Campaign News

The Star-Ledger - December 5, 2013, by Eunice Lee - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy filed suit today against the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a growing battle for towns seeking to use eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages.

Last month, Irvington's mayor announced plans to conduct a legal study of using eminent domain to help residents facing more than 1,700 homes foreclosures.

If town officials decide to proceed, Irvington would become the second town in the nation, after Richmond, Calif., to employ a tactic that's drawn fire from Wall Street, according to Executive Director Udi Ofer of the ACLU of New Jersey, which endorsed Irvington's announcement.

The 17-page suit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, demands that the FHFA disclose details about its relationship with banks and other financial institutions. The agency has threatened legal action against Richmond and other cities planning to use the eminent domain tactic and may deny credit to locals seeking mortgages, the suit says.

Corinne Russell, an FHFA spokeswoman, declined comment on the lawsuit saying the agency does not discuss pending legal matters.

The novel approach, dubbed as "friendly condemnations," allows municipalities to use the power of eminent domain to seize mortgages, rather than homes, where homeowners owe more than the current value of the house.

Using money from private investors, Ofer said towns would pay the mortgage holders' fair market value and then restructure mortgages into lower principal payments that are more favorable for homeowners. About 700 to 1,000 homes in Irvington could potentially benefit from eminent domain takeovers, according to Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith.

On Wednesday, Newark's city council voted unanimously for the city to conduct legal research and policy analysis as a step towards adopting the eminent domain strategy.

Filed under the Freedom of Information Act, which compels the government to provide copies of federal records, the lawsuit argues that the federal agency is trying to block municipalities from using eminent domain to prevent foreclosures. The FHFA regulates the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The lending agencies control most mortgages in the U.S.

The suit says the FHFA never responded to an Oct. 1 FOIA request seeking information between the federal agency and members of the financial industry, including the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, American Securitization Forum, American Bankers Association and the Association of Institutional Investors.

The lack of response to the FOIA request prompted the lawsuit, which was filed by the Center for Popular Democracy and ACLU, as well as chapters in New Jersey and California. Those chapters filed on behalf of: New Jersey Communities United, New York Communities for Change, Alliance for Californians for Community Empowerment, the Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, Urban Revival Inc., The Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition and the Home Defenders League.

The FOIA request also targets "correspondence, phone messages, emails, calendar entries, and notes or memoranda" between leaders of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency and representatives of several banks including Wells Fargo, Deustche Bank, Bank of America, Chase Citigroup and Ally Bank.

On July 31, the city of Richmond offered to purchase 624 underwater mortgages. In August, the suit says several banks filed suit against Richmond and the FHFA released a statement citing "serious concerns on the use of eminent domain to restructure existing financial contracts."

Also, the financial industry and powerful lobbying groups have "vigorously opposed" the use of eminent domain, according to the suit.

The suit says that publicly revealing "the priorities and opinions of high-ranking FHFA officials, and the nature and substance of their exchanges with the financial industry" is an urgent concern.

Other cities considering the use of eminent domain to address foreclosures include San Francisco, El Monte, Calif., Seattle and Yonkers, N.Y.

Source

But there’s a bigger risk-free payout the Fed makes to big banks, one set to rise exponentially as the economy improves. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, hundreds of billions of dollars that would otherwise go into the federal Treasury will leak out to banks, including branches of foreign banks, in the coming years. If Congress needs to find money to pay for new programs, they could cancel the Fed’s recent practice of paying interest on bank reserves.

For nearly 100 years, the Federal Reserve managed the nation’s monetary policy without paying interest on reserves, including the 10 percent of the value of loanswhich banks are required by law to park at the Fed. But in 2006, Congress passed the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act, authorizing interest payments. It was actually an old idea first promoted by conservative economist Milton Friedman.

Friedman thought that required reserves without compensation constituted a hidden tax on the financial industry. He also believed the strategy would make it easier for central banks to engage in monetary policy. If the Fed offered an interest rate on excess reserves just above the federal-funds rate (a.k.a. the rate banks use to lend to each other), then it makes more financial sense for banks to leave their money there. It sets a floor for the federal-funds rate, in other words, giving the Fed more control over its range. It also helps the Fed expand its balance sheet, critical to engaging in monetary interventions like quantitative easing.

