Campaign News

Latin Post - June 30, 2014, by Michael Oleaga - New York Assemblyman Francisco Moya, author of the state's DREAM Act, told Latin Post, "The New York City Council's decision to create the nation's first public defender system for immigrants facing deportation is a bold move for justice and I am proud to say that I was an early supporter of this initiative on the state level. One of my proudest accomplishments this year is that I was able to secure funds in the state budget for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project."

"Facing a judge without counsel provides an unreasonable barrier to justice," Moya added. "If you wind up in immigration court and must defend yourself against trained attorneys, it's almost impossible to avoid deportation. Providing counsel for those facing deportation is about justice and family unity. No one should have to lose a family member to deportation just because they couldn't afford an attorney. I applaud the efforts of the New York City Council and look forward to taking up my bill to expand this program statewide again next year."

New York City became the first jurisdiction in the United States to provide free legal counsel to detained undocumented immigrants facing deportation. New York City's Council passed the $4.9 billion program known as the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) after a "successful" yearlong trial.

The NYIFUP's funding from the City Council grants legal representation for nearly 1,380 detained immigrants in the city.

The program is also the result of a five-year study by the Center for Popular Democracy, the Immigrant Justice Clinic of Cardozo Law School, Make the Road New York and the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights (NMCIR). According to the Vera Institute of Justice, more than 7,000 U.S. citizen children in New York City lost a parent to deportation between 2005 and 2010. Sixty-seven percent of detained immigrants in the city continue their deportation hearings without legal counsel, and only 3 percent find success. Vera noted immigrants with legal representation are 10 times more likely to find a successful outcome in immigration court.

"In addition to the financial hardship caused by the loss of a primary breadwinner, these children have been shown to suffer significant emotional and psychological effects," said Vera, which administered the initial one-year-pilot program and sought to increase "court effectiveness and decrease detention times" and would save taxpayer dollars.

"In time, NYIFUP would become a model for other jurisdictions that value their immigrants and counterbalance overtly hostile immigration policies enacted in states like Arizona and Alabama," NMCIR stated.  "New York State has an opportunity to lead by making resources available to address a critically important unmet need and to keep New York families together."

NMCIR Executive Director Angela Fernandez acknowledged deportation proceedings do not require the government to provide lawyers since it is considered a "civil" matter rather than criminal.

"However, to the immigrants who are held in county jails, shackled and forced to litigate in one of our most complex arenas of law against trained government attorneys, the civil designation is cold comfort," Fernandez said.

"New York City's investment in the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project will not only help those who receive legal representation in decisions that will profoundly affect their lives, but it will also send a clear message that the city values and protects all families," Make the Road New York's Immigration Project's Cesar Palomeque said in a statement.

"The City Council should be congratulated for its leadership in ensuring that no detained New Yorker will be deported without an opportunity to show that she or he is entitled to remain in the country," Vera Director of the Center on Immigration and Justice Oren Root said.

Credit for the NYIFUP has been given to City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Councilmembers Carlos Menchaca, Julissa Ferreras and Daniel Dromm.

On a federal level, House Democrats have proposed the Vulnerable Immigrant Voice Act (VIVA) (H.R. 4936) legislation that would provide legal representation to unaccompanied minors and mentally disabled individuals during immigration proceedings. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), nearly 90,000 children will immigrate to the U.S. without an adult by the end of 2014.

"Currently, thousands of these children are stuck in a legal limbo as they seek a brighter future in the United States and most will not have legal representation," National Immigration Forum's Executive Director Ali Noorani told Latin Post.

The National Immigrant Justice Center's Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy, Senate and House immigration reforms such as S. 744 and H.R. 15 provides legal representation to undocumented people for immigration court, but both bills have stalled in Congress.

Source

The Village Voice - February 14, 2013 - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his minimum wage salary doesn't allow for him to afford public transportation, that's a problem.

Low-wage workers across the city have stood up in the past year to demand that such insecurity be eradicated and to pressure employers to finally begin to provide them with just compensation for their labor.

Building on the progress generated by these worker-led movements--in industries such as retail, fast-food, airline security and car washing--UnitedNY, the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups held a symposium and released a report yesterday analyzing the state of the city's low-wage worker movement.

