Immigration Advocates on SB 4: We’re Resisting in Texas
Grassroots leaders and local officials wasted little time organizing a coordinated campaign to fight SB 4, a new Texas law that targets cities, towns and sheriffs that don’t cooperate with federal...
Grassroots leaders and local officials wasted little time organizing a coordinated campaign to fight SB 4, a new Texas law that targets cities, towns and sheriffs that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Only nine days after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the legislation, formally known as Senate Bill 4, into law, grassroots advocates announced a “Summer of Resistance” campaign May 16. The statute allows police officers, sheriff deputies and Texas state troopers to ask about a person’s immigration status – whether they are here legally – during a routine stop.
Read the full article here.
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to...
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to rescind the pay of a key senior executive.
The demands came just one day after Chief Executive John Stumpf resigned from a Federal Reserve advisory panel.
Senators had pushed for Stumpf not to be reappointed, saying it was inappropriate for someone who presided over improper sales tactics to be giving advice to an agency involved with bank regulation.
Stumpf has been under intense fire since the bank this month agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into an aggressive sales culture that led bank employees to open as many as 2 million accounts that customers didn’t authorize.
The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges, and some senators have called for a Labor Department investigation into whether the bank failed to pay employees overtime when they worked late nights and weekend to meet sales quotas.
A group of Senate Democrats continued to attack Wells Fargo on Friday, publicly calling on Stumpf to stop enforcing mandatory arbitration clauses in the agreements for customer accounts that were not authorized.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had pressed Stumpf on the matter at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, arguing that it was unfair not to allow those customers the ability to file lawsuits against the bank.
Stumpf said at the time that he would have to “talk to my legal team.”
Brown said Friday that he and his colleagues want relief for bank customers and more answers from Wells Fargo.
“If Wells Fargo really does want to look out for the customers, if they really are in fact sorry, as the CEO said, for these unauthorized accounts, they ought to let the court system work if these people who were wronged want to bring suit,” he said.
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
The Democrats sent a letter to Stumpf on Friday, requesting more information about the arbitration clauses, including how many customer complaints about fake accounts were forced into arbitration proceedings.
Brown was among those writing to Stumpf, along with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, an activist investment group that is part of the Change to Win union federation wrote to Wells Fargo’s board, asking it to rescind at least part of the compensation earned by the executive who oversaw the employees who opened unauthorized customer accounts.
The letter from CtW Investment Group, which is a Wells Fargo shareholder, adds to the pressure on the bank to claw back some of the approximately $100 million earned by Carrie Tolstedt, the company’s former head of community banking.
Wells Fargo’s stock has declined by about 8% since the settlement was announced on Sept. 8.
On Thursday, five senators called for Stumpf not to be reappointed to the Federal Advisory Council, a 12-member body that meets four times a year with the Fed’s Board of Governors to discuss banking and economic matters.
Stumpf had represented the Fed’s San Francisco district, where Wells Fargo is based, since 2015.
He “made a personal decision to resign” and notified the Fed on Thursday, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Dunn said.
“His top priority is leading Wells Fargo,” she said.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, organized the letter to the head of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco asking that Stump not be reappointed to the advisory council when his term expires on Dec. 31.
“It would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for ‘unfair’ and ‘abusive’ practices that placed consumers at financial risk,” they wrote.
The letter also was signed by Warren and Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon.
Their call was backed by Fed Up, a coalition of labor, community and liberal activist groups that has pushed to reduce the influence of bankers on Federal Reserve policies.
“Commercial banks already have too much influence within the Federal Reserve System,” the coalition said Thursday. The coalition also asked its members to sign a petition calling for Stump’s “immediate dismissal” from the advisory panel.
“Stumpf, as the CEO of a bank accused of ‘unfair’ and ‘abusive’ practices, should have no role advising the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors on policies affecting working families,” Fed Up said.
