Illinois African-American Jobless Rate Among The Nation's Highest
Illinois African-American Jobless Rate Among The Nation's Highest
The African-American unemployment rate in Illinois is improving, but it is still one of the highest in the nation, shows a ...
The African-American unemployment rate in Illinois is improving, but it is still one of the highest in the nation, shows a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
The jobless rate among African Americans in Illinois declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, which covered April through June. The rate ticked down from 12.5 percent during the first quarter of 2015.
To put that 11.5 percent in perspective, the statewide unemployment rate in Illinois was 6 percent during the second quarter of 2015. In that quarter, African Americans in Illinois had the highest jobless rate followed by Hispanics at 7.9 percent, Asians at 4.8 percent and whites at 4.6 percent, according to EPI's review.
Illinois is one of only eight states in which African-American unemployment rates were at or below pre-recession levels in the second quarter of 2015. The other states were Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri.
But a closer look at the numbers shows that nearly all of those states had the highest African-American unemployment levels in the nation before the Great Recession hit.
For example, Illinois had an African-American jobless rate of 12.2 percent before the recession in the fourth quarter of 2007.
"African Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state," EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis, said in a statement. "We need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal."
EPI's analysis covered 23 states and the District of Columbia. Only two states, New Jersey and South Carolina, and the District of Columbia had higher African-American unemployments rates than Illinois in the second quarter of 2015.
Overall, the African-American unemployment rate was the highest in the District of Columbia, 14.2 percent, and the lowest in Tennessee, 6.9 percent. The rate was below 10 percent in 11 states examined by EPI.
Nationwide, the African-American unemployment rate dropped to 9.1 percent in July, the lowest level in seven years. Still, the jobless rate for African Americans remained about twice as high as the white unemployment rate of 4.6 percent.
EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) are at least two groups that say African Americans would benefit greatly in terms of employment and wage growth if the country were to achieve full employment. They have called on the Federal Reserve to pursue "genuine full employment" before raising short-term interest rates.
At some point this year, the Fed could begin to raise the rates, which were cut to near zero percent during the Great Recession to support the economy.
In a recent statement on the full employment issue, CPD's director of strategic research Connie Razza stressed that "Black America is still in the middle of a Great Recession."
"When [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good paying jobs," she said. "The direct consequences of the Fed's projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers."
"Instead," Razza continued, "the Fed could continue to push toward a tight labor market, in which the number of people looking for work more closely matches the number of jobs available. A full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace."
Source: Progress Illinois
Here's How The #AbolishICE Movement Really Got Started
"The demand to abolish ICE has existed almost since the beginning of ICE," Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, told Refinery29. "Since its creation, there...
"The demand to abolish ICE has existed almost since the beginning of ICE," Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, told Refinery29. "Since its creation, there were organizations that were saying that the inclusion of ICE as an agency that is designed specifically to separate families, put people in detention, to deport them is a dangerous development in the way we as a country relate to migration."
Read the full article here.
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-truth Era Opening Reception to Collect For Change Inauguration
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-truth Era Opening Reception to Collect For Change Inauguration
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-Truth Eramarks the inauguration of Collect For Change-an initiative which collaborates with artists across disciplines, offering artwork with a portion of...
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-Truth Eramarks the inauguration of Collect For Change-an initiative which collaborates with artists across disciplines, offering artwork with a portion of sales benefiting a charity personally selected by each artist. As a feminist response to the one-year anniversary of the current administration, the group exhibition highlights "objects" and works by female artists "objecting" to a dominant paradigm through innovative media in the feminist realm.
Featured artists Ana Teresa Fernández, Chitra Ganesh, Michelle Hartney, Angela Hennessy, Nadja Verena Marcin, Sanaz Mazinani, and Michele Pred will donate a portion of all artwork sales to Art & Abolition, The Center For Popular Democracy's Puerto Rico Rebuilding Fund, Girls Garage, Girls Inc., NARAL Pro-Choice California, Planned Parenthood, and 350.org.
Read the full article here.
The Federal Reserve Board's Plan to Kill Jobs
Truthout - March 2, 2015, by Dean Baker - There is an enormous amount of political debate over various pieces of legislation...
Truthout - March 2, 2015, by Dean Baker - There is an enormous amount of political debate over various pieces of legislation that are supposed to be massive job killers. For example, Republicans lambasted President Obama’s increase in taxes on the wealthy back in 2013 as a job killer. They endlessly have condemned the Affordable Care Act as a jobs killer. The same is true of proposals to raise the minimum wage.
