Blog
For years, the members and staff of Arkansas Community Organizations (ACO) have helped tenants in Arkansas win much-needed repairs and improvements to their rented homes and apartment complexes. Yet, despite these services, ACO realized they were pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down again: While nearly one third of all Arkansans rent their homes (and those numbers are growing), the state still does not have a minimum standard of habitability for rental units and landlords are not required to maintain their properties. Worse still for mistreated tenants, nonpayment of rent is a criminal offense in Arkansas.
ACO realized they needed to fight hard to change Arkansas's lopsided landlord-tenant laws. Members began meeting with attorneys at nonprofit legal organizations in the state to develop an organizing and litigation strategy for reforming the state's renter laws, and over the last several years, ACO and Arkansas tenants have won several important victories.
In 2015, the city of Little Rock tried to close down an apartment complex over the holidays, giving tenants just one week to move. ACO had contacts at the complex and quickly organized a group of tenants who ultimately stopped the city's eviction order. The judge overseeing the case eventually ruled that because Little Rock has housing codes, there also exists an implied warranty of habitability for all rental property in the city.
In the summer of 2018, ACO started Arkansas Renters United (ARU) in an effort to build a statewide organization that could match the power of the Arkansas Realtors Association, a group that has defeated every attempt to reform Arkansas’s landlord-tenant laws. Lacking the financial capacity to hire organizers, ACO formed a closed Facebook group that members could share with friends around the state. The strategy worked—the group grew quickly, and members planned and participated in several actions, including making over 200 calls to the governor's office as part of a coordinated call-in during December 2018.
Valencia White, mother of two, and a renter in Little Rock, says she and the other members of the ARU are ready to continue the battle.
“It’s OK to just sit there and live in squalor? It’s a luxury to have a house that won’t fall in on you?” she asked. “I’m in the fight. We’re fighting together.”
The potential for this campaign to grow and build transformational people power in Arkansas is enormous, but social media alone cannot build the grassroots revolution needed to win stronger tenant protections in the state. For this reason, ACO has launched a national fundraising drive in order to hire two organizers who can lead campaigns across the state to keep the pressure on local property managers and realtors and bring real change to people in Arkansas. They ask for you to get involved in two ways: 1) stand in solidarity with their members by making a financial contribution here, and 2) reach out to ACO Executive Director, Neil Sealy, if you are aware of skilled organizers who are ready to take on this fight in Arkansas. Neil can be reached at nsealy@arkansascomm.org.
In early 2017, a national network of thousands of birddoggers—people who put sustained public pressure on elected officials to take action—came together to help defeat the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Two years and 170+ birddog trainings later, Birddog Nation has won scores of important commitments from their local electeds to support a healthcare system that guarantees high-quality, low-cost health coverage for everyone and brings an end to the terrible HIV pandemic.
If you are interested in participating in this work, Birddog Nation invites you to join their weekly calls on Tuesdays at 8:30pm ET. The call-in number is 1-669-900-6833, with meeting room code 2510128015.
League of Heroes is a community of citizen activists fighting to save our democracy. It began in 2017 when activist Ady Barkan confronted then-U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (AZ), asking him to be a hero and vote to save healthcare benefits for millions of Americans. Instead, Congress chose to put Medicare and other programs at risk so it could cut taxes for corporations and the wealthiest families in America. Now we need you to help continue the fight. Will you be a hero by joining us to defend our democracy and fight for working people?
League of Heroes’ weekly calls take place on Thursdays at 8pm ET. The call-in number is 1-669-900-6833, with meeting room code 2510128015.
After months of actions organized by CPD affiliates and allies, congressional conservatives failed to take healthcare from millions of Americans in 2017, marking a crucial step for working families across the country. And still, for the tens of thousands of community members that make up the CPD Network, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was never a path toward affordable, accessible healthcare. Many families are still struggling to afford basic necessities, and are having to choose between food on their tables and the medications they need to save their lives. For this reason, the CPD Network made the decision to endorse and push for Medicare for All in 2019.
