Blog
Earlier in May, we joined our sister organization CPD Action (CPDA) to launch our Summer of Heroes in DC campaign, focused on organizing weekly actions led by our affiliates including mobilizations, lobby visits, and other federal fighback advocacy efforts. As Congress was returning from its July 4 recess, CPD/CPDA brought hundreds of grassroots leaders to Washington, DC to raise our voices and take action on issues of critical importance to our communities.
On July 10, CPD/CPDA affiliates and allies came to the DC to demand that the Farm Bill protect Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for low-income families. The version of the Farm Bill passed by the House would reduce or eliminate SNAP benefits (food stamps and other nutrition assistance) for up to two million households. CPD/CPDA affiliates Our Children Our Future and SPACEs, together with allies like the Center for Community Change and the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, brought over a hundred people to DC – many of them families who would be directly impacted by these cuts. Stormy Matlick, for example, is a single working mother of three who boarded a bus in West Virginia at 2am to tell her Congressional representatives that they have no right to decide whose children will or won’t have food to eat. We met with ten Congressional offices and held three accountability actions at the offices of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Representatives Mike Conaway (one of the primary architects of the House bill) and Alex Mooney (who represents many of the West Virginians who had traveled to DC that day.)
On July 12, over a hundred youth came to DC to speak out against the the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline. Youth from CPD/CPDA affiliates Make the Roads New York and Connecticut were joined by allies from the Urban Youth Collaborative, the Advancement Project, and Communities for Just Schools Fund. Since the Federal School Safety Commission formed by the Trump administration in the wake of the Parkland school shooting has shown little interest in actually listening to youth of color, the young people brought their concerns directly to the Department of Education (DOE) in a “People’s Listening Session” outside DOE headquarters. With calls for “counselors not cops,” the youth denounced the presence of police in schools as a misguided approach to school safety, and defended Obama-era guidelines addressing racial bias in school discipline. The young people also held 16 meetings with members of Congress encouraging them to divest from policing and deporting young people, to invest in students and teachers, and to preserve the civil rights of young people. The action was covered by Politico. We urge you to support CPD’s Summer of Heroes program by making a donation today.
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) promotes philanthropy that serves the public good, is responsive to people and communities with the least wealth and opportunity, and is held accountable to the highest standards of integrity and openness.
As part of an ongoing blog series featuring NCRP’s nonprofit members, CPD’s Network President and Co-Executive Director, Jennifer Epps-Addison, spoke to them about the importance of general operating support. NCRP explains that “Grantmaking in this new era calls for funders who trust their grantees with general operating support, and who acknowledge and support leaders of color. CPD’s successes and structure present a testament to these two needs.”
Since the 2016 election, CPD Network affiliates have helped organize more than 860 resistance events that were attended by more than half a million people. Our network also hosted over 15 major civil disobedience actions on issues ranging from immigration to taxation to health care. Without flexible funding, this work would be nearly impossible. As new problems arise faster than ever before, CPD and our affiliates, like many organizations operating in our time, need the flexibility to change course at any given moment. Read NCRP’s full blog post here.
In July, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) released a new policy toolkit, “Expanding Voter Registration in Cities and Counties: A Toolkit for Local Policymakers.” The toolkit accompanies CPD’s previously-released report, “Deepening Democracy: How Localities Can Expand Voting Rights” and offers resources and materials to assist city and county policymakers in developing and advancing policy reforms that will expand voter registration in their jurisdictions. The report and toolkit highlight opportunities for local jurisdictions to fight back against more than a decade of attacks on voting rights and democratic participation, which have undermined core principles of representative democracy and eroded the political participation of ordinary citizens and the Rising American Electorate.
In this political moment, protecting our democracy and strengthening the political power of communities of color, immigrants, and residents with low incomes must be a local imperative. The newly-released toolkit lifts up policies that expand voter registration at city or county agencies as a way to counter the attacks on voting rights and expand access to voters, particularly in states that have been hostile to broadening voter participation. With this policy reform, designated local agencies offer eligible voters the opportunity to register to vote when applying for other services—for example, through agencies that provide human and social services, affordable housing, and health programs, among others. Local agencies are strategic places to expand voter registration because they administer services, utilities, benefits, and programs that serve local residents, and disproportionately reach low-income communities and communities of color—who are under-registered to vote compared to their wealthy and white counterparts.
The policy toolkit consists of two parts:
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A model local agency voter registration ordinance, which provides local jurisdictions with model policy language and highlights key areas where local elected officials can tailor the policy to fit the unique context of their jurisdiction.
