Report: City Agencies Noncompliant with Voter Registration Law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Alison R. Park (917) 805-0830, apark@populardemocracy.org; Neal Rosenstein (917) 575-4317, nrosenstein@nypirg.org; Chelsea Schuster (561) 843-0197, cschuster@citizensunionfoundation.org; Margaret Fung (212) 966-5932 x201, mfung@aaldef.org; Erik Opsal (646) 292-8356, erik.opsal@nyu.edu.
Report: City Agencies Noncompliant with Voter Registration Law in 84 Percent of Client Interactions
Voting rights coalition working with Mayor, City Council, and agency heads to improve compliance
October 21, 2014, New York, NY – City agencies are not doing enough to help New Yorkers register to vote found a new report released today by the Pro-Voter Law Coalition. The coalition of groups is led by Center for Popular Democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Citizens Union of the City of New York, and the New York Public Interest Research Group/NYPIRG.
Last summer, Mayor de Blasio issued his first Mayoral Directive aimed to improve city agency voter registration efforts. The City passed local Law 29, also known as the Pro-Voter Law, in 2000 to expand voter registration opportunities at municipal agencies. Information for the report, A Broken Promise: Agency-Based Voter Registration in New York City, was obtained through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and field investigations, and revealed a lack of compliance across city agencies with the Pro-Voter Law. Key findings included:
Widespread failure to comply with the Pro-Voter Law’s requirement to provide voter registration application forms. Specifically, city agencies failed to do so in 84 percent of client interactions;
Efforts ranged from the inconsistent administration of the Pro-Voter Law, to an almost complete lack of apparent attempts to fully administer the law at the city agencies that responded to FOIL requests;
Increased noncompliance for limited English proficient New Yorkers. Only 40 percent, or 2 out of 5, of agency clients whose primary language was not English were given translated voter registration applications as mandated by the law; and
Agency staff received no regular training on voter registration procedures mandated by the law.
“Under previous Mayoral administrations, New York City has broken its promise to city voters by failing to comply with the Pro-Voter Law, and failing to create an electorate that is truly representative of our city,” said Steven Carbó, Director of Voting Rights and Democracy Initiatives at the Center for Popular Democracy. “We are heartened by Mayor de Blasio’s recent Mayoral Directive and his strong commitment to voter registration—and we look forward to working closely with his administration to realize our shared objectives.”
“Fourteen years ago, the threat of a veto by Mayor Giuliani weakened key provisions of the Pro-Voter Law, and then Mayor Bloomberg failed to properly implement it for 12 long years,” said Neal Rosenstein, Government Reform Coordinator of NYPIRG. “It’s time for today’s Council to strengthen the law and for Mayor de Blasio to clearly break with his predecessors and make sure it’s effectively implemented. Potential city voters deserve to be able to register as easily as New Yorkers can at DMV offices across the state under the federal Motor Voter Law.”
“Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy and increasing civic engagement is essential in making sure all New Yorkers are fully represented in government,” said New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “That’s why it’s essential that the Pro-Voter Law is fully enforced and I thank the Center for Popular Democracy, Citizens Union, NYPIRG, The Brennan Center for Justice, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund for their recommendations to strengthen compliance and engage more citizens in elections.”
“Voter participation is essential to our democracy, and with plummeting voter turnout, we must ensure that New Yorkers have more convenient opportunities to register to vote,” said Dick Dadey, Executive Director of Citizens Union. “This report outlines a needed framework for a model agency voter registration program that will result in robust efforts to encourage more New Yorkers to register.”
“Nothing is more important to democracy than voter participation. These are smart strategies to break down barriers to registering to vote for those who may be least likely to do so,” said Council Member Brad Landers. “Our city is strongest when everyone’s voices are heard.”
“Long lines and Election Day chaos are potent symbols of our nation’s broken voter registration system, and our research show that the same is true here in New York City,” said DeNora Getachew, Campaign Manager and Legislative Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “Our city needs to join the growing national movement to modernize elections by requiring agencies to electronically transmit voter registration information directly to the board of elections, instead of continuing to use outdated paper forms. This digital-age solution is win-win for voters and election officials. It will increase voter registration rates, save the city money, and make voter rolls more accurate.”
