The Housing Recovery Has Skipped Poor and Minority Neighborhoods
On October 11, 2009, when Isaac Dieudonne was two years old, his family moved into a new home in Miramar, Florida. As...
On October 11, 2009, when Isaac Dieudonne was two years old, his family moved into a new home in Miramar, Florida. As they began to unpack, young Isaac bounded out the front door in search of fun. The parents found him several minutes later, floating dead in the fetid pool of a foreclosed house.
Since the financial crisis began in 2008, approximately 5.7 million properties have completed the foreclosure process, and stories like this begin to answer the critical question of what happens to all those homes. While many are resold, too often they fall into disrepair, creating blight that drags down property values and turns communities into potential deathtraps, attracting not just mosquitoes and mold, but crime and tragedy.
According to expert reports, this neglect occurs disproportionately in communities of color, part of a disturbing pattern. While the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the ability to use the Fair Housing Act to challenge discriminatory effects in neighborhoods, the nation’s neighborhood layout looks more segregated than ever, exacerbating the racial wealth gap. There’s no point in having an anti-housing discrimination law if it isn't vigorously employed to prevent a real societal division that drags down minority families. The Justice Department, free of uncertainty about the Fair Housing Act’s future, needs to work to realize the law's intended purpose.
The housing recovery has skipped more low-income neighborhoods.Fifteen percent of homes worth less than $200,000 are still underwater, where the borrower owes more on the house than it’s worth. This is compared to only six percent of homes over $200,000. Property values in low-income neighborhoods have not bounced back to the degree of their wealthier counterparts.
An important study from Stanford University shows how this housing divide doesn’t align with socioeconomic status, but with race. Middle-class black households are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower incomes than the average low-income white household. This creates fewer opportunities for minorities, as neighborhood poverty can predict the quality of schooling and the availability of jobs for the next generation. Areport from the American Civil Liberties Union shows that median household wealth for African-Americans continued to drop after the housing collapse, long after median wealth for whites stabilized. They project this to continue well into the next generation, with a drop in the average black family’s wealth by $98,000 more than it would have been without the Great Recession.
Foreclosures are largely responsible for this widening disparity. Predatory lending was directed at minority homeowners. Subprime mortgages weregiven disproportionately to minority borrowers, and after the housing bubble collapsed, these loans failed at higher rates. Racial segregation prior to the crisis turned these neighborhoods into targets, with subprime lending specialists going door-to-door and luring even those who owned their homes outright into refinances with dodgy terms. Banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America paid fines for pushing minority borrowers into subprime loans, even when they qualified for better interest rates. But these fines—$175 million and $335 million, respectively—were substantially lower than they paid for other bubble-era abuses.
More black and Latino borrowers had their wealth exclusively tied up in their homes, and when they lost them, more of their wealth dissipated. Even after the collapse, the Federal Reserve found that from 2010-2013, net worth of nonwhite or Hispanic families fell 17 percent, compared to an increase of 2 percent for white families.
This wealth transferred in part to Wall Street. Private equity and hedge funds scooped up hundreds of thousands foreclosed properties in low-income communities, and converted them into rentals. This prevented minority homeowners from benefiting from any return in property values, and displaced many from their neighborhoods. And a recent survey of community organizations finds that this has created higher rents and more transient neighborhoods.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with quasi-public mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, auction off these homes to investors at a discount, according to a study from the Center for Popular Democracy. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently passed a resolution urging these government lenders to sell instead to non-profits that would work to protect homes from foreclosure.
And then there is the disparate treatment of foreclosed properties repossessed by banks, known as real estate owned (REO). The National Fair Housing Alliance’s findings in 29 metropolitan areas indicate that REO in communities of color are twice more likely to have damaged doors and windows, overgrown weeds and trash on the premises and holes in the roof or structure. This violates the Fair Housing Act: Banks are responsible for maintenance and upkeep on all properties, and if they neglect that in black and Latino neighborhoods, the Justice Department can sanction them.
The failure to maintain foreclosed properties has multiple negative effects for communities. Blight creates health and safety concerns, acts asmagnets for crime, and lowers property values for neighboring homes. It also reduces the tax base for municipalities, as nobody pays property taxes on an empty house. The city of Detroit has already lost $500 million from foreclosures in the past few years; 78 percent of homes with subprime loans are know foreclosed or abandoned.