Under the 2006 law, interest on reserves wasn’t supposed to kick in until 2011, but Congress moved up the date three years when it passed the law authorizing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Fed set the interest rate on all reserves at a skinny 0.25 percent, which produces a small payout on required reserves. But excess reserves above the 10 percent requirement, which banks never left at the Fed until 2008, exploded as the Fed’s balance sheet expanded. From virtually nothing seven years ago, excess reserves hover around $3 trillion today.

Who owns these excess reserves? As the Cleveland Fed noted in a report last week, more than 80 percent come from the top 100 largest banks. U.S. branches of foreign banks, primarily from the European Union, have about $1 trillion in excess reserves parked at the Fed.

The Fed’s audited financial statement indicates that they have paid banks $25.2 billion in interest on reserves from 2008 to 2014. That number jumped from $2.1 billion in 2009 to $6.7 billion in 2014, a three-fold increase. The entire time, the interest rate has been the same: 0.25 percent. But that’s subject to change.

As the economy improves, the Fed is clearly angling to raise the federal-funds rate, which has been stuck around zero since 2008. Fed officials have already indicated they will accomplish this mostly through recalibrating interest on reserves. At theirSeptember 2014 policy meeting, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the central bank would “move the federal-funds rate into the target range … primarily by adjusting the interest rate it pays on excess reserve balances.” While the interest rate on required reserves may stay constant, the Fed would raise the interest rate on excess reserves, allowing interbank lending only to rise so far.

In effect, interest on excess reserves is equivalent to the federal-funds rate. And the higher the interest rate goes, the more money banks make from the Fed. You can see this most clearly in Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections of Fed remittances.

Any money the Fed makes on investments gets returned to the federal Treasury. And business has been good for the Fed of late. They remitted $99 billion in 2014 and a projected $102 billion this year. But CBO’s latest update predicts that number will fall drastically, to $76 billion in 2016, $40 billion in 2017, and just $17 billion in 2018. The lion’s share of the difference comes from the Fed paying out their earnings to banks, with higher interest on reserves as they hike rates.

While it’s hard to pinpoint the totals because the CBO doesn’t separate out interest on reserves, by marking the difference between 2015 and subsequent years we can estimate that the Fed could deliver anywhere from $20 billion to $50 billion a year to banks, risk-free. That’s an enormous amount of money, based on the claim that interest on reserves is somehow an indispensible strategy for monetary policy, even though the Fed thrived for 91 years without such a tool.

This shift in how monetary policy is conducted occurred with practically no debate. Fed officials are reportedly worried about the “optics” of their exit plan, with its unjust enrichment of the largest banks. But outside of a few libertarians, nobody has raised alarms yet.

One progressive group that’s challenged the Fed from the left was stunned to learn that, in addition to depressing the economy, an interest-rate hike would have a secondary effect as a silent bank bailout. “Clearly this is under-covered, because I haven’t heard about it,” said Ady Barkan with the Center for Popular Democracy, director of Fed Up, a grassroots organization pushing the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. “But we shouldn’t be shocked. It is the rule that the Fed prioritizes helping banks, and has over the last seven years.”

There are other ways to control monetary policy besides interest on excess reserves, unless you believe that the Fed was impotent from 1917 to 2008. For instance, the Fed could reduce their balance sheet, rather than letting it contract through attrition, the current strategy. That would reduce the money supply, which shows what a pickle the Fed has gotten itself into with its expanded balance sheet. But the Minneapolis Fed, at least, downplayed the risks of gradual asset sales into a global market.

Another option is to hold off on raising rates, allowing the balance sheet to slowly contract and encouraging banks to recirculate excess reserves into the economy by creating favorable conditions for more profitable investments. “It’s incomprehensible to us to think that the economy is getting too healthy too quickly,” said Barkan of Fed Up.

Members of Congress, who created this mess by authorizing interest on reserves, could take it away too, and in so doing could create a large pay-for that could be transferred into productive projects. You could potentially fund an entire six-year highway bill simply by eliminating interest on reserves.