“We face a crisis of non-participation in New York City: Of the 8.5 million residents of New York City, only 4.3 million are registered to vote,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “City law dictates that our government help register voters—but this report shows that, in the vast majority of cases, it simply isn't happening. City agencies must comply with the law to offer voter registration forms to New Yorkers. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, it is our democracy, if we can keep it. And the task of keeping it must involve immediate action to remedy the failures of implementation of our city’s Pro-Voter laws.”
“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the nation’s fastest growing racial group and comprise almost 14 percent of New York City’s population. Along with other communities of color and immigrant communities, these are important members of our city’s electorate who deserve to participate fully in the political process,” said Margaret Fung, Executive Director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “Compliance with the law’s language access mandates, including translated voter registration forms and bilingual staff at city agencies, is a critical first step to ensure meaningful civic engagement from all of New York’s communities.”
“Voter registration is essential to ensuring a broad and inclusive electorate,” said Javier Valdes, Co-Executive Director of Make the Road New York. “The City should do absolutely everything it can to ensure that all eligible New Yorkers have the opportunity to participate in our democracy.”
The Pro-Voter Law requires 18 city agencies and, under certain circumstances, their associated subcontractors, to provide 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.
In its report, the Pro-Voter Law Coalition made 12 recommendations including the following:
Establish comprehensive protocols by December 31, 2014 to ensure that all agencies provide voter registration applications to clients when they apply for services, renewal or recertification for services and change of address relating to such services and promptly transmit all completed voter registration applications to the NYC Board of Elections;
Require agencies to use coded voter registration forms specific to each agency. Solicit quarterly reports by the Board of Elections on the numbers of forms submitted by city agencies (a model protocol is proposed in City Council Intro 356 of 2014); and
Mandate that agency staff provide the same level of assistance in completing voter registration forms as is given to other agency transactions. This should include verbal assistance.
Members of the Pro-Voter Coalition are available for interviews with the media.
The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with 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 and economic justice agenda. Visit www.populardemocracy.org and www.twitter.com/popdemoc.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that seeks to improve our systems of democracy and justice. The Center’s work ranges from voting rights to campaign finance reform, from racial justice in criminal law to Constitutional protection in the fight against terrorism.
Citizens Union is a nonpartisan good government group dedicated to making democracy work for all New Yorkers. Citizens Union serves as a civic watchdog, combating corruption and fighting for political reform. We work to ensure fair and open elections, honest and efficient government, and a civically‐engaged public. Principled and pragmatic, Citizens Union is an independent force for constructive reform, driving policy and educating the public to achieve accountable government in the City and State of New York.
The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) is New York State's largest student-directed research and advocacy organization. NYPIRG is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit whose principal areas of concern are environmental protection, consumer rights, higher education, government reform, voter registration, mass transit and public health.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), founded in 1974, is a national organization that protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans. By combining litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing, AALDEF works with Asian American communities across the country to secure human rights for all.
Legal Experts Pan US for Disappointing Human Rights Record
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a leading voice on human rights issues worldwide, legal experts said at a forum...
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a leading voice on human rights issues worldwide, legal experts said at a forum here on Friday, from water shutoffs in Detroit and widespread police brutality to Guantanamo Bay and drone strikes. The alleged abuses include asserting immunity from and not ratifying certain international rights laws and treaties, not joining the International Criminal Court, and supporting governments with abysmal rights records of their own.
Experts at the forum, which took place at Hunter College and previewed the country’s upcoming human rights review by the United Nations, acknowledged that the U.S. is not typically considered an egregious human rights abuser. But a simple look beneath the surface, panelists said, uncovers a staggering range of human rights issues:
Lack of healthcare. Despite the Affordable Care Act’s success in promoting healthcare access, affordable health insurance is not available in many states and not accessible to undocumented immigrants. In a state like Texas, where restrictions sharply limit access to reproductive health, Latina women are twice as likely to contract cervical cancer and 30% more likely to die from it, Katrina Anderson from the Center for Reproductive Rights said.
