For immigrants fighting deportation, a push for government-funded lawyers
For immigrants fighting deportation, a push for government-funded lawyers
Nearly 4,000 immigrants in the Washington region face deportation every year without a lawyer, according to a report that calls on area governments to follow the lead of New...
Nearly 4,000 immigrants in the Washington region face deportation every year without a lawyer, according to a report that calls on area governments to follow the lead of New York and Los Angeles and provide funding for legal aid to immigrants.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a national nonprofit organization, analyzed thousands of deportation cases at immigration courts in Baltimore and Arlington and found that immigrants were far more likely to prevail if they had a lawyer...
Read full article here.
Turning a Moment into a Movement after the Deaths of Unarmed Black Men
Washington Post - February 19, 2015, by Marc Fisher, Sandya Somashekhar, and Wesley Lowery - In the months following...
Washington Post - February 19, 2015, by Marc Fisher, Sandya Somashekhar, and Wesley Lowery - In the months following the shooting death of Michael Brown, Tony Rice quit his job to lead nightly protests in Ferguson, Mo. But after a grand jury decided in November not to indict the officer who shot Brown, Rice said, “we just woke up one morning and no one was out there protesting.”
That hasn’t deterred Rice. As the nation’s attention has turned elsewhere, he and fellow activists have switched up their tactics, slowing down and digging in, trying to nurture a nascent civil rights movement by shifting to local issues and a broader critique of American society.
The deadly confrontations in Ferguson; in Cleveland, where police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was playing with a pellet gun; and in New York, where police choked and killed a man who was selling loose cigarettes on the sidewalk, prompted young people to take to social media and the streets to express outrage and demand change.
The unrest generated by the deaths of Brown in Ferguson, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Eric Garner in Staten Island may eventually become the first scene in a stirring saga of how a moment builds into a movement. Or it could end up as a cautionary tale about how a righteous activism born of traumatic incidents fizzles, the energy of dozens of new activist groups sapped by quotidian realities and the shortened attention spans of a society that expresses its political passions in Likes and tweets.
“To go from protesting to power, you need demonstrations, legislation and litigation,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the veteran civil rights leader who has acted in recent months as an informal adviser and cheerleader for several new groups. “Sprinters burn out real fast. These young people need to be in it for the long run. And it must be an intergenerational coalition. A movement that’s mature requires clergy and lawyers and legislators. The struggle is never a one-string guitar.”
The new activists are still trying to tune their instrument. They are still figuring out whether to hew to local issues or go national. For the most part, the young protesters haven’t connected with elders such as Jackson or the Rev. Al Sharpton. They have uneasy relationships not only with civil rights fighters of generations past, but also with the black mayors and police chiefs who owe their own positions to the successes of that earlier activism.
All that adds up to a fractured puzzle composed of idealistic young activists who believe ordinary people can band together to make black lives matter more, but who haven’t yet figured out how to boost their generation into action.
In Ferguson, some activists moved from street actions to events such as “Books and Breakfast,” a giveaway featuring books such as “The New Jim Crow” and “I Love My Hair!” and free yogurt parfaits. One recent day, only a few dozen people stopped by, mostly familiar faces of hard-core activists.
Nonetheless, they talked about marching at a local high school where white students had said disparaging things about black protesters. The meeting ended with pleas from organizers to hug someone in the room and take another look at the books, half of which were left unclaimed.
Two days before the book event in Ferguson, the roads were slick in Cleveland, with heavy snow falling, as about a dozen activists gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Cleveland Heights — a racially and economically mixed suburb up the hill from downtown.
The meeting, called by a local activist group called Puncture the Silence, was an effort to press beyond the squabbles and rivalries that have plagued the protest groups that emerged after the Rice shooting. Although protests have continued almost weekly in Cleveland through a harsh winter, the wait to hear whether the officers involved in the shooting will face criminal charges has left many activists frustrated, splintered by arguments over strategy, objectives and media posture.
Some want more marches, sit-ins and disruptive protests. Others propose to stage a tribunal, rendering an extrajudicial verdict in several cases of police use of force. Still others want a focus on policy, but what should they demand? Body cameras? Special prosecutors? Police training? Collective bargaining?
“We need to keep the direct pressure on elected officials, but we also need to stay active in the streets,” Rachelle Smith, 31, who has been a key player among Cleveland’s young protest groups since the Rice shooting, told the group.