On Monday, April 29, hundreds of CPD affiliate members and allies, and members of the Birddog Nation, a group of hundreds of activists trained to observe and seek out their elected officials to hold them publicly accountable, traveled to Washington, DC to rally in front of big PhRMA headquarters. On Tuesday, April 30, Ady Barkan, Senior Campaigner at CPD, testified at the historic, first-ever congressional hearing on Medicare for All in Washington, DC. You can read his full testimony here and watch the full hearing here, or by clicking on the image below. Just after the hearing, it was announced that Medicare for All would have a hearing in the House Ways and Means committee, the first major committee of jurisdiction for legislation!
Earlier this year, CPD affiliates and allies worked alongside Representatives Pramila Jayapal and John Dingell to draft and introduce a bill to Congress in April. That very bill is now being championed by many progressive elected officials like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, who has introduced his own bill in the Senate. The Medicare For All Act is a landmark comprehensive bill that would ensure all Americans would be covered and would eliminate copays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses.
Since its release, 16 senators have cosponsored the bill, including presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. CPD affiliates DelACA, SPACES, Maryland Communities United, Rights and Democracy VT and NH, and members of the Birddog Nation, have shared sustained presence on Capitol Hill since January 2019, hitting the halls for lobby meetings and actions to gain more cosponsors for the bill.
We've come so far, but still have much work to do. If you are interested in getting involved in the fight for Medicare for All, reach out to CPD National Organizer, Darius Gordon at dgordon@populardemocracy.org or follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
Of course, this work would not be possible without the generous financial support from people like you. A problem that affects us all demands a solution that includes us all. We will not leave anyone behind. Healthcare is a human right and we need you in the fight. Make a donation today.
From April 4-6, Local Progress held its first Texas convening in Austin, bringing together more than 80 local elected officials and community and labor partners to learn, strategize, and build progressive power in the state and beyonD.
The convening came at an urgent time for local governments and communities in the state, as the Texas legislature is poised to wage attacks on local democracy through state prohibitions on local policy and revenue raising. To respond to this, Local Progress kicked off the convening with a lobby day and press conference at the state capitol, urging state lawmakers to uphold local democracy. You can read a great piece in the Texas Observer about these efforts to stop state interference.
Throughout the weekend, local elected officials and allies focused on strategizing and learning about topics like transformative public safety, protecting immigrant residents, affordable housing, school finance, environmental justice, and much more. Local Progress also held several interactive training sessions on governing strategies, expanding gender equity policy, and improving communications, and digital media strategy.
Texas is facing many challenges and undoubtedly will face more in the months and years to come. But Local Progress has built a powerful foundation of local leaders committed to making their state a place where everyone can thrive, no matter what you look like or where you come from. Learn more about Local Progress here.
On Thursday, April 11, working Nevadans, families, and small business owners came together in front of the state’s Senate Commerce and Labor committee to testify and advocate for the earned paid sick days bill, SB312. With this senate bill, Nevadans would have the right to earn paid sick days and finally be able to put their health and the health of their families first. More than 430,000 children in Nevada live in families in which all parents work, yet too often parents cannot use the sick days they earn to care for their children.
At the committee hearing, Make the Road NV (MRNV) organizers Bianca Balderas and Jose Macias shared stories of their own family members being affected by the inability to earn paid time off to take care of themselves when they fell ill. Jose lost his mother because she couldn’t afford to put her health first. Like most working families, she needed to support her family and ignored all the warning signs of the stroke she had while working, and later passed away as a tragic consequence. Families are unknowingly risking their own lives going to work to provide for their families.
Individuals, working families, and small businesses understand the need for earned paid days, and with no opposition, the Nevada Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted the paid sick days bill out of committee unanimously at the end of the hearing! The bill now moves to the senate floor to be heard again with new amendments being written into the bill that will hopefully expand to cover even more of Nevada’s workforce.
MRNV, as part of the statewide Time to Care NV coalition made up of 24 organizations, will continue to lift the voices of working families and urge elected officials to support SB312 when it gets introduced again later this year. We invite you to get involved by signing up here to share your own story, be notified of the next bus trip to Nevada’s state capitol, or join MRNV at a hearing in Las Vegas.