We don’t even know if the Fed’s rate-raising strategy will work without drawbacks, as it’s never been tested. But if “working” equals paying the largest banks hundreds of billions in unearned money, the Fed should figure out something else.

El Diario - December 14, 2014, by Steve Carbo - Aunque las oportunidades para avanzar reformas progresistas se han disminuido en Washington y en muchos estados después de las elecciones de noviembre, existe aún terreno fértil en las ciudades, lugares que reciben menos atención de los medios pero son cada vez más reconocidas como importantes "laboratorios de la democracia".

La ciudad de Nueva York es notable por su liderazgo. Después de tomar las riendas en enero, el Alcalde Bill de Blasio, la Presidenta del Concejo Melissa Mark-Viverito, junto con concejales progresistas, han expandido las leyes de días de enfermedad pagados, han implementado políticas policiales más justas, y han puesto fin a las detenciones injustas de inmigrantes. Y esta semana, el alcalde Bill de Blasio firmó una nueva legislación que que marca el comienzo de una gran expansión del electorado a través de la revitalización de la ley Pro-Voter (Pro-Votante) . Este es un modelo que otras ciudades deberían seguir.

La ley Pro-Votante, que fue inicialmente firmada en el año 2000, prometía expandir las oportunidades para el registro de votantes en la ciudad. La ley exigía que diecinueve agencias municipales, cada una de las cincuenta y nueve juntas comunitarias, y muchas agencias que reciben contratos del gobierno municipal, debían ofrecer formularios de inscripción de votantes, y asistencia completando los formularios, para residentes de la ciudad que estuvieran aplicando para recibir servicios de las agencias, re- certificando su exigibilidad, o reportando un cambio de dirección. Estos programas de registro de votantes en agencias públicas están basados en la Ley Nacional de Registro de Votantes, la cual requiere en parte que las agencias estatales de asistencia pública ofrezcan formularios de registro electoral a sus clientes.

Al ser administrados bien, estos programas tienen la capacidad de registrar del 15 al 20 por ciento de los clientes de la agencia. Un programa local similar en la ciudad de Nueva York podría ayudar a cientos de miles a qué se registren para votar.

Lamentablemente, las cosas aún no se han dado así. En octubre, el Centro para la Democracia Popular, y sus aliados en la coalición Pro-Votante, reportaron en un estudio que las agencias municipales de la ciudad de Nueva York estaban ignorando la ley. El ochenta y cuatro por ciento de los clientes entrevistados para el estudio eran elegibles pero nunca recibieron formularios de registro electoral.

Pero las elecciones son importantes y el cambio está en camino. En su primera Directiva Ejecutiva el verano pasado, el Alcalde De Blasio ordenó a cada una de las agencias contempladas en la ley Pro-Votante que desarrollarán planes para conformarse a la ley, y que reportaran su desempeño en la implementación de estos planes cada seis meses. Nuestra coalición fue invitada a ayudar a desarrollar modelos de planes para las agencias. Inmediatamente el Concejo de la Ciudad tuvo su primera audiencia pública acerca del tema, y el 25 de noviembre aprobó una nueva legislación presentada por los concejales Ben Kallos y Jumanee Williams, la cual fortalece las provisiones de la ley Pro-Votante. Con estas nuevas mejoras y algunos cambios adicionales, como la inclusión de agencias con un alto número de clientes como la agencia de viviendas públicas (NYCHA) y el departamento de educación, y el reemplazo de formulario de papel con formularios electrónicos, la ley Pro-Votante de la cuidad de Nueva York representa un gran modelo nacional que otras ciudades pueden replicar. El gobierno puede y deber jugar un papel líder en asegurarse que cada individuo que es elegible para votar sea agregado a las listas de votantes.

Pero las ciudades no deben para ahí. Con suficiente autoridad y autonomía, las ciudades pueden expandir la democracia permitiendo medidas como el registro de votantes el mismo día de la elecciones, el voto temprano, y la extensión del derecho al voto a los no-ciudadanos y personas que han pasado por el sistema judicial, el registro de estudiantes de secundario, y el pre-registro de jóvenes de 16 y 17 años de edad. Estas son algunas de las medidas promulgadas por la coalición de oficiales electos progresistas, Local Progress, que se han unido por su compromiso a avanzar una economía justa, igualdad para todos, ciudades habitables y gobiernos efectivos.