The next move after expressing anger in the street is often the hard part for new civil rights groups. Do they seek changes in the law? Push to elect sympathetic candidates? Focus on winning over those who aren’t yet on their side? Or pull back from the moment and get radical, pressing for wholesale social change?
In Ferguson, many of the more than a dozen organizations that formed in the tear-gas clouds of August fragmented over the course of the fall. Conflicts flared over organizers who spent much of their time honing their profile on Twitter and attending an endless series of conferences on activism. Members of some new groups grumbled about leaders who seemed more interested in scoring airtime with Don Lemon on CNN or winning donations from wealthy celebrities than about recruiting poor people to their cause.
On the night of the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the Brown shooting, Tory Russell and other members of a new civil rights group called Hands Up United knew one thing they had to do: Race to their office to fend off vandals and prevent violence.
Today, six buildings across from the group’s original office remain boarded up. The Metro PCS shop is a blackened heap; a steel bar bears a slogan written in rust: “America Wake Up!”
Hands Up United has moved to a new location but isn’t going away, said Russell, a burly man with a thick beard who wears his devotion to the movement on a T-shirt emblazoned with the first names of young African Americans whose deaths have fueled this fight — Trayvon, Mike, Eric . . .
By the time Brown was killed, Russell, 30, had already dropped his plan to become a teacher — a dream he traces to his days in the library at Sumner High School in St. Louis, alma mater of Chuck Berry and Tina Turner. Today, Russell views his old school as dominated more by in-school suspension than reading books, so he has focused his political work on distributing books on black history and radical politics.
He sees a surer path to change at the neighborhood level than in any effort to win nationwide notice. “And now the real work begins,” Russell said. “You can complain about the system being bad and how it affects the community. But if your room is dirty, you’re going to have to pick up the clothes and wash the dishes. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Hands Up’s leaders haven’t lost sight of the issue of police brutality: “We still believe the ultimate piece of the narrative is that unarmed people are being killed by police,” said Tef Poe, 27, a rapper from St. Louis who started the group with Russell.
But since the TV cameras left town, the heady camaraderie of those first weeks has given way to infighting and a struggle for attention.
Poe joined other organizers on a trip to the Palestinian territories last year and he recently returned from the Sundance Film Festival — decisions that have raised questions among some activists about how groups are spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have come in from foundations and ordinary people who hit “donate” buttons online.
Poe and Russell said they are not getting paid by Hands Up. Neither was sure of the exact size of the organization’s budget. Hands Up United — which like many of the new groups has not established nonprofit status of its own — has received organizational help from a group connected with the California antiwar nonprofit known as Code Pink.
Russell said Hands Up United, unlike other groups that flared on TV and Twitter and then disappeared, is in it for the long run. “For some people, when it wasn’t sexy anymore, when CNN left, it died down for them,” he said. “What we’re doing is not hashtag activism, this is actually community organizing. I’ve never seen hashtags change my community.”
Athousand miles away, Hands Up United’s shift in focus from civil disobedience to community development — from leading rallies to giving out books — sounds familiar to Phillip Agnew.
The group he founded in 2012 — after a former neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old in Sanford, Fla. — had a two-year head start on those that have emerged in Ferguson and Cleveland. Agnew’s Dream Defenders have been through it all: the rush of the marches, a 31-day sit-in in the state capitol, confrontations with the powerful, promises that they would be listened to, frustration when nothing changed.
Now, on the same day that Hands Up United gives out books in Ferguson, Agnew’s Dream Defenders stage a multicultural festival in front of a sprawling, brightly colored mural of Haitian village life in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood. The attractions includesalsa dancing and African drumming; speeches in English, Spanish and Creole; testimonials from farmworkers and college students — all spiced with gentle reminders of the need to do something about the number of young people from Miami’s crazy quilt of impoverished communities who drop out of school, land in prison, or subsist without career or much hope of one.
The Dream Defenders — the name refers to the effort to build on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy — started out demanding the repeal of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which allows people to use deadly force if they feel threatened by another person. But after their sit-in failed to persuade Gov. Rick Scott (R) to call a special session of the legislature to reconsider the law, Agnew and his fellow Defenders concluded that they needed to move on to “the next phase.”
What that would look like took many months to decide. Agnew — at 29, he is thoughtful yet blunt, insisting on talking about fomenting revolution even when his older advisers counsel more moderate rhetoric — said he was initially distracted by the celebrity that came with being a prominent activist.