By Jim Puzzanghera
Source
Jersey City May Require Paid Sick Leave
The New York Times - September 3, 2013, by Katie Zernike - Calling it a matter of “basic human dignity,” the mayor of Jersey City wants to require all but the smallest businesses to provide...
The New York Times - September 3, 2013, by Katie Zernike - Calling it a matter of “basic human dignity,” the mayor of Jersey City wants to require all but the smallest businesses to provide their employees paid sick days.
The bill would make the city, which is New Jersey’s second largest, the first in the state and one of the few nationwide to require paid sick leave. It is modeled on similar laws enacted in several cities over the last several years.
But it would go further than most, requiring any business with 10 or more employees to provide up to five paid sick days each year. Companies with fewer employees would have to provide five unpaid sick days.
In contrast, a bill passed by the New York City Council this year — after a veto by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — will require employers with 20 or more employees to provide paid sick leave when it takes effect next year; the following year, it will extend to workplaces with 15 or more employees. The city exempted manufacturers, as does a state law in Connecticut that requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide paid sick leave.
The policy proposed by Mayor Steven Fulop in Jersey City would not include that exemption. As in other cities, workers would earn a day of sick time for each 30 days worked.
Mr. Fulop, who worked in his parents’ deli in Newark when he was growing up, said he had fashioned his proposal so as not to hurt the businesses, like bodegas or start-ups, that struggle most.
“But once you get to a point that you have a stable work force, with 10 or more people,” he said, “it’s a reasonable thing to say they shouldn’t be at risk for losing their jobs or penalized if unfortunately they get sick or a loved one does.”
As financial firms have moved across the Hudson River, Jersey City has become more affluent; Mr. Fulop, 36, first moved there to work for Goldman Sachs. But he said the policy was aimed particularly at helping lower-wage workers.
“It’s an opportunity to make sure that employers who move here are conscious of this basic dignity for working families,” Mr. Fulop said.
The mayor, who was sworn in on July 1, will propose the bill to the City Council next week; its chances are considered good, given that the majority of the members are aligned with him.
A coalition of community and union groups is pushing the bill as a matter of good public health: food service workers who can stay home are less likely to spread germs, as are sick children whose parents can stay home with them, thanks to the bill.
“We think that people understand that it’s important for workers not to have to choose between taking care of their loved ones and a day’s pay,” said Kevin Brown, a vice president of a local service workers union.
In other cities that have debated paid sick leave, opponents have argued that it is too expensive, particularly for small businesses. While Portland, Ore.; Washington; and San Francisco have all passed paid sick-leave policies, about a half-dozen states have passed laws prohibiting municipalities from doing so. But studies have shown that most employers ultimately support the policy, and report that it has not made them less profitable.
Source
Candidates Ready for GOP Debate: Alleged NY Backers of Hate Rhetoric
NEW YORK - Protestors called out some prominent New Yorkers ahead of tonight's GOP presidential candidate debate, accusing them of funding a network of groups that promote anti-immigrant hate...
NEW YORK - Protestors called out some prominent New Yorkers ahead of tonight's GOP presidential candidate debate, accusing them of funding a network of groups that promote anti-immigrant hate speech. Connie Razza, director of strategic research for the Center for Popular Democracy Action, said those allegations are confirmed in a new report that identifies New Yorker Barbara Winston as a financial contributor and board member of groups that, for example, worked to restrict undocumented immigrants' access to driver's licenses in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.
"When Donald Trump talks about deporting all of the undocumented immigrants in the United States," she said, "he's really picking up the platform that these wealthy New Yorkers have been investing in, over years." We reached out for comment to Bruce Winston Gem where Barbara Winston serves as president. Asked to respond to the allegation that Barbara Winston funded hate speech organizations, a manager there said, “No, it is not true.” Immigrant advocates say they protested in front of the Harry Winston Jewelers on Fifth Avenue Tuesday, because they say Barbara Winston owns that property.
