A Broken Promise: Agency-Based Voter Registration in New York City
Executive Summary
Voter registration is the number one barrier to the vote. An estimated 51 million eligible citizens, more than 24 percent of the electorate, could not cast a ballot on...
Voter registration is the number one barrier to the vote. An estimated 51 million eligible citizens, more than 24 percent of the electorate, could not cast a ballot on Election Day in the 2012 presidential election solely because they had not been registered. Registration and voting rates are particularly low for families with annual incomes below $20,000, voters of color, naturalized citizens, and those with limited English proficiency. Civic engagement levels are even worse in New York State. Fewer New Yorkers registered to vote and cast a ballot in the November 2012 general election than the national average.
Download the report here.
One proven method of increasing voter participation, particularly among underrepresented citizens, is voter registration at public agencies (“agency-based registration”). Well-administered voter registration programs established at public assistance agencies pursuant to federal law have helped register 15 to 20 percent of agency applicants. In 2000, New York City sought to expand voter registration opportunities at municipal agencies by enacting Local Law 29 (“the Pro-Voter Law”), which required 18 city agencies and, under certain circumstances, their associated subcontractors, to offer voter registration forms to all persons submitting applications, renewals, or recertification for agency services, or notifying the agency of a change of address. The law included each of the City’s 59 community boards as well. The last and only evaluation of the Pro-Voter Law, undertaken by the New York City Council over a decade ago, found that agencies were failing to offer voter registration.
In 2014, the Center for Popular Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Citizens Union of the City of New York, and the New York Public Interest Research Group formed the Pro-Voter Law Coalition and launched a new initiative to assess the agencies’ compliance with the law and opportunities to enhance the law’s impact. The Pro-Voter Law Coalition submitted Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to each of the 18 city agencies; met with the Voter Assistance Advisory Committee at the New York City Campaign Finance Board; and, along with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Make the Road New York, launched field investigations at 14 city offices subject to the Pro-Voter Law to measure their compliance with the law.
The FOIL responses and field investigations revealed widespread agency failure to implement the Pro-Voter Law. Specifically, they found:
Inconsistent adherence. Documents provided by the 12 agencies that responded to FOIL requests indicated scattered and inconsistent attention to the Pro-Voter Law; Noncompliance in a majority of interactions. In 84 percent of client interactions, agency officials failed to comply with the Pro-Voter Law’s requirement to offer voter registration application forms; Failure to provide language access. Agency failures extended to bilingual voter registration mandates. Specifically, only 40 percent, or 2 out of 5 agency clients whose primary language was not English were given translated voter registration applications; and No training of agency staff. All 11 of the agency employees who responded to training inquiries admitted that no agency staff receive regular training on voter registration procedures.These findings are particularly significant given that over 30 percent, or 18 of 59 citizen clients interviewed at the agencies required to comply with the Pro-Voter Law’s mandates reported they were not registered to vote.
Agency failure to comply with the Pro-Voter Law marks a lost opportunity to increase New York City voter registration rates and, by extension, voter participation in the city. Expanding opportunities for New Yorkers to register to vote at municipal agencies will require a concerted commitment by the Mayor, City Council, and municipal agency heads. The Pro-Voter Law Coalition is joined by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the League of Women Voters of the City of New York, Common Cause New York, and Make the Road New York in issuing the following 12 recommendations to help ensure that every eligible city resident is registered to vote when interacting with city agencies subject to the Pro-Voter Law.
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High Road Workweek Partnership Invites Employers to Adopt a Fair Workweek
High Road Workweek Partnership Invites Employers to Adopt a Fair Workweek
As more retailers declare nationwide reforms to their scheduling practices – from ending on-call scheduling to providing greater advance notice – there is increased industry interest in...
As more retailers declare nationwide reforms to their scheduling practices – from ending on-call scheduling to providing greater advance notice – there is increased industry interest in understanding the impact of difficult work schedules on employees. Leading-edge employers are also starting to quantify the down-stream effects of ever-changing work schedules and excessive reliance on part-time staff, including higher turnover, chronic absenteeism, lower productivity, and unsatisfactory customer service. Many industry leaders now recognize that predictable, stable and flexible work schedules are not just good for employees, but are essential to meeting operational, sales and growth objectives.
At the Next:Economy summit, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative will unveil the High Road Workweek Partnership, a groundbreaking approach to the future of work, which meaningfully incorporates employee voice and scheduling equity values into scheduling technologies and management practices.