Water shutoffs. In Detroit, 14,000 households and 38,000 people were without water at the end of 2013, according to Rob Robinson of the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, after the city implemented a program that shut off water in households that couldn’t pay their bills. More 80% of the city’s population is African American, he added, and 40% live below the poverty line.
Police brutality. The U.S. is now experiencing what it’s like to be both over-policed and under-protected, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Marbre Stahly-Butts argued. From the gripping videos capturing instances of police violence to the ensuing national outrage, there’s a new level of awareness around law enforcement abuses.
The response, which has largely centered around the implementation of body camera use by police, has felt inadequate to many, Stahly-Butts said, especially given the billions of dollars allocated to fighting terrorism overseas. “Why no war on racism?” she asked.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died as a result of a police chokehold last year, put a human face to the issue. “If there’s a crime, there should be accountability, whether you’re wearing blue jeans, a blue business suit, or a blue uniform,” she said. His tragedy, she said, was her motivation for speaking out on behalf of human rights, specifically urging police to abide by the same laws they enforce.
Indefinite detention and drone strikes. Despite an early push by President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay, 122 men remain in the prison without charge or trial. Fifty-six of these men have been cleared for transfer out of the prison, but just five transfers have taken place so far in 2015. In another counterterrorism offensive, the Obama administration has expanded the drone strike program in Pakistan and Yemen. The Center for Constitutional Rights’ Baher Azmy told the audience that the program has killed more than one thousand civilians since 2002.
Out-of-control surveillance. The U.S. government’s large-scale data dragnet, revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, is inconsistent with the universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to Faiza Patel, a co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. The “collect-it-all” approach to surveillance eviscerates privacy, Patel argued, by allowing the government to listen in on Americans’ phone calls and read text, email and other online messages without sufficient oversight.
Other speakers were more hopeful. Catherina Albisa, a human rights lawyer with the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, said the U.S. began as a fierce champion of human rights and described an “emerging landscape” of young people and protesters committed to economic justice through human rights. But government commitments to those rights have languished, Albisa argued, noting America’s “manufactured” water crisis and the closing of abortion clinics in Texas as evidence of deteriorating rights for U.S. residents.
Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, went further, suggesting the U.S. government undermines human rights standards. The U.S. is an active participant in the United Nation’s human rights review process, she explained, but the last set of recommendations resulted in zero domestic reforms. That lack of responsiveness could undermine the review’s credibility going forward, she warned.
The U.S. is set to undergo its second United Nations review in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 11.
Source
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), told me. (Archila was one of the...
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), told me. (Archila was one of the women who passionately confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator last week during the Senate hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, shortly before the senator urged an FBI investigation into the sexual-assault allegations.) Together with Make the Road New York (MRNY), CPD published an alarming data brief estimating that if the administration were able to effectively implement its “zero-tolerance” policy—its attempt to prosecute all people who cross the border outside of a port of entry—the number of migrants in private detention centers would rocket from between 290 to 580 percent in the next two years.
Read the full article here.
New York City's Undocumented Immigrants Will Get Municipal IDs, Says Mayor De Blasio
Huffington Post - February 10, 2014 - New York City's undocumented immigrants will soon be able to obtain municipal ID cards, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.
"We will protect the...
Huffington Post - February 10, 2014 - New York City's undocumented immigrants will soon be able to obtain municipal ID cards, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.
"We will protect the almost half-million undocumented New Yorkers, whose voices too often go unheard," the mayor said during his first State of the City speech. "We will reach out to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status -- issuing municipal ID cards available to all New Yorkers this year -- 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."
"La ciudad de Nueva York es el hogar de todos los que vivimos aqui. No dejaremos que ninguno de nuestros residentes viva en las sombras," de Blasio repeated in Spanish, a nod to the city's large Latino population.