Daniel Altschuler, managing director of the Make the Road Action Fund and co-editor of the report, "Backers of Hate in the Empire State," said it calls on nonprofit groups, political parties and the news media to sever ties with the New Yorkers cited in the report and the groups they are allegedly funding. "These are folks that have been buttressing the anti-immigrant infrastructure in this country," he said. "It identifies these folks, and demands that they be held responsible for promoting this kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric and false facts." Razza said it has been a major goal of these anti-immigrant groups to get their views front and center in prime-time slots such as tonight's GOP debate. "These wealthy New Yorkers are providing funding both to this anti-immigrant hate network and to the Republican Party," she said, "and starting to mainstream anti-immigrant hate in a way that's really dangerous."
The report is online at cpdaction.org. - See more at: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2015-10-28/immigrant-issues/candidates-...
Source: Public News Service
Activist Ady Barkan says despite loss in Arizona, every seat is up for grabs
Activist Ady Barkan says despite loss in Arizona, every seat is up for grabs
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A Hero” and vote for candidates who protect healthcare. Ady tells Ali Velshi...
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A Hero” and vote for candidates who protect healthcare. Ady tells Ali Velshi that with all the challenges he faces that if he can get out and vote, everyone can.
Watch the video here.
Left takes aim at the Federal Reserve
Liberal activists are putting a target on the Federal Reserve for the 2016 elections, much to the delight of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Denouncing an agenda that they say tilts toward...
Liberal activists are putting a target on the Federal Reserve for the 2016 elections, much to the delight of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Denouncing an agenda that they say tilts toward Wall Street, members of the “Fed Up” coalition on Monday unveiled a set of reforms that would alter how the central bank does business.
“No longer are we focused only on fixing the Fed’s monetary policy and internal governance positions,” said Ady Barkan, the group’s campaign director. “We are now beginning an effort to reform the Federal Reserve itself.
“Ask all of the presidential candidates what their plans are for the Federal Reserve,” he added in a call with reporters.
While touting its reform proposals, the group was joined Monday by a top policy official with Sanders, who has made criticism of Wall Street a cornerstone of his presidential bid.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, said the Democratic candidate was not yet ready to endorse the coalition’s proposal, needing more time to review it.
But Sanders has pitched his own Fed reforms, and Gunnels said the Vermont senator is “very passionate” about overhauling how the Fed does business. Gunnels said the central bank should delay raising rates any time soon.
“The Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent,” he said. “Raising rates must be done as a last resort, not to fight phantom inflation.”
The “Fed Up” coalition said it had reached out to every remaining presidential campaign with its reform proposal. None of the Republican campaigns responded, but the group has had “very substantive conversations” with staffers to Hillary Clinton, according to Barkan.
“We urge Secretary Clinton to show leadership on this issue and hope that she will soon be coming out with her plan to reform the Federal Reserve,” he told The Hill.
Clinton’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The leftward pressure on the Fed is coming at a critical time.
The bank is trying to step back from intense stimulus it injected into the economy after the financial crisis. It raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade in December, but so far has opted not to raise them any further at subsequent meetings.
Looming over its deliberations is the presidential election. The central bank prides itself on its political independence, and any major decisions in the months to come could expose it to charges it is working to benefit one party or the other.
While many economic indicators are improving, many community groups like Fed Up argue that many middle-class and working-class Americans are feeling none of those gains. They point to stagnant wage growth and a low labor participation rate as evidence that the Fed has ample reason to continue boosting the economy.
The coalition’s reform proposal was written by Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth economist who spent two decades at the Fed, including time as a special adviser to Fed chiefs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
While most conservative critiques of the Fed center on how it conducts monetary policy, Levin focuses most of his fire on the dozen regional Fed banks scattered across the country.
Levin argues that the regional institutions are undemocratic entities that hand bank executives huge influence at the Fed. The regional banks are directly backed by commercial banks, which occupy most of the seats on each regional bank’s board. In turn, those boards pick each regional Fed president, who at some point will hold a rotating spot on the Fed’s board, which handles the nation’s interest rates.
