Big Demand for NYC Municipal ID Cards
Aljazeera America - January 14, 2015, by Wilson Dizard - New York City’s municipal identification card, launched Monday, quickly became a...
Aljazeera America - January 14, 2015, by Wilson Dizard - New York City’s municipal identification card, launched Monday, quickly became a hot ticket, with thousands of residents eager to receive one lining up at distribution centers across the city — a volume that prompted city officials on Wednesday to start processing card applications by appointment only.
The nation’s largest city joins a handful of other municipalities — from San Francisco to Mercer County, New Jersey — that in recent years have issued their own ID cards to make life easier and safer for large populations of undocumented immigrants and anyone else in need of identification. Available free of charge to anyone 14 years or older in New York City, the cards also provide discounts at businesses and free access to some of the city's museums.
“It’s something good they should have done a long time ago," Alice King, 46, originally from Trinidad but a Brooklyn resident for the last 15 years, told local news site DNAInfo.
Based on its size alone, New York City’s program could become a model for municipal IDs in other U.S. cities, civil liberties advocates say. There are about 500,000 undocumented immigrants in New York City.
“It remains to be seen, but I think the intended effect is that New Yorkers will have a lot easier time accessing city services and being part of the economic life of the city,” said Emily Tucker, senior staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group that published a report in 2013 hailing the use of municipal ID cards across the nation.
So far, nine U.S. municipalities issue ID cards, with most in the San Francisco or New York City metropolitan areas. Washington, D.C., has a version as well. Other cities — including Chicago and Phoenix — are looking into launching similar programs.
Supporters of municipal IDs, which were piloted in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, say that issuing the cards to undocumented residents fills a gap left by a lack of immigration reform in Congress.
They also say the IDs make everyone safer by allowing such residents to no longer be afraid to report crimes against them or others to police. Without identification, many undocumented immigrants fear risking deportation by speaking to authorities.
In New York City, police say they will accept the cards as an adequate form of identification, which Tucker said will “make interactions with police smoother.”
“Now police can issue a summons instead of arresting a person without ID for something like an open container violation, instead of taking them to the precinct to spend a night in jail,” she added.
The cards can help undocumented residents do simple things like open bank accounts, rent apartments, board flights and access medical help — tasks made far more difficult or even impossible without identification.
“We’ve heard of school districts where parents without ID are not able to pick up their kids from extracurricular activities,” said Layla Razvani, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “These parents are part of the community.”
Still, not everyone supports municipal ID programs. Their most vocal opponents argue that by issuing cards, municipalities are flagrantly disobeying federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration, aiding the undocumented by providing IDs to people who can’t prove they’re citizens.
“We don’t know who these people really are. We have to take their word for it. It makes it more difficult to enforce federal immigration law,” said Ira Mehlmann, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that opposes the continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
“They say it’s to stop them [undocumented immigrants] from being treated like second-class citizens. It’s an oxymoron. They aren’t citizens. They don’t have a legal right to be in the country,” he added.
Mehlmann particularly fears that undocumented residents could exploit municipal ID card programs to carry out acts of violence. Although he could not point to a single instance of a city ID being used in the commission of a crime, he said, “the fact that nobody with one of these IDs has committed a terrorist act yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t pose a threat.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union has also expressed skepticism about the city’s municipal ID program, wary that authorities might misuse the information provided by undocumented residents who are some of society’s most vulnerable.
NYCLU spokeswoman Jen Carnig said that the cards could make life easier for people but that police don’t have to provide the same level of probable cause to access the municipal IDs as they do for regular driver’s licenses. She credited the city with saying it would inform people whose information police have accessed, but she argued that the protections should be as strong as they are for citizens.
“No one should be subject to having their personal documents accessed by law enforcement or become subject to an investigation based on a hunch, and it’s possible that could be the case for some people,” she said.
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Chicago Activists Organize Against Massive Police Training Academy to Be Built As Schools Close
Chicago Activists Organize Against Massive Police Training Academy to Be Built As Schools Close
The city’s 2018 budget plan includes a $27.4 million investment in police reform and commitments to hire hundreds of new law enforcement officers. According to a report by the Center for Popular...
