Campaign News

US News - July 17, 2013, by Steven Nelson - Immigration advocates are thrilled that New York City is footing the bill for a pilot program to provide free legal representation to people fighting deportation.

The City Council allocated $500,000 in June for the pilot program, with Speaker Christine Quinn – a candidate for mayor – taking the lead in shepherding the funds into the fiscal year 2014 budget, advocates say.

"There really was no controversy because the statistics bore out the injustice," Angela Fernandez of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights told U.S. News.

Non-citizens living in the U.S. without legal permission aren't guaranteed a free lawyer in non-criminal deportation cases.

Immigration law is "as complex as tax law," Fernandez said. She pointed to a research conducted by federal judge Robert Katzmann that found defendants without attorneys prevail less than 10 percent of the time in immigration cases.

"If they have access to a high-quality deportation defense attorney, their chances of prevailing is 67 percent," she said.

The Vera Institute of Justice, a legal advocacy group, will administer the program and approve grants to experienced non-profits whose attorneys specialize in immigration defense.

Fernandez said is costs up to $4,000 to defend a person during the course of immigration proceedings.

"The stakes are pretty high," said Brittny Saunders of the Center for Popular Democracy. "Folks who are detained, in many cases on minor infractions of immigration law, have no right to counsel ... so they're going up against federally trained attorneys."

Fernandez and Saunders agreed that the pilot program - officially called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project – is the first publicly funded endeavor to defend immigrants against deportation, and they hope it will become permanent.

Quinn's office confirmed to U.S. News that the program was funded in the city's recently approved budget.

The immigration advocates, attorneys and Quinn are scheduled to discuss the program during a Friday event at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.

Source

05.12.2016

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) Thursday released a letter signed by 116 Members of the House of Representatives and 11 senators urging the Federal Reserve to reform its governance by committing to more diverse leadership and prioritizing full employment for all communities. The letter represents a major development in the Congressional-Fed relationship and a sign of increasing interest on Capitol Hill for rigorous Fed oversight and reform.

Addressed to Fed Chair Janet Yellen, the letter calls attention to the lack of diversity across the Federal Reserve system. White men from the financial and the corporate sectors dominate Fed governance in Washington D.C. and around the country, according to a study conducted by the Center for Popular Democracy for the Fed Up coalition.

“The overwhelming support for this letter demonstrates that Members of Congress want to see a Federal Reserve that truly represents the American people - and that makes sure the economy works for all with a mandate for full employment,” said Connie Razza, author of the report cited by the Congressional letter and Campaign Director at the Center for Popular Democracy, which coordinates the Fed Up coalition. "As it becomes clear that the recovery has yet to reach many millions of Americans, the momentum behind this cause is growing. Now it’s time to hear from all of our Presidential candidates. Do Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump believe that the Fed should do a better job reflecting the American people?”

The letter comes amid growing attention to the governance practices of the Fed by Democrats and progressives. In February, at her testimony in front of the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees, fifteen Democratic members of Congress asked Chair Yellen questions about racial disparities in the economy and lack of diverse leadership in Fed governance. The Fed Up coalition, comprised of community-based organizations, labor unions, and policy advocates from around the country, has over the past eighteen months turned Fed governance and policy into an important issue for the progressive movement.

The letter’s signatories include Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (VT), every Democratic member of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as a significant percentage of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and House Financial Services Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA), Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. James Cleburne (D-SC), who are members of the Democratic Party’s leadership.

Currently, 11 of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents are white and 10 of the 12 are men. Not a single regional Bank president is Black or Latino and, indeed, there has never been an African American president of a regional Bank in the history of the Federal Reserve System. This year, all voting members of the interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) are white.

The Congressional letter quotes from a former regional Fed president and argues that the lack of diverse leadership is hurting the Fed’s policy decision-making processes: “When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected,” the letter says.