Los años que vienen van a ser difíciles para las personas que luchan por la justicia social. Pero aún mientras luchamos en contra de la agenda de la agenda regresiva de la derecha, los progresistas debemos buscar oportunidades para avanzar políticas públicas. Y como lao demuestra la nueva ley Pro-Votante, las ciudades representan un gran espacio de oportunidad.

Source

Both the U.S. House and Senate are now — eight years late — debating this week how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as No Child Left Behind. Signed into law in 2002, NCLB was supposed to have been rewritten by Congress in 2007, but sheer negligence and an inability among lawmakers to agree meant that America’s public schools were forced to live under a law that was fatally flawed.

Here is a letter that was sent to every senator about what the signatories believe should  — and should not — be in any new education law. Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the letter was sent by the Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of nearly 40 organizations of parents and students of color in 23 states, as well as from 175 other national and local civil rights, youth and community organizations.

 

Dear Senators McConnell and Reid,

The Journey for Justice Alliance, an alliance of 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in 23 states, joins with the 175 other national and local grassroots community, youth and civil rights organizations signed on below, to call on the U.S. Congress to pass an ESEA reauthorization without requiring the regime of oppressive, high stakes, standardized testing and sanctions that have recently been promoted as civil rights provisions within ESEA.

We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools. We live in the communities where these schools exist. What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement. It’s destruction.

Black and Latino families want world class public schools for our children, just as white and affluent families do. We want quality and stability. We want a varied and rich curriculum in our schools. We don’t want them closed or privatized. We want to spend our days learning, creating and debating, not preparing for test after test.

In the Chicago Public Schools, for example, children in kindergarten through 8th grade are administered anywhere between 8 and 25 standardized tests per year. By the time they graduate from 8th grade, they have taken an average of 180 standardized tests!   We are not opposed to state mandated testing as a component of a well-rounded system of evaluating student needs. But enough is enough.

We want balanced assessments, such as oral exams, portfolios, daily check-ins and teacher created assessment tools—all of which are used at the University of Chicago Lab School, where President Barack Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have sent their children to be educated. For us, civil rights are about access to schools all our children deserve. Are our children less worthy?

High stakes standardized tests have been proven to harm Black and Brown children, adults, schools and communities. Curriculum is narrowed. Their results purport to show that our children are failures. They also claim to show that our schools are failures, leading to closures or wholesale dismissal of staff. Children in low income communities lose important relationships with caring adults when this happens. Other good schools are destabilized as they receive hundreds of children from closed schools. Large proportions of Black teachers lose their jobs in this process, because it is Black teachers who are often drawn to commit their skills and energies to Black children. Standardized testing, whether intentionally or not, has negatively impacted the Black middle class, because they are the teachers, lunchroom workers, teacher aides, counselors, security staff and custodians who are fired when schools close.

Standardized tests are used as the reason why voting rights are removed from Black and Brown voters—a civil right every bit as important as education. Our schools and school districts are regularly judged to be failures—and then stripped of local control through the appointment of state takeover authorities that eliminate democratic process and our local voice—and have yet so far largely failed to actually improve the quality of education our children receive.

Throughout the course of the debate on the reauthorization of ESEA, way too much attention has focused on testing and sanctions, and not on the much more critical solutions to educational inequality.