Under Levin’s plan, regional Fed banks would have to solicit public input when selecting their presidents. Regional banks would be required to put together a list of candidates through input from both the public and public officials from their specific region. The plan calls for Fed banks to emphasize diversity, considering candidates across a range of racial, gender and educational backgrounds.
Levin highlighted that in the 100-year history of the Federal Reserve system, there has never been a black head of a Fed regional bank.
The unveiling of the reform plan came on the same day that Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen met privately with President Obama to discuss the central bank’s work and the state of the economy.
High-ranking Republicans have been critical of the Fed, particularly for the unprecedented stimulus program it carried out under Bernanke. Top GOP candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have accused the Fed of harming the economy with its efforts, and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also been a frequent critic of the bank.
Sanders occupies a fairly unique political position when it comes to the Fed. He was one of just two Democrats to back a vote earlier this year on a Republican bill that would subject the central bank to a full outside review.
Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More
Separately, Sanders has also pushed to “Audit the Fed,” and the Levin plan also includes a comprehensive annual review of the Fed’s operations.
The Vermont senator has floated his own Fed reform proposal, arguing in a December piece in The New York Times that the institution has been “hijacked” by bankers. His plan would limit the influence of the financial sector on selecting Fed officials and require the Fed to prioritize unemployment when considering interest rates.
Fed officials have repeatedly resisted any efforts to change how it does business, frequently arguing that changes could render the central bank ineffective or subject it to improper political pressure.
By Peter Schroeder
Source
New York Immigrant Family Unity Project - The Report
The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project:
Good for Families, Good for Employers, and Good for All New Yorkers
Each year, thousands of New Yorkers — parents, siblings, employers,...
Each year, thousands of New Yorkers — parents, siblings, employers, workers and students — face detention and the possibility of deportation without the assistance of legal counsel. These New Yorkers are isolated from their loved ones and confront the possibility of long-term and, in some cases, permanent separation from their communities.
This analysis demonstrates that New York State can dramatically reduce the emotional and economic cost of the detention and deportation system by providing high-quality legal counsel for detained immigrants who are facing deportation through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). For an annual investment of $7.4 million – or 78-cents per personal income taxpayer per year – NYIFUP would help ensure that deportation proceedings reflect our fundamental values, providing a measure of fairness for immigrant New Yorkers.
Download the report here.
Executive SummaryEach year, thousands of New Yorkers— parents, siblings, employers, workers and students — face detention and the possibility of deportation without the assistance of legal counsel. These New Yorkers are isolated from their loved ones and confront the possibility of long-term and, in some cases, permanent separation from their communities.
This system of detention and deportation calls our collective commitment to due process into question. Immigration proceedings share many of the same features as criminal proceedings, with immigrant New Yorkers risking their liberty and extended separation from their families and communities. Yet, unlike criminal proceedings, immigration proceedings lack basic safeguards to guarantee fairness. Most strikingly, because New Yorkers have no guaranteed access to counsel in immigration proceedings, thousands face trained government attorneys in these high-stakes proceedings every year without the benefit of legal assistance. This leads to detentions that continue for months or years longer than necessary and deportations of New Yorkers who have viable legal claims to remain in the communities they call home.
But these are not the only costs. Current policies and practices are also costly in economic terms, resulting in significant annual outlays. Needlessly long detentions and avoidable deportations burden Empire State employers, New York State government, immigrant families and, ultimately, New Yorkers as a whole.
This analysis demonstrates that New York State can dramatically reduce these costs by providing highquality legal counsel for detained immigrants who are facing deportation through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). For an annual investment of $7.4 million – or 78-cents per personal income taxpayer per year – NYIFUP would help ensure that deportation proceedings reflect our fundamental values, providing a measure of fairness for immigrant New Yorkers.
The program would generate nearly $1.9 million in annual savings to New York State by reducing spending on public health insurance programs and foster care services and capturing tax revenues that would otherwise be lost. In addition, NYIFUP would produce $4 million in savings for Empire State employers each year, by preventing turnover-related costs stemming from detentions and deportations. Taken together, these savings offset the majority of the investment needed to establish the program.