A source in the mayor's office told Spanish-language El Diario la Prensa on Monday that de Blasio will officially submit the proposal soon.
The city ID card would not operate as a driver's license, nor would it be accepted as a form of identification by federal agencies.
It does fulfill one of de Blasio's many campaign promises. "These identification cards will also help foster better relations between the police and undocumented people, who often choose not to report crimes out of fear they may be deported," reads a section of de Blasio's campaign website from last year. "In New Haven, Connecticut -- which offers a municipal ID to undocumented people -- crime in the largely-immigrant Fair Haven community declined 20 percent in the two years after the IDs were introduced, even as crime-reporting increased."
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito told Politicker she has “full confidence” that “a universal ID will become a reality as soon as possible.”
Ten other cities across the country including San Francisco, Trenton, and Washington, D.C. have already created their own municipal ID programs.
New York State Senators Adriano Espaillat (D) and Jose Peralta (D), both of New York City, expressed support for de Blasio's proposal in a joint statement. They also took the opportunity to advance another cause: allowing immigrants to apply for drivers licenses. From the statement:
"...it is unacceptable that hardworking immigrants are made to break the law in order to commute to work or take their kids to school," they wrote. "Providing undocumented immigrants the opportunity to obtain drivers licenses will ensure that all New York drivers are properly credentialed, educated and operating registered, inspected and insured vehicles, making our roads safer and benefiting all New Yorkers."
De Blasio himself has previously supported allowing undocumented immigrants in New York to apply for driver's licenses.
Source
Let’s Be Real Episode 6: We’re Fed Up!
Let’s Be Real Episode 6: We’re Fed Up!
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people and people of color. We take you to a rally in front of the Federal Reserve...
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people and people of color. We take you to a rally in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where we spoke with two protesters about how the Fed impacts their communities. Then, we sit down with the Director of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up! Campaign to hear about the fight to put working people and communities of color at the center of the Fed’s decision-making process.
Read the full article here.
The Perils of Ever-Changing Work Schedules Extend to Children’s Well-Being
Abercrombie & Fitch announced last week that it would stop requiring workers to be on call for shifts that could be canceled with little notice, making it the latest retailer to pull back from...
Abercrombie & Fitch announced last week that it would stop requiring workers to be on call for shifts that could be canceled with little notice, making it the latest retailer to pull back from such scheduling practices.
Williams-Sonoma ended on-call shifts in the last several months, while Gap has scaled back the practice ahead of a study it has commissioned on scheduling. Last year, Starbucks announced that it was bringing more “stability and consistency” to its employees’ hours after an article in The New York Times highlighted the company’s habit of giving workers little advance notice on their schedules and requiring some to close and open stores in consecutive shifts, known as “clopening.”
Although the workers directly affected by unpredictable schedules are the most obvious winners, the biggest beneficiaries of a change in the practice could be their children.
A growing body of research suggests that children’s language and problem-solving skills may suffer as a result of their parents’ problematic schedules, and that they may be more likely than other children to smoke and drink when they are older.
“Young children and adolescents of parents working unpredictable schedules or outside standard daytime working hours are more likely to have inferior cognitive and behavioral outcomes,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal advocacy group, said last week in a report.
Last year, two Democratic representatives introduced the Schedules That Work Act, which would require employers to give workers more say about their hours and provide them with incentives to encourage more stable schedules.
“We are all talking about this today,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, who is one of the bill’s lead sponsors. “Five years ago, it was an issue people would have brushed to the corner.” The bill has 69 co-sponsors; two Democrats also introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
Among the needs that policy makers and activists working on the issue identify is finding stable, professional child care on a schedule that shifts from week to week.
“The arrangements families put together are usually ad hoc,” Ms. DeLauro said. “They have to rely on other family members, friends. If something breaks down in that chain, they have a problem.”
While all shifting schedules pose a challenge in this regard, on-call work may be unique in the way it complicates child care arrangements.
