Blog
On Tuesday, September 4, the Center for Popular Democracy, CPD Action, the Women’s March, and Housing Works along with CPD Network affiliates and allies Alaska Grassroots Alliance, Arkansas Community Organization, Hoosier Action, Organize Florida, Maine Grassroots Alliance, Rights and Democracy VT and NH, Strong for All, SPACES and the Birddog Nation, kicked off a week of near constant action calling on the Senate to #CancelKavanaugh and not confirm Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial record demonstrates his commitment to rolling back reproductive justice, labor rights, and racial justice protections across the country.
Over 600 people came to Washington, DC, to join us in public hearings and encourage the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination. This is just the beginning. We plan to be in DC through next week and need your vital support to keep fighting for our communities.
On the first day, 70 people were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience inside the public gallery, where activists stood all day to voice their objections to the nominee and the Supreme Court confirmation process. The actions received widespread media attention from major media outlets, including CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Rewire, Glamour and The Hill, among others.
One after another people stood up to tell their reasons why they did not want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. Nearly 100 people occupied the offices of several Senators including Chuck Schumer, Rob Portman, Joe Donnelly, Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins, calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to represent the interests of women, working people, immigrants, and others whose futures would become uncertain with a Kavanaugh nomination.
Network President and Co-Executive Director of CPD and CPD Action Jennifer Epps-Addison was the second to be arrested on Tuesday morning, calling on Senate Democrats to each “Be A Hero,” a reference to CPD Action Senior Campaigner Ady Barkan, who started the Be A Hero fund to protect health care for working Americans. Epps-Addison was arrested with over 30 other women from the CPD Network, the Women’s March, Ultraviolet and NARAL. By Wednesday, September 5, over 200 women and allies were arrested for disrupting the Kavanaugh Hearings and occupying Senate offices.
“From disrupting the hearing to occupying Senator Schumer’s office, we are here to tell our Senators that they need to protect us and our futures by cancelling the Kavanaugh hearings,” said Epps-Addison. “Yes, some Democrats applauded our efforts this morning. But that is not enough. We need bold action. In these dangerous times, we need nothing less than a full rejection of this dangerous nominee.”
On the final day of hearings, activists organized a funeral procession and delivered flowers to heroic Senators Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono and Cory Booker for taking bold action during the confirmation hearings. Activists also sent flowers to wavering Senator Lisa Murkowski, after 10 members from Alaska Grassroots Alliance met with her, in the hope that she shows the same bravery she displayed during the fight to save the the Affordable Care Act in this moment of urgency. Murkowski signaled that she is leaning towards voting no but needed support. This meeting illustrates the power of our coordinated actions.
Along with his proven anti-choice history, Brett Kavanaugh is poised to erode worker protections, deny rights to immigrants, take away health care access, all while bolstering the power of big corporations and millionaires and billionaires. While each person has a different reason for protesting Kavanaugh, collectively we understand that a Senate vote on his nomination would erode freedoms and protections for generations.
In all, over 100 actions were carried out between Tuesday, September 4 and Friday September 7. This is just the start. We will not rest until our elected officials do everything they can to stop this nomination process. Please donate today to protect our values and support the resistance in the fight to #CancelKavanaugh.
CPD Network President & Co-Executive Director, Jennifer Epps-Addison, was featured in the Women’s Media Center this month discussing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Janus.
In another blow to an already embattled labor movement, the Supreme Court ruled that public-sector unions can no longer use“fee share” systems that charge an agency fee to employees who decide not to join a union but are covered by its collective bargaining agreement.
The impact of the ruling will fall particularly hard on women, especially women of color, who make up a disproportionate share of public-sector union members and for whom such unions have been a lifeline. Despite being just over 7 percent of the overall population in the United States, Black women account for nearly one in every five public-sector workers and one in seven in the labor force at large, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In the feature, Epps-Addison highlights the voices of several women of color leaders within the CPD Network.