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Communications materials, to help local elected officials and advocates communicate effectively about the importance of agency-based voter registration.
Community members, advocates, and ordinary citizens can urge local elected officials to use this toolkit and implement local voter registration policies. By passing these policies, we can pave the way for meaningful policy change in 2018 and beyond. For more information, read “Deepening Democracy: How Localities Can Expand Voting Rights,” and access the toolkit here.
In recent years, billionaire pharmaceutical executives and hedge fund managers have made billions in profit by creating, feeding, and treating a crisis of opioid addiction in the United States. As the opioid crisis has turned into a full-blown national public health epidemic, CPD’s Opioid Network, in partnership with Hedge Clippers and P.A.I.N., continue to take action and address the current overdose crisis. On July 20, as part of an ongoing series of protests to target notorious profiteers for their role in perpetuating the opioid epidemic, CPD joined photographer Nan Goldin and her advocacy group P.A.I.N., Harvard medical students, and other activists and allies for a protest at the Harvard Sackler Art Museum.
In addition to medical students and physicians from Boston and New York, protestors were joined by several advocacy groups representing people who use drugs and who have been directly affected by the crisis. The action was organized by Harvard medical students and CPD’s Opioid Network, a group of more than 45 grassroots organizations representing communities who have been most affected by the crisis, in states ranging from West Virginia to Arkansas. The network, launched late last year and has organized local rallies and town halls taking elected officials to task for their inaction in the face of the crisis. This action was covered in local outlets including the Boston Globe, WBUR, Harvard Crimson, MetroWest Daily, ARTNews, and The Daily Caller.
This action is the fourth of its kind to target art galleries and schools named after the Sackler family, who founded Purdue Pharmaceuticals. Purdue created Oxycontin and facilitated a crisis by aggressively marketing the drug as a treatment "to start with and to stay with." To maximize profit, they knowingly buried concerns about the medication’s risk of dependence and misuse. Given the enormous wealth, standing, and prestige the Sackler family has made from its sales, protestors are demanding action from the family to address the epidemic -- namely, by investing in harm reduction tools like Narcan and Safe Injection Facilities, as well as Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT). Please donate today to support CPD’s Opioid Network in standing firm that the provision for more and better healthcare is the only effective solution to the opioid crisis.
We are pleased to announce that the Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI) is expanding and becoming a joint partnership between Organization United for Respect (OUR) and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD). Working with community and labor partners across the country, we have achieved tremendous strides in promoting stable workweeks that provide balance and economic security for working families. With over 1.8 million people now covered under fair workweek laws, we are excited to grow our capacity to support coalitions across the country and activate working people in the movement for a family-sustaining workweek.
The core of the fight for a fair workweek is about giving working people a voice and stability in a changing economy. Now with new technologies automating work, intensifying financialization and corporate monopolies undermining worker voice and eroding job quality, we need bold strategies that build long term power for working people. By joining OUR and continuing a deep partnership with CPD and its network, the Fair Workweek Initiative team will grow its capacity to develop innovative responses to these new challenges facing working families in the retail sector.
OUR, a growing CPD affiliate, is a movement leader in amplifying the voices of people working in retail who are on the frontlines of a changing and increasingly volatile economy. Combining innovations in technology, online to field organizing and leadership development, OUR has advanced new ways to activate and empower working people. Aligning with a growing network of workers and working in collaboration with the CPD Network, FWI and OUR’s new joint strategies will include innovations in worker rights enforcement, civic participation, and a broader policy agenda that addresses the changing nature of work in retail. As tremendous movement gains in raising wages and winning a fair workweek, earned sick time and family leave are under attack, FWI, OUR and CPD are excited to work together on a new online-to-field civic engagement program that will encourage working people employed in hourly service jobs to vote.
In September, FWI’s Director Carrie Gleason, Campaign Manager Terrysa Guerra, and Corporate Strategies Director Lily Wang will be joining OUR’s staff while staying closely engaged with CPD and our full network of affiliates. Supervising Attorney for Worker Justice Rachel Deutsch, who helped design the state and local fair workweek policy innovations, will remain at CPD and will continue to provide policy support for fair workweek campaigns and the broader economic justice policy agenda. Stay connected to the work of the Fair Workweek Initiative at fairworkweek.org.
