Advocacy group calls for more oversight of California charter school spending
Advocacy group calls for more oversight of California charter school spending
A lack of transparency and inadequate oversight can set up the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. A 2015 report...
A lack of transparency and inadequate oversight can set up the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. A 2015 report from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy, entitled “The Tip of the Iceberg,” reported over $200 million lost to fraud, corruption and mismanagement in charter schools.
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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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Bank Workers Tell Their Bosses: Stop Making Us Sell Shady Products To Poor People
ThinkProgress - April 9, 2015, by Alan Pyke - The newest line of criticism for the banking industry is coming from...
ThinkProgress - April 9, 2015, by Alan Pyke - The newest line of criticism for the banking industry is coming from within, as a group of rank-and-file banking employees prepare to demand that their employer stop ordering them to use predatory sales tactics and start treating them as a valued piece of the workforce.
A group of tellers, loan officers, and customer service representatives from the country’s largest commercial banks will rally Monday outside office towers in Minneapolis to call attention to their own low pay and to consumer-harming sales policies they say are imposed on them by management. As part of the demonstrations, workers will ask to meet with executives at Wells Fargo to deliver a petition calling for the bank to do away with high-pressure sales quotas for its customer service staff.
In a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), one teller “says she has to ‘practically chase customers out of the door hawking unwanted credit and debit card accounts'” or face reproach from her manager, despite corporate policy that ostensibly prohibits disingenuous or high-pressure tales tactics.
“What they want, what they need, isn’t important to us. Selling them a product is,” a call-center worker at another bank said, summarizing the approach her managers take toward customers.
The CPD report details how the largest banks exacerbate inequality on the macro level and prey upon trusting customers on the micro-level. It argues that the largest American consumer banks are contributing to economic inequality and mining huge profits while freezing tens of millions of un-banked Americans out of basic financial services.
The kinds of basic banking products that are essential to working people trying to save for their retirement or their children “are what industry insiders consider ‘low-value’ or ‘low-margin’ services,” CPD notes, and “are not currently a priority for the big banks.” Instead, banks have put tellers and call center employees under ever more pressure to sell people credit cards and additional bank accounts regardless of whether those products suit the customer’s real needs. At one bank, customer service staff must “make 40 percent of the sales of the top seller to avoid being written up.”
For providing this warped version of “customer service” and surviving the high-pressure work environment the banks create for them, frontline workers are rewarded with falling pay. Pay for tellers fell by more than 5 percent from 2007 to 2013 after adjusting for inflation. Bank workers who conduct interviews for people requesting loans have seen their wages drop by 3.2 percent, and customer service reps have gotten a 2.5 percent cut in that same window.
Out of every 10 bank tellers in the country, three are enrolled in food stamps or another public assistance program. Considering that most such programs have far fewer people enrolled than are eligible for them, it’s likely that the ratio of tellers who qualify for public aid is even higher. Taxpayers spend nearly $900 million a year providing benefits to bring bank tellers and their families up to a subsistence-level income, which means everyone in the country is helping to subsidize bank profits.
Those profits are massive, as the CPD report notes. For every dollar in revenue that the 10 largest consumer banks in America bring in, they manage to keep 20 cents as pure profit after paying workers, overhead, and taxes. That large profit margin leaves plenty of room to pay workers enough to avoid poverty.
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How Hurricane Maria Could Change Puerto Rico’s Political Future
How Hurricane Maria Could Change Puerto Rico’s Political Future
In the windowless backroom kitchen of the Loisaida community and arts center in Lower Manhattan, Aris Mejías cradles a...
In the windowless backroom kitchen of the Loisaida community and arts center in Lower Manhattan, Aris Mejías cradles a plastic ziplock with the last of the dark-roast coffee she brought back from her native Puerto Rico. “It’s probably extinct,” she says. “Ay Díos, I think I’m gonna cry.” Mejías’s eyes are red and sunken. Neither she nor Isabel Gandía has slept much since Hurricane Maria tore through the southeast Caribbean in late September. They’ve been too busy coordinating a donation drive to bring emergency aid to Puerto Rico. At 3:30 in the afternoon, Gandía is only just getting around to breakfast.
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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."
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Activists Deliver Climate Plan for Just Transition to EPA Offices Nationwide
On January 19, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regional offices issued their own...