Last week, fifteen Senate Democrats, including leaders Chuck Schumerand Dick Durbin and ranking member of the Banking Committee Sherrod Brown, asked regulators to open an investigation into the treatment of foreclosed properties. “The same communities of color that were victimized by predatory lending may now be facing the double whammy of racial bias when it comes to the upkeep of foreclosed homes,” said Brown. But policing foreclosed properties would only begin to close the gap between white and non-white neighborhoods.
The entire point of the Fair Housing Act, passed shortly after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968, was to reverse the findings of the Kerner Commission, that the country “is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” But reading through these statistics, you wouldn’t know the Fair Housing Act existed. We are further than ever from what Justice Anthony Kennedy described as the act’s “role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.” It has been impotent in the face of multiple discriminatory shots at people of color, which has opened up a historically large wealth gap and crippled their opportunity.
Until we figure out another way for the middle class to build wealth other than purchasing a mortgage, the discriminatory effects of our housing system will further a permanent underclass among people of color in America. The Justice Department has an enormous amount of work to do.
Source: The New Republic
Turning Immigrants Into Citizens Puts Money in L.A.'s Pocket
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are...
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are on-board with federal legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
Maybe we're just being selfish. It turns out that naturalization, the process of going from immigrant to citizen, puts cash in our pockets, concludes a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy, the National Partnership for New Americans, and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at USC Dornsife.
If we naturalized folks who are eligible but who are dragging their feet, L.A. would see as much as a $3.3 billion economic impact and as much as $320 million in additional tax revenues over a 10-year span, the report's authors say. Holy frijole.
The researchers say that naturalization makes immigrants eligible to get better jobs and better pay, which in turn helps them spend more money in their communities: "These increased earnings will lead to additional economic activity," the report says.
L.A. immigrants can earn as much as an extra $3,659 a year, more than in New York or Chicago, by starting the citizenship process, the academics say in the paper:
Clearly, naturalization benefits immigrants: it provides full civil and political rights, protects against deportation, eases travel abroad, and provides full access to government jobs and assistance.
While opponents of a pathway to citizenship often paint south-of-the-border immigrants as a burden on taxpayer resources, the paper argues that folks who fully legalize their allegiance to the United States actually contribute to our tax base.
Of course, what they're talking about is "increased naturalization" "over the status quo," according to the report. It's all about potential.
Getting immigrants to naturalize would require some heavy lifting, though.
One barrier to naturalization is the cost, the authors say, which has risen from $225 in 2000 to $680 in 2008. The cheaper U.S. Green Card ($450) "sets up an incentive to continue to defer naturalization," the study says.
The authors say more encouragement in cities like L.A. could go a long way toward seeing more folks naturalize. This week City Hall joined an effort, "Cities for Citizenship," to do just that.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy:
Cutting through the administrative and financial red tape of the naturalization process is an outgrowth of that leadership and will benefit millions of American families who have been excluded from the privileges of citizenship. We ask both city leadership and the immigrant community to join us in this initiative.
Source
Workers’ groups show candidates that supporting higher wages wins votes
Workers’ groups show candidates that supporting higher wages wins votes
Several worker advocacy groups in swing states are showing senatorial candidates that according to polls, voters...
Several worker advocacy groups in swing states are showing senatorial candidates that according to polls, voters support raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for overtime pay.
The groups include the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund and the Working Families Party. They report that when voters learn that GOP incumbent senators oppose raising the minimum wage and expanding overtime pay eligibility, they often switch their support to Democratic challengers.
This might greatly influence the outcome of close U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Arizona.
Forty four Senate Republicans have signed a resolution opposing the overtime pay expansion the U.S. Labor Department plans to implement December 1.
“Voters are fed up with lack of action in Washington on raising wages for working people, and what we’re seeing is that just letting voters know where the candidates stand on these issues can have a significant impact,” Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, says.
He cited polls that found:
▪ Nationally, voters support expanding overtime pay eligibility by a three-to-one ratio. Just over half of voters say they would oppose a candidate who opposes the expansion.
▪ In Pennsylvania, three-fourths of voters say they support raising the minimum wage. Also, by an 81 to 15 percent margin, they say they approve of expanding eligibility for overtime pay. Fifty seven percent of voters say they will oppose candidates who do not support these goals. (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty has made raising the minimum wage a key plank in her race against GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.)