In March, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools issued a letter to the House and Senate leadership, with four recommendations for ESEA Reauthorization.:

First, there are 5000 community schools in America today, providing an array of wrap around services and after school programs to children and their families. These community schools serve over 5 million children, and we want to double that number and intensify the effort. We are calling for a significant investment in creating thousands moresustainable community schools. They provide a curriculum that is engaging, relevant and challenging, supports for quality teaching and not standardized testing, wrap-around supports for every child, a student centered culture and finally, transformative parent and community engagement.We call on the federal government to provide $1 billion toward that goal, and we are asking our local governments to decrease the high stakes standardized testing with its expensive test prep programs and divert those funds into resourcing more sustainable community schools. Second, we want to include restorative justice and positive approaches to discipline in all of our sustainable community schools, so we are calling on the federal government to provide $500 million for restorative justice coordinators and training in all of our sustainable community schools. Third, to finally move toward fully resourcing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we call on the federal government to provide $20 billion this year for the schools that serve the most low income students, and more in future years until we finally reach the 40% increase in funding for poor schools that the Act originally envisioned. Finally, we ask for a moratorium on the federal Charter Schools Program, which has pumped over $3 billion into new charter schools, many of which have already closed, or have failed the students drawn to them by the illusive promise of quality. We want the resources that all our schools deserve – we don’t need more schools. We need better ones.

So now we are prepared to say, clearly, that we will take nothing less than the schools our children deserve.   It will cost some money to support them, but that’s okay, because we have billionaires and hedge funders in this country who have neverpaid the tax rates that the rest of us pay. We are a rich country, and we can afford some world class community schools.

As we continue to organize for educational justice, it is that tradition of struggle that will guide J4J, AROS and the scores of organizations who have signed on to this letter.  We are the people directly impacted and will continue to organize in the memory of the great institution builder Ella Baker who said, “Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.”  Our voices matter.