While the unemployment rate for whites is near 4 percent, the unemployment rate for African-Americans currently stands at 9 percent. The vaunted recovery has never fully reached Black and Latino communities, where stagnant wage growth and involuntary part-time work is widespread. The Congressional letter calls on the Fed to remedy this reality: “By fostering genuine full employment, the Federal Reserve can help combat discrimination and dramatically reduce the disproportionate unemployment faced by minority populations.”

Some Fed officials want to intentionally slow down the economy in June by raising interest rates; the Congressional letter urges Chair Yellen to “give due consideration to the interests and priorities of the millions of people around the country who still have not benefited from this recovery.”

The letter also calls for a more transparent process in appointing Fed leaders, pointing to the recent re-appointments of all 12 regional presidents to new five-year terms in February.

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

May 12, 2016

Dear Chair Yellen,

We write to thank you for your strong leadership at the Federal Reserve throughout your historic tenure.  Beginning with your first public speech in Chicago, you have placed crucial renewed emphasis on the importance of building a full employment economy, which will raise Americans’ wages and combat inequality. And you have displayed an appreciation for the fact that, as you have said, “there are real people behind the statistics, struggling to get by and eager for the opportunity to build better lives.”  Over the past two years, thanks in no small part to your leadership and that of President Obama, our economy has added more than 5.5 million new private-sector jobs.

However, despite these gains, we remain deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve has not yet fulfilled its statutory and moral obligation to ensure that its leadership reflects the composition of our diverse nation in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, economic background, and occupation, and we call on you to take steps to promptly begin to remedy this issue.

In 1977, Congress responded to concerns that monetary policy was being set by a body that fell short of reflecting the diverse makeup of the United States by passing a law that requires the Federal Reserve to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin, and with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor and consumers.”  Nearly 40 years later, the leadership across the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male, while major financial institutions and corporations are overrepresented in senior roles.

According to a study by the Center for Popular Democracy released in early February, 2016, 83 percent of Federal Reserve head office board members are white, and men occupy nearly three-fourths of all regional bank directorships.   The lack of public representation on regional Banks’ boards is even more distressing in light of the lack of diversity among regional Bank presidents and the resulting lack of diversity on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Currently, 92 percent of regional Bank presidents are white, and not a single president is either African-American or Latino.  Moreover, at present 100 percent of voting FOMC participants are white, while 83 percent of regional Bank presidents and 60 percent of voting FOMC members are men.

In addition to racial and gender disparities, we are also concerned with the persistent lack of occupational diversity.  Despite the important role they serve in reflecting the interests of working families, only 11 percent of the Federal Reserve’s regional Bank directors come from community, labor, or academic organizations. By contrast, 39 percent of all regional directors represent financial institutions, and 47 percent represent firms in commerce, industry, and services.

Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated.  When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.

For example, it is widely accepted that employment discrimination against women and minorities decreases as our economy approaches full employment. The data is unambiguous: even when comparing workers with the same levels of education, African-American workers face higher unemployment rates and are paid less than their white counterparts, women make less than their male counterparts, and women of color are particularly disadvantaged. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute confirmed the importance of full employment for African-Americans, demonstrating that for every .91 percent reduction in unemployment for whites, black unemployment drops 1.7 percent.   This reality is particularly relevant today, as the unemployment rate for African-Americans (8.8 percent) is currently more than double the unemployment rate for white Americans (4.3 percent), with Hispanics also suffering worse unemployment rates (6.1 percent).

By fostering genuine full employment, the Federal Reserve can help combat discrimination and dramatically reduce the disproportionate unemployment faced by minority populations. Unfortunately, it seems that this perspective is missing from FOMC deliberations. Reflecting on his experience on the FOMC in a recent blog post, former Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Narayana Kocherlakota wrote: “There is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely underemphasized in FOMC deliberations: race.”  He reviewed the most recent full year of FOMC meeting transcripts available (2010), and found that “there was no reference in the meetings to labor market conditions among African-Americans,” although the unemployment rate for African-Americans never dropped below 15.5 percent during that year.   It is unacceptable that discussion of the job market for these populations would be an afterthought, or worse, ignored entirely, and we are concerned that the lack of balanced representation may be a significant cause of this oversight.