▪ In Missouri, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by a 76 to 16 percent margin. If a candidate opposes the idea, 53 percent of voters say it would lessen their support.
▪ In Ohio, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by an 80 to14 percent margin. And if a candidate opposes the idea, 51 percent of voters say they would lessen their support.
“Working women and men should be paid for the time they work, period. The Obama administration’s decision to increase the overtime threshold is an enormous, in many cases life-changing, win for working people, from fast-food, retail and healthcare managers to post-doctoral associates and counselors,” Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry has said.
She continued: “This action will put more money in people’s pockets and boost the economy. It will boost women, African Americans, Latinos, people who are early in their careers and people who have modest education levels – the very people hardest hit by the 40-year assault on working people built on phony trickle-down economics.”
“Raising wages includes lifting national wages, but it’s far broader than that,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has said. “We want earned sick leave and paid family leave. We want full employment, fair overtime rules and fair scheduling so people won’t have to guess whether they’ll get enough hours to pay the rent.”
The Working Families Party, the NELP Action Fund and their allies are working to inform workers about where candidates for office from president down to city councilperson stand on raising wages,” said NELP fund spokesman Paul Sonn.
By Mark Gruenberg
Source
Protesters roll loudly through Senate office buildings, 155 arrested
The chants of vocal activists echoed through the hallways of Senate office buildings Wednesday, as hundreds staged sit-...
The chants of vocal activists echoed through the hallways of Senate office buildings Wednesday, as hundreds staged sit-ins to protest the Republican health care plan that's already on shaky ground.
Clashing with the shouting was the sound of two-way radios from a larger-than-normal police presence to arrest those refusing to heed warnings to stop.
Read the full article here.
Report: Black Unemployment in Bay Area More Than Three Times the Average
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $...
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $15 an hour position as a medical assistant in Mission Bay. But since she's a temp worker, she earns less than her co-workers, who make $20 to $25 per hour for the same work.
Still, as a black woman in San Francisco, she is fortunate. The unemployment rate for black people in the Bay Area is 19 percent, according to 2013 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the Economic Policy Institute.
Blacks are unemployed at more than three times the rate of workers of other races, according to this data. The Bay Area finished 2013 with a 6 percent total unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In San Francisco, unemployment has dropped rapidly since Mayor Ed Lee took office in January 2011, when the jobless rate was 9.5 percent. The most recent figures from the state Employment Development Department — which does not publish jobless rates by race — pegged The City's unemployment rate at 3.8 percent, by far the rosiest employment figures since the first dot-com boom at the turn of the millennium.
The wide gulf in the jobless rate between ethnic groups living in the same city belies the idea that The City and state have fully recovered from the Great Recession, according to advocates with the leftist Center for Popular Democracy.
The group released the unemployment figures by ethnicity Thursday as part of a national campaign to convince the Federal Reserve Bank to keep interest rates low in order for the economic recovery to trickle down to all workers.
So far, "the recovery is based on white America alone," said Eisler, 36, a Bayview resident who holds an associates degree and a certified nursing assistant license. Her current job, the best she could find, does not cover her $1,800 a month rent, she said.
Statewide, the jobless rate for black people is 14 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, compared to 6.1 percent for whites, 8.5 percent for Latinos and 5.9 percent for Asians.
Source
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over...
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over bound and unbound delegates, the Democratic National Convention is about to go headlong into a conflict over superdelegates in its rules committee this weekend.
The DNC’s rules committee is expected to convene Saturday morning, where groups are planning to gather outside the city’s convention center and urge the party to end the superdelegate system.
According to a media advisory, the pre-vote press conference with rules committee members includes a formal petition delivery of more than 500,000 signatures collected by Democratic-leaning groups working to end the use of superdelegates at the Democratic National Convention.
A superdelegate is a party official or elected official who is free to cast a vote for any candidate for the presidential nomination at the party’s national convention, regardless of whom the voters of their state prefer. This is in contrast to a “pledged delegate” who must cast their ballot in accordance to the winner of their state party’s primary.