On January 19, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regional offices issued their own corrective on the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. Days before the end of the federal comment period, the Climate Justice Alliance's Our Power Campaign - comprised of 41 climate and environmental justice organizations - presented its Our Power Plan, which identifies "clear and specific strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, in a way that will truly benefit our families' health and our country's economy."
Introduced last summer, the CPP looks to bring down power plants' carbon emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels within 15 years. The plan was made possible by Massachusetts vs. EPA, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling which mandates that the agency regulate greenhouse gases as it has other toxins and pollutants under the Clean Air Act of 1963. Under the CPP, states are each required to draft their own implementation plans by September of this year, or by 2018 if granted an extension. If they fail to do so, state governments will be placed by default into an interstate carbon trading, or "Cap and Trade," system to bring down emissions.
Michael Leon Guerrero, the Climate Justice Alliance's interim coordinator, was in Paris for the most recent round of UN climate talks as part of the It Takes Roots Delegation, which brought together over 100 organizers from North American communities on the frontlines of both climate change and fossil fuel extraction. He sees the Our Power Plan as a logical next step for the group coming out of COP21, especially as the onus for implementing and improving the Paris agreement now falls to individual nations.
"Fundamentally," he said, "we need to transform our economy and rebuild our communities. We can't address the climate crisis in a cave without addressing issues of equity."
The Our Power Plan, or OPP, is intended as a blueprint for governments and EPA administrators to address the needs of frontline communities as they draft their state-level plans over the next several months. (People living within three miles of a coal plant have incomes averaging 15 percent lower than average, and are eight percent more likely to be communities of color.) Included in the OPP are calls to bolster what CJA sees as the CPP's more promising aspects, like renewable energy provisions, while eliminating proposed programs they see as more harmful. The CPP's carbon trading scheme, CJA argues, allows polluters to buy "permissions to pollute," or carbon credits, rather than actually stemming emissions.
The OPP further outlines ways that the EPA can ensure a "just transition" away from fossil fuels, encouraging states to invest in job creation, conduct equity analyses and "work with frontlines communities to develop definitions, indicators, and tracking and response systems that really account for impacts like health, energy use, cost of energy, climate vulnerability [and] cumulative risk."
Lacking support from Congress, the Obama administration has relied on executive action to push through everything from environmental action to comprehensive immigration reform. The Clean Power Plan was central to the package Obama brought to Paris. Also central to COP21 was US negotiators' insistence on keeping its results non-binding, citing Republican lawmakers' unwillingness to pass legislation.
Predictably, the CPP has faced legal challenges from the same forces, who decry the president for having overstepped the bounds of his authority. Republican state governments, utility companies, and fossil fuel industry groups have all filed suit against the CPP, with many asking for expedited hearings. Leading up the anti-CPP charge in Congress has been Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hascalled the plan a "regulatory assault," pitting fossil fuel industry workers against the EPA. "Here's what is lost in this administration's crusade for ideological purity," he wrote in a November statement, "the livelihoods of our coal miners and their families."
Organizers of Tuesday's actions, however, were quick to point out that the Our Power Plan is aimed at strengthening - not defeating - the CPP as it stands. Denise Abdul-Rahman, of NAACP Indiana, helped organize an OPP delivery at the EPA's Region 5 headquarters in Chicago, bringing out representatives from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, National People's Action and National Nurses United.
"We appreciate the integrity of the Clean Power Plan," she said. "However, we believe it needs to be improved - from eliminating carbon trading to ensuring that there's equity. We want to improve CPP by adding our voices and our plan, and we encourage the EPA to make it better." Four of the six states in that region - which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin - are suing the EPA.
Endorsed by the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, Greenpeace and the Center for Popular Democracy, among other organizations, yesterday's national day of action on the EPA came as new details emerged in Flint, Michigan's ongoing water crisis - along with calls for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation and arrest. The EPA has also admitted fault for its slow response to Flint residents' complaints, writing in a statement this week that "necessary [EPA] actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been."
Abdul-Rahman connected the water crisis with the need for a justly-implemented CPP. "The Flint government let their community down by not protecting our most precious asset, which is water," she said. "The same is true of air: we need the highest standard of protecting human beings' air, water, land."
Source: Truthout
Activist groups march in Pittsburgh for People's Convention
Activist groups march in Pittsburgh for People's Convention
Hundreds of protesters attending the People's Convention in Downtown Pittsburgh took about two hours to march Friday in...