As Network President, Epps-Addison met with working women from all across the country during the past year. Throughout her travels, it’s become clear that the public sector has long been a vital employer for communities of color. Further, communities of color have utilized the collective power of unions to reduce the gender-based pay inequities that women workers routinely face. Women, especially women of color, have always been the doers—in the labor movement, in the civil rights movement, and in today’s movements for economic and racial justice. While the Janus ruling drastically undermines the voices of workers across the country, the CPD Network’s commitment and resolve will only grow stronger in the face of these attacks. Read the full feature here.
On August 9, CPD took part in Speak Up, Rise Up, a festival of storytelling dedicated to sharing the experiences of individuals who too often don’t get a chance to have their stories heard. The festival featured the stories of women of color, veterans, senior citizens, members of the LGBT community, and many more.
CPD’s program showcased the stories of organizers within the CPD Network and explored the experiences that motivated individuals to organize and mobilize their community. Perla Lopez, a youth organizer with Make the Road New York, spoke of coming to the U.S. to join her mom ten years ago. A Dreamer, she learned about Make the Road New York through canvassers in her neighborhood, and decided she could make a difference in other people’s lives by encouraging them to speak out about their experiences.
Vaughn Armour, a member of New York Communities for Change, explained how he began organizing after tenants in his building were threatened with eviction. After his longtime girlfriend passed away, his landlord responded by trying to buy out her two sons and evict them from the property. It had a transformative effect on him, pushing him to not just organize tenants but also to fight to change rental laws in New York.
Jesus Gonzalez, an organizer for CPD and Make the Road, spoke about the multiple shootings of young men of color in his neighborhood. Seeing so many of his friends face police brutality, he knew he needed to get involved.
Speaking with Jazmin Chavez, CPD’s Digital Director and moderator for the showcase, the three organizers delved into the obstacles they faced on their path, explaining how they had encouraged their friends and neighbors who had felt disheartened to get involved by showing them how they could make change. Responding to an audience question about how members of the community could help their organizations, panelists encouraged them to share their own stories to form community between those who feel powerless to make change. There is power in a story – power to heal, power to mobilize, and power to transform.
The current political moment demands increased clarity and focus from progressive forces. To meet this demand, this summer CPD launched a series of 6 network-wide conversations titled “Building Our Network.” Representatives from our 50 affiliates across the country are invited to join these 90-minute phone conversations that dive deeply into critical questions about our shared methodology, vision, and medium and short-term goals.
For a federated network that is just over a year old, taking on the essential work of articulating our collective identity, goals, and trajectory is no easy task. These calls are a means of making sure that the strategic insight, experience, and needs of our affiliate organizations shape the resolution of these important questions. The calls serve as a means to connect, hear from each other, and share common vision -- rooted in our communities and expressed on a national scale.
The conference call tactic is simple, but the core purpose is ambitious. CPD aims to have our entire organization (affiliates, boards and staff) engaged substantively in developing a five-year strategic plan, a federal policy agenda, and a long-term vision of the society we wish to build. Thus far, these conversations have been helpful in informing CPD national staff about the views and priorities of our partners, and allowed partners hear one another’s perspectives, challenges and aspirations. If you are interested in joining these calls, please reach out to Stephanie Yazgi, CPD’s Director of Capacity Building.
CPD is excited to welcome our newest affiliate, Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT), to our growing network of grassroots organizations! Founded in November 2017, LIT and its 501(c)(4) sister organization, Leaders Igniting Transformation Action Fund (LIT AF), is an organization led by youth of color, that engages in issue-based and electoral organizing, direct action, advocacy for progressive public policy, and youth leadership development in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. LIT is CPD’s first youth-led affiliate organization.
While LIT is new to the network, CPD has partnered with LIT for the last several months supporting the development and launch of their campaign to end the school-to-prison pipeline in Milwaukee Public Schools and in the adoption of their Youth Power Agenda. Earlier this year, LIT and CPD co-authored a report entitled “From Failure to Freedom: Dismantling Milwaukee’s School-to-Prison Pipeline with the Youth Power Agenda.” LIT’s Youth Power Agenda calls for the removal of metal detectors and police officers in schools and more investments for teachers, social workers, guidance counselors, and jobs programs. In March, LIT launched a campaign to drive this vision. The campaign comes as Milwaukee Public Schools moves to implement a resolution agreement from the U.S. Department of Education’s (“DOE”) Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) which mandated a reform of MPS’ School Discipline Code, following an OCR investigation which revealed stark racial disparities and discrimination in discipline practices.
