University, said during the discussion. "[The job market is filled with] part-time jobs, low wages, no benefits, no social contract, no ability to move up in the job the way 20th century workers were able to."
Warren says that the quality of jobs in the American economy will only decline if something isn't done. He noted that 24 percent of jobs were low-wage in 2009. By 2020, that number is expected to nearly double and hit 40 percent. To make matters worse, technological "advances" are expected to increase unemployment rates by 3-5 percent moving forward.
"We're looking at an economy only of low-wage work in the future, but also of high and permanent levels of unemployment," Warren said.
The panel was moderated by acclaimed labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse of the N.Y. Times and included Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor of labor for U.S. Department of Labor and Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.
Several panelists stressed the need to combat attacks from right-minded forces seeking to erode worker wage and benefit rights. Falcon says that those fighting for worker rights must correct popular narratives, many of which categorize wage and benefit increases for workers as business-killers.
"When we talk about the minimum wage, the immediate response from business is, we're going to lose jobs because, we're only going to be able to hire a few people. We have to have an answer to that objection," Falcon said. "Through raising the minimum wage, you create job growth in terms of people being able to put more money into the economy. You're [putting] less pressure on social welfare systems...the system is still subsidizing business [when the public provides] welfare and other social services."
Warren* argued a similar point.
"I think we have to be much more explicit about targeting the right the way that they've targeted us. There's a reason why the right has gone after public sector unionism," Warren* said. "They know that's where the heart of the labor movement is in terms of funding and in terms of membership. We have to get smarter about which parts of the right do we target to destroy ideologically, organizationally so that we can advance further our movements."
Source
Calls Renewed for Charter School Regulations
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of...
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of Philadelphia charter schools, concluding wasteful spending at the privately managed schools costs a yearly average of more than $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money, and more than $30 million since 1997.
“Pennsylvania lawmakers have not given oversight bodies the tools they need to detect that fraud and stop it early,” according to a report prepared by three nonprofit agencies, ACTION United, The Center For Popular Democracy, and Integrity In Education.
The three groups are part of the umbrella group, Philly Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), which continued to seek greater oversight of privately managed charter schools that are publicly funded like their district-run counterparts. The group’s members delivered copies of its findings and recommendations this week to the state Attorney General’s Office and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC), which oversees the city’s public school system.
ACTION United, which has criticized the school district for policies and practices it deems unfair, reported no significant action on the 20-page report released in September. The renewed push for increased regulations on charter schools comes as the state-controlled commission ended its seven-year ban on considering new charter school applications in an effort to control operating costs.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union wants the moratorium reinstated until measures are taken to increase charter school regulation and improve transparency. The state Legislature required the school district to start considering new charter school applications as a condition to receive a sales tax on cigarette packs sold in Philadelphia.
Local activists and educators called for the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether all charter schools have appropriate levels of internal controls and policies to prevent fraud. Oversight agencies have inadequate resources to maintain staff needed to assess fraud and conduct targeted audits.
The nonprofit organization asked 62 charter schools to provide details about fraud prevention practices, but about half of the respondents replied and only four school districts had adequate fraud prevention practices on the books.
Earlier this week, the group called for providing additional funding to the SRC for improving oversight of fraud risk management practices in all publicly funded schools. They made calls for more leadership from the governor’s office, and for granting authority to city or county controllers to assess fraud risk and conduct audits of school district’s finances.
There are only two auditors for the school district, with more than 200 public schools. And implementation of charter school fraud risk management programs has been lacking in publicly funded schools and fraudulent activities aren’t typically exposed by the type of audits that are conducted, according to PCAPS.
“General auditing techniques alone don’t uncover fraud,” according to the report.
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Warren blasts Yellen for endorsing very white, very male regional Fed presidents
Warren blasts Yellen for endorsing very white, very male regional Fed presidents
Around this time last year, as another white male took the reins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Fed’s...
Around this time last year, as another white male took the reins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Fed’s archaic and opaque system of choosing its regional presidents started to come under fire. At first the criticism was over the way the system appeared to favor insiders. Patrick Harker, at the time the new Philadelphia Fed President, had sat on the regional Fed board that was tasked with filling that position. Later that summer the Dallas Fed would name Robert Kaplan, who is also white, as its president despite the fact that he was a director at the executive search firm that that regional Fed board hired to find candidates. When the Minneapolis Fed named Neel Kashkari its president later in 2015, groups like the Fed Up Coalition pointed out that while he was the only non-white regional president, he, like Harker and Kaplan, had former ties to Goldman Sachs.
Since these presidents have rotating votes on U.S. interest rate policy, many saw the selections as a critical failure to reflect the country’s diversity of gender, race and background. As it stands, 11 of the 12 regional Fed presidents are white, 10 of them are male, and none are black or Latino. Fed Up, a network of community organizations and labor unions calling for changes to the central bank, also points out that there has never been a black regional president in the Fed’s 102-year history.