DNC rules committee members are expected at the press conference and include Aaron Regunberg, the amendment’s chief sponsor. Groups presenting the signatures will include: MoveOn.org, Demand Progress, Daily Kos, Social Security Works, Democracy for America, New Democrat Network, National Nurses United, The Other 98%, Courage Campaign, Progressive Kick, Credo, PCCC, Progressive Democrats of America, Center for Popular Democracy, Social Security Works, and Reform the DNC.
“This is a historic moment for the Democratic Party,” said Aaron Regunberg, Rhode Island state representative and rules committee member. “Saturday we vote on whether to end the undemocratic superdelegate system. It’s time to restore democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders became frustrated with the superdelegate system, as they saw it as a way that damaged the Vermont senator’s candidacy during the party’s primary against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“The super delegate system undermines the promise of one person one vote that is bedrock of democracy,” added Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of National Nurses United and rules committee member. “It was created to block the nomination of candidates who would challenge a political system that has for far too long been dominated by corporate interests and a wealthy elite. Ending this undemocratic selection process would be a strong step forward to making the Democratic Party more responsive to those thirsting for real change and a healthier America.”
By KERRY PICKET
Source
Where Trump’s Policies Sow Fear, New Campaign Argues, "Corporate Backers of Hate" Stand to Profit
Where Trump’s Policies Sow Fear, New Campaign Argues, "Corporate Backers of Hate" Stand to Profit
Last month, immigrant and workers’ rights groups, led by the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York,...
Last month, immigrant and workers’ rights groups, led by the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York, launched the “Corporate Backers of Hate” campaign. The groups are targeting nine corporations that, activists argue, stand to profit off of policies pushed by President Donald Trump. These include several companies whose CEOs sit on the president’s Business Council.
“We are launching this campaign today because we know the extent to which President Trump is able to implement his anti-immigrant, anti-worker agenda actually depends heavily on how much collaboration he is able to muster,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, during a press conference. “On immigration, for instance, the White House will rely on the work of private companies to provide the funding, software, and manpower to ramp up deportations, to build detention facilities, and to build a border wall.”
Read the full article here.
Let's Choose Children Over the Charter Industry
Roll Call - May 14, 2014, by Kyle Serrette and Sabrina Joy Stevens - Our children are too precious, and education...
Roll Call - May 14, 2014, by Kyle Serrette and Sabrina Joy Stevens - Our children are too precious, and education funding too scarce, to risk turning either over to unscrupulous or incompetent organizations. That’s why charter schools were originally supposed to be something akin to a small, controlled experiment: public school laboratories intended to encourage new ways to educate students. That way, if something turned out not to work, the risk to students, educators and communities could be contained.
Unfortunately, the modest educators and community members of the charter school movement’s early days have been eclipsed by members of the charter school industry: an industry rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Yet advocates, particularly among elected officials, have been unwilling to confront this fact and deal accordingly.
Fraud and abuse is rampant in the charter sector. Last week, our organizations issued a new report detailing how charter operators wasted or stole more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars. That number only reflects cases that have been reported in 15 states; it boggles the mind to consider what an examination of all states would uncover.
We found examples of operators embezzling millions in public funds for years before being detected, spending public funds on vacation homes instead of textbooks. In one case, someone bought a private airplane; in another egregious example, they used the money for visits to a strip club. In other cases, unfit operators just plain lost vast amounts of taxpayer money.
Sadly, H.R. 10, the charter schools bill recently approved by the House, fails to address the corruption within this poorly regulated industry.
Ignoring several representatives who offered common-sense amendments, the House passed a bill that fails to call for even basic protections like conflict-of-interest guidelines. It “requires” annual audits, yet allows states to waive the requirement, making it easier for fraudulent actors to hide their theft. It does not extend open meetings laws to charters, nor does it require charter operators to include community representation on their boards.
The bill further erodes community input and oversight by awarding priority status to states that allow entities that are not local education agencies (LEA) to be charter authorizers. Not only will this make it harder for local communities to control access to our tax dollars, it will also erode the quality and consistency of children’s education. For example, 17 charters abruptly closed in Columbus, Ohio, last year alone. In most cases, their non-LEA authorizers’ slipshod vetting processes missed red flags that would have allowed them to thwart fraud and mismanagement.