The city’s 2018 budget plan includes a $27.4 million investment in police reform and commitments to hire hundreds of new law enforcement officers. According to a report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives, and Black Youth Project 100, Chicago spent 38 percent of its general fund expenditures on policing last year, and has the second-largest police force in the nation.
Read the full article here.
The Fed Just Inched Closer To Raising Interest Rates
The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will keep interest rates at or near zero for now, but implied it would soon raise them, alarming left-leaning activists and economists concerned...
The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will keep interest rates at or near zero for now, but implied it would soon raise them, alarming left-leaning activists and economists concerned about stagnant wages.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is the central bank’s body responsible for managing key interest rates, said in a statement that its decision was based on the conclusion that interest rates of zero to 0.25 percent -- known as the “zero lower bound” -- were still needed to “support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability.” The statement refers to the Fed’s dual mandate to both pursue full employment and keep inflation low through its control of the money supply.
The FOMC said that inflation in particular continues to remain too low to warrant an interest rate hike.
“Inflation continued to run below the Committee's longer-run objective, partly reflecting earlier declines in energy prices and decreasing prices of non-energy imports,” the committee said in the statement.
However, the Fed also indicated in its statement that it is optimistic about the pace of economic growth, buoying expectations of a rate hike in September when the FOMC meets next. Many analysts have been predicting that the Fed would raise rates as soon as September, or at least before the year’s end.
The FOMC statement noted that “economic activity has been expanding moderately in recent months. The labor market continued to improve, with solid job gains and declining unemployment.”
The Fed has kept the primary interest rate it controls near zero since December 2008.
Many activists and economists, including the left-leaning nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign, believe that the Fed has prioritized the inflation half of its dual mandate at the expense of full employment. They argue against raising rates before unemployment gets low enough for employers to raise wages. And they are especially considered that unemployment rates remain disproportionately high in communities of color.
The Fed Up campaign was pleased that the Fed did not raise rates on Wednesday, but called the lack of a rate hike a “low bar,” since it was not even expected by most observers. Instead, the campaign emphasized its frustration with the FOMC statement for ignoring signs of slack in the job market.
“The FOMC statement hails ‘solid job gains,’ but does not mention that the most recent job figures showed a slowdown in wages,” said Jordan Haedtler, deputy campaign manager for Fed Up. “The downward trend in wages is a major reason why the Fed should not raise interest rates in 2015.”
Source: Huffington Post
Report: $15 Chicago Minimum Wage Would Lift Up Struggling Workers
Progress Illinois - May 27, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - A proposal to hike Chicago's minimum wage to $15 an hour would not only be a boon for many low-wage workers but also the city's economy,...
Progress Illinois - May 27, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - A proposal to hike Chicago's minimum wage to $15 an hour would not only be a boon for many low-wage workers but also the city's economy, according to a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy.
"Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would promote economic stability among Chicago workers, economic vitality in their neighborhoods and economic growth throughout this city," said Connie Razza, director of strategic research at the center, which works both locally and nationally to build "the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda."
The new report comes ahead of Wednesday's Chicago City Council meeting, during which aldermen with the Progressive Reform Caucus plan to introduce an ordinance for a citywide hourly minimum wage of $15 an hour. The ordinance was developed with members of Raise Chicago, a coalition of community and labor groups advocating for a higher hourly wage floor in the city. Chicago's current minimum wage is $8.25 an hour, the same as the base hourly wage in Illinois and $1 more than the federal level.
Under the proposed ordinance, large companies in Chicago making at least $50 million annually would have one year to phase in a $15 minimum hourly wage, including for workers at their subsidiaries and franchise locations, according to Raise Chicago. Small and mid-sized businesses would have slightly more than five years to boost their employees' wages to $15 an hour.
The first phase of the proposed ordinance, which would apply to larger firms, would increase the wages for 22 percent of Chicago workers, or 229,000 people, according to the report. Phase one would generate nearly $1.5 billion in new gross wages annually, or $1.1 billion after deductions. During the first stage of the proposed ordinance, the higher employee wages would mean an estimated $616 million in new economic activity across the region, leading to the creation of 5,350 new jobs, the report showed. A $15 hourly wage for workers employed by large businesses in the city would also provide approximately $45 million in new sales tax revenue.