Hundreds of protesters attending the People's Convention in Downtown Pittsburgh took about two hours to march Friday in hot, humid weather from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center to Station Square.
The march, which started at 2:30 p.m., made stops at the U.S. Steel Building and the Allegheny County Courthouse on Grant Street before ending at Station Square.
Marchers carried hand-painted, cardboard busts of presidential candidate Donald Trump and UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff, orange butterflies on bamboo poles, and banners bearing the slogan, "still we rise." Chants rose above the din of after traffic as prosters cried phrases like, "No justice, no peace," and "Ain't no power like the power of the people, because the power of the people don't stop."
At Seventh and Grant Street, police and marchers talked. One woman took a selfie with an officer — typical of the friendly exchanges between protesters and police.
Jose Lopez, of Brooklyn said he attended the march with Make the Road New York, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights.
"It's been really great. We have a lot of working people with us. A lot of our folks don't have the wages or the opportunity to meet the community and get off the block. So it's great to be here."
Pittsburgh police maintained a visible presence along the parade route. Officers on motorcycles and bicycles assembled before the march.
The march has been planned for some time, but it comes less than 24 hours after five Dallas police officers were fatally shot during a march protesting the recent shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana by police officers.
Seven other Dallas officers were injured in an incident President Barack Obama said "horrified" America.
Erin Morey, of Mt. Lebanon, came out to show support, particularly for Martin Esqivel Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant who was arrested at his Pittsburgh home and faces deportation.
"Every voice should be heard," said Morey, whose son Max accompanied her. "I want to support an open dialogue."
The progressive groups involved in the Pittsburgh march were hosted by the Center for Popular Democracy. They voiced concerns regarding immigration, labor, environmental and civil rights causes. The group stopped at the courthouse, but officials there had already sent civilian workers home for the day and closed the building at 2:30 p.m.
"Right now, it's going great," said Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay, who walked along with the marchers, shaking hands and chatting with reporters.
"I expected to find the atmosphere more tense," he said.
McLay said the officers he'd spoken with remained positive.
"I'm really, really proud of them," he said. "Right now, they're so focused on the task before them, they're not thinking about feelings," he said.
Some marchers delivered a sharper message with a red banner that said "fire killer cops."
Among others, the groups marched by the offices of the Federal Reserve, Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Bank of New York Mellon and even train tracks, which the groups say carry crude oil, which is targeted by climate change opponents.
Toomey stayed away from his Station Square office on Pittsburgh's South Shore. Instead, the Lehigh Valley Republican held a news conference on the North Shore to express his support for law enforcement.
"It was not a good place to be," Toomey said of Station Square.
Toomey described the viral images of fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota as "very disturbing," and said both incidents need to be thoroughly investigated. But the shooting rampage that left five police officers dead and seven others wounded in Dallas "has no possible justification," Toomey said.
"The vast majority of officers are good, decent, honest and hard-working individuals," Toomey said. "What is completely wrong is the narrative that somehow cops generally are the bad guys. That narrative is something I have been pushing back on because it's wrong."
Toomey's election opponent, Democrat Katie McGinty, also shared support for police and called for thorough investigations of the shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota.
In messages posted to Twitter, the city police department offered condolences to Dallas police and Gov. Tom Wolf ordered flags to be flown at half staff.
In Greensburg, the police department posted a lengthy message on Facebook that served, in part, to remind readers that police officers are human beings who are part of a larger community.
Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik held a Mass at noon for about 70 people at Saint Mary of Mercy Church in Downtown to pray for peace and reconciliation in light of the Dallas shootings.
"Yesterday was Dallas, Wednesday was Baton Rouge, Tuesday was St. Paul. And Monday, July 4th our own Wood Street. Violence continues," Zubik said during the sermon.
"Where will it be today, where will it be tomorrow? Will it stop? Do we want it to stop?" he said.
Zubik compared violence to a disease and said that it rips families apart. He asked for attendees to think of the communities affected by violence across the nation, as they are neighbors and that it was senseless to direct blame at "one group of individuals." He said "it's imperative to tear down our own prejudices."
Zubik reminded the group that there's no competition for "whose life matters most," invoking the Black Lives Matter movement. The service ended with a prayer for first responders and others involved in public safety.