Disturbingly, the bill awards priority to states that don’t have charter caps, encouraging states to further accelerate charter growth before they’ve established the protections that could prevent the aforementioned abuses. States already struggle to monitor the charter schools they have; it is simply reckless to incentivize them to open more before establishing necessary protections.
H.R. 10 ignores many of the most pressing community concerns about charters. Any new funding for charter schools must encourage more, not less, oversight and involvement by local taxpayers and families. Specifically, a new bill should ban the practice of requiring parent contracts, one of many practices that charter operators use to avoid serving the neediest students.
Charter operators should also be required to collect and publicly report information on student attrition, mobility, and transfer before coming back to the public till. This crucial information will ensure that public funding stays with the students it’s intended to benefit. It will also allow families and policymakers to make informed comparisons between charter and public schools.
If our senators want to ensure success and opportunity through quality public schools, they should create legislative protections that promote quality, and mandate the transparency and accountability that make a school public. H.R. 10 does none of this. Children and taxpayers deserve better.
Kyle Serrette is the director of Education Justice Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. Sabrina Joy Stevens is the executive director of Integrity in Education.
Source
If Politicians Actually Want to Make Change, They Have to Think Like Organizers
If Politicians Actually Want to Make Change, They Have to Think Like Organizers
In 2011, after years of entrenched fighting between businesses and labor supporters, and months of negotiation in the...
In 2011, after years of entrenched fighting between businesses and labor supporters, and months of negotiation in the city council, Seattle’s paid sick-leave ordinance came down to a walk in the park. The bill’s sponsor, councilmember Nick Licata, invited his colleague Tim Burgess, the council’s stalwart fiscal conservative, for a stroll around Green Lake. At that point, few council members were willing to support the bill and Licata was nowhere close to the five-vote majority he needed.
“I figured, in some ways, the swing vote would be Burgess,” Licata explained. “Given his standing in the business community, if he supported it, then other council members would come out and support it. It would have a domino effect.”
Walking side-by-side around the park’s lakeside path, Licata learned that Burgess wanted only minor concessions. Licata brought those back to his coalition of sick-leave supporters, who agreed to most of them. The bill, which had been stuck for years in legislative limbo, began to move. Burgess voiced his support, other councilmembers followed, and Licata wrangled the votes necessary to pass one of the country’s first laws requiring all employers to provide paid sick time to workers.
Laws like this help make Seattle the progressive city it is. In the past five years alone, Seattle has become the first major city to enact a $15 minimum wage; banned the use of plastic bags; sanctioned homeless encampments on city property; helped lead the charge on statewide votes for legal marijuana and marriage equality, and more. To hear most residents tell it, this progressive streak is as inevitable as good coffee or the craggy face of Mount Ranier—the natural outcome of a city peopled by good liberals who want to do the right thing.
But, as the long fight to win paid sick leave suggests, Seattle’s progressive laws are anything but inevitable. The city’s businesses fight tooth and nail against every attempt to improve worker rights and pay, threatening an exodus to friendlier climates. And while Seattle residents say they want the city to be affordable and want to help the rapidly growing homeless population, they also show up in force to protest affordable-housing measures and proposals to open more temporary homeless encampments.
What has fueled Seattle’s progressive victories, then, isn’t some mystery potion or innate Northwestern goodness, but the same hard work that has forced progress in other cities: grassroots organizing, tenacity, and political allies like Nick Licata. For 18 years, Licata has been one of the most reliable forces inside City Hall pushing and prodding Seattle to be a more humane city.
Since his election in 1998, Licata has had his hands in every piece of progressive legislation to pass through City Hall. He fought years of serious opposition to pass the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance, championed paid sick leave and the $15 minimum wage, created Seattle’s first lobbyist-registration law, pushed for sanctioned homeless encampments, and much more. He also fought against public funding of sports stadiums, a bill to outlaw panhandling, and plenty of other attempts at city-sanctioned discrimination.
Throughout his time in office, Licata was doggedly consistent in both his political ideology and his commitment to progressive causes. Among his colleagues, he was often the one vote to the left of all others, but they respected his attention to detail and willingness to work with everyone. Licata’s consistency and legislative success helped him build a citywide progressive base that reelected him every time he ran. Occasionally, it even won him accolades outside his adopted city. The Nation named him Most Valuable Local Official in 2012.