“It was very easy to accept invitations all over the country,” he said. “It’s very, very, very alluring and seductive to have folks know you and to go to conferences and workshops every week. I was in Time magazine, on television all the time — it does begin to create some kind of friction within the organization. And then you look up and feel like we haven’t gotten anywhere. We had to pump the brakes.”
Some other groups that formed after Martin was killed have left Florida and are trying to find traction on a nationwide scale. The Million Hoodies Movement for Justice was started by a young Floridian, but its leaders are now spread around the country, active mainly through video and social media.
“Nobody’s going to have their political beliefs changed on Facebook, but it is a way for us to connect,” said Peter Haviland-Eduah, the group’s spokesman, who lives in Michigan, where he is in graduate school. “We want to build coalitions across the country, and we have to find small, tangible wins. The civil rights movement in the ’60s was about changing laws and they had tangible goals, like getting more folks to register to vote. We’re about changing the consensus, changing beliefs, and that’s much more difficult.”
The Dream Defenders concluded that the only way forward is to embed themselves in local issues. “It’s a big mistake for these groups in Ferguson and other places to go national,” said Sherika Shaw, 26, the group’s South Florida coordinator, who left a graduate program in art education after learning about Dream Defenders on Instagram. “The people are here, where you are. It’s not about changing policy; you can’t use the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house. We don’t want to be the people the TV networks call; we want to be who the people call instead of the police when there’s a domestic dispute.”
Shaw spends her days trying to establish Dream Defenders groups in local high schools, appealing to teens to speak out against having uniformed security officers on their campuses.
The group’s core members lived for a time in a borrowed house in the lush suburb of Miami Lakes — the dream house, they called it — allowing them to talk and plan around the clock. They lived on Agnew’s credit card and his savings from four years he spent selling erectile-dysfunction and anti-depression drugs for a pharmaceutical company in North Carolina.
They studied past movements, read history and made two defining decisions: Unlike many other new groups, they would stay local, rooting themselves in Florida’s problems and people. And they would get radical, spurning elective politics and emphasizing their belief that the persistent poverty and social immobility in many black communities result not from specific policies but from the very nature of capitalism and racism.
On one morning in early February, Agnew arrived at work angry because he woke up to a flat tire on his car. “This system of capitalism creates a lot of stress around money,” he said. He put on his black “People Over Money” T-shirt and began another day of trying to convince blacks and Hispanics that the problem they see as police brutality is really far deeper.
“A community that just lost someone to a police shooting may not be ready to hear that,” he said. “They may not have that language. But if we talk to them about what they experience — being ignored, being invisible, the contempt for black people, the contempt for poor people — they begin to see that this is much larger.”
At the street festival, which draws about 150 people over the course of the afternoon, Shamile Louis, the 23-year-old daughter of Haitian immigrants, tries to get that message across. Louis, who has worked with Dream Defenders since her junior year in college, recalls watching George Zimmerman’s trial in Martin’s shooting on TV every day; when he was acquitted, “my soul was shattered,” she said. She spent 27 days at the sit-in at the capitol in Tallahassee. But although she’s still committed to the cause, the realities of surviving are pulling her away from full-time activism.
“I’m going to have to find work,” she said. “The movement is really struggling. We were really amped up at the capitol. The reality now is people have real lives and have to work.”
She spent part of the afternoon at the Dream Defenders table in the center of the courtyard. By day’s end, only six people have signed cards expressing interest in the group’s work.
Jesse Jackson came to Tallahassee to join the Dream Defenders in their sit-in. Sharpton shuttled into Ferguson to lead marches and rustle up media attention. Black clergy and leaders of traditional civil rights groups reached out to the new groups, offering advice and organizational support.
And in December, Agnew and six other leaders of new groups met at the White House with President Obama, who told them he would set up a task force to address the “simmering distrust” between police and African Americans. Agnew came away from the meeting convinced that protest groups must become more radical because change will not come from those already in power.
“The concessions won by the civil rights movement in the ’60s are our biggest obstacle,” he said. “We have black Fortune 500 CEOs, an African American president, African American mayors and chiefs of police, and still the lot of black people, Latino people, has not risen.”
Dream Defenders, which has a minimally paid staff of seven, works largely off a $200,000 grant from the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based foundation that supports groups seeking social change. Agnew said he expects the Tides money to dry up eventually “because in the end, we’re going to be too radical for them.”
In Cleveland, the mayor, police chief and much of the City Council are black, as are many influential pastors. But some young black activists say their fight puts them squarely at odds with the city’s black power structure.