Achieving a High Road Workweek involves three key components:
A Partnership of Core Stakeholders: With a 360 degree view from engaging diverse stakeholders, employers can assess the impact of their current scheduling practices and envision a sustainable workweek;
The High Road Workweek Pledge: Translates core business principles into specific scheduling practices that encompass: Predictability and Stability, Adequate Hours, and Employee Input and Flexibility, and Equal Opportunity and Mobility; and
Measurable Implementation and Assessment: Innovative scheduling technologies, guidance for managers, and clear metrics will facilitate implementation of the pledge, while ongoing feedback from employees and a research-based assessment will ensure that new policies deliver the intended outcomes.
The High Road Workweek Partnership delivers lasting scheduling solutions and provides a framework for employers who want to be strongly positioned in the global economy, leveraging the latest technologies and integrating corporate social responsibility into workforce management to create meaningful employment.
“Employers of our country’s hourly workforce are at a crossroads. The worrisome scheduling trends that have come to public attention are persistent and challenging issues that affect both workers and the longevity of a company’s success. Through a meaningful collaboration with employees, a commitment to core scheduling principles, and an innovative use of workforce management metrics, any business is capable of implementing a high road workweek,” says Carrie Gleason, Director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Professor Susan Lambert of the University of Chicago, a key architect in developing the framework for scheduling stability, says, “While this year marks tremendous progress in employers recognizing the costs that lean staffing and unpredictable scheduling has for both workers and business, employers will need to implement new metrics for their managers and find ways to incorporate more employee input to ensure these commitments to reform become consistent scheduling improvements. The High Road Workweek Partnership presents an innovative approach to helping employers implement measurable standards for fair work schedules across their operations.”
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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.
www.fairworkweek.org The Fair Workweek Initiative, anchored by the Center for Popular Democracy and CPD Action, is driving the growing momentum to restore a workweek that enables working families to thrive. We are committed to elevating the voices of working people to ensure they can shape the solutions that work for their families – whether through improved industry practices or new workplace protections.
Newark Student Sit-in Lasted Through the Night at District Headquarters
NJ.com - February 18, 2015, by Naomi Nix - New Jersey Communities United organizer and NSU co-founder Thais Marques said the school district is preventing food from coming up to the students...
NJ.com - February 18, 2015, by Naomi Nix - New Jersey Communities United organizer and NSU co-founder Thais Marques said the school district is preventing food from coming up to the students during their sit-in; The students have not eaten for 12 hours, Marques said.
But Newark Public Schools spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said the district is not withholding food and that it will be available for them when they come downstairs where there is a bus waiting to take them to school.
"We encourage the kids to go to school," she said.
The youths who staged a sit-in at Newark Public Schools' headquarters Tuesday night in protest of superintendent Cami Anderson's leadership stayed the night.
"We are staying until Cami comes in to her office and faces us or until her resignation," New Jersey Communities United organizer and NSU co-founder Thais Marques said in a phone interview this morning.
The sit-in, organized by the Newark Student Union, started around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday during a Newark Public Schools Advisory Board business meeting when the students ascended to the 8th floor where Anderson's and other administrators' offices are located, said activists and board members.
The students received pizza for dinner and are awaiting donations of breakfast from area organizations, Marques said.
The students plan to hold a press conference later in the day.
Meanwhile, Newark Public Schools spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said the district is trying to work with their parent to get them to attend school.
"We appreciate the passion shown by these students, but the district strongly believes that this passion would be better served in the classroom," she said in a statement.
"NPS has reached out to their parents in an effort to get this group of students to school this morning, and we remain open to engaging in a constructive dialogue that does not compromise valuable learning time."
But Marques said the students' parents support their sit- in, and even attended Tuesday's business meeting in a show of support.
"It's kind of like a futile effort on their part because they have parent support," she said.
The activists contend that Anderson has not engaged with students and parents about the district's controversial reforms.
The union is also opposed to the district's One Newark plan, which they argue is untested and hurts neighborhood schools.
"The One Newark plan is not what we want," Marques said in an interview Tuesday evening.
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Payday lenders must be stopped from preying on the poor: Guest commentary
Payday lenders must be stopped from preying on the poor: Guest commentary
Payday lending has come under attack in recent years for exploiting low-income borrowers and trapping them in a cycle of debt. The problem has grown to such an extent that last month, the Consumer...
Payday lending has come under attack in recent years for exploiting low-income borrowers and trapping them in a cycle of debt. The problem has grown to such an extent that last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed new rules to rein in the most egregious abuses by payday lenders.