"It's very difficult to try and make ends meet on $7.25 minimum wage in New York City," Alterique Hall, a worker in the fast-food industry, said during a news conference following the event. "Some nights you want to lay down cry because you [feel] like 'what's the point of going to work and putting all of myself into a job, [if] I'm going to be miserable when I get off work, miserable when I go home...and don't want to wake up and go to work the next day...to get disrespected, treated poorly and paid poorly.'"

Hall, who's been active in the push for fairer wages in the fast-food industry, is the worker who is often forced to embark on the three-hour treks to work. Hall said that his boss will sometimes said him home as a penalty for his tardiness--without considering the ridiculous journey he has to travel just to get to there.

"Working hard, and working as hard as you can, isn't paying off for them," mayoral hopeful and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, said during the news conference. "They're being underemployed, They're being underpaid. They're being taken advantage of. They're being ignored. They're becoming a permanent underclass in the city of New York."

The UnitedNY and CPD report lays out four specific initiatives that workers and advocates must pressure the city to implement in order to help better the plight of low-wage workers. The reports calls on the city and employers to :

[Raise] standards for low-wage workers. [Regulate] high-violation industries where labor abuses are rampant. [Establish] a Mayor's Office of Labor Standards to ensure that employment laws are enforced. [Urge] the State to allow NYC to set a minimum wage higher than the State minimum--due to the higher cost of living in the City.

The report pays close attention to the need for City Council to pass the paid sick-leave bill, and increase the minimum wage in the city to $10/hour--a salary that would net a worker with regular hours about $20,000/year in earnings.

"We can't continue to be a Tale of Two Cities, where the path to the middle class keeps fading for thousands of New Yorkers," said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. "We must break the logjam and pass paid sick leave in the City Council. We have to protect low-wage workers fighting union busting employers. We can't tolerate inaction any longer. It's time for real action to fight for working families."

During one of the symposium workshops, a panel of labor experts discussed the obstacles facing low-wage workers in their fight to obtain such rights.

"[We've] shifted from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy," Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University, said during the discussion. "[The job market is filled with] part-time jobs, low wages, no benefits, no social contract, no ability to move up in the job the way 20th century workers were able to."

Warren says that the quality of jobs in the American economy will only decline if something isn't done. He noted that 24 percent of jobs were low-wage in 2009. By 2020, that number is expected to nearly double and hit 40 percent. To make matters worse, technological "advances" are expected to increase unemployment rates by 3-5 percent moving forward.

"We're looking at an economy only of low-wage work in the future, but also of high and permanent levels of unemployment," Warren said.

The panel was moderated by acclaimed labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse of the N.Y. Times and included Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor of labor for U.S. Department of Labor and Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.

Several panelists stressed the need to combat attacks from right-minded forces seeking to erode worker wage and benefit rights. Falcon says that those fighting for worker rights must correct popular narratives, many of which categorize wage and benefit increases for workers as business-killers.

"When we talk about the minimum wage, the immediate response from business is, we're going to lose jobs because, we're only going to be able to hire a few people. We have to have an answer to that objection," Falcon said. "Through raising the minimum wage, you create job growth in terms of people being able to put more money into the economy. You're [putting] less pressure on social welfare systems...the system is still subsidizing business [when the public provides] welfare and other social services."

Warren* argued a similar point.

"I think we have to be much more explicit about targeting the right the way that they've targeted us. There's a reason why the right has gone after public sector unionism," Warren* said. "They know that's where the heart of the labor movement is in terms of funding and in terms of membership. We have to get smarter about which parts of the right do we target to destroy ideologically, organizationally so that we can advance further our movements. "

Source

Proponents of hiking the state’s minimum wage have already collected more than $1.4 million to put the issue on the November ballot and convince voters to support it.

But there’s no word on how much the Arizona Restaurant Association has spent so far trying to keep Proposition 206 from ever getting to voters.

New campaign finance reports due Friday show donations of $1,357,509 to Arizonans for Fair Wages and Health Families, with another $100,000 on loan from campaign consultant Bill Scheel. Most of those dollars — about $900,000 — were spent hiring paid circulators to put the issue on the ballot.

But the secretary of state’s office said Friday it has yet to get a spending report from foes. In fact, spokesman Matt Roberts said foes have not even filed to form a campaign committee, a legal prerequisite for spending any money for or against ballot measures.

There clearly has been some spending.

The restaurant association hired attorneys and filed suit on July 14 in a legal bid, unsuccessful to date, to have the measure removed from the November ballot. And the report due Friday is supposed to cover all expenses through Aug. 18.