Increased wages for workers could also lower employee turnover costs for businesses, according to the report. Requiring Chicago employers with annual gross revenues of $50 million or greater to pay their workers at least $15 an hour would reduce labor turnover in the workforce by as much as 80 percent per year.
However, larger firms covered under the proposed ordinance could see their overall employer costs increase by up to 4 percent, according to the report's estimations. As a result, affected firms may raise consumer prices by about 2 percent. Such a price hike would translate into an $0.08 increase for a $4 hamburger, the report noted.
Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), who intends to co-sponsor the ordinance, said he expects about 10 out of the 50 Chicago aldermen to initially sign on to the legislation.
"The push then would be to get others to join with us in this cause, because it's important," the alderman said. "We should have talked about this many, many years ago, and had (the minimum wage) kept up with inflation, we might not be having this conversation right now. ... I'm hoping that our colleagues will see that this is not a job killer."
Sawyer said there is no specific date planned for when the proposal could go up for a full city council vote.
It is the alderman's hope that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's recently-formed minimum wage task force will consider the $15 minimum wage proposal. Emanuel has asked members on the diverse committee, chaired by Ald. Will Burns (4th) and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law's President John Bouman, to craft a plan to increase the wages for hourly minimum wage and tipped workers in the city.
"I understand the interest in forming this committee," Sawyer said. "I don't think it's necessary because a proposed ordinance is ready to be submitted tomorrow. But now that the committee has been talked about, this [$15 minimum wage ordinance] is the first thing they can look at."
Sawyer and other backers of a $15 minimum wage are "open to listening to any and all suggestions" about the proposed ordinance, the alderman said. Sawyer also noted that Chicagoans are in favor of a $15 minimum wage.
During the March primary election, Chicago voters overwhelming supported a non-binding ballot referendum to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees of companies with annual revenues over $50 million. The referendum appeared on the ballot in 103 city precincts, garnering support from 87 percent of voters.
Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now, which is involved with the Raise Chicago campaign, said the city's strong public support of a $15 minimum wage is not surprising.
"We know that people in this city are struggling," she stressed. "The current minimum wage in Illinois is only $8.25 an hour, and that's so low that the workers, and certainly those who are supporting families, simply cannot survive, oftentimes working two or three jobs just to make ends meet and make other major personal sacrifices for themselves and their families.
"The $15 an hour wage will correct that," Johnson added. "It will provide a path out of poverty for families and allow (workers) to meet their families' basic needs so they no longer have to rely on food stamps or other public assistance. And in addition, it will stimulate the city's economy."
A total of 900,000 people work in Chicago, and 329,000 of them make less than $15 an hour, according to the report. Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately represented among low-wage workers in the city.
Blacks and Latinos make up 23.6 percent and 26.8 percent of the share of all Chicago workers, respectively. However, 28 percent of low-wage earners in the city are black and 42.4 percent are Latino. Low-wage workers who live in the city are concentrated in the Chicago neighborhoods of Austin, Avondale, Bridgeport and McKinley Park, among other areas.
"This geographic concentration of residents earning low wages means that an increase in the minimum wage will offer larger benefits to certain neighborhoods, while also stimulating the citywide economy," the report reads.
Meanwhile, Chicago aldermen are up for re-election next year, and Sawyer said those who co-sponsor the $15 minimum wage ordinance might see more support from voters at the polls.
"I think in my community, (supporting a $15 an hour minimum wage) plays better. People that try to live off of minimum wage understand that it needs to be raised, so those [aldermen] that have people that can understand that will obviously fare better," Sawyer said. "Maybe some in more affluent wards, it many not play as well, but even those there can understand the economic impact."
People who "have more disposable income, they spend it," the alderman continued. "And if you have more disposable income and you spend it, that means the money is circulating in those individual communities. Sales taxes are paid. That means we can get more revenue to do things: Pay down debt, infrastructure improvements, capital improvements."
Over the next few months, Raise Chicago members and others plan to take part in a number of activities to build community support for a $15 Chicago minimum wage and "put pressure on elected officials to carry out the will of the people," Johnson said.
When asked if Chicagoans can expect to see more public protests concerning the minimum wage, Johnson said, "We'll see."
Be sure to check back with Progress Illinois for our coverage of Wednesday's Chicago City Council meeting.
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Mpls. Fed chief, activists talk about economic gap
Mpls. Fed chief, activists talk about economic gap
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis met with activists and northside residents Wednesday over racial and economic disparities.