Yet payday lenders are not alone in profiting from the struggles of low-income communities with deceptive loans that, all too often, send people into crushing debt. In fact, such targeting has grown common among industries ranging from student loan providers to mortgage lenders.
For decades, redlining denied black people and other communities of color access to mortgages, bank accounts and other important services. Today, black and brown women are similarly being “pinklined” with lending schemes that deny them the opportunity for a better life.
A recent report underlines the toll these practices have taken on women of color. Among other alarming statistics, the report shows that 6 out of 10 payday loan customers are women, that black women were 256 percent more likely than their white male counterparts to receive a subprime loan, and that women of color are stuck paying off student debt for far longer than men. It also shows that aggressive lending practices from payday lending to subprime mortgages have grown dramatically in recent years.
In Los Angeles, debt is a dark cloud looming over the lives of thousands of low-income women all over the city.
Barbara took over the mortgage for her family’s home in South Central Los Angeles in 1988. She had a good job working for Hughes Aircraft until she was injured on the job in 1999 and took an early retirement. To better care for an aging mother living with her, she took out a subprime loan for a bathroom renovation.
The interest rate on the new loan steadily climbed, until she could barely afford to make monthly payments. She took out credit cards just to stay afloat, burying her under an even higher mountain of debt. To survive, she asked her brother to move in, while her son also helped out with the bills.
Numerous studies have shown that borrowers with strong credit — especially black women and Latinas — were steered toward subprime loans even when they could qualify for those with lower rates.
Women of color pay a massive price for such recklessness. The stress of dealing with debt hurts women in a variety of ways.
Alexandra, a former military officer, lost her partner, the father to her daughter, after a protracted struggle with ballooning subprime loan payments. The credit card debt she needed to take out as a result threatened her health, leaving her with hair loss, neck pain and sleep deprivation. She eventually needed to file for bankruptcy to settle the debt.
Women of color are vulnerable to dubious lenders because structural racism and sexism already puts far too many women in economically vulnerable positions. The low-wage workforce is dominated by women, and the gender pay gap is significantly worse for women of color. Many women of color are forced to take out loans just to survive or to try to improve their desperate situations.
Predatory lending practices, and other corporate practices that deny communities opportunities and exploit the most economically vulnerable, have been allowed to proliferate for far too long. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began taking action on payday and car title loans last month, but more needs to be done.
Regulators must ensure all lending takes into account the borrower’s ability to repay, and that lenders do not disproportionately target and attempt to profit off of the least protected.
The payday lending rules acted on last month are a step in the right direction but don’t go nearly far enough. We have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure black and Latina women are not exploited by the 21st century version of redlining.
Marbre Stahly-Butts is deputy director of Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, of which Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment is an affiliate.
By Marbre Stahly-Butts
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Fixing the Shift
Fixing the Shift
Hard on the heels of the Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign, a group that has won legislation or regulation changes involving work schedules in three states and seven cities is launching a drive...
Hard on the heels of the Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign, a group that has won legislation or regulation changes involving work schedules in three states and seven cities is launching a drive in Philadelphia. The Fair Workweek Initiative will kick off its campaign in Philadelphia on Tuesday, with a rally at 12th and Chestnut streets, followed by a march to City Hall, where organizers will demand that City Council pass legislation requiring fair and consistent schedules for hourly workers. Fair Workweek is an effort of the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy, which describes itself as an alliance of organizations promoting “an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
Read the full article here.
Immigration Advocates Applaud Mayor Bill De Blasio’s ID Card Plan
CBSNew York - February 11, 2014 - Undocumented immigrants and their supporters are cheering Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for creating city identification cards this year. But, as WCBS 880′s Alex...
CBSNew York - February 11, 2014 - Undocumented immigrants and their supporters are cheering Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for creating city identification cards this year. But, as WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman reported, they also want to make sure New York gets it right.
During his State of the City address Monday, de Blasio vowed to make municipal ID cards available to all residents in 2014 regardless of their immigration status, “so that no daughter or son of our city goes without bank accounts, leases, library cards, simply because they lack identification.”
“To all of my fellow New Yorkers who are undocumented, I say: New York City is your home, too, and we will not force any of our residents to live their lives in the shadows,” he said.
Aracely Cruz said she’s been waiting 10 years to hear a promise like de Blasio’s.
“I face fear every day,” she said. “I don’t trust anybody.”
Cruz was among the immigration reform proponents who gathered at a news conference Tuesday in lower Manhattan. Also in attendance were a mother who wants the freedom to walk into her child’s school and a day laborer who says he has spent 15 years in Queens with nothing to show to prove he’s part of the city.