Kris Buchmann of Albuquerque worked a retail job at a local mall when her son, now 3 ½, was about 1 year old. She said she was frequently scheduled for on-call shifts that never materialized or that lasted less than an hour when they did.
“I still had to pay a babysitter,” said Ms. Buchmann, who is active in a New Mexico organizing group called Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, or OLÉ. “Sometimes I would have to go pick her up, take her back to my house because she didn’t have transportation, drive to work, get sent home, still have to pay her, and drive her home.”
When Ms. Buchmann demanded a more stable schedule, her employer refused, an experience that is not uncommon. After that, she left the job.
As practices like unpredictable scheduling have proliferated in recent years, fed by a shift toward lean staffing models made possible by sophisticated software, they have attracted public criticism.
In a nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll in May, 72 percent of Americans favored requiring chain stores to provide at least two weeks’ notice for any change in schedule, or else compensate workers with extra pay.
Regulators have also taken notice. In April, the office of the New York State attorney general sent letters to 13 retailers, questioning their use of on-call shifts. The letters, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, said retailers were providing workers with “too little time to make arrangements for family needs, let alone to find an alternative source of income to compensate for the lost pay.”
Several companies that received letters from the New York attorney general have denied that they use on-call scheduling for low-wage workers, or that it is common in their stores. Some retailers say that only a small fraction of their workers who have been on unpredictable schedules care for children.
“Very few of our store associates are working parents,” said Michael Scheiner, a spokesman for Abercrombie & Fitch, which was among the letter’s recipients.
But the problem appears to be widespread. A 2012 study of nonfood retail workers in New York City by Stephanie Luce of the City University of New York and by the Retail Action Project, a workers’ advocacy group, found that more than half of the surveyed workers who cared for others, like children or elderly family members, had to make themselves available for last-minute shifts.
Because the practice is relatively new, however, scholars must infer its likely impact from research over the last decade showing the effects on children of parents working nonstandard hours, including night shifts, that have been more common for years.
In one of the most respected studies, published in 2005 in the journal Child Development, Prof. Wen-Jui Han of New York University looked at children during their first three years of life, controlling for such demographic variables as their mothers’ income, education, and race and ethnicity.
Professor Han, who was then at Columbia University, found that children of mothers who worked nonstandard schedules performed lower on problem-solving, verbal comprehension and spoken language tests than children of mothers who worked traditional schedules. Part of the explanation, she concluded, was increased stress on the part of the parents.
“Parents try their best to attend to their children in a sensitive and warm manner, but the physical and emotional exhaustion from nonstandard schedules makes it difficult,” Professor Han said in an interview. “With young children, if they’re crying, asking for food, asking for something, it’s all about how you interact with them.”
Another key issue, she found, was access to quality child care. Children whose mothers worked nonstandard schedules during their first year of life were significantly less likely to be enrolled in professional day care centers throughout early childhood. This type of child care setting, she noted in the paper, tends to be associated with better cognitive development than informal arrangements like relying on extended family members, a frequent alternative.
As for adolescents, Professor Han and two colleagues published a second paper, in the journal Developmental Psychology in 2010, which said that the longer mothers worked odd hours, the more likely their children were to smoke, drink, act out and engage in sexual activity.
The specific effect of on-call work and other frequently changing schedules — as opposed to work hours that fall outside the traditional workday — is only beginning to be studied, but social scientists worry that it has similar implications for children.
In a study of female workers at a large clothing retailer published last year in the Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Julia R. Henly and Susan J. Lambert of the University of Chicago found that the unpredictability of the workers’ schedules was related to higher stress and difficulties juggling work and family demands.
While the study did not examine the way this affected children, Dr. Henly suggested that the challenges posed by unpredictable work hours could take a toll on children as well. She also predicted that mothers with constantly changing work schedules would be less likely to enroll their children in preschool and other high-quality child care facilities.
“Some amount of early childhood education is important,” she said. “But it’s impossible to take advantage of those opportunities if you have a schedule that doesn’t allow you to get your kid there.”