On June 28, CPD, along with our sister organization, CPD Action, partnered with the Women’s March to bring over two thousand women to the streets of DC to demand an end to the Trump administration’s inhumane and brutal anti-immigrant policies that have resulted in the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their families. Together, we brought the outrage and public pain to the doorsteps of lawmakers and federal officials who are responsible for policies that criminalize migration and tear families apart. Over six hundred women were arrested after shutting down the Hart Senate building, demanding an end to the zero-tolerance policy, the closing of all detention camps, and the abolition of ICE, an agency that is terrorizing our communities each day.
Over that weekend, hundreds of thousands of people, including affiliates from the CPD Network, took to the streets in their communities as part of the national #FamiliesBelongTogether day of action. Across the country, people of conscience marched to say families belong together in communities, not in cages. Over thirty CPD affiliates anchored rallies in their states, and centered the voices of immigrants and refugees who’ve been directly impacted by Trump’s White Nationalist anti-immigrant policies.
Affiliates from Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and many others joined the national call to demand that separated families be reunited and Congress move to abolish ICE. In Los Angeles, the Be A Hero Fund, a project of our sister organization CPD Action, partnered with a coalition of local immigrant rights organizations to hold a massive rally in front of City Hall with over thirty thousand supporters and allies in attendance.
The country now knows what immigration enforcement does, and what it looks like. The images we have seen and the cries we have heard evoke the worst moments in our country’s history, and we can no longer turn away. We must recommit ourselves to the values of a democratic and welcoming society, and demand an immigration system that protects families and upholds the dignity of human life. This is a defining moment that will shape our generation. We must not be silent. Donate today to make it clear that families belong together, and that all humans belong in freedom, not in cages.
From July 12-14, 150 elected officials from over 30 states and 90 jurisdictions joined Local Progress in Minneapolis, Minnesota for their seventh annual convening. Throughout the weekend, Local Progress members shared with each other about their challenges and experiences as elected officials, as well as strategized about how to work toward “Taking Back Power: Reclaiming Government by the People,” which was the convening’s theme. Local Progress has grown bigger over the last year as well as more diverse and cohesive as a network, all of which was on display in Minneapolis. Check out #LP2018 on social media to hear directly from the elected officials in attendance.
The convening began at Minneapolis City Hall, where Council President Lisa Bender grounded the group in amazing, recent, local victories and Local Progress Vice Chair and Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym detailed a year of growth and success in the network. Congressman Keith Ellison challenged the group to build a local movement so strong it transcends to the national level. CPD affiliates Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha and Take Action Minnesota also welcomed Local Progress to the North Star State and helped inform or lead programming throughout the conference. Read more on our blog.
Breakout discussions over the course of the event ranged from protecting immigrants to winning good jobs, from building worker power to strategies to create and preserve affordable housing, and to reforming and transforming public safety in our cities. Other inspiring sessions featured CPD Network President and Co-Executive Director Jennifer Epps-Addison, Local Progress founding director Ady Barkan, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, Amalgamated Bank CEO Keith Mestrich, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, SEIU Executive Vice President Heather Conroy, and Senator Amy Klobuchar among others. Watch the livestream here to see Ady and Jennifer ignite the room with hope in the closing plenary panel, knitting together our racial, economic, and immigrant justice work, the origin story of Local Progress, candidate recruitment, and strategy all in one discussion about how we save our democracy and build power in our country.
Last week, Mayor de Blasio and the New York City Council unveiled this year’s final budget which included a $4 million initiative to bring more guidance counselors and social workers into New York City schools. For years, CPD partner Urban Youth Collaborative has been leading the fight to ensure that more guidance counselors and social workers are hired to support young people. When the initiative was announced, Chair of the Education Committee Council Member Treyger acknowledged UYC’s advocacy, stating: “Our students, including @UYC_YouthPower, have been advocating for more social workers and guidance counselors. Your voices were heard. There’s $2 million for guidance counselors and $2 million for Bridging the Gap social workers.”
In April 2017, through a report co-authored with CPD, UYC released the Young People’s School Justice Agenda – a vision for safe, supportive, and inclusive schools developed by youth leaders organizing to transform their schools and communities. Their agenda centered supportive approaches to improving school climate. These approaches are proven to be more effective at helping students address the root causes of conflict and reducing school infractions, thus actually creating safer schools than punitive policies such as suspensions and policing.