In less than six months, LIT and LIT AF have already secured a number of significant victories. In March, after the launch of a petition that generated over a thousand emails to the school board and a press conference outside the school board meeting, the district agreed to hold six public meetings on the DOE agreement where there was no previous plans for community (and youth) engagement before. Then in June, LIT defeated a dangerous Milwaukee Public Schools' discipline policy proposal that would have further entrenched the school-to-prison pipeline and put undocumented students at severe risk. In July, they launched “Black Hogwarts,” an immersive six-week workshop that teaches young people ages 12 to 20 about oppression, politics, civic engagement and community organizing. And in August, LIT’s sister c4, LIT AF, wrapped up an impressive electoral engagement program that resulted in more than 6,500 doors knocked, 5,000 voter pledge cards signed, and 100,000 people engaged through social media. This is just a sample of some of their amazing work.
On campuses and in their communities, LIT/LIT AF organizes young people to build independent political power for social, racial and economic justice and transformation; towards a future where every young person has the freedom to thrive. CPD looks forward to supporting LIT in achieving that vision. You can follow LIT/LIT AF on Twitter, Facebook, and on their website. Please join us in welcoming LIT to the CPD Network!
Last month, once again, a local community was shattered by the news that an unarmed person had been summarily killed by police. This time, the shooting occurred in Allentown, PA, one of several cities where CPD affiliate Make the Road Pennsylvania organizes. Immediately after the shooting, Make the Road PA jumped into action in an effort to mobilize support for the victim’s family and to help demand accountability for the officer and the police department.
Joseph Santos was shot by police at 5:45 p.m. on Saturday, July 28, after attending a birthday party for his fiancee's kids at a local amusement park. Multiple videos of the incident show clearly that Santos had his hands in the air and said the words "Don't do it," right before an officer shot him five times, ending his life.
Make the Road PA held a vigil at the site where Santos was murdered and brought his family and the rest of the community together to condemn police brutality and fight for justice. During the action, armed white supremacists gathered across the street shouting at the family as they grieved. Shouts of "White Power" and "Go back home" came from cars driving by.
Less than a week after that vigil, District Attorney Jim Martin announced charges of voluntary manslaughter against the officer, Jonathan Roselle, a former National Guardsman. Roselle is still on paid administrative leave. This same D.A. usually takes up to seven weeks to make a ruling on police-involved shootings, but in large part due to the community organizing from Make the Road PA and other leaders, a decision was made more quickly. Organizers and family members held a press conference to stand by the D.A.'s decision and demand a swift conviction for the officer.
Soon after that press conference, thousands of police supporters flooded Make the Road PA’s social media feeds with hate and threats and scheduled their own rally to support the police officer on the site where Santos was murdered. That same day, Make the Road PA held an interfaith service for the community and the family to gather and mourn
Joseph was a strong member of his community, and many kids called him their stepdad, because he was the one that stepped up to help them when they didn't have anybody. He was working on gaining certification in construction and tirelessly signed up for classes to improve his education. He started a clothing line called "D.R.E.A.M. Drugs Ruin Everything Around Me." He encouraged his community to stay drug-free and lead healthy and happy lives.
Make the Road PA and the community of the Lehigh Valley continue to work with Joseph Santos’ family to bring an end to police brutality, and to ensure that this type of police violence never happens again.
For the fifth consecutive summer, CPD and Fed Up activists travelled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming -- where the world’s most powerful economic policymakers gather to discuss the direction of the global economy. The topic of this year’s symposium was corporate concentration and its effect on wages. The Fed has said flat wages are a “puzzle,” and Fed Up arrived in full force with over 50 workers of color from across the country, activists and academics to give them the answer to that puzzle: corporations have too much power, workers don’t have enough power and that imbalance is keeping wages low. CPD affiliates including SPACES DC, Action NC, New Georgia Project, New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Make the Road New York, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), and Organization United for Respect (OUR), made sure the Fed could not ignore this obvious truth as they chart the future direction of the economy.