We are grateful that you pledged to consider African-Americans for future positions as regional Bank presidents during your recent Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before Congress, and appreciate your concern that no African-American has led a regional Bank to date.  While some recent progress has been made, the Federal Reserve still has considerable work to do  in order to comply with both the letter and spirit of the requirements of the Federal Reserve Act that seek to ensure fairness in the representation within the leadership of the Federal Reserve.        

On February 19, 2016, the Federal Reserve announced that 10 regional presidents (eight men and two women, all white) had been re-appointed to new five-year terms.  Despite the importance of this decision, there appears to have been no public consultation, and limited transparency regarding the metrics and criteria used to evaluate the presidents’ performance, or in the decision to reappoint them.  As the Board of Governors embarks on its search for regional Bank directors to serve beginning in 2017, and as you consider future regional president vacancies, we urge you to engage in an inclusive process to consider candidates from a diverse set of backgrounds, including a greater number of African-Americans, Latinos, women, and individuals from labor, consumer, and community organizations. 

Moreover, as you make crucial monetary policy decisions in 2016, we urge you to give due consideration to the interests and priorities of the millions of people around the country who still have not benefited from this recovery. We share the vision that you laid out in Chicago two years ago: an economy in which all working families “get the chance they deserve to build better lives.”

Thank you for your continued pursuit of these vital goals.

Sincerely,

Members of Congress

# # #

 

www.whatrecovery.org

Fed Up is a coalition of community organizations and labor unions across the country calling on the Federal Reserve to reform its governance and adopt policies that build a strong economy for the American public. The Fed can keep interest rates low, give the economy a fair chance to recover, and prioritize genuine full employment and rising wages for all communities.

www.populardemocracy.org

The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.

 

Press Contact:

Asya Pikovsky, apikovsky@populardemocracy.org, 207-522-2442

URBAN Outfitters, you're breaking my heart.

I'd loved you since I discovered your lone West Philly shop when I was in college. You'd just changed your name from the Free People Store, and your countercultural merchandise spoke to my giddy dreams of a boho life. I was smitten the day I bought an Indian-print cotton bedspread from you to sew into curtains for my first-ever single-girl apartment.

"Where'd you get them?" friends would ask, eyeing my handiwork.

"Urban," I'd say, knowing the word had become code for "I may be broke, but at least I'm hip."

 

MORE COVERAGE

Urban Outfitters company asks employees to work for free

God, I was young.

Since then, you've become more successful than I have, morphing into a $1 billion global behemoth that also encompasses the brands Free People, Anthropologie, Bhldn and Terrain. Your clothes still skew to the young demographic I used to belong to, so I'd taken to scanning your racks for Christmas gifts for my clothes-horse teenager.

She got to wear your cute stuff and I got to maintain a touchstone relationship with a company that had put down roots in Philly, as I had, and never left. It made me happy.

Sure, your price tags indicated you'd gotten a tad full of yourself ($89 for a cotton/poly romper? Really?). And you'd stumbled embarrassingly in attempts to be edgy (a shirt evocative of the one the Nazis made gay concentration-camp prisoners wear? What were you thinking?).

Still, Urban, I'd cut you slack the way family cuts slack to kin. You've remained a player in a city that has lost too many homegrown businesses to either bankruptcy or foreign soil. That counts for a lot in my book.

You may not be perfect, I'd always told myself, but you're ours.

But Urban - oh, Urban. I've been learning about the way you treat your part-time employees, the young, mostly female staff who work in your retail stores. And I'm ashamed of you.

For years, you've subjected them to an enslaving scheduling system that betrays your "free people" roots. Basically, you give them their schedule only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they don't know, until three hours before the shift is to begin, whether you need them to work that shift or not. If not, they don't get paid.

Yet they're required to hold that time for you, in case you do.

"On calls are considered scheduled shifts, and the same attendance policy applies," your employee handbook says.