Beyond advancing progressive policy, Licata’s time in office helped carve out a space for the current progressive bloc of councilmembers, including Kshama Sawant, Mike O’Brien, and Licata’s longtime legislative aide turned successor, Lisa Herbold. It is of course overly simplistic to draw a straight line from Licata to those that came after him, but his ability to stay true to his values while getting things done helped pull Seattle’s traditionally centrist electeds to the left and proved that voters support progressives.
“Nick, for so long, fostered and cultivated this progressive wing of Seattle,” said O’Brien. “One of the things I learned from Nick is you don’t need to shy away from progressive values. You can embrace them.”
Since his election in 1998, Nick Licata has had his hands in every piece of progressive legislation to pass through Seattle's City Hall.
Last December, Licata finished his final term as a city councilor—a move he was careful not to frame as retirement. He is not ending his political work, just changing the form it takes. Some of his time will be spent working with Local Progress, the nonprofit network of progressive local politicians he helped found in 2012. Some of it will be spent promoting his recently published book, Becoming A Citizen Activist, which is part memoir and part how-to guide for navigating local government. All of it is in service of Licata’s theory of the city as a tool for movement-based social and political change.
“With Congress deadlocked and state governments largely taken over by the right wing, large urban areas are the last bastions of progressive strength,” he explained. “But it’s hard to manifest that into political power. We need to start going where our strength is and building out from that.”
* * *
Licata’s attempt to seed state and national change by fomenting shifts at the local level is, in many respects, the logical conclusion of a career built on grassroots activism.
Licata was born in Cleveland in 1947, the son of traditional working-class Catholics who never graduated from high school. His turn towards progressive politics began during his college years at Bowling Green State University, where he helped found the school’s chapter of Students for Democratic Society, and solidified in 1970, when he was a graduate student at the University of Washington protesting the war.
After grad school, Licata moved into PRAG House, a commune that would serve as home base for 25 years of organizing and activism that eventually launched his political career. Like a true Renaissance lefty, he had hand in almost all the consequential battles of the age, as well as some of the less consequential ones. He published a directory of Seattle community groups and social services called the People’s Yellow Pages; helped form Coalition Against Redlining; launched an alternative weekly called the Seattle Sun; helped organize an annual 24-hour dance marathon called Give Peace A Dance to raise money for nuclear disarmament TV ads; and co-founded Citizens For More Important Things to fight public funding of new baseball and football stadiums in Seattle, among other things.
Much of Licata’s activist career was paid for by his work as an insurance broker, a kind of Wallace Stevens of the activist left. But after 15 years of this arrangement, Licata was unhappy and his bosses expected him to become a manager.
He left to run for city council.
* * *
In Licata’s first run at council, he was the underdog against Aaron Ostrom, a popular city staffer with establishment backing. Despite being outspent and running without major endorsements, Licata was able to organize his broad activist networks to show up at the polls and elect him.
“I was somewhat isolated [as a progressive]. I could tell my new colleagues thought I was going to be temporary. The first day in office I didn’t have a chair, though I think it was an oversight,” Licata said.
Nonetheless, Licata managed to prove his efficacy. Years of working in insurance gave him a keen eye for detail and in his first year in office, he found an extra $50,000 that had not been allocated in the budget.
Licata’s attempt to seed state and national change by fomenting shifts at the local level is the logical conclusion of a career built on grassroots activism.
“It’s a trite term, but I think I earned their respect,” said Licata. “Not that I was brilliant, but I dug into things more than usual.”
He also proved he knew how to work the system. Licata’s first major victory was killing Seattle’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics.
“It was almost like drowning the golden child. Even I was very supportive to start. Who doesn’t like the Olympics?”
But as he dug into the contract and read about other host cities, Licata realized Seattle would have to take on any financial liabilities from the games and likely wind up with a pile of debt.
“The people we’re supposed to serve most, not the tourists, not the people coming in, not the investors, not the businesses, but the people living here? They don’t gain. In fact a lot of them lose,” Licata said.
He started his uphill battle with his most conservative colleagues, highlighting the financial case against hosting the Olympics. He got his message out to local journalists who started covering the issue. He also hosted a public forum downtown in the go-to journalist watering hole. The room was packed with people who had come to listen to a panel of experts make the case against the Olympics (the pro side declined his invitation). He commissioned a countywide poll that showed people were against the bid when they knew about the debt. The council slowly came around and, in the end, eight of nine members signed a letter in opposition to the bid. Because no councilmember was willing to sponsor a resolution in support, the issue died.