“As an African American guy trying to make a difference, I am fighting the white establishment, and I’m also fighting the black establishment,” said Alonzo Mitchell, an organizer who hosts a local radio show and is a regular at council meetings.
When Mitchell, 33, approached a city official to seek backing for a mentorship program for future political leaders, he says he was told: “No one is going to teach you. Power is never given, it’s taken.”
On the city’s west side, below the modest Guide to Kulchur bookstore, an expansive basement meeting room has become the headquarters of an activist collective determined to change how Cleveland police operate.
In the basement one recent afternoon, activists peppered half a dozen council members with demands, insisting that each official complete a report card, answering yes or no to statements such as “The officer who killed Rice should be immediately indicted.” All but one of the council members in attendance said they favored an indictment.
When protesters planned a march after the Rice shooting, Police Chief Calvin Williams volunteered to shut down parts of a highway. Commuters griped about the protests impeding traffic, but Mayor Frank Jackson said “that’s the inconvenience of freedom.” Cleveland police officers working at demonstrations conversed and joked with protesters, a strikingly different approach from officers in St. Louis, who met similar protests with riot gear, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets.
Despite such efforts at cooperation, pressing for change is harder in cities with black elected officials, some veteran civil rights leaders say.
“It is more difficult to organize against a black power structure,” said Lawrence Hamm, 61, who formed the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark in 1983 after a police shooting of an unarmed black man. “You might be marching against a popular black mayor, and it’s going to be harder for you to get people to join you.”
The new groups need help from the old-line black civil rights groups they sometimes view as having sold out, Hamm said: “The black radical organizations — the people who want more fundamental change — are not going to be strong enough to get there on their own.”
Although Hamm’s group still agitates for police overhauls, its founder long ago realized he needed to work both with elected officials and with older, mainstream organizations.
“We formed our group because we felt the traditional civil rights groups were not aggressive enough,” said Hamm. “But now, I belong to three branches of the NAACP.”
Three decades after Hamm set out to be more in-your-face than the black organizations of his parents’ generation, Ciara Taylor, the 25-year-old political director of Dream Defenders, found her way to a more radical path by volunteering in Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Knocking on doors in Vero Beach, Fla., she was called the n-word and confronted with the reality that a black senator’s candidacy for president “does not make race go away,” she said. “There was a great hope within my generation and within me that we could be free of racial identification, but we realized that race does not go away.”
But it took a one-two punch three years later to propel her into full-time activism: In her senior year at Florida A&M University, the school proposed to eliminate her major, Spanish language; she switched her concentration to political science and joined a campaign to reverse the cutbacks. A few months after that, when Martin was killed, Taylor, daughter of a corporate manager and a career Navy officer, felt jolted from her middle-class trajectory.
“Being a young person, you’re impatient,” she said. “You see these trigger moments happen and you automatically want to fight the big beast that our parents tried to protect us from.”
Now, two years into her life as an organizer, Taylor bristles at the notion, expressed by some veterans of the 1960s movement, that the new activism is dissipating. “A lot of the older generation looks at movement work as physically being at a protest,” she said. “That’s important, but a more radical expression of social engagement is simply choosing to love yourself in a society that tells you you look like a thug or your nose is too big.”
When Taylor sees new groups fading away, she doesn’t take that as a defeat, but as a sign that people are “caring for themselves. The fact that a lot of movements are disintegrating comes from the inability to care for oneself, especially mothers with families.”
Ferguson remains a hive of activism. For the first time, the Organization for Black Struggle, which grew out of the Black Power movement of the 1970s and ’80s, has enough money to pay six staff members, thanks to support from individuals and progressive groups such as the Center for Popular Democracy, Color of Change and the Open Society Foundations, which was founded by liberal billionaire investor George Soros.
Seven months ago, Charles Wade was adjusting scarves and trimming hems for Hollywood stars. Now he’s in St. Louis, where the former image consultant to Solange Knowles, Beyoncé’s sister, is alone, in black sweats, scrubbing the floor of a townhouse that is part of a transitional housing program he has set up through his new organization, Operation Help or Hush.
It’s been a trying few days. His asthma was acting up. A protester he’s been housing lost Wade’s credit card while out buying supplies. And on Twitter, he’s dealing with a protester who questioned his funding, his newfound fame as an activist and his devotion to the cause.
“It’s really demoralizing that you have to fight so hard just to do something decent for people,” Wade said.