To be sure, the central bank was set up in 1913 in this decentralized way to check the power of the Washington-based Fed Board, whose seven governors are nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate in public hearings and votes. The Fed presidents scattered around the country, meanwhile, are quietly chosen by their regional directors (usually corporate, industry and civic heads) and then, again with little or no public input or transparency, approved by the Fed governors after a series of private interviews with them in Washington. All 12 presidents had their terms extended earlier this year.
So the stage was set on Tuesday for Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who some see as a potential running mate for U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to make a point about diversity at the Fed while making things rather uncomfortable for Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee – and who, it may be noted, is the first woman to lead the central bank:
Warren: “Does the lack of diversity among the regional Fed Presidents concern you?”
Yellen: “Yes, and I believe it is important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear. As you know, it’s the responsibility of the regional banks’ Class B and C directors to conduct a search and to identify candidates. The (Fed) Board reviews those candidates and we insist that the search be national and that every attempt be made to identify a diverse pool of candidates…”
Warren: “The Fed Board recently re-appointed each and every one of these presidents without any public debate or any public discussion about it. So the question I have is, if you’re concerned about this diversity issue, why didn’t you take (any) of these opportunities to say, ‘Enough is enough, let’s go back and see if we can find qualified regional Fed presidents who also contribute to the overall diversity of the Fed’s leadership’?”
Yellen: “We did undertake a thorough review of the re-appointments of the performances of the presidents. The Board of Governors has oversight of the reserve banks, there are annual meetings between the Board’s bank affairs committee and the leadership of those banks to review the performance of the presidents, and there were thorough reviews of…”
Warren: “But you’re telling me diversity is important and yet you signed off on all these folks without any public discussion about it. I appreciate your commitment to diversity and I have no doubt about it. I don’t question it. It just shows me that the selection process for regional Fed presidents is broken because the current process has not allowed you and the rest of the Board to address the persistent lack of diversity among the regional Fed presidents. I think that Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of both backgrounds and interests.”
As it happens, Clinton said last month that she, too, supports an ongoing push by Warren and other liberal members of Congress to exclude bankers from the regional Fed boards and to make the central bank more diverse.
By Jonathan Spicer
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Conservatives May Control State Governments, But Progressives Are Rising
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives...
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in Washington is frustrating, the rightward lurch of statehouses could be devastating. Reveling in their newfound power, state lawmakers and their corporate allies are writing regressive policies that could hurt families by exacerbating inequality, further curtailing an already weakened democracy, and worsening an environmental crisis of global proportions.
From a law that would censor public university professors in Kansas to a governor who prohibits state officials from using the term “climate change” in Florida, ideologues in state capitols are wasting little time when it comes to enacting an extreme agenda. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wisconsin officially enacted right to work legislation on Monday, a policy that’s shown to lower wages and benefits by weakening the power of unions. Missouri, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois are all entertaining various versions of the law. In states like New York and Ohio, legislators are considering severe cuts to public education, while vastly expanding charter schools.
Of course, a look at key 2014 ballot initiatives shows voters held progressive values on issues like the minimum wage, paid sick days, and a millionaires tax. And just 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in 2014, meaning that there is surely a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.
The path to policies that put families first is not short, but a bold coalition across the country took an aggressive step forward this week.
On March 11th, under the banner “We Rise,” thousands of people joined more than 28 actions in 16 states to awaken that silent majority and call their legislators to account. A joint project of National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction and other allies across the country, the message of the day was simple: our cities and states belong to us, not big corporations and the wealthy. We can work together and push our legislators to enact an agenda that puts people and the planet before profits. And at each local action, leaders unveiled their proposals for what that agenda would look like in their cities and states.
In Minnesota, grassroots leaders are fighting for a proposal to re-enfranchise over 44,000 formerly incarcerated people. In Nevada, our allies are agitating for a $15 minimum wage. In Illinois, we are organizing for closing corporate tax loopholes and a financial transaction tax (a “LaSalle Street tax”) that would help plug the state’s budget hole. With each of these proposals, we are moving from defense to offense and changing the conversation about race, democracy and our economy.
We’ve seen over and over again in American history, change starts close to home – in our towns, cities and states. On March 11th, we saw a fresh reminder of the power of local change. Our families and communities are defining this new front in American public life, and we will continue rising to challenge corporate power and win the policies that put people and planet first - not last.
If November was a wave election, then this Spring will be a wave of bottom-up people power activism. What starts with defending people and our democracy from an extreme corporate conservative agenda, will pivot to offense as grassroots organizations across the country fight to fundamentally reshape our government and our economy from the bottom up. Expect an unabashedly bold agenda that holds the potential for awakening the progressive majority and ushering in a new era in America, an era where our country works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well connected.
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