Neel Kashkari talked with leaders from...
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis met with activists and northside residents Wednesday over racial and economic disparities.
Neel Kashkari talked with leaders from Neighborhoods Organizing for Change for an hour — an unusual meeting of a banking insider and a group known for street demonstrations and putting political pressure on the powers that be.
"A big part of my job is to get out and understand first hand what is happening, what are the challenges," said Kashkari who has served on the central bank system since January.
In that time, the former head of the federal government's bank bailout program in 2008 has drawn attention for his warning that failure of some big banks could lead to another financial crisis.
Kashkari said that the Fed's monetary policy can have an effect on unemployment, interest rates and inflation, but he said Congress' fiscal policy will also be key in addressing racial disparities.
Anthony Newby, executive director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, said they talked about the high unemployment rate among African-Americans.
"Now we can spend more time collaborating, doing a deeper dive and figure out what are the structural barriers and then what can the Fed do to bridge that gap," Newby said. "That's a big deal and big starting point."
Newby added he was pleased to have someone in Kashkari's position listening to real people struggling to make ends meet.
Kashkari agreed to meet with them again.
By PETER COX
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N.J. company named among worst for wage theft fined $3.2 million
N.J. company named among worst for wage theft fined $3.2 million
NEW YORK-- The New York City Comptroller levied a huge fine on a Parsippany company that cheated dozens of workers, mostly immigrant laborers, out of millions of dollars in wages for work on city...
NEW YORK-- The New York City Comptroller levied a huge fine on a Parsippany company that cheated dozens of workers, mostly immigrant laborers, out of millions of dollars in wages for work on city projects.
K.S. Contracting, owned by Paresh Shah, was ordered to pay $3.2 million and will also be barred from receiving state contracts for five years.
In its statement the comptroller's office did not identify the headquarters of Shah's company, but an Internet search turned up multiple Parsippany addresses for the business. State records tie Shah to at least one of those addresses, The Daily Record reported.
The company, named in 2015 as one of the worst wage theft violators in the city by the Center for Popular Democracy, was awarded more than $21 million in contracts between 2007 and 2010.
K.S. Contracting came under investigation in May 2010, when an employee filed a complaint. An investigation over the next several years uncovered a kickback scheme targeting immigrant employees, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said.
Following a four-day administrative trial in May 2016, Stringer's office learned that checks were regularly issued to just half the workforce, which was ordered to cash them and return the money to supervisors. The cash was then given to all the workers at a rate significantly below the prevailing wage.
At least 36 workers were cheated out of $1.7 million in wages between 2008 and 2011, with some workers who were to be paid a combined wage and benefits package of $50 an hour receiving just $90 a day in cash. Most of the victims were workers of Latino, West Indian or South Asian descent, Stringer said.
"With President Trump taking clear aim at immigrants across the country, we need to stand up and protect the foreign-born New Yorkers who keep our City running. Every New Yorker has rights, and my office won't back down in defending them," New York Stringer said in a statement.
"Contractors might think they can take advantage of immigrants, but today we're sending a strong message: my office will fight for every worker in New York City. This is about basic fairness and accountability."
By Paul Milo
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Richmond Fed Names McKinsey's Thomas Barkin as Its President
Richmond Fed Names McKinsey's Thomas Barkin as Its President
Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond confirmed Monday they had chosen Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., as the institution’s next...
Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond confirmed Monday they had chosen Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., as the institution’s next president.
“We are fortunate to have found an extremely well-qualified individual to serve the Federal Reserve’s Fifth District and the American people,” Margaret Lewis, chair of the Richmond board of directors, said in a statement.
Read the full article here.
Why Aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking About the Federal Reserve?
Why Aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking About the Federal Reserve?
In an election fueled by populist anger and dominated by talk of economic insecurity, why aren’t any of the presidential candidates talking about the Federal Reserve?
After nearly a decade...
In an election fueled by populist anger and dominated by talk of economic insecurity, why aren’t any of the presidential candidates talking about the Federal Reserve?
After nearly a decade of high unemployment, severe racial and gender disparities and wage stagnation, voters are heading to the ballot box in pursuit of a fairer economy with less rampant inequality. In California and New York, low-wage workers are celebrating historic agreements to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. And the economy and jobs consistently rank among the top concerns expressed by voters of all political stripes.