Immediately after the Brown shooting, Wade, a native of Bowie, Md., started raising money on Twitter to provide food, housing and even expense money for protesters who paused their lives to go into the streets. He raised $25,000 in one week. On one occasion, after putting out a call on Twitter for help for protesters who needed gas money, Wade stood in the parking lot of Andy Wurm Tire & Wheel handing out $20 bills.
Since grand jurors decided not to indict Wilson, many activists have scattered. Wade stayed. He still expects to house 27 new activists by April, and he’s raising money through Twitter and from friends and family.
He’s determined to keep going, he said; there’s so much more to do: “There’s very little we’ve actually gotten for Ferguson except for it to be known nationally.”
Source
The Federal Reserve Should Not Increase Interest Rates
Later this month, the world's top financial and economic policymakers will pow-wow at the Federal Reserve Bank annual meeting in Jackson Hole to determine whether it is time for the Fed to roll...
Later this month, the world's top financial and economic policymakers will pow-wow at the Federal Reserve Bank annual meeting in Jackson Hole to determine whether it is time for the Fed to roll back recession-era policies -- e.g. a near-zero benchmark interest rate -- put in place to support job growth and recovery.
This would be the wrong decision for the communities that are still struggling to recover and the wrong decision for America. Advocates for higher interest rates point to an improving job market as a sign that America has come back from the recession. But many activists, economists, and community groups know that raising interest rates now would stymie the many communities, particularly those of color, that continue to face persistent unemployment, underemployment, and stagnant wages. As the Fed Up campaign, headed by the Center for Popular Democracy, notes in areport released this week, tackling the crisis of employment in this country is a powerful and necessary step toward building an economic recovery that reaches all Americans -- and ultimately, toward building a stronger economy for everyone.
The report, "Full Employment for All: The Social and Economic Benefits of Race and Gender Equity in Employment," shares a new data analysis by PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) estimating the boost to the economy that full employment -- defined as an unemployment rate of 4 percent for all communities and demographics along with increases in labor force participation -- would provide. While overall unemployment is down to 5.3 percent, it is still 9.1 percent for blacks and 6.8 percent for Latinos. Underemployment and stagnant wages have further driven income inequality and hinder the success of local economies. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed can promote continued job creation that leads to tighter labor markets, higher wages, less discrimination, and better job opportunities -- especially within those communities still struggling post-recession.
Lowering unemployment to 4 percent for all gender and racial groups (the rate of overall unemployment in 2000 when the economy was last at full employment) and increasing labor force participation rates would mean that 14.3 million more Americans are employed, 9.3 million fewer would live in poverty, GDP would increase by $1.3 trillion, and the government would receive an additional $261 billion in tax revenue, according to the report.
Full employment would also have an enormous positive impact on racial inequities in income. Currently, only half of workers of color make at least a living wage ($15/hour), compared to 69 percent of white workers, and median household income within communities of color is significantly lower compared to white households. With full employment, black households would see their incomes rise 23 percent, Latino households would see a 14 percent increase, and Native American households would see a 32 percent increase.
Armed with this data, which was compiled as part of ongoing economic research by PolicyLink and PERE's National Equity Atlas team, Fed Up will host its own meeting in Jackson Hole, featuring presentations by this team, activists, economists, and community organizers. This meeting, concurrent with the Fed's, aims to put pressure on the Federal Reserve to acknowledge those communities of color still mired in the recession and take up policies that will bring full employment to all. While Federal Reserve policies are not the only solution to boosting employment among those communities so often left behind, they are a vital and necessary step towards building a stronger, more inclusive American economy.
Source: Huffington Post Politics
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 transparent about relief reporting and to grant principal reductions. An overwhelming...
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.
Source
Banks eye changes to CEO gatherings
Banks eye changes to CEO gatherings
BANKS EYE CHANGES TO CEO GATHERINGS — When the Financial Services Forum holds its next meeting, a key item on the agenda may well be the fate of the organization representing CEOs of the nation's...
BANKS EYE CHANGES TO CEO GATHERINGS — When the Financial Services Forum holds its next meeting, a key item on the agenda may well be the fate of the organization representing CEOs of the nation's largest banks, insurers and asset managers.