While there is great concern in Washington over these and other imaginary job killers, the Federal Reserve Board is openly mapping out an actual job killing strategy and drawing almost no attention at all for it. The Fed’s job killing strategy centers on its plan to start raising interest rates, which is generally expected to begin at some point this year.
The Fed’s plans to raise interest rates are rarely spoken of as hurting employment, but job-killing is really at the center of the story. The rationale for raising interest rates is that inflation could begin to pick up and start to exceed the Fed’s current 2.0 percent target, if the Fed doesn’t slow the economy with higher interest rates.
Higher interest rates slow the economy by discouraging people from borrowing to buy homes or cars. They will also have some effect in discouraging businesses from investing. With reduced demand from these sectors, businesses will hire fewer workers. This will weaken the labor market, which means workers have less bargaining power. If workers have less bargaining power, they will be less well-situated to get pay increases. And if wages are not rising there will be less inflationary pressure in the economy.
The potential impact of Fed rate hikes on jobs is large. Suppose the Fed raises interest rates enough to shave 0.2 percentage points off the growth rate, say pushing growth for the year down from 2.4 percent to 2.2 percent. If we assume employment growth drops roughly in proportion to GDP growth, this would imply a reduction in the rate of job growth of almost 10 percent. If the economy would have otherwise created 2.4 million jobs over the course of the year, the Fed’s rate hikes would have cost the economy more than 200,000 jobs in this scenario.
For comparison purposes, we are having a big fight over the Keystone pipeline. The proponents of the pipeline point to the jobs created by building a pipeline as an important justification, even if the oil being pumped through the pipeline may cause enormous damage to the environment. According to the State Department’s analysis, building the pipeline would create 21,000 for two years. This pipeline related jobs gain has been widely touted in the media and is supposed to make it difficult for many members of Congress to go along with President Obama in opposing Keystone.
Yet, the Fed can easily destroy ten times as many jobs with a set of interest rate hikes this year with its actions passing largely unnoticed. In fact, the impact of Fed interest rate hikes on jobs can easily be far larger than this 200,000 number. If the Fed decides that the unemployment rate should not fall below a certain level (5.4 percent is a number is often used), then it could be costing the economy millions of jobs if the economy could actually sustain a considerably lower level of unemployment as it did in the late 1990s.
To be clear, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues on the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) that determines interest rates are not evil people sitting around figuring out how to ruin the lives of American workers. The Fed has a legal mandate to control inflation, in addition to its mandate to sustain high levels of unemployment. If they raise interest rates it will be because they fear inflationary pressures will build if they let the economy continue to grow and unemployment to fall.
But this is inevitably a judgment call. The call is based on both their assessment of the risk of inflation and also the relative harm from higher rates of inflation as opposed to higher rates of unemployment. It is likely that the members of the FOMC, who largely come from the financial industry, are much more concerned about inflation than the population as a whole. They are also likely to be less concerned about unemployment. These are people who tend to read about unemployment in the data, not to see it themselves or among their friends and family members.
This is why it is important that the public be paying attention to the Fed’s interest rate policies and let them know how they feel about raising interest rates to kill jobs. The Center for Popular Democracy has organized an impressive grassroots campaign around the Fed’s interest rate policies. Those who don’t want to see the government deliberately trying to kill jobs might want to join in.Source
Rate Hike Opponents Overwhelmed The Fed's Phone System
Left-leaning groups affiliated with the Fed Up campaign, including CREDO Action, the Working Families Party and Daily Kos, estimate that over...
Left-leaning groups affiliated with the Fed Up campaign, including CREDO Action, the Working Families Party and Daily Kos, estimate that over 400 of their members called the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ public comment hotline and the phone numbers of the Fed’s special economic advisers late last week and early this week to express opposition to an interest rate hike. The activists, along with many liberal economists, believe the Fed should wait for higher wage growth before raising rates.
Around 9 a.m. Monday, activists reported being unable to record additional messages on the public comment hotline because it apparently was full, according to Fed Up. This continued for another two to three hours.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ communications office declined to confirm the account or otherwise comment on the calls.
The Fed Up campaign’s opposition to an interest rate hike is part of a broader goal of making the Fed more accountable to average workers and their concerns. Fed Up convened dozens of grassroots activists to make their case to Fed officials in person at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium in late August.