One government institution reigns supreme in its ability to influence wages, jobs and overall economic growth, yet leading candidates for president have barely discussed it at all. The Federal Reserve is the most important economic policymaking institution in the country, and it is critical that voters hear how candidates plan to reform and interact with the Fed.
The Fed too often epitomizes the problems with our economy and democracy over which voters are voicing frustration: Commercial banks literally own much of the Fed and are using it to enrich themselves at the expense of the American working and middle class. When Wall Street recklessness crashed the economy in 2008, American families paid the price.
At the time, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon sat on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which stepped in during the crisis to save Dimon’s firm and so many other banks on the verge of collapse. Although the Fed’s actions helped Wall Street recover, that recovery never translated to Main Street, where jobs and wage growth stagnated.
Commercial banks should not govern the very institution that oversees them. It’s a scandal that continues to threaten the Fed’s credibility. An analysis conducted earlier this year by my parent organization, The Center for Popular Democracy, showed that employees of financial firms continue to hold key posts at regional Federal Reserve banks and that leadership throughout the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly white and male and draws disproportionately from the corporate and financial world.
When the Fed voted in December to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, the decision was largely driven by regional Bank presidents — the very policymakers who are chosen by corporate and financial interests. In 2015, the Fed filled three vacant regional president position, and all three were filled with individuals with strong ties to Goldman Sachs; next year, 4 of the 5 regional presidents voting on monetary policy will be former Goldman Sachs insiders. Can we trust these blue-chip bankers to address working Americans’ concerns?
Yet despite the enormous power it wields and the glaring problems it continues to exemplify, the Fed has received little attention this election cycle. As noted by Reuters last week, two of the remaining candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and John Kasich, have been mute on what they would do about the central bank. Donald Trump’s sporadic statements about the Fed have been characteristically short on details, prompting former Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota to call for Clinton, Trump and all presidential candidates to clarify exactly how they plan to oversee the Fed’s management of the economy. Ted Cruz has piped up about the Fed on a few occasions, although his vocal endorsement of “sound money” and other policies that contributed to the Great Depression warrant clarification.
The most detailed Fed reform proposal from a presidential candidate to date was a December New York Times op-ed in which Bernie Sanders wrote that “an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates,” and urged vital reforms to the Fed’s governance structure.
On Monday, Dartmouth economist Andy Levin, a 20-year Fed staffer and former senior adviser to Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her predecessor Ben Bernanke, unveiled a bold proposal to reform the Federal Reserve and make it a truly transparent, publicly accountable institution that responds to the needs of working families.
The New York primary provides a perfect opportunity for the remaining presidential candidates to tell us what they think about the Federal Reserve. Candidates in both parties should specify whether they support Levin’s proposals, and if not, articulate their preferred approach for our federal government’s most opaque but essential institution.
As Trump, Cruz and Kasich gear up for a potentially decisive primary, they would do well to respond to the many calls for clarity on the Fed. And on Thursday night, Sanders and Clinton will have the chance to clarify their stances on the Fed when they debate in Brooklyn, just a few miles away from Wall Street and the global financial epicenter that is the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
As New York voters get ready to decide which of the remaining candidates would make the best president, they will be asking themselves which candidate will better handle the economy. The candidates’ positions on the Fed must be part of the equation.
Jordan Haedtler is campaign manager of the Fed Up campaign, which calls on the Federal Reserve to adopt policies that build a strong economy for the American public. Fed Up is an initiative of the Center for Popular Democracy, a nonprofit group that advocates for a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
By Jordan Haedtler
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Carlos Menchaca: Sunset Park’s Councilman Brings A Voice To The Voiceless
Carlos Menchaca: Sunset Park’s Councilman Brings A Voice To The Voiceless
New York City Council Member Carlos Menchaca loves to grow spices and chilies to add to his home cooked meals — but when it comes to choosing his favorite Mexican food spot in Sunset Park, he...
New York City Council Member Carlos Menchaca loves to grow spices and chilies to add to his home cooked meals — but when it comes to choosing his favorite Mexican food spot in Sunset Park, he doesn’t play favorites.