In March 2019, CPD’s Education Justice Campaigns and Organizing and Capacity Building teams convened three emerging youth organizing groups that are gearing up to dismantle the school-to-prison pipelines in their respective cities. Youth leaders from Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT), Milwaukee; the Youth Power Collective (YPC), a campaign of OnePA, Pittsburgh; and from Good Jobs Now (GJN), Detroit all gathered in Milwaukee for three days of training and campaign planning.
Together, these youth leaders came up with bold visions and plans to achieve them. They want hundreds, even thousands, of their peers to come together to create a more just, safe and inclusive schools. They want cops out of schools. They want their schools and communities to have the support and resources that provide them with the opportunities to grow and the freedom to thrive.
Each of these goals will require young people to build power in their communities. The organizations came together to learn from one another, deepen their youth organizing practice, and to plan for the year ahead. To build fierce and robust youth power, each of the organizations is developing their organizing models, which includes base-building strategies and leadership development practices. The convening was also a time for the organizations to build relationships with each other and learn and work together in pursuit of these goals. Their campaign plans prioritized CPD’s commitment to building a powerful and aligned youth base across the network.
The youth from these organizations were also prominent leaders of the national #YouthDemand campaign, which set out to challenge the DeVos School Safety Commission, whose recommendations would further entrench the racially discriminatory school-to-prison pipeline. The #YouthDemand campaign collected thousands of signatures and endorsements from almost 50 organizations across the country—all demanding a school safety plan that rejects the further militarization of our schools, divests from police in schools, and removes metal detectors and punitive school discipline practices. Instead, they are for investment in mental health and counselling services and increased teacher salaries, among other things.
Now these youth have turned their attention to movement-building at the most local level, in their schools and communities, to ensure that what the #YouthDemand—the freedom to thrive —becomes a powerful rallying call that begins with targeting and dismantling the systems that criminalize Black and Brown youth in their places of learning. These youth demand big changes, and CPD will be there to support them in realizing their bold vision for the future. Please make a donation to support this critical work today.
On April 9, In the Public Interest, the Public Accountability Initiative, and CPD jointly published a data brief The Wall Street Banks Still Financing Private Prisons. The first comprehensive data of this type released in the last two years, the brief highlights the major Wall Street banks that finance the multibillion-dollar private prison companies: CoreCivic and GEO Group. The brief reveals that Wall Street banks provide over $2.6 billion in credit and loans, making them complicit in the Trump administration’s hateful anti-immigrant agenda. Nearly 75% of immigrants detained are held in private prisons whose stock prices have soared against the backdrop of Trump’s zero tolerance and family separation policies. Read the full data brief here.
Since Trump’s election, immigrant rights advocates have joined forces under the banners of #FamiliesBelongTogether and #BackersOfHate to urge Wall Street banks to cut their financial ties with Geo Group and CoreCivic. After years of coordinated action, shareholder resolutions, and mounting public pressure, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo agreed to sever ties with the private prison industry in March 2019. On the heels of that victory, the data brief highlighted that other Wall Street banks who are still financing private prisons. Bank of America is the only top six US bank that is currently lending to private prison companies and has not committed to ending its financing relationships with the industry. In addition to its long-standing financing of private prison companies, Bank of America has developed a close relationship with Caliburn, a new corporate conglomerate that is the only for-profit entity running migrant children detention facilities.
The data brief was released in advance of an April 10 US House Committee on Financial Services hearing on holding megabanks accountable. Immigrant rights advocates from CASA in Action, Moms Rising, Families Belong Together, and CPD attended the hearing, then rallied in front of SunTrust and across from Bank of America—two of the banks profiled in the data brief with significant financing relationships—to demand that they stop these practices.
We have proven that together we can stop this. Make a donation to support this campaign and tell Bank of America to stop financing for-profit immigrant detention centers. Let’s shine a light on this complicity, and let’s put a stop to it.
Local leadership teams of residents of manufactured home communities (historically known as trailer parks) are building an inspiring movement to ensure that all families have access to decent, affordable housing in healthy communities. As manufactured home communities are being gobbled up by greedy, predatory investors for huge profits, MHAction leadership teams are working with allied tenants’ groups and organizations across the country to push for increased protections, such as rent control and good cause eviction.