According to Carrie Gleason of the Center for Popular Democracy, a nonprofit organization that helps community groups organize, such complications may explain why there appear to be fewer parents who work on-call shifts.
“A lot of times we find that they don’t last very long,” she said. “It’s absolutely impossible for working parents to meet their responsibilities to their families and hold down a job at a company with on-call shifts.”
Still, even parents who don’t work on-call jobs often have little advance notice of their schedules. In many companies that officially promise to make schedules available in advance, Ms. Gleason said, “managers edit the schedule up until the hours someone is supposed to come in.”
Correction: August 14, 2015
Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about the effects on children of their parents’ unpredictable work schedules misstated part of the name of a group in which Kris Buchmann, who left a retail job because of the difficulties in arranging child care, is active. It is Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, not Organizers in the Land of Enrichment.
Source: New York Times
It’s true: HUD policy really does hurt our neighborhoods
It’s true: HUD policy really does hurt our neighborhoods
HUD has a program that sells tens of thousands of troubled mortgages across the country, many in black and Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the housing crisis, to Wall Street speculators - at a...
HUD has a program that sells tens of thousands of troubled mortgages across the country, many in black and Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the housing crisis, to Wall Street speculators - at a discount! Please let that sink in.
Since 2010, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been auctioning off pools of very delinquent mortgages through a program they call Distressed Asset Sales Program, or DASP. In most cases, the sales have gone to the highest bidder, which have been hedge funds and private equity firms.
Lone Star Fund, a private equity firm started by a Texas billionaire, and Bayview Asset Management, an affiliate of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, have been two of the primary beneficiaries of these sales. The result? Struggling homeowners lose their homes and speculators turn the properties into high-cost rentals that contribute to displacement in communities across the country.
This month, over 110,000 people from across the country signed a petition calling on HUD Secretary Julian Castro, to change this program. This comes on the heels of a March 1st letter to HUD from 45 members of Congress issuing a similar call for reforms to this mortgage sale program. In fact, for over two years, housing advocates and national policy groups have been pushing HUD to fix this program.
In an interview on WNYC Studio’s “The New York Radio Hour,” Secretary Castro referred to our protests that his program is enriching Wall Street as “sloganeering.” We wish that were the case. Unfortunately, it is simply a fact that 98% of the mortgages sold through HUD’s DASP program are going to Wall Street, one that can be verified on HUD’s own website where they post reports from these sales. Most, if not all, of these Wall Street buyers are what the industry itself calls “vulture capitalists” – investors that specialized in distressed assets in the hopes of making them more profitable and selling them for a profit.
In an effort to suggest that he has addressed the problem, Secretary Castro touts the agency’s 2015 auctions of troubled mortgages in which only non-profits were eligible to bid. Let’s be clear. Only 172 mortgages were sold to non-profits through these auctions, while a whopping 15,309 went to Wall Street investors in 2015. So yes, a gesture was made by the agency, but at such a miniscule scale he surely cannot suggest that the problem is solved.
There is no reason to sell such a high percentage of these loans to some of the same culprits responsible for the housing crisis in the first place. In fact, it seems to be in direct conflict with HUD’s mission to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. Call me skeptical, but I don’t trust a private equity firm like Blackstone – a company whose CEO made $734 million last year - to help fulfill that mission. Blackstone and other major speculators have a goal of making as much money as possible, and in the process are chipping away at the wealth and stability of neighborhoods in the process.
There is a viable alternative, that housing and civil rights groups across the country are calling for. HUD should prioritize selling these loans to good actors that have a community-centered plan to save homes from foreclosure when possible and, when foreclosure cannot be avoided, to meet the affordable housing needs of the community with their property disposition plans.
A growing number of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have programs to do just this, and have raised the capital needed to buy pools of these delinquent mortgages. But so far, they haven’t been able to get their hands on the number of mortgages that they can afford. HUD should do all it can to make sure CDFIs and other good actors are prioritized for these sales.