-New York State employers pay an estimated $9.1 million in turnover-related costs annually as they are forced to replace detained or deported employees. NYIFUP would save employers $4 million in such costs each year.-The detention or deportation of a parent makes it difficult for some students to complete school, limiting their long-term earning potential, increasing reliance on public health insurance programs and decreasing tax revenues. Over 10 years of the NYIFUP program, this would translate into $3.1 million in annualized costs to the state each year. NYIFUP would save New York over $1.3 million in such costs each year.-Detentions and deportations cost New York’s State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) about $685,000 each year. NYIFUP would save the state over $310,000 per year in such costs.-The state pays over $562,000 a year to provide foster care for the children of detained or deported New Yorkers. NYIFUP would reduce these costs by over $263,000 each year.
Few investments have the potential to yield such far-reaching returns. We urge New York State to seize the opportunity to create a first-in-the-nation, statewide system of universal representation for individuals who are detained and facing deportation. Doing so will produce $5.9 million in savings each year to New York State and employers, ensure that the system lives up to our most closely-held ideals and help to keep Empire State families whole.
“Let Our Wages Grow:” Fed Up Coalition to Attend Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Symposium, Ask Fed Not to Kill the Recovery
On August 27 and 28, workers, economists and allies with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition will return to Jackson Hole, Wyo. with a clear demand for Federal Reserve officials:...
On August 27 and 28, workers, economists and allies with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition will return to Jackson Hole, Wyo. with a clear demand for Federal Reserve officials: Let Our Wages Grow.
Some Fed officials claim the risk of inflation as a reason to raise interest rates, and central bankers have even made “Inflation Dynamics” the theme of their annual summit. But inflation is nowhere to be seen. A raise in interest rates would mean slowing the economy, halting the recovery and harming families for whom the recovery has been weakest: women and people of color, especially African Americans.
With too many Black workers still unemployed and wage growth nowhere to be found, the economy is simply not ready for the Fed to slow it down. Members of the Fed Up coalition will take this message to Jackson Hole, and will contrast the Fed’s summit on inflation with their own conference focused more broadly on jobs, wages and other issues of primary importance for working families.
The Fed Up campaign, anchored at the Center for Popular Democracy, will hold a number of teach-ins in Jackson Hole, Wyo. during the Federal Reserve’s symposium from August 27 to 29 to convey why it does not make sense to stop the recovery for American families. The teach-ins will be led by workers, economists, and Fed Up allies and will cover an array of topics like the Fed’s role in full employment, the intersection of Black Lives Matter and the Fed, the selection process for regional bank presidents, a historical look at inflation, and more.
“There is no data supporting the Fed’s push for higher interest rates,” said Ady Barkan, campaign director for Fed Up. “While they toy with halting the recovery, there is a crisis of stagnant wages and a lack of good jobs. We will remind Fed officials that their actions could have damaging consequences for women, African Americans and Latinos.”
The Fed Up campaign’s efforts to highlight the urgency of letting the economy grow for working families goes back to its inception last year. Since then, the Fed Up members from across the country have attended Jackson Hole, met with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and regional Fed presidents, held national mobilizations, and more.
“With Fed officials gearing up for a crucial decision-making period, it is more important than ever that they hear from workers and understand how their decisions play out in communities across the country,” said Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Details for the teach-ins will be released at a later date.
Interviews Available
There are interviews available with workers affiliated with the Fed Up campaign who are coming to Jackson Hole, as well as economists and policy experts from the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Popular Democracy, and allies.
For inquiries or interviews, please write to press@populardemocracy.org.
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The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion...
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion each year, comes in different forms. An employer could keep customer tips instead of paying them out to workers, force employees to work off the clock without compensation, or illegally deduct the cost of uniforms or work tools from employees’ paycheck.
Read the full article here.