City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, D-Brooklyn, head of the Immigration Committee, said members are drafting a bill to create the cards and plans to hold a hearing on the matter within the next month.
“We’re not going to wait for a federal government to give us reform,” he said.
“We’re tired of Congress failing us and failing our families,” said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. “And what we do in New York is we don’t wait for Congress.”
One concern advocates such as Steve Choi, executive director of the New York City Immigration Coalition, have is “we have to make sure we are ensuring trust, that the city agencies, such as the library and the police, are able to really accept these municipal ID cards without fear that folks are going to be branded somehow.”
Brittny Saunders, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, said other cities have created an incentive for citizens to also obtain the cards ”by connecting up these IDs with discounts at local businesses.”
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, agreed the ID cards should be used for all New Yorkers, not just undocumented immigrants.
“I, for one, intend to get a municipal ID because I want to use the ID that’s accessible to all New Yorkers,” she said.
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Proposed Legislation Could Grant State Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants
SILive.com - June 16, 2014, by Ryan Lavis - With the legislative session in Albany scheduled to end this week, one New York lawmaker is pushing legislation that would grant sweeping rights of...
SILive.com - June 16, 2014, by Ryan Lavis - With the legislative session in Albany scheduled to end this week, one New York lawmaker is pushing legislation that would grant sweeping rights of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and non-citizens, including the right to vote and access to healthcare.
The New York Is Home Act, sponsored by Bronx state Senator Gustavo Rivera, would provide benefits to non-citizens who meet certain criteria.
Requirements include proof of residence in New York state for at least 3 years, pledges to abide by New York laws and uphold the state constitution, as well as a willingness to serve on New York juries. Additionally, non-citizens would also have had to pay state taxes for at least 3 years.
After meeting these criteria, non-citizens would receive a form of state citizenship that includes the right to vote in all state and local elections and hold certain public offices. Additionally, they would have access to college financial aid and health insurance programs, and the ability to apply for drivers and professional licenses, according to a summary of the bill.
Staten Island Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) opposed the bill.
"Extending the privilege of voting to those in our country illegally devalues United States citizenship and further erodes the incentive to enter the country through safe and proper channels," Ms. Malliotakis said in a statement. "While some of us are fighting to protect taxpaying citizens, others are looking to give rights and benefits to non-citizens. It is a shame that during these last days of session, this is the priority of some legislators."
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) questioned the logistics of the bill, and noted the responsibility of such immigration reform should ultimately fall on Congress.
"These are issues that rightfully belong to the federal government, and we need a Congress more willing to develop comprehensive solutions to citizenship," Sen. Savino said.
According to the bill, this legislation would not interfere with the federal government's authority to regulate immigration.
The bills sponsor told the Daily News that he does not expect his legislation to pass anytime soon.
"Obviously this is not something that's going to pass immediately, but nothing as broad as this or as bold as this passes immediately," Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), told the Daily News.
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Father with ALS asks Sen. Jeff Flake on flight to oppose tax bill
Father with ALS asks Sen. Jeff Flake on flight to oppose tax bill
An activist who suffers from ALS protesting the GOP tax cuts confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) over his support for the controversial proposal and asked him to change his mind.
“Why not...
An activist who suffers from ALS protesting the GOP tax cuts confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) over his support for the controversial proposal and asked him to change his mind.
“Why not take your stand now?” Ady Barkan asked Flake as they waited for their Thursday night flight to depart Washington, D.C. “You can be an American hero. You really could — if the votes match the speech.”
Read the full article here.
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who’ve “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
...
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who’ve “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, will be heeding the call of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Sanders’ endorser and convention delegate.
“We need people running for school boards,” Ellison told the New York Times in May. “We need people running for City Council. We need people running for state legislatures. We need people running for zoning boards, for park boards, to really take this sort of message that Bernie carried and carry it in their own local communities.”
Fortunately of those seeking relevant political advice, former Seattle City Councilor Nick Licata has just published Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, & Advice For Changing Our World (Sasquatch Books, 2016). His book draws on several decades of experience as a progressive elected official and varied campus and community organizing work before that.
Like Sanders, Licata was a Sixties’ radical. He belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Bowling Green State University and learned retail politics, at the dormitory level, when he ran successfully for student government president.
Like some Sanders supporters who may become candidates in the near future, Licata had an unconventional resume when he first sought public office. He had lived in a well-known Seattle commune for twenty years and founded two alternative publishing ventures, the People’s Yellow Pages and the Seattle Sun. A Democrat with Green Party sympathies, he defeated a candidate who was backed by the mainstream media and out-spent him 2-to-1.