I have seen too many people in my community lose their homes and their wealth to Wall Street speculators. We cannot allow the same policies that ravaged our communities to continue. For me the choice is very clear: will Secretary Castro make sure that HUD helps families stay in their homes, or will he allow HUD to continue to sign over these loans to Wall Street and fuel neighborhood displacement?
It’s time for HUD to make the right choice and partner with non-profit CDFIs and other organizations that will keep our neighborhoods together. I encourage everyone who cares about the stability of neighborhoods across the country to join with me in calling on Secretary Castro and HUD to change the DASP program so that it prioritizes foreclosure avoidance and the creation of affordable housing.
By Ana Maria Archila
Source
Jóvenes dreamers envían contundente mensaje a políticos demócratas de California
Jóvenes dreamers envían contundente mensaje a políticos demócratas de California
Un grupo de soñadores se dieron cita para pedir a líderes políticos que defiendan el Dream Act ante el gobierno. De no hacerlo, apoyarán y buscarán la ayuda de otros legisladores, afirmaron.
...Un grupo de soñadores se dieron cita para pedir a líderes políticos que defiendan el Dream Act ante el gobierno. De no hacerlo, apoyarán y buscarán la ayuda de otros legisladores, afirmaron.
Mira el video aquí.
Progressive Activists Take A Seat For The People At Federal Reserve Retreat
Progressive Activists Take A Seat For The People At Federal Reserve Retreat
Two years ago this week, the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy and allied groups launched the Fed Up campaign, aimed at making the Federal Reserve more accountable to workers and communities...
Two years ago this week, the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy and allied groups launched the Fed Up campaign, aimed at making the Federal Reserve more accountable to workers and communities of color. They converged then on the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming, where Fed officials decamp every year to discuss policy and hobnob with the economic elite.
How much political headway has the campaign made since then? This year, Fed Up activists were essentially put on the schedule for senior Federal Reserve officials, with a major meeting at the Jackson Hole summit.
The group met Thursday, the first day of the summit, with eight of the 12 presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks and two members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Fed Up activists have met individually with the governors and regional bank presidents before; they spoke with some Fed officials less formally at the past two Jackson Hole gatherings. This is the first time, however, that their delegation of some 120 rank-and-file activists had met with so many of the central bank’s decision-makers in one place.
“It is kind of like a mini-FOMC,” said Fed Up campaign manager Jordan Haedtler prior to the event, likening it to a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policymaking body.
The progressive campaign is calling for the central bank to wait for the economic recovery to reach more broadly across America before raising its benchmark interest rate again, a move that slows the pace of economic growth to head off price inflation.
It has also criticized the Fed for the lack of racial, gender and professional background diversity among its senior officials, arguing that only a central bank that looks like America can craft policy in the best interests of all citizens.
The Fed officials at the meeting were Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which hosts the annual symposium; New York Fed president William Dudley; Dallas Fed president Robert Kaplan; Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari; Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester; Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren; San Francisco Fed president John Williams; Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker, and Fed governors Stanley Fischer and Lael Brainard.
“They were really impressed with how well prepared we were,” said Haedtler after the meeting. “They were heartened by the discussion.”
“We’ll see how things go in September,” he added, referring to the next opportunity for an interest rate hike.
Bill Medley, a spokesman for the Kansas City Fed, also gave positive feedback about the meeting.
“It was a productive dialogue, as it always is, and we look forward to continuing the conversation,” Medley said.
Fed Up has had a banner year so far. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton embraced the broad contours of its platform in May after weeks of private discussion with group representatives.
“Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue,” a Clinton spokesman said at the time.
But Clinton stopped short of signing on to a bolder reform proposal that Fed Up rolled out in April, which would turn the central bank system into an entirely public institution. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is already a federal agency, whose top officials are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But the 12 regional banks it supervises are owned by the private financial institutions they serve. (Fed Up released a more detailed version of its idea on Monday.)
The private nature of these banks is a major reason why they are run overwhelmingly by white men with backgrounds in finance, Fed Up argues. There has never been a black or Latino president of one of the regional banks, the group notes in its reform proposal, and one-third of the current bank heads are alumni of Wall Street power player Goldman Sachs.