Sources familiar with the matter told M.M. that some banks are ready to hash out whether it makes sense to keep investing in the group, wind it down or consider other options, including merging its functions with those of another trade organization. The CEOs are scheduled to meet next in October. Its members include the heads of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Washington's banking industry insiders have been chattering about the direction of the group since longtime president and chief executive Rob Nichols was named last year as head of the larger American Bankers Association. The ABA represents a broad range of small, regional and large banks.
"There's an ongoing debate among all the banks whether it's worth having all these different trade associations," one source familiar with discussions said.
Forum spokeswoman Laena Fallon did not comment on any CEO discussions about overhauling the organization.
“The Forum CEOs are looking forward to their annual fall meeting and are working together on a number of shared industry priorities including cybersecurity, strengthening the financial system, and helping provide credit to drive the economy forward," Fallon said.
JACKSON HOLE KICKOFF — The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual economic symposium starts today in Jackson Hole. The main event for the markets will be tomorrow morning's speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on the Fed's "monetary policy toolkit." Bloomberg's Steve Matthews and Jeff Black expect that "any description she offers of the U.S. economy will probably be crafted to keep an interest-rate rise on the table for the central bank’s policy meeting next month — without committing it to act." http://bloom.bg/2bOzoxt.
The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip argues that central bankers are facing big questions about their relevance, because of the persistence of slow economic growth since the 2008 crisis and therefore low interest rates. He lays out what they may do next: http://on.wsj.com/2bWVnp2.
'FED UP' MEETING AHEAD OF THE FESTIVITIES — In a sign of the movement's growing clout, a coalition of labor and community groups banding together as "Fed Up" expect at least seven Fed presidents and one Fed governor to show up at a public meeting in Jackson Hole this afternoon. Among other things, they will talk about reforming the Fed's structure and how monetary policy affects working-class communities. Fed Up expects the attendee list to include Fed Governor (and potential Clinton Treasury Secretary) Lael Brainard, New York Fed President William Dudley, Kansas City Fed President Esther George and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari.
The meeting will be livestreamed here at 6:30 p.m. ET: http://bit.ly/2bAZAuy.
Fed Up director Ady Barkan told M.M. that a major topic of discussion will be a proposal to overhaul the structure of the Fed to minimize the influence of commercial banks. "We're going to be asking them whether they support that, and why not if they don't," Barkan said.
HAPPY THURSDAY — It's been a pleasure serving as your guest host the last couple of weeks. I'm handing it over to my colleagues tomorrow, so please keep sending tips to Pro Financial Services editor Mark McQuillan: mmcquillan@politico.com. Happy to keep in touch on Twitter @zachary.
THIS MORNING ON POLITICO PRO FINANCIAL SERVICES – VIctoria Guida on the GAO's opinion on community-based flood insurance -- and to get Morning Money every day before 6 a.m. -- please contact Pro Services at (703) 341-4600 or info@politicopro.com.
DRIVING THE DAY — Hillary Clinton will give a speech on the "disturbing 'alt-right' philosophy" of Donald Trump's campaign; 3 p.m. ET in Reno, Nev. ... Fed Up meets with Federal Reserve officials at 6:30 p.m. as the economic symposium begins in Jackson Hole. ...
FOR YOUR FALL CALENDAR — A federal appeals court has scheduled Oct. 24 oral arguments in the government's fight to keep MetLife under scrutiny of the Federal Reserve because of its potential systemic risks.
TIME TO MEASURE THE DRAPES, MAJORITY LEADER SCHUMER? — The New York Times gives Democrats a 60 percent chance of retaking the Senate. http://nyti.ms/2bOAPfg.
HOW DELAWARE DEFEATED CORPORATE SUNSHINE — A 3,000-word Reuters investigation on the state's fight against proposals that would reveal the owners of corporate shell companies: "[T]he proposed law continues to languish, thanks in part to [Delaware Secretary of State Jeffrey] Bullock. He was neither the first nor the only official to take up the fight, but became a leader in defending the status quo as worldwide support for change gained traction." http://reut.rs/2c8f8vb.
GOVERNMENT AT ODDS WITH ITSELF ON STUDENT LOANS — Bloomberg's Shahien Nasiripour on how the CFPB has become student loan borrowers' advocate against the Education Department: "Both the [CFPB] and the Obama administration share the same goal: improved customer service and fewer loan delinquencies. But industry observers see the administration as more accommodating to the industry's needs, while the consumer bureau has made clear that it's ready to sue. It's as if the Obama administration is using a carrot while the consumer bureau is brandishing a stick." http://bloom.bg/2bjb5uv.