Neither Steve Chucri, president of the restaurant group, nor Chiane Hewer, its spokeswoman, returned repeated calls seeking comment.

Roberts said his office has no legal opinion on whether the money spent in court over ballot measures has to be reported. But the legal expenses incurred by initiative supporters are listed, with their report saying the group paid $70,000 to the Torres Law Group to defend them in the lawsuit brought by the restaurant association.

Proposition 206, if approved in November, would immediately hike the state minimum wage from $8.05 an hour now to $10. It would hit $12 an hour by 2020, with future increases linked to inflation.

It also would require companies to provide five days of paid sick leave a year; small employers would have to offer three days.

There is one thing missing, however, from the report by the pro-206 group.

The report shows $998,684 of the donations coming from Living United for Change in Arizona.

But Tomas Robles, former director of LUCHA who is now chairing the campaign, said some of those dollars came from elsewhere. He said the organization has been the beneficiary of funds from groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Robles said, though, that the way Arizona law has been amended by the Republican-controlled legislature does not require detailing the specific donors or the amounts they gave.

While any spending by the restaurant association to date is unknown, the campaign is likely to be overshadowed, at least financially, by the fight over Proposition 205.

That measure would legalize the recreational use of marijuana by all adults; current law limits use of the drug to those who have certain medical conditions, a doctor’s recommendation and a state-issued ID card.

So far the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has amassed more than $3 million in donations.

Of that, $778,950 comes from the Marijuana Policy Project, the national group that funded the successful 2010 campaign for medical marijuana. A separate Marijuana Policy Project Foundation kicked in another $236,572.

Virtually all of the other five- and six-figure donations come from existing medical marijuana dispensaries. Proposition 205 would give them first crack at getting a license for one of the fewer than 150 retail outlets that would be allowed until 2021.

So far the campaign has spent nearly $2.6 million.

The opposition Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy reported collected $950,011 but has spent less than $294,000.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce is the largest single source of funds for the anti-205 campaign, so far putting in $114,000.

There’s also a $100,000 donation from T. Sanford Denny. He’s the chairman of United National Corp., which Bloomberg says is a privately owned holding company for First Premier Bank.

Another $100,000 was chipped in by Randy Kendrick, wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick.

The new reports also show that a branch of the Service Employees International Union spent $2.1 million in its ill-fated attempt to put a measure on the ballot to cap the compensation of non-medical hospital executives at $450,000 a year. Proponents gave up after a lawsuit was filed contending that many of the people who circulated petitions had not complied with state law, voiding any of the signatures they collected.

By: Howard Fischer

Source

Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still about twice the rate of whites. A report by Progress Illinois said the state’s Black unemployment rate is one of the worst in the nation.

According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI,) only two other states, New Jersey and South Carolina have higher Black unemployment rates than Illinois. D.C. had the highest Black unemployment rate at 14.2 percent, while Tennessee had the lowest at 6.9 percent. Illinois’ Black unemployment rate declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to Progress Illinois.

The nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to about 9 percent. However, the Black jobless rate is twice the white unemployment rate of 4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“African Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state,” said EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis. “We need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal.”

In a press release, Connie Razza, director of strategic research for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), said, contrary to the improving economy, “Black America is still in the middle of a Great Recession.”

According to Progress Illinois, EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy both called on the Federal Reserve to support policies that would help Black America.

“When [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good-paying jobs,” Razza said. “The direct consequences of the Fed’s projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers.”

A tight labor market, which we have now, benefits employers since there are more people looking for fewer jobs. This allows employers to keep labor costs low and easily fire workers, because there are hundreds of people lined up to replace them. Razza said the Fed needs to support policies that would move towards a full employment economy.

“A full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to Black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace,” Razza said.

Black unemployment has been a long-standing problem. The Labor Department began tracking employment figures by race in 1972 and since then the Black jobless rate has stubbornly remained at twice the white rate. Employment experts say its not just a matter of training and education. Studies have shown Black men with college educations have higher unemployment rates than white men with just a high school education.

However, economists say the improving economy is making it easier for all Americans, including Black people, to find work.

“Now, you’re starting to see a broad recovery which is reaching groups with high unemployment rates like African-Americans and teens,” said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the American Center for Progress in a CNN article.

This issue was also brought up during the last Republican debate.

“Once you have economic growth, it’s important we reach out to people who live in the shadows… which includes people in our minority community and people who feel they don’t have the chance to move up,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate.

Source: Atlanta Black Star