Fed Up’s moment at this year’s Jackson Hole symposium was not without its hiccups.
Earlier this month, Fed Up were informed that the Jackson Lake Lodge had canceled over a dozen of its room reservations. The hotel said a “computer glitch” had led to the overbooking of 18 rooms. But the fact that 13 of those rooms were booked by Fed Up raised concerns that they were being targeted.
Although the activists found lodging at a nearby resort, Fed Up filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, and members of Congress sympathetic to their cause sent Fed Chair Janet Yellen a letter asking for an explanation.
In an apparent gesture of detente, George, the Kansas City Fed president, offered Fed Up the big meeting, and the campaign withdrew its objections to the lodging snafu.
Fed Up agreed also to limit its presence in the lodge’s halls during a scheduled cocktail hour. In the past, activists have clustered inside the hotel to confront Fed officials in person. The group held a press conference-cum-rally outside the lodge before Thursday’s meeting. It also plans to run teach-in seminars and to canvass the city’s low-income neighborhoods to spread the word about Fed reform.
But Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager, wanted to focus on Thursday’s meeting. It is evidence, he said, that his fledgling movement’s priorities have made it into the mainstream.
“We have clearly reshaped the discourse,” Haedtler said.
By Daniel Marans
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Rivera and Camara Push 'Ambitious' Bill for Noncitizen Voting
Capital NY - June 16, 2014, By Nidhi Prakash - With just four remaining days in the state legislative session, sponsors of a new bill to grant citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants said...
Capital NY - June 16, 2014, By Nidhi Prakash - With just four remaining days in the state legislative session, sponsors of a new bill to grant citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants said they hope to begin building momentum for next session.
“First of all, this is obviously not something that is going to pass by the end of this week," said State Senator Gustavo Rivera, at a press conference in Battery Park City. "This was never about this particular legislative session. We’ve been working on it for almost two years, it’s a bold idea and we wanted to make sure it was thought out."
The bill, titled the New York is Home Act, would make it legal for undocumented immigrants in New York State to vote in local and state elections, get professional and drivers' licenses, and make them eligible for state-funded Medicaid and financial aid for higher education.
“What we’re doing today is we’re starting a conversation not only in New York, but hopefully across the country,” said Rivera, who was joined at the press conference by representatives from the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York.
Senator Rivera said he was choosing this moment to introduce the bill, despite nearing the end of the legislative session, partly because of a lack of movement in Washington on immigration reform. He pointed to the defeat last week of Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party candidate who criticized Cantor's support for limited immigration reform.
But some progressives have also balked at provisions in the proposed bill. Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for municipal ID cards for undocumented immigrants, but said last year he's "not comfortable" with the idea of noncitizen voting.
“We are certainly asking for everyone in the Senate and the Assembly as well as in other sectors—the mayor and the governor—to support it, and we will have conversations with them going forward," Rivera said. "We are just starting the conversation."
Assembly Member Karim Camara, the bill’s sponsor in the Assembly, said the broad scope of the bill could help other stalled measures, like the Dream Act and a bill to allow undocumented immigrants access to drivers' licenses.
“We’re hoping that by looking at this big picture, and this is probably one of the most ambitious efforts over at least the last decade or two, maybe those smaller pieces now seem like they’re not that big of a deal,” said Camara.
Camara said he hoped the bill would create momentum for other immigration reform initiatives by the start of the next legislative session.
“We didn’t break it into priorities in this bill, but we’re hoping that by looking at this overarching bill it’ll perhaps make those other smaller bills easier—drivers' license, Dream Act, et cetera,” he said.
Camara blamed the balance of power in the Senate for those bills being unsuccessful in the past, and said if that was to change there may be more hope for immigration reform on a state level.
“The Republican-led Senate has been a main challenge," he said. "We would have passed it this year if it was not for that. So of course there is that elephant in the room, that political dynamic that we can’t avoid, and if that’s not the case then we’ll appeal to individuals’ reason."
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