EX-FED OFFICIAL WARNS AGAINST GOING EASY ON INFLATION — Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh argues in a WSJ opinion piece that central bankers should resist calls to accommodate higher inflation, which has yet to rear its head, despite low interest rates: "A new inflation target would undermine the Fed’s commitment to any policy framework. It would please the denizens of Wall Street who pine for still-looser Fed policy. And households would be understandably miffed to receive a new lecture on unconventional monetary policy — this one on the benefits of higher prices." http://on.wsj.com/2bhsAqQ.
U.S., EU DUKE IT OUT OVER APPLE, TAXES — The FT's Barney Jopson and Arthur Beesley on the intensifying feud: "The U.S. has launched a stinging attack on the European Commission in a last-ditch bid to dissuade Brussels from hitting Apple with a demand for billions of euros in underpaid taxes. In a sharp escalation of the transatlantic feud, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a rare warning on Wednesday that Brussels was becoming a 'supernational tax authority' that threatened international agreements on tax reform. The criticism comes as the European Commission is finalizing a probe into an alleged sweetheart tax deal that Ireland granted to Apple, the biggest single case in a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance across the EU. After prolonged delays, a definitive ruling is expected next month." http://on.ft.com/2bhuJT5.
FLOOD INSURANCE POLITICS IN LOUISIANA SENATE RACE — Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon endorsed Republican Rep. Charles Boustany in the race for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, arguing that he is "the only candidate I trust to fight for affordable flood insurance." Congress faces a September 2017 deadline to reauthorize the government-run National Flood Insurance Program. "I look forward to working with Commissioner Donelon to write common-sense flood insurance policy as Louisiana’s next United States Senator when Congress begins work on reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program in 2017," Boustany said in a statement.
NYT'S TAKE ON GOLDMAN CATERING TO THE 'COMMON MAN' — From William Cohan in DealBook: "As it has done many times in its past to survive and to thrive, Goldman is in the process of reinvention. This explains Marcus, its new online lending business named after the company’s founder, Marcus Goldman, along with GS Bank, its online savings account business with no minimum balance requirements. After all these years, Goldman Sachs has suddenly discovered retail banking. But it is not out of altruism or charity, nor is it nefarious. It is all about making money from money, which has always been Goldman’s specialty." http://nyti.ms/2bCDhcf.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-money/2016/08/banks-eye-change...
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By ZACHARY WARMBRODT
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Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve, seeking to shine light on the central bank’s president selection process....
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve, seeking to shine light on the central bank’s president selection process.
The lawsuit, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, is a product of the “Fed Up” campaign to strip private bankers’ influence from the Fed’s top rungs and increase transparency in its leadership selection. The suit was filed after the Fed ignored a FOIA request filed in August seeking information on president selections in 2015 and 2016, the group said.
“The leaders of the twelve Reserve Banks are among the most powerful and influential actors in shaping the nation’s monetary policies, yet the process by which they are chosen is completely non-transparent,” the group wrote in the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The lawsuit comes as Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, prepares to leave the bank in February.
“The public has a right to obtain records about how the Federal Reserve’s leaders are selected, and there is no justification for the Fed’s withholding of basic information about its governance,” said Connie Chan, an attorney representing Fed Up, in a statement. “The fact that Fed Up has to bring this FOIA lawsuit is itself further evidence of the Fed’s lack of transparency.”
By Tara Jeffries
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Queens activist Ana Maria Archila takes center stage in elevator showdown with Flake
Queens activist Ana Maria Archila takes center stage in elevator showdown with Flake
Message delivered, message received — Queens-style.
Outerborough activist Ana Maria Archila, after angrily confronting Sen. Jeff Flake in a Capitol Hill elevator over his support of Supreme...
Message delivered, message received — Queens-style.
Outerborough activist Ana Maria Archila, after angrily confronting Sen. Jeff Flake in a Capitol Hill elevator over his support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, said the accounts of America’s abused women were no longer falling on deaf ears after the Arizona Republican delayed a vote on the judge’s candidacy for a week.
Read the full article and watch the video here.
Warren Calls on Yellen to Increase Diversity at the Fed
Warren Calls on Yellen to Increase Diversity at the Fed
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday committed to increasing diversity at the central bank, particularly within the Fed’s leadership ranks.
“It’s something we will continue to...
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday committed to increasing diversity at the central bank, particularly within the Fed’s leadership ranks.