“That’s a hard one,” Menchaca chuckled. “I always order tacos al pastor with a side of Mexican rice and beans,” he said of his traditional go-to dish. It binds him to his Mexican roots and the vibrant immigrant community that has adopted him as their hometown hero.
“What I love about Sunset Park is that anywhere you go, Bush Terminal Park, the senior center, down 5th Avenue, or even 8th Avenue, you feel at home,” Menchaca, who also represents Red Hook, parts of Bensonhurst and Borough Park, told the Sunset Park Voice. “It’s a neighborhood of families.”
A large majority of those Sunset Park families hail from the neighborhood’s Mexican and Asian immigrant communities — the two largest ethnic groups in New York City, after Dominicans, according to Census data — which stood firmly behind Menchaca during his 2013 run for District 38 council member.
Menchaca made history as the first Mexican-American Democrat elected to serve in the New York City Council. His victory over an incumbent councilwoman signified the rise of Mexican Americans in the political landscape, putting the young trailblazer on the map.
“We grew as a family. They took care of me and I took care of them,” Menchaca said of his constituents.
The 35-year-old Manchaca already knew he wanted to go into politics while growing up in the border town of El Paso, Texas, described himself as a “feisty kid, wanting to know everything” to advocate for his family.
He witnessed his single mother, Magdalena, struggle to raise seven children on her own.
“I don’t know how she did it,” Menchaca said of the hardships the family faced. “We interacted with government all the time, and it made me passionate about understanding how the system could be better.”
The first in his family to graduate from college, Menchaca holds a degree from the University of San Francisco in performing arts and social justice. His experience in political activism led him to New York to join the Coro Fellows Program – where he learned the value of community-government relations.
Since then, he’s made it his mission to bridge communities and as a council member he introduced participatory budgeting in Sunset Park – a democratic process that allows residents to decide how to spend a public budget and where taxpayers dollars go to fund their neighborhoods.
Menchaca’s success at empowering disenfranchised communities through the initiative has garnered write-ups in The New York Times, DNAInfo, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In his first year of PB, two-thirds of the ballots in his district were cast in Spanish and Chinese.
“Whether you live or work here, your voice matters, and what we’ve been able to do through participatory budgeting is bring opportunities to invite everyone to the table no matter their age, sexual orientation, or immigration status,” Menchaca said.
As Chair of the Committee on Immigration and member of the LGBT Caucus, Menchaca sponsored the 2015 launch of IDNYC, a municipal identification card offered to New Yorkers and undocumented immigrants. It gave them an opportunity to have legal identification without fears of deportation, open a bank account, access to public places, among other benefits.
But Menchaca was just getting started.
His next mission: Invest in adult education to help immigrant New Yorkers learn English. Menchaca says he receives daily letters at his legislative office from non-English speaking parents requesting for classes to help them communicate with their children’s teachers.
That’s why he’s advocating for $16 million and calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to fund the Adult Literacy Initiative they way he did with universal pre-kindergarten. A recent report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York suggests that these classes could raise immigrants’ wages and reduce income inequality in impoverished communities.
“This is where it gets serious,” Menchaca said. “We think about gentrification and all the things that make us so afraid, because we don’t know what it is. But one thing that’s clear is how we can affect family’s lives through education.”
As our conversation steered towards immigration reform and the importance of ethnic and community media, Menchaca’s calm demeanor turned sympathetic. The 102-year-old El Diario/La Presna, the nation’s oldest Spanish language newspaper, laid off nearly half of its staff due to budget cuts, which shocked its readers, including Menchaca.
“The second I heard those real issues of El Diario, I called for a public hearing,” he said. He calls ethnic and community media a lifeline to many people in the city because it connects them to job postings, news, and immigration issues vital to families.
An hour before the hearing, Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced, via press release, an expansion of the administrations outreach to community and ethnic media companies across the city. In addition, the city created an online directory of 200 media ethnic media outlets, that will be available to city agencies and the city vowed to place more advertising in the ethnic papers.
Aside from the legal and education proposals, gentrification is another issue Menchaca’s community knows all too well. People have seen the factory district west of the Gowanus Expressway redeveloped as Industry City, a home for trendy shops, hip cafes, and markets like the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg aimed at food fanatics.