All I can ask, Urban, is: What the hell? But your PR flacks didn't respond to my questions.

The use of "on-call" staffing is obviously necessary in medical and first-responder fields, where lives depend on workers being available when needed. Reasonable people know it's part of the gig. But using the same scheduling to ensure that a billion-dollar retailer doesn't "waste" money on excess workers during a slow day at the shop?

C'mon, Urban. It's horrible.

The unpredictability means employees can't schedule classes, if they're in school. Or go to a second job, so they can cobble together a full-time salary. Or reliably arrange child care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both remains fixed even though their working hours don't.

Their only compensation, if I read the handbook correctly, is that they get to keep their jobs so you can continue to exploit their need to make a living.

"It's pretty messed up," one of your employees told me when I asked her about the policy. I won't say which of your 179 U.S. stores employs her, since she needs her crappy job. She's toiling through college and doesn't know, week to week, what her paycheck will be. "It's hard to plan," she said.

She could get a job at a different store, but it seems you're not the only retail chain doing this.

Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and L Brand Inc.'s Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works are some of the other billion-dollar corporations whose on-call scheduling have wreaked havoc on their workers. The practice began about 10 years ago, says Carrie Gleason, as globalization increased retail competition and companies needed new ways to shave expenses.

"They started incorporating new technology into scheduling that used software algorithms" to track store traffic, the time of year, even weather patterns, says Gleason, director of the fair-work-week initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.

But the predictions aren't perfect, so on-call staffing provides wiggle room to keep labor costs down. Retailers also tie store managers' bonuses to how low they keep labor costs.

How can you stand being part of this, Urban?

In April, New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called companies like you on the carpet, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage Americans.

As a result, big changes have happened.

Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works stopped the practice nationwide. Abercrombie and Gap say that nationally they, too, are phasing out on-call shifts.

But you, Urban, are dragging your feet. You'll stop the practice in New York, you announced this month, but everywhere else it'll be exploitation as usual.

Which means you're doing the right thing in New York only because New York law requires you to. As for everywhere else, it's human decency be damned.

"If Urban found a business model to let them stop on-call shifts in New York, they ought to be able to find a business model that will let them stop the shifts everywhere else," says Lance Haver, formerly the city's consumer advocate and now director of civic engagement for City Council.

"If they don't, then consumers can say we're not going to shop at their stores until they change their practice. We can refuse to support a store that abuses the people who wait on us."

Haver also thinks the only way to assure that businesses like you, Urban, treat employees better is for your workers to organize.

"People say there's no longer a reason for people to join unions," he says, "but that's because they don't know about these disgusting practices."

Lest you think, Urban, that all your employees are miffed with you, that's not the case. I spoke with one employee, a fan, who asked not to be named because she's hoping to work her way into your corporate headquarters at the Navy Yard. She sees her on-call schedule as a necessary evil, given the vagaries of the retail market.

"The company has to do right by its shareholders," she told me. "I think they're stuck between a rock and a hard place."

Except that your company founder and CEO, former hippie and current billionaire Richard Hayne, owns most of your stock.

He has the clout to end on-call staffing. That's not being between a rock and a hard place. It's holding the power position.

Please, Urban, return to your roots and free your people. And please start in Philly.

Because family comes first.

Source: Philly.com

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the formation of a police accountability task force Tuesday. 

In a Monday press release, the mayor said the five-member body — which he will appoint, and which will be advised by former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick — "will review the system of accountability, oversight and training that is currently in place for Chicago's police officers," according to the Chicago Tribune.

"The shooting of Laquan McDonald requires more than just words," Emanuel said in a statement. "It requires that we act."

The announcement came one week after a Cook County judge compelled the city to release video footage of the Oct. 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, which was captured on a patrol car dash camera but kept under wraps for 13 months. 

McDonald's killer, Officer Jason Van Dyke, shot the teenager 16 times in front of multiple witnesses but was charged with first-degree murder only last week. The sluggish circumstances of the release have since drawn accusations of an administrative cover-up. Van Dyke was released from jail Monday after posting ten percent of his $150,000 bail. 