Licata’s organizer approach to legislating and willingness to work with everyone was a recurring theme of his time in office and served him well in his proudest victories.
Getting the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance—a basic law that requires landlords to register rental properties so the city can make sure they’re up to code—took six years of negotiations between advocates and the Rental Housing Association.
The Paid Sick and Safe Time bill was a similarly big lift that required years of brokering negotiation between labor, activists, and businesses. Councilman O’Brien says that tenacity was an example of Licata at his best.
“He’s watching it and figuring out ‘where are my votes, who’s with me, now where do I get the next vote? I think we need to have a brown bag, we need a town hall, I need to build momentum. What are the obstacles that keep you from supporting this? Can we work on that?’” O’Brien explained.
Licata’s organizer approach to legislating and willingness to work with everyone was a recurring theme of his time in office
He continued, “The bill that came out in the end wasn’t exactly how anyone wanted it in the start, but it was great. He had the ability when he was driving something to be really aware of the politics on the floor, what changes he needed to make, how to manage that dynamic.”
Licata readily admits he can’t take sole credit for $15 Now’s success or many of the city’s big progressive victories. But he’s proud of the role he’s played as an activist on the inside connecting the fist-raised activists he came up with and the establishment whose support and votes are critical for political success.
“I’m not very good at sports analogies. But I think I’m like the midfielders in soccer. They make sure the ball gets to the striker or keeps the ball away from their own goalie. But they don’t end up on the front cover.”
Now that he’s left office, Licata wants to see if he can take his mid-fielding talents national to see if cities’ progressive momentum can combat state and national conservatism.
* * *
The idea that like-minded local politicians need to work together to bolster regional and national progressive policy is at the heart of Local Progress, the nonprofit Licata co-founded with New York City Councilman Brad Lander in 2012. They point to the minimum-wage movement as example of their success. The $15 Now effort started in Seattle then spread to other cities and gained enough momentum to get introduced at state and national levels.
The organization is young and only recently raised enough money to hire staff, but it has succeeded in recruiting 400 members in 40 states, the majority of whom are elected officials. Local Progress’ work is a mix of big-picture enthusiasm building and nitty-gritty policy work.
Licata is working part-time with Local Progress to explore how best to accomplish regional organizing. The work is rooted in a feeling that there’s no choice but to focus on cities.
Lander said, “There’s still a lot cities can do on their own through legislation and policy, as we’ve been seeing. When cities get together they can make changes in their states. Then start to make those changes nationally.”
"I think you can change the world and you have to. You just have to go about it strategically and it takes some time.” —Nick Licata
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University history professor and co-editor of Dissent magazine, agreed that ever-more-progressive city politics have helped shift the national conversation. But without a corresponding movement of national progressives activists, local politicians can only do so much.
“There has to be a left populist movement. It can’t at all dismiss the importance of race and gender and sexual orientation and environment. All that’s right. But you’re not going to win majority without having a majority,” said Kazin.
He continued, “You need a lot of young people who are excited about politics and activists, and not just at election time.”
That is, in some ways, what Licata hopes to engender with his new book. As the name implies, Becoming A Citizen Activist is Licata’s attempt to share the lessons he’s learned to help people effectively navigate city politics.
Perhaps the most important of those lessons is that success comes from barely perceptible micro-victories that build into movements and major victories in the long term.
“Everyone becomes disappointed in the gap between the ideal and the deliverable,” said Licata. “You’re not going to change the world overnight. I think you can change the world and you have to. You just have to go about it strategically and it takes some time.”
Licata’s 18 years in office and over 40 years of community activism in Seattle are certainly evidence of that. His many losses and half wins and small steps forward have added up to marked change in Seattle over time. Of course, like most cities, Seattle is still a deeply inequitable place with a growing gap between rich and poor. But Licata’s work has helped give progressives a platform from which to combat those inequities. And given that, it seems possible that bringing that same detail-focused, local approach to the national stage might eventually bring about national progressive change.
By Josh Cohen
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Poor People’s Campaign Training Attacked by Pepper Spray
Poor People’s Campaign Training Attacked by Pepper Spray
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