In February, when the mayor proposed the BQX Connector, a streetcar line that would link Sunset Park to Astoria, Queens, some residents feared this new development would accelerate gentrification in their waterfront neighborhood, but the councilman says it can also ease transportation woes in his district.
“We are in desperate need of transportation options and I think the BQX serves as one idea we need to explore,” Menchaca said. “We want to increase the ability for people to travel outside the neighborhood for jobs.”
People have been vocal on fixing the R trains, the extension of bus lines, potentially bringing Citi bike and the ferry into their communities. For now, Menchaca sees the BXQ as an economic development to help community members, but it will only happen if people work together, he noted.
Menchaca confirmed that he plans to embark on a City Council re-election campaign in 2017.
What will his campaign be about? Preserving manufacturing jobs in Sunset Park, protecting immigrants through legal services, and shaping how the police force works with the community, he said.
“No matter the immigration status, you help everybody, and when you do that, you get these beautiful communities that are so diverse,” said Menchaca.
Clarification [June 2, 10am]: An earlier version of the headline misleadingly referred to the councilman as Sunset Park’s hometown hero, although he was not born in New York. We’ve adjusted the headline accordingly.
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
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Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to...
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to rescind the pay of a key senior executive.
The demands came just one day after Chief Executive John Stumpf resigned from a Federal Reserve advisory panel.
Senators had pushed for Stumpf not to be reappointed, saying it was inappropriate for someone who presided over improper sales tactics to be giving advice to an agency involved with bank regulation.
Stumpf has been under intense fire since the bank this month agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into an aggressive sales culture that led bank employees to open as many as 2 million accounts that customers didn’t authorize.
The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges, and some senators have called for a Labor Department investigation into whether the bank failed to pay employees overtime when they worked late nights and weekend to meet sales quotas.
A group of Senate Democrats continued to attack Wells Fargo on Friday, publicly calling on Stumpf to stop enforcing mandatory arbitration clauses in the agreements for customer accounts that were not authorized.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had pressed Stumpf on the matter at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, arguing that it was unfair not to allow those customers the ability to file lawsuits against the bank.
Stumpf said at the time that he would have to “talk to my legal team.”
Brown said Friday that he and his colleagues want relief for bank customers and more answers from Wells Fargo.
“If Wells Fargo really does want to look out for the customers, if they really are in fact sorry, as the CEO said, for these unauthorized accounts, they ought to let the court system work if these people who were wronged want to bring suit,” he said.
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
The Democrats sent a letter to Stumpf on Friday, requesting more information about the arbitration clauses, including how many customer complaints about fake accounts were forced into arbitration proceedings.
Brown was among those writing to Stumpf, along with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, an activist investment group that is part of the Change to Win union federation wrote to Wells Fargo’s board, asking it to rescind at least part of the compensation earned by the executive who oversaw the employees who opened unauthorized customer accounts.
The letter from CtW Investment Group, which is a Wells Fargo shareholder, adds to the pressure on the bank to claw back some of the approximately $100 million earned by Carrie Tolstedt, the company’s former head of community banking.
Wells Fargo’s stock has declined by about 8% since the settlement was announced on Sept. 8.
On Thursday, five senators called for Stumpf not to be reappointed to the Federal Advisory Council, a 12-member body that meets four times a year with the Fed’s Board of Governors to discuss banking and economic matters.
Stumpf had represented the Fed’s San Francisco district, where Wells Fargo is based, since 2015.
He “made a personal decision to resign” and notified the Fed on Thursday, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Dunn said.
“His top priority is leading Wells Fargo,” she said.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, organized the letter to the head of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco asking that Stump not be reappointed to the advisory council when his term expires on Dec. 31.
“It would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for ‘unfair’ and ‘abusive’ practices that placed consumers at financial risk,” they wrote.
The letter also was signed by Warren and Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon.
Their call was backed by Fed Up, a coalition of labor, community and liberal activist groups that has pushed to reduce the influence of bankers on Federal Reserve policies.
“Commercial banks already have too much influence within the Federal Reserve System,” the coalition said Thursday. The coalition also asked its members to sign a petition calling for Stump’s “immediate dismissal” from the advisory panel.
“Stumpf, as the CEO of a bank accused of ‘unfair’ and ‘abusive’ practices, should have no role advising the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors on policies affecting working families,” Fed Up said.
By Jim Puzzanghera
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