Mayor Emanuel also fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday, in response to calls from the public and some officials to have him removed. Meanwhile, the video's release has set off a week of protests in Chicago, as questions remain regarding next steps.

Jason Van Dyke is the first Chicago police officer to be charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty incident in 35 years, a fact that has elicited doubt Emanuel's task force will yield substantive results.

"Our first thought is that this [task force] can't be a substitute for what's really needed here, which is a full-scale federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department with subpoena power," Ed Yohnka, Director of Communications and Public Policy at the ACLU of Illinois, told Mic. "Whatever this task force does, what we've witnessed in this and other instances is a fundamental breakdown in the ability of police to protect the public, and the public's faith in CPD."

Others echoed Yohnka's skepticism. "Appointing a committee to look into an issue is a tried-and-true tactic elected officials long have employed to buy time and breathing room when faced with a scandal or crisis," wrotethe Chicago Tribune. "[It] gives Emanuel something else to talk to reporters and the public about other than the ... video."

Indeed, it's unclear how effective police accountability task forces in other cities have been. An Inspectors General was appointed in Los Angeles, New York City and New Orleans have uncovered systemic abuses and identified problems that shoddy or nonexistent data collection had rendered invisible over the past decade. Seattle has a 15-member community police commission, appointed by the mayor, to review oversight and accountability processes. 

However, "there is no clear evidence that these oversight bodies alone are effective in obtaining meaningful reforms," according to a Justice in Policing report and toolkit from the Center for Popular Democracy and PolicyLink, both policy advocacy organizations.

Yohnka suggested to Mic that a more tried route to change in Chicago would require a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. "That confidence needs to be restored, that someone in power is actively looking into this," he said. "But it's systemic. This issue pervades multiple superintendents and multiple people in terms of leadership in the department. It requires a systemic approach to accountability, transparency and how law enforcement operates."

One such DOJ examination of the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department published in March laid bare a hotbed of racist law enforcement practices that yielded reform suggestions amidst a national conversation around racism and policing. This is not a unique phenomenon. According to the Washington Post, the DOJ has launched 67 investigations into police departments across the U.S. over the past decade, 24 of which were closed without reform agreements, and just 26 of which resulted in "binding agreements tracked by monitors."

Results have been mixed. The long-term effect of these agreements are not tracked by the DOJ, making it hard to tell if they actually work. 

"We don't tend to evaluate .?.?. after we have left," Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the department's civil rights division, told the Post. "There's a limit to how much we can .?.?. remain engaged with a particular jurisdiction given our limited re­sources."

This leaves little precedent for a positive outcome in Chicago — a city with a staggering recent history of police abuse. Over the past decade, the city has spent $500 million on legal costs and settlements stemming from law enforcement misconduct, including $5 million paid out to Laquan McDonald's family in April. 

That same month, Chicago set up a $5.5 million fund to compensate victims of former-CPD Commander John Burge, who tortured and sexually abused more than 100 mostly black arrestees during his tenure with the department. The case of Dante Servin, an off-duty officer who fired into a crowd and killed 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in 2012, was also dismissed in April because state's attorney Anita Alvarez — whose office has a history of questionable conduct — charged him with a crime the judge deemed too  severe for what he did.

The McDonald case has also been plagued by scandal, including allegations that police officers tampered with surveillance tape that captured the shooting from a nearby Burger King, resulting in 86 minutes of footage gone missing.

Some have suggested the mere appearance of police accountability can have positive effects, lending legitimacy to law enforcement bodies that had formerly lost the trust of their communities. But in the case of Chicago, it may be too late for that. 

"The reality is, we're kind of past the point of cosmetics here," said Ed Yohnka. "There's been this fundamental breakdown in terms of trust. Whether we're talking the Burge incidents or the millions of dollars in payouts to victims, there really needs to be a much broader look at what is going on."

Source: Mic