For several years, MHAction community leaders from Illinois have been working closely with city and suburban housing justice organizations, like the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), another CPD affiliate, to lift the statewide preemption ban on rent control. MHAction leaders have been hosting community forums, activating their neighbors on social media and at their doors, and participating in direct actions on corporate owners to highlight the need for rent control protections. Illinois’ statewide collaboration, the Lift the Ban coalition, has been engaging key decision makers across the state and building a sense of solidarity between residents of manufactured home communities and renters. MHAction leaders recently held meetings in Springfield, IL with key decision makers on this important issue.
This May, MHAction leadership teams will be coming together for a national leadership retreat. MHAction leaders from seven states will engage in trainings and actions to develop their narrative and political analysis skills using a gender, racial, and class justice lens. Together, they will build and strengthen vibrant, energetic, purpose-driven leadership teams to carry out MHAction’s 2019 organizational work plan. In order to pull off this gathering, MHAction leaders need your financial support! Please donate to MHAction to make their May gathering a reality and support the work of MHAction’s leadership teams. Make a donation today!
We’re incredibly excited to announce that actor, writer, and activist Kendrick Sampson will be our master of ceremonies at CPD’s Stronger Together LA Benefit on May 23! Kendrick hails from Houston, Texas where he was raised in a family of musicians and artists. Kendrick’s acting credits include How to Get Away with Murder, The Vampire Diaries and, most recently, as Nathan on the hit HBO series Insecure. Kendrick uses his voice to empower marginalized communities and to shine a light on issues of inequity. Learn more about Kendrick here.
Please join us for an empowering celebration of grassroots organizing, progressive change, and building people power that allows us all the freedom to thrive. Get your tickets today!This year’s honorees are advocates and activists who are working to create transformative change in their state of California and nationwide:
NONPROFIT LEADERDr. Robert K. RossPresident & CEO of The California Endowment
PHILANTHROPISTTom SteyerClimate Activist, Founder of NextGen America & Need to Impeach
and BIRDDOG ACTIVISTS Christopher NoxonWriter, Activist & Author of "Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook"
Chris BubserCommunity Leader & Co-Founder, Hang Out Do Good
CPD, together with our 53 affiliates across 131 cities, 34 states, and Puerto Rico, is on the forefront of the national movement to fight back and resist attacks on our nation and its values. Read more about our honorees on our website and be sure to mark your calendar for Thursday, May 23, 2019!
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS or BECOME A SPONSOR
Local Progress is a network, housed within CPD, that supports progressive elected officials, facilitates best practice sharing, and connects members in their shared efforts for a more equitable and just future for communities across the country. One of the most elusive challenges faced by localities large and small across the country is to plan for growth and the decades to come in an inclusive way that rectifies historical injustice. Fortunately, this past year, Minneapolis succeeded in providing a north star from which communities all over can draw inspiration.
On March 15, Local Progress hosted a webinar about Minneapolis 2040, the city’s comprehensive plan, which the council passed in late 2018 after an in-depth three year process. The webinar featured Council President Lisa Bender, Councilmembers Phillipe Cunningham (ward 4), and Jeremiah Ellison (ward 5) and Long-Range Planning Director Heather Worthington.
The content focused on several aspects of the plan: process and timeline, key highlights, and the political conditions that made it feasible in the first place. In particular, the city grounded the work in the community through a robust effort to solicit widespread engagement from start to finish, which included the creation of a Civic Engagement Plan to help ensure efficiency and transparency. This commitment to community engagement produced a clear need for a long-term vision of the city grounded in racial equity that could begin to address past historical injustices. The goals of the legislation include eliminating disparities, creating affordable and accessible housing, and fostering a healthy, safe and connected populace, to name just a few.
Local Progress members share in the desire to see their cities and future growth serve everyone, not just those at the top of the wealth scale. In many cases, growth and economic development intentionally leaves people behind, particularly communities of color. Historically, communities have often been left out of decision-making and deprived of the ability to build wealth. Minneapolis acknowledges that there are systemic and racist barriers which they must address to move forward building a vision of their city that is for everyone. The Minneapolis plan 2040, both in creation and design, offers an exciting case for cities seeking to realize similar commitments to equity and justice for their communities. Watch the webinar here.