Meet the lefty club behind a blitz of new laws in cities around the country
Like many new organizations, Local Progress sprang from the ashes of a crisis.
In 2012, New York City...
Like many new organizations, Local Progress sprang from the ashes of a crisis.
In 2012, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, who represents Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, and Nick Licata, then Seattle council chair, had a phone call about how to deal with the tidal wave of foreclosed homes that had swept the country. A few loosely organized collectives had emerged around the challenge of blight, with some cities trying innovative and legally risky strategies like using the power of eminent domain to seize the foreclosed mortgages. But there wasn’t a place to convene like-minded local officials around that issue — or any other. “It really grew into 'hey, there should be something like this,'” Lander says.
Rather than creating a new organization, Lander reached out to the Center for Popular Democracy, another young outfit that secured grants to support a few staff members for the project. They first gathered in 2012, at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington. The group has grown — with annual convenings and ones that are more ad hoc, like a forum in support of Seattle’s first-in-the-nation vote to raise its minimum wage to $15 in 2014. The show of solidarity helped. “One thing they said was, 'make it look like we’re not crazy,’” Lander says, of Seattle’s council.
Many cities have a klatch of liberal legislators who push for higher minimum wages, paid leave mandates, taxes on plastic bags and the like. By putting them in contact with one another and other community groups, Local Progress has in recent years created a policy feedback loop that’s accelerated the spread of new laws in municipalities across the country. In the absence of federal action on many issues, it’s trying to make local government into something that doesn’t just pick up the trash — but solves some of society’s biggest problems as well.
City-level cooperation, of course, isn’t a new idea.
Its first iteration came about a century ago, during the Progressive era, when urban leaders fought for home rule for cities in order to establish construction codes, health and safety standards, and the architecture of good government through state-based alliances called Municipal Leagues. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created programs that bypassed the more conservative governors and state legislatures, filtering aid for infrastructure projects through local Democratic machines.
That relationship started to weaken through the 1970s and ‘80s, when some Democrats migrated to the suburbs, urban politics became more racialized, and the flow of money slowed to a trickle.
“What’s new in the last 30 years is that federal role has been eroding, and by now it’s really difficult to get anything done,” says Margaret Weir, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in urban politics. "The Reagan administration signaled to cities that 'you’re pretty much on your own.’"
Meanwhile, the old Municipal Leagues had evolved into bodies like the National League of Cities and the National Council of State Legislators, which serve as convening entities — but don’t tend to push the policy envelope that much, so as to remain all-inclusive. Licata, in particular, was frustrated that there seemed to be more focus on issues of greater concern to small towns, rather than those of large cities; he also wanted to see more emphasis on issues of social justice and racial equity than the existing organizations were willing to take on.
"The old ones got defined in more nonpartisan terms,” says Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard. “Today’s progressives want a harder edge."
Creating an organization of self-described progressive elected leaders serves another purpose: It creates an easy and fast way for liberal activists to access the people most likely to take action.
"There wasn’t a place where you could find progressive elected officials in the aggregate. You’d find one here and you’d find one there,” says Angela Glover Blackwell, president of Policylink, which focuses on equity for communities of color. Local Progress “was a gold mine.”
So far, Local Progress has appealed to reform-oriented elected officials like D.C. City Councilmember Elissa Silverman, whom the organization recruited last year. In October, she made a quick trip to Los Angeles for the group’s first large convening, where she found about 100 people like her trying to think creatively about what local officials can do within the law — like require predictable schedules for retail employees, for example, or crack down on non-payment of freelancers.
"I was not totally sold on the value of going out there, but I said ‘what the hell,’ and I’m really glad I did,” Silverman says. Now, when she wants to workshop a new policy idea or learn what others had experienced with proposals that crop up in D.C. — like funding a new arena that will be used by a professional sports team, which Silverman opposes — she can tap into the network with one email to a listserv, or look up a policy toolkit that Local Progress’ small staff has put together on the issue.