"I thought the sermon was incredible," said Marie Atria of Mt. Lebanon, "this is all terrible and it has to stop."
The Church said it was a normal attendance for a midday Friday mass. Pittsburgh has a potential for violence, but the "overwhelming response from the citizens of Western Pennsylvania is they're working for peace," Zubik said.
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald released a joint statement regarding the violence in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas:
"Today, our nation is in mourning for the deaths of so many in our community. We are hurt, angry, confused and in pain as we struggle to cope with the violence plaguing us. Our answer to the violence in our community cannot be more violence. Pittsburgh's strength has always been in coming together to solve issues and supporting each other in times of need. We rely on that strength and we need it now more than ever.
"We have great faith that all of us – residents, communities, law enforcement, activists – have the capacity to come together to heal from our pain and anger, no matter how difficult that may be for us. We can do more to honor the lives of those who were killed by working together to stop the violence and have a more peaceful community."
Peduto called for a "peace summit" to be held next week, but a date hasn't been determined.
Reporting by Max Siegelbaum, Megan Guza, Justin Merriman and Matthew Santoni.
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Fed moves to quell charges of opacity, lack of diversity
The Federal Reserve has rolled out a series of announcements, online forums and meetings with Americans this year in...
The Federal Reserve has rolled out a series of announcements, online forums and meetings with Americans this year in response to outspoken civic groups and many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, calling for a more transparent and inclusive U.S. central bank.
The latest critique came this week when Fed Up, a labor-affiliated coalition pushing for reforms, said it was "disappointing" that Nicole Taylor, a black woman and dean of community engagement and diversity at Stanford University whose term as director at the San Francisco Fed soon expires, would be succeeded on the board by Sanford Michelman, a white man who is co-founder of law firm Michelman & Robinson LLP.
"It's definitely a step back in terms of what I'd like to see on our board. We're working actively to build representation of women and minorities," John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, said on Wednesday in response to reporters' questions, noting the decision was made by private banks in his district.
After years of resisting more overt political efforts to curb its independence, the Fed this year has appeared willing to shine a light on its historically opaque process of choosing district Fed presidents, and also to show it is more sensitive to racial and gender diversity.
After the Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks last year all chose as presidents men with past ties to Goldman Sachs, the Atlanta Fed hosted a public webcast this month and said it seeks a "diverse set of candidates" for its new chief, raising hopes it would name the first black or Latino Fed president in the central bank's 103-year history.
"It's not just because we want to go and say we're diverse," Loretta Mester, Cleveland Fed president, said at a meeting with workers a day after her bank launched online applications for the public to recommend directors and advisers. "It's about getting different view points that are very helpful to us in ... thinking about the economy and understanding the trends."
The regional Fed presidents have rotating votes on policy, except for the head of the New York Fed who has a permanent voting role. Unlike Fed governors who are selected by the White House and approved by the Senate, the presidents are chosen by their district directors, half of whom are themselves picked by private local banks that technically own the Fed banks.
Critics say the dizzying structure leaves the Fed beholden to bankers who do not represent the public, and they point out that 11 of 12 district presidents are white while 10 are men.
By Jonathan Spicer and Dion Rabouin
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Protesters Converge On Stephen Schwarzman's Water Mill Home
About 35 protesters from various political organizations—the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New...
About 35 protesters from various political organizations—the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, and Strong for All Economy Coalition—converged on the Water Mill Home of Stephen Schwarzman on Friday afternoon.
Mr. Schwarzman is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group and an adviser to President Donald Trump.
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A top regulator's close ties to Wall Street damage one of its most crucial functions 10 years after the crisis
A top regulator's close ties to Wall Street damage one of its most crucial functions 10 years after the crisis
“A new report from the Fed Up coalition, an activist group calling for more inclusive economic policies, says the key...
“A new report from the Fed Up coalition, an activist group calling for more inclusive economic policies, says the key regional Fed bank's conflicts lead to subpar regulation of Wall Street. As William Dudley, a former Goldman Sachs partner, prepares to retire as New York Fed president, Fed Up calls on the bank to "select a new president who will put the interests of the public before Wall Street. A new report from the Fed Up coalition, led by the Center for Popular Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit, shows just how stark the lack of diversity in race, gender, and professional backgrounds has been at the New York Fed.”
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