“In the previous 128 city council elections, only two candidates had won when both daily newspapers endorsed their opponent,” Licata reports, so “the odds didn’t look good.” Fortunately, his message that the city should invest more resources “in all neighborhoods and not concentrate them in just a few” resonated with an electoral coalition of “young renters” and “older home-owners.” Licata’s own track record of neighborhood activism gave him the necessary name recognition and grassroots street cred to win.
NIMBYism or More?
Becoming A Citizen Activist is full of useful tips about how activists and allied politicians can collaborate on issue-oriented campaigns. His book makes clear that “going local” is different from backing a presidential campaign focused on national and international questions. According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things.” By that, the author means linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
He describes how Seattle’s four years of skirmishing over plastic bag regulation originated in one neighborhood’s opposition to a new waste transfer station. What might have been just another exercise in NIMBYism evolved into a city-wide push for waste reduction, at its source, plus much greater recycling. A plastic bag fee, imposed by the city council, was overturned after a plastic bag industry-funded referendum campaign but the city’s ban on Styrofoam containers survived. In 2011, the city council passed a broad ban on single-use plastic bags, which the industry opted not to challenge either in court or at the polls.
Licata’s other examples of progressive policy initiatives include raising local labor standards, strengthening civilian oversight over the police, providing greater protection for undocumented immigrants, decriminalizing marijuana possession, and using cultural programs to foster a sense of community.
Several of his most interesting case studies reveal the tendency of legislators—even liberal-minded ones—to be overly timid and skeptical about policy initiatives that push the envelope. In 2011, for example, Licata tried to lower the expectations of constituents who met with him about a paid sick leave mandate opposed by local employers. “I cautioned that it was not likely that we’d see it anytime soon,” he admits in the book.
Yet, less than nine months later, he was “shown to be wrong.” Not only was there sufficient public support but “well organized advocacy groups” marshaled “a wealth of data to prove that the sky wouldn’t fall if paid sick leave passed.”
Several years later, when some Seattle fast food workers staged union-backed job actions to highlight their minimum wage demand, it was the same story:
“....Politicians like me were sympathetic but also felt that fifteen dollars was way too big a lift. In my own case, I thought there were more readily achievable goals—like fighting wage theft. I found myself initially offering cautious verbal support and not much more.”
What made Seattle’s “fight for fifteen” winnable was grassroots organizing by local labor organizations and left-wing activists, who were able to inject the issue into the 2013 mayoral race between incumbent Mike McGinn and his challenger, state senator Ed Murray. Shortly before the election, Murray endorsed a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour while McGinn insisted that Washington state should take action instead of the city.
Key Socialist Presence
That year, it also made a big difference to have an energetic and charismatic socialist candidate running for city council under the “Fight for Fifteen” banner. Kshama Sawant took on Richard Conlin, “a well-liked liberal politician” who cast the city council’s lone vote against paid sick leave and opposed raising the minimum wage without further study. According to Licata, Conlin, like McGinn, was defeated due to the votes of “many disaffected Democrats who wanted more aggressive council members willing to speak out on issues.”
Once elected, Sawant was quick to utilize what Licata calls “the unique means that public officials have to help mobilize the public.” Among these are holding public hearings, forming issue-oriented or constituency-based task forces and commissions, and backing ballot measures like the threatened popular referendum on “15 Now” that kept Mayor Murray and his allies from weakening minimum wage legislation more than they did in 2014.
Yet when Sawant—a generation younger than Licata—first ran against his longtime colleague, Richard Conlin, the council’s most left-leaning member didn’t support her. In Becoming a Citizen Activist, Licata now acknowledges Sawant’s unusual strengths as a radical politician, including her social media savvy, “dedicated following,” and ability to project “a message that resonated with the public.” Her tweets, blogging, and website use “helped her obtain 80 percent citywide name recognition after a year on the council, far surpassing all the other council members,” Licata reports.
According to the author, local pollsters surveying the relative popularity of city councilors prior to Seattle’s 2015 election found that Sawant’s “numbers were higher than all the others but mine, and I beat her by only one point.” These results might explain why Mayor Murray and the Seattle business community failed to unseat their Socialist Alternative critic when she ran for re-election last year, with Licata’s backing this time. (Licata himself chose to retire from the city council.)