A few months later, while introducing a proposal for public financing of municipal elections, she mentioned the experiences of three young council members she met at the conference: Antonio Reynoso, Ritchie Torres, and Carlos Menchaca of New York, all of whom had triumphed in unlikely campaigns against powerful opponents.
"Antonio in particular said 'Hey Elissa, if it wasn’t for public financing, I wouldn’t have been able to win,’ and that was very important for me to hear,” Silverman recalls. ”I was already convinced, but to have all three of them say that made a big impact.”
In trying to push a progressive agenda in cities, Local Progress hasn’t escaped opposition.
Some of the most formidable comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative membership organization that helps Republican state senators and representatives pass laws confining the size of government,often to tremendous effect. In 2014, liberals formed the State Innovation Exchange to try to serve as a counterweight, but its influence is so far fairly limited.
ALEC doesn’t have to fight Local Progress’ members directly. Instead, the group has favored “pre-emption” laws that enforce uniform rules across a state -- preventing a city on its own from passing stricter gun laws, or higher minimum wages. Pittsburgh’s new paid sick days ordinance, for example, was just thrown out by a court on the grounds that the city didn’t have the authority under state law to enact it.
“As cities step out and move the ball forward, states have come in to take away their power to do just that,” says Andrew Friedman, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, where Local Progress is housed.
About a year after Local Progress had its first meeting, ALEC formed the American City and Council Exchange, also focused on local jurisdictions. The group’s director, Jon Russell, met with LocalProgress co-founder Nick Licata, who had joined as a member to learn more about the group. Russell thinks they could find common ground on some issues, like openness and transparency in local government. But that doesn’t usually include the question of what cities should control, and what should be left to the state.
“There’s some situations where the state does a better job, and wants to have consistency,” Russell says. “What we tend to tell our members is to focus on what we do best — making sure our budgets are effective and efficient. Don’t get tied up in these political issues that more recently have crept into local government.” He thinks that local officials shouldn’t listen to environmental groups, for example, trying to ban fracking or keep coal trains from coming through town.
“If they want to work on state issues, they should run for state government,” Russell said, of the policy entrepreneurs. "People want their trash picked up. They want their police to respond to calls. They want their fires put out.”
The central idea of Local Progress, however, is that no issue is out of bounds for city government. Besides environmental groups, it has heavy involvement from the labor movement; an AFL-CIO vice president sits on the organization’s board, and the conference in October had a session on the Service Employees International Union’s Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign, along with numerous appearances by union officials. Those outside groups are essential to getting new policy ideas into practice.
In time, Lander sees the direction of policy innovation starting to flow in reverse: From pioneering cities up to state and federal lawmakers, who might take cues from what appears to be a groundswell of support. He recently wonthe passage of a bill banning credit checks for employment, for example.
“Eventually that should be a national law or a CFPB regulation. That’s not going to happen until a lot of cities and states do it,” Lander says. “And if there’s a competition for who can do the strongest law, eventually it’ll make sense for businesses to say 'we should have a national law.'"
But right now not all cities are able to adopt the kinds of path-breaking new laws that councils can pull off in liberal enclaves on either coast. Take something like allowing Uber drivers to unionize, which could entail years of litigation while courts decide whether it’s kosher — as the mayor of Seattlepointed out in a letter to council members after they voted unanimously in favor of it. Being the first takes both political will and financial resources to enforce new mandates and weather the inevitable legal hiccups or unforeseen consequences that might require adjustments down the road.
That’s also where the leaders of Local Progress think a central clearinghouse of information could come in handy: It might help a city councilperson in Terre Haute, Ind., or Tempe, Ariz., avoid having to design an inclusionary zoning ordinance from scratch. Moreover, it makes members feel connected to a larger movement, rather than just slogging away in the trenches.
“It’s a question of looking at a progressive issue, and understanding that progressive issues do reflect the interests of everyone,” Licata says. “As an additive to the gas, we’re able to get more mileage and oomph on this issues.”
Source: Washington Post
18 hours ago
7 days ago