UYC continued its advocacy by releasing a Policy Brief with CPD to support their calls. That brief showed that guidance counselors and social workers provide critical services to create safe and supportive schools. The current ratio of students to full-time guidance counselors is 1:407. As a point of comparison, the ratio of students to New York Police Department School Safety Division personnel is 1:207. Students attending middle schools with comprehensive counseling programs reported feeling safer in their schools, better relationships between students and teachers, greater satisfaction of students with the education they were receiving in their schools, and earning higher grades. Read more about UYC’s work in an op-ed here.
Young people organizing with UYC expressed a vision for their future filled with hope. Their vision prioritized deep investment in guidance counselors and social workers. While there is still far more work to do and progress to achieve, this $4 million investment in young people’s priorities is a critical step forward for all New York City young people and is a testament to the fundamental importance of sustained and strategic youth organizing to transform our schools and education system.
At a standing room only summit on June 13, elected leaders expressed new support for policies championed by more than a dozen progressive partners and allies including CPDA, CPD’s sister organization. We The People 2018 was an historic summit to advance an agenda of racial, environmental, and economic justice in conversation with five U.S. Senators and Members of Congress. The summit featured the faces and voices of members of grassroots community based organizations around the country. Community members and leaders directly impacted by the issues took the opportunity to directly address their elected officials, making clear the case for bold and progressive policy change. In their answers, electeds expressed new support for policies like Medicare for All and the Financial Transaction Tax. We The People was covered in USA Today, MSNBC, The Washington Post, CBS News, The Hill, and Common Dreams.
As a network of people’s institutions, it was imperative to hear Congressional leaders speak productively on issues central to CPD’s work, and to project a bold and transformative vision rooted in multi-racial, pro-worker, and progressive populism. We The People elevated the core issues the CPD Network cares about, changing and grounding the national conversation in the values held, and the lived experiences of, our affiliates and their members.
Ana Maria Archila, Co-Executive Director of CPD Action and Heather McGhee, President of Demos Action, facilitated the day, which included speeches from leaders like Senators Booker, Warren, Sanders, Gillibrand and Harris and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Congressman Luis Gutierrez. The Senators each took multiple questions from activists in the room on key topics including Wall Street reform, healthcare, race, mass incarceration, workers’ rights, unionization, money in politics, immigration, reproductive rights, voting rights, and climate.
The organizations involved included Care in Action, Communication Workers of America (CWA), CPD Action (CPDA), Demos Action, Faith in Action Fund, Indivisible, MoveOn, People’s Action, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Sierra Club, United We Dream Action, Working Families Party (WFP), 32BJ SEIU, and 350 Action.
Toys R Us workers are standing up and taking action as over 33,000 workers and their families lost the jobs they love last week. Over 100 Toys R worker leaders have protested Wall Street private equity funds, stood with members of Congress, and taken action in their stores calling for both the severance pay their families need and new rules for private equity funds destroying jobs. Thousands more are speaking out online and more are getting involved every day through OUR’s Rise Up Retail campaign. This fight for workers has received significant national media coverage in the Washington Post, CNN, CBS, The Atlantic and The Nation, and their first-ever appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box.
“I was holding my 2-year-old son and speaking in the lobby of Bain Capital’s office when a security guard pushed me and tried to silence us,” said Alisha Hudson from Lexington, Kentucky. “I was scared at first, but then I got mad, and I decided I wasn’t going to back down. And that’s what we need to do right now. We need to stand up, speak out and not give up.”
Toys R Us workers are educating the American public about what happens when Wall Street becomes your boss with a video of their meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders that has garnering over 3.6 million views. Members of Congress are sending letters to KKR, Bain and Vornado in support of severance pay for Toys R Us workers and pledging financial reform to protect working families from Wall Street greed. These corporations saddled Toys R Us with $5 billion in debt while pocketing $470 million in fees and interest, draining the company of much needed capital to compete in today’s retail economy and landing it in bankruptcy.
The NJ Congressional Delegation including Senators Cory Booker, Bob Menendez, and Representative Bill Pascrell, launched a week of actions this month with Toys R Us workers in New Jersey while the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Representative Keith Ellison, spearheaded a letter of support. CPD affiliates and partners like Make the Road New Jersey, New York Communities for Change and NJ Citizen Action all joined worker actions this month.
Momentum is growing as workers take their demands to state pension funds across the country who invest public employee retirement dollars into KKR and Bain Capital. Already Minnesota’s Governor moved the state to halt new investments into KKR last week and workers are pushing Washington, New York City, California, Ohio and Michigan to invest responsibly in funds that don’t hurt working families.
Toys R Us workers and their families are emerging as new leaders to push for the next wave of financial reform which stops Wall Street from playing games with our jobs.