“It’s something we will continue to focus on,” Yellen said during the question-and-answer period of her semiannual testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. “Diversity is an extremely important goal, and I will do everything I can to advance it.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked Yellen to commit to increasing diversity among the bank’s top officials, noting that 10 of the 12 Fed’s regional presidents are men. “Does the lack of diversity among the regional Fed presidents concern you?” Warren asked Yellen.
“Yes, I believe it’s important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear,” Yellen responded, adding that the central bank monitors hiring searches closely to make sure regional banks recruit diverse candidates.
Warren said she trusted Yellen’s commitment, but that her response shows the Fed’s selection process for regional leaders is “broken” and lacks transparency.
“You’re telling me diversity’s important, and yet you just signed off on all these folks without any public discussion about it,” Warren said. “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 backgrounds and interests.”
Warren and other lawmakers — 116 House members and 10 senators — signed a letter to Yellen last month that urged her to fill the bank’s top echelon with more diverse leaders. Yellen responded to the letter last week affirming the need for more diversity, according to Warren.
On Monday, activists for the “Fed Up” campaign pushed for diversity in the Fed’s regional branches in a report published by the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy.
“It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m committed to diversity,'” Dushaw Hockett, executive director of Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity, another group advocating for the Fed Up campaign, said in an interview after today’s hearing. “What’s the plan? What are the mechanisms for how we get there, and how are we going to evaluate whether we’ve achieved them?”
The emphasis on diversity comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report showing pervasive issues with racial and gender discrimination among rank-and-file employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where 25 percent of Asian employees, 25 percent of female employees and 27 percent of black employees said they have experienced discrimination at the agency.
By Tara Jeffries
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Liberals and conservatives blast the Fed
WISN 12 ABC - November 11, 2014, by Patrick Gillespie - The economy might be improving, but Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen can't catch a break.
Conservatives in Congress demanded an...
WISN 12 ABC - November 11, 2014, by Patrick Gillespie - The economy might be improving, but Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen can't catch a break.
Conservatives in Congress demanded an audit of the Fed last month. Now liberals have their list of grievances.
A coalition led by the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy has launched a "Fed Up" campaign. They say the Fed is out of touch with Main Street and isn't focusing enough on getting people back to work.
America's central bank has a dual mandate to keep prices of goods stable and get the economy to full employment.
The coalition sent a public letter to Yellen on Tuesday calling for "public engagement" in the selection of the replacements for two regional Fed Presidents who are resigning. Dallas Fed President Richard Fischer and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser are leaving their posts soon.
Yellen will meet with three dozen coalition representatives on Friday.
The timing of the demands is a bit odd. Since taking over as Fed chair in early 2014, Yellen has repeatedly stressed that full employment and higher wages are among her top goals.
America's unemployment rate is now at a six-year low. The economy added another 214,000 jobs in October and is on track for its best year of jobs gains since 1999. Wages, however, have not improved since the recession.
"We continue to hear reports that the economy is recovering, but millions of workers and their families are still struggling, whether from involuntarily part-time hours, poverty wages, or a lack of earned sick time," said Ady Barkan, a staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Both conservative and liberal groups say their aim is simply for more transparency at the Fed, although there is concern about politics impacting the central bank.
The Fed's decisions on interest rates which influence everything from mortgage rates to the bond market are intended to be free of outside influence.
In October, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, led the conservative critics and said the Fed should be audited by a Congressional oversight office. Two auditors already look at the Fed's finances every year, but Cruz wants closer scrutiny of whether the Fed made the right monetary policy choices.
Yellen and Cruz have not scheduled a meeting, although Yellen appears before Congress twice a year.
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Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N. Sackler Protest the Opioid Crisis at Harvard’s Sackler Museum
Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N. Sackler Protest the Opioid Crisis at Harvard’s Sackler Museum
The organization hosted over 70 protesters at a die-in demonstration last Friday. The protest operated with support from organizations like VOCAL NY, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Harm...
The organization hosted over 70 protesters at a die-in demonstration last Friday. The protest operated with support from organizations like VOCAL NY, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Harm Reduction Coalition. The group marched from Harvard Square to the atrium of the Harvard Art Museums building, which hosts the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum. Participants threw Oxycontin and Narcan (a narcotics overdose prescription medication) containers across the floor of the atrium, chanting protests like “Sacklers lie! People die! Fund harm reduction now!” Hyperallergic reached out to the Harvard Art Museums and a representative of the institution declined to comment.
Read the full article here.
4 days ago
4 days ago