New Forms of Organization
Readers interested in further detail about their over-lapping council careers will have to wait for American Socialist, a political memoir by Sawant (to be published by Verso next year) or Jonathan Rosenblum’s forthcoming book for Beacon Press about labor and politics in Seattle. Rosenblum worked on Sawant’s re-election campaign which, in his view, demonstrated “the indispensability of organization” and an “independent political base.”
Unlike Licata’s own more typical electoral efforts in the past, Sawant’s “campaign strategies and tactics were not directed by a single candidate or campaign manager.” Instead, Rosenblum points out, they were “developed through collective, thoughtful discussions” among Socialist Alternative members who live in Seattle and “are connected to a broader base of union and community activists.” (See http://www.alternet.org/activism/socialist-win-seattle-anomaly-or-harbinger)
One limitation of Licata’s book is the absence of any discussion about fielding slates of progressive candidates who are committed to a common platform that includes rejection of corporate contributions. To his credit, Licata did play a major role in creating the multi-city network of progressive elected officials known as Local Progress. In the Bay Area, this group includes Richmond, CA. city councilor (and former mayor) Gayle McLaughlin, whose Richmond Progressive Alliance only runs candidates who spurn business donations.
Nationally, about 400 mayors, city councilors, county supervisors, and school board members use Local Progress as a “think tank” and clearing house for alternative public policies. Assisted by the Center for Popular Democracy in New York, the group distributes a 60-page handbook for improving labor and environmental standards, housing and education programs, public safety, and municipal election practices. At annual conferences—like its national meeting in Pittsburgh on July 8-9—local victories of the sort Licata describes in his book are dissected and their lessons disseminated. (For details, see http://localprogress.org/)
Local Progress leaders believe that neither street politics nor electoral victories alone will make a sufficient dent in the status quo. As Licata told his fellow “electeds” when they met in New York two years ago, municipal government changes for the better only when progressives have “an outside and inside game...people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.” Licata’s new book provides many useful examples of that necessary synergy.
(Steve Early is a longtime labor activist and author of a forthcoming book about progressive politics in Richmond, California entitled Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Beacon Press, 2017). A version of this review appeared originally in Working In These Times, He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com)
By Steve Early
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Group in Allentown rallies for immigration reform
The Morning Call - April 6, 2013 - Whitehall Township resident Belkys Luvon doesn't expect all of America's...
The Morning Call - April 6, 2013 - Whitehall Township resident Belkys Luvon doesn't expect all of America's undocumented immigrants to be granted U.S. citizenship overnight. That's not what she and other advocates of comprehensive reform of the country's immigration laws are lobbying for — or even what they'd want.
But Luvon, who said she came to the United States legally from the Dominican Republic 29 years ago, feels it only fair that undocumented immigrants be offered legal means of gaining citizenship.
Basically, what proponents call "a path to citizenship" should be for those who have lived here, abided by the law, worked hard, raised families and otherwise contributed to the well-being of countless communities, Luvon said.
She and other Lehigh Valley residents, as well as organizers from other areas, staged a public rally for immigration reform Saturday at Allentown's Cedar Creek Park. Only a few dozen people were on hand in the early going — the event got off to a late start — but support for the cause regionally, as well as nationally, is strong, according to Tony Perlstein of the Center for Popular Democracy inWashington, D.C., which supports reform.
In addition to the event in Allentown, "speak outs" for reform were scheduled in Norristown and other parts of Pennsylvania, and across the country, Perlstein said.
Luzon — who operates a consulting business helping immigrants attain citizenship, as well as with preparing income tax returns and starting businesses of their own — said she wants more people, regardless of status, to have the kind of opportunity granted to her.
"I consider myself lucky, thank God," she said, having followed her mother to America. "I believe it is fair, after living here and working hard" — and staying out of trouble with the law, she stressed — for people to have a path to citizenship as envisioned by PresidentBarack Obama, Luzon said.
Luzon objects to the term "illegal immigrants."
"No human being is illegal," she said.
Reform supporter Erika Sutherland, a Muhlenberg Collegeprofessor, said she hopes for a comprehensive package of reforms that streamlines existing programs for attaining citizenship and gives people a way to get on the path toward citizenship.
Among the goals, she said, is "an equitable comprehensive citizenship" for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are "people contributing to our community and [who] want nothing more than the ability to stay and work."
"We are a nation of immigrants," Sutherland concluded. "We can do better."
With a group of Republican and Democratic senators working on comprehensive reform, the Center for Popular Democracy expects tens of thousands of supporters at a demonstration Wednesday in Washington in favor of reform, Perlstein said.
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