In Anticipation,Jitu BrownJourney for Justice Alliance

Along with…

ACTION of Greater Lansing, Lansing, MIAction NCWashington, DCAction UnitedAdvocates Building Lasting Equality (ABLE), NHAdvocating, Mobilizing, and Organizing in Solidarity (AMOS), La Crosse, WIAFT Local 2115, Birmingham, ALAlliance AFT DallasAlliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods (ACTION), Youngstown, OHAlliance for Educational Justice (AEJ)The Alliance for Newark Public SchoolsAlliance for Public Schools, FLAlliance for Quality Education (AQE), New YorkAlliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse (ACTS),Syracuse, NYAlliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS)American Federation of Teachers (AFT)Arkansas Community OrganizationAROS HoustonAsamblea de Derechos Civiles, Twin Cities/St. Cloud, MNAtlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment (ABLE), Atlanta, GAAustin Voices for Education and Youth, TXBadAss Teachers Association (BATs)Baltimore Algebra ProjectBaltimore Teachers UnionBoston Area Youth Organizing ProjectBYOP/Community Labor United, Boston, MABrighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago, ILBoston Education Justice AllianceCalifornians for JusticeCamden Parent Union, NJCamden Student Union, NJCapital Region Organizing Project (CROP), Sacramento, CACenter for Popular Democracy (CPD)Change the Stakes, NYCChicago Teachers UnionChicago PEACECincinnati Federation of TeachersCitizen Action of New YorkCitizens for Better Schools & Sustainable Communities, Birmingham, ALCitizens for Education AwarenessCoalition of Black Trade UnionistsCoalition for Community Schools, New Orleans, LACoalition for Effective Newark Public Schools, NJColeman Advocates for Children & Youth, San Francisco, CACommunity Coalition, CACommunity Voices for Public Education, Houston, TXCommunities UnitedConcerned Citizen’s CoalitionConcerned Citizens of New Orleans, LACongregations United to Serve Humanity (CUSH), Kenosha, WIDetroit LIFE Coalition, MIDRUM, NYCEducation AustinEmpower DCEmpower DC Youth Organizing ProjectEmpower Hampton Roads, Norfolk, VAEquality, Solidarity, Truth, Hope, Empowerment, Reform (ESTHER), Neenah, WIThe Ezekiel Project, Saginaw, MIFairTest (National Center for Fair & Open Testing)Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), Oahu/Maui, HIFaith Coalition for the Common Good, Springfield, ILFannie Lou Hamer Center for Change, MIFlorida Institute for Reform and Empowerment (FIRE)482Forward, Detroit, MIFuture of Tomorrow, Cypress Hills Local Development Corp, Brooklyn, NYGamalielGamaliel of Metro Chicago, Chicago, ILGenesis, Alameda County, CAThe Grassroots Collaborative, Chicago, ILGrassroots Education Movement, Chicago, ILGreat Public Schools (GPS) Pittsburgh, PAHouston Federation of Teachers, Local 2415, TXIndiana Organizing Project, South Bend, INInnerCity Struggle, LAInterfaith Strategy for Advocacy and Action in the Community (ISAAC), Kalamazoo, MIJoining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope (JONAH), Eau Claire, WIJoint-Religious Organizing Network for Action and Hope (JONAH), Battle Creek, MIJustice Organization Sharing Hope and United for Action (JOSHUA), Green Bay, WIJustice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB), San Diego, CAKansas Justice AdvocatesKeep the Vote/No Takeover Coalition, DetroitKenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), Chicago, ILLabor Council for Latin American Advancement, AFL-CIO (LCLAA)Long Island Organizing Network (LION), Riverhead, NYMake the Road, New York, NYMaryland Communities UnitedMassachusetts Jobs with JusticeMedia Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia, PAMetro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2), Kansas City, MO/KSMetropolitan Congregations United (MCU), St. Louis, MOMetropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength (MOSES), Detroit, MIMilwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), Milwaukee, WIMinnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (MN NOC)Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE)More than A Score, Chicago, ILMOSES, Chicago, ILMOSES, Madison, WINAACP, ArkansasNAACP OregonNAACP Washington StateNAOMI, Wausau, WINC Heat/ Youth Organizing Institute, Durham/RaleighNehemiah, Petersburg, VANeighborhood Networks, Philadelphia, PANetwork for Public EducationNewark Student Union, NJNew Jersey Communities United (NJCU)The New York A. Phillip Randolph InstituteNew York City Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)New York City Opt OutNew York Communities for Change (NYCC)New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope (NOAH), Niagara Falls, NYNOLA Village, LANorth Bay Organizing Project (NBOP), Sonoma County, CANorthside Action For Justice, Chicago, ILOrganizers in the Land of Enchantment (OLE), NMOrganize Now, FLOur Community, Our Schools, Dallas, TXPadres Y Jovenes Unidos, Denver, COParents Across AmericaParents Across America, Roanoke Valley, VAParents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati, OHParents 4 Teachers,Chicago, ILParents on the MoveParents Unified for Local School Education (PULSE),Newark, NJPartnership for Renewal in Southern and Central Maryland (PRISCM),Prince George’s County, MDPaterson Education Fund, NJPatterson Education Organizing Committee, NJPennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network (PIIN), Pittsburgh, PAPIIN-Northwest, Erie, PAPilsen Alliance, Chicago, ILPhiladelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), PAThe Philadelphia Council AFL-CIOPhiladelphia Federation of Teachers, PAPhiladelphia MoveOn.org, PAPhiladelphia Student Union, PAPittsburgh Federation of Teachers, PAPower U, Miami, FLPride at WorkProject SouthQuad Cities Interfaith (QCI), Davenport, IARacine Interfaith Coalition (RIC), Racine, WIRaise Your Voice, Chicago, ILRise Up GeorgiaRochester ACTS, Rochester, NYSave Our SchoolsSave Our Schools NJSchools and Communities UnitedSchott Foundation for Public EducationSEEK, COSistas & Brothas United, New York, NYStay Together Appalachian YouthSunflower Action, Wichita, KSSupport Our Students, Birmingham, ALStewards of Prophetic, Hopeful, Intentional, Action (SOPHIA), Waukesha, WITeachers for Social Justice, Chicago, ILTeaching for ChangeTexas Organizing Project (TOP), TXUnited Congregations Metro East (UCM), E. St. Louis, ILUnited Opt Out of NJUnited Federation of Teachers, NYCUnited Teachers of Los Angeles, CAUrban Youth Collaborative, NYVAYLA, New Orleans, LAVOICE, Buffalo, NYVoices for Education, AZWisconsin Jobs NowWISDOM (Gamaliel statewide), WIYinzercation, Pittsburgh, PAYouth Empowered in the StruggleYouth Justice Coalition, LAYouth On The Move, Bronx, NYYouth Together, Oakland, CAYouth United for Change, Philadelphia, PA

Source: Washington Post