On August 23, CPD’s Fed Up team kicked off the event with in-depth popular education including a Full Employment Defense workshop focused on corporate concentration: big corporate monopolies, like Amazon, growing more powerful and keeping workers' wages low. Following the training, Fed Up hosted a panel in the designated “First Amendment Zone” outside of the Jackson Lake Lodge where academics and workers discussed how market concentration keeps wages down and, importantly, how that means the Fed should let unemployment get significantly lower before raising interest rates. On Friday, Fed Up members led tours and activities across the Jackson Hole Lodge to occupy the same space as the most powerful people in the economy and fill it with their stories about how they still haven’t recovered from the last financial crash.
When Fed Up first came to Jackson Hole, we were called protestors who were disrupting the Fed’s meeting, then activists trying to push our agenda. This year, for the first time, our coalition of workers of color were considered “experts” whose views shaped the most important economic conversation in the country in this moment. The coalition was featured in Reuters, CNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Visit CPD Action’s Facebook page to hear directly from the workers who joined Fed Up in Jackson Hole and follow the hashtag #10YearsAfter.
This summer, we were thrilled to be joined by a group of law and policy interns from across the nation. Our intern class became an integral part of the CPD team, providing legal and policy research and analysis for the organization and our network. Our interns worked to develop popular education, viable policy options, and deeper visioning materials for our racial justice, education, voting rights and democracy, economic justice, and worker rights campaigns.
The interns’ work covered a range of issues, including progressive policing practices, alternatives to 911, compliance of school discipline policies under the Civil Rights Act, local voting rights, prot-tenant policy options, crafting legal and policy primers related to the Federal Reserve Bank, and right to counsel initiatives for immigrants in detention.
The class helped support events in New York and Washington, DC, including direct actions calling for an end to family separation, blocking anti-worker Federal Reserve appointees, stopping a Trump Supreme Court confirmation, demanding an end to the school-to-prison pipeline, and to cease ICE raids in communities.
Thank you to the 2018 CPD Law and Policy Innovation Intern Class for your contributions. Please visit our website for a listing of current openings at CPD, including our Law Graduate Public Interest Fellowship program.
2018 Summer Interns:Hira Ahmed (New York University School of Law '19) Eric Cardenas (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University '19) Hajar Hasani (Northeastern University School of Law '20) Demarquin Johnson (Harvard Law School / Kennedy School of Government '20) Yazmine Nichols (Fordham University School of Law '20)
In August, the CPD Strategic Research team will be joined by Eli Vitulli, a two-year fellow from the Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Public Fellows program. The Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program places PhDs in the humanities or social sciences with nonprofit organizations and government agencies working in the fields of policy, civil rights, arts and culture, and the media. CPD is one of 24 organizations nationwide selected as a partnering host organization for the 2018 Public Fellows cohort. The program is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Eli comes to CPD with a Ph.D. in American Studies, and a minor in Feminist and Critical Sexuality Studies, from the University of Minnesota. His academic research examines social justice movements and the impact of state institutions and violence--especially the US criminal legal system--on marginalized communities, with an emphasis on queer and trans people, disabled people, and people of color. He is also currently working on a book about the history of US prison and jail practices regarding the management of gender nonconforming and trans people from the early twentieth century to the present. Eli has taught in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies departments at Grinnell College, Mount Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, DePaul University, and University of Minnesota.
In addition to his academic work, Eli has been involved in grassroots organizing and nonprofit work for the past 15 years. His work with the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois (TJLP), the CeCe McDonald support committee, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and Not In Our Name included conducting research, developing communication materials for the community and media, organizing community and fundraising events, helping develop organizational infrastructure, and providing support for community-based campaigns.
At CPD, Eli will join the rest of the research team in meeting the strategic research needs of all our campaigns and affiliates. Welcome Eli!
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.