The Fed’s inability to receive more phone calls confirms it is "unused to actual public engagement," Fed Up campaign director Ady Barkan wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.
The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee is meeting on Wednesday and Thursday to decide whether to raise its benchmark interest rate, and plans to announce its decision Thursday afternoon. The Fed has indicated it may decide to raise the rate slightly above the near-zero level, where it has remained since December 2008.
Proponents of an interest rate hike note that the official unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent and argue that although inflation is well under the Fed’s 2 percent target, it is better to raise rates gradually sooner to avoid having to take more dramatic action later.
Opponents of a rate hike, however, observe that the official unemployment rate does not account for people who have given up looking for work or are working part-time involuntarily. That is why they believe the declining unemployment has not been accompanied by more significant wage growth.
"Millions of working families know from their own experiences that the economy is still struggling," said Murshed Zaheed, deputy political director of CREDO Action, in an email statement. "Intentionally slowing down the economy now would reduce job creation and prevent wage growth. It’s the last thing the Fed should be doing."
Source: Huffington Post
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a ...
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a series of May Day protests scheduled to take place throughout the city (and beyond) on Monday.
The specific targets of this action, according to organizers from Make The Road New York, are the Wall Street banks that help finance private prisons and immigrant detention centers. To that end, organizers said twelve protesters were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience while blocking the entrances outside of JPMorgan Chase, which is one of the companies named in Make The Road's and the Center for Popular Democracy's Backers Of Hate campaign.
Read full article here.
Labor Activists Applaud First Statewide ‘Fair Scheduling’ Law
Starting next summer, companies in Oregon will have to give workers at least seven days’ notice about when they’ll have to work, according to legislation signed Tuesday by Governor Kate Brown. A...
Starting next summer, companies in Oregon will have to give workers at least seven days’ notice about when they’ll have to work, according to legislation signed Tuesday by Governor Kate Brown. A handful of major cities have passed “fair scheduling” laws, but Oregon is the first state to do so and the biggest victory on the issue so far for labor activists.
Read the full article here.
‘We’ll Give You Whatever We Have:’ How Organizations Are Fighting to Bring Relief to Puerto Rico
‘We’ll Give You Whatever We Have:’ How Organizations Are Fighting to Bring Relief to Puerto Rico
The sixth-floor windows wouldn’t hold in the winds, they knew. So the doctors and staff at the University Pediatric Hospital in San Juan moved the entire neonatal intensive-care unit, the NICU,...
The sixth-floor windows wouldn’t hold in the winds, they knew. So the doctors and staff at the University Pediatric Hospital in San Juan moved the entire neonatal intensive-care unit, the NICU, down three floors as Hurricane Maria closed in. The predicted damage came. Windows cracked, water poured in. The air-conditioning units blew away.
Read the full article here.
Teachers Union Questions Charter School Relationships With For-Profit Company
Teachers Union Questions Charter School Relationships With For-Profit Company
Denver’s teachers union is demanding Denver Public Schools halt the expansion of charter schools until district leaders can ensure taxpayer money is not going to for-profit corporations.
...
Denver’s teachers union is demanding Denver Public Schools halt the expansion of charter schools until district leaders can ensure taxpayer money is not going to for-profit corporations.
The request comes on the heels of a study by an advocacy organization, the Center for Popular Democracy, based in New York. It alleges Denver’s largest charter school network – the Denver School of Science and Technology – paid between $20 million and $50 million to a for-profit company for employee and personnel services for DSST schools. During this time the company was owned by two of DSST’s founding directors.
The Center for Popular Democracy group says that relationship raises concerns about conflicts of interest.
DSST and Denver Public Schools deny any wrongdoing.
The district says that neither the district, DSST nor the company benefited financially and in fact there was a net loss to the company, which the district forgave when the company dissolved.
Money for independently run public charter schools is under great scrutiny now because of pending state legislation to shift more money to charter schools.
By Jenny Brundin
Source
Arizona's Minimum-Wage Initiative Saved by Political Consultant's Inheritance
Arizona's Minimum-Wage Initiative Saved by Political Consultant's Inheritance
The campaign manager for a group trying to raise Arizona's minimum wage said on Wednesday that the effort was helped considerably by his own timely loan of $100,000.
Bill Scheel is one of...
The campaign manager for a group trying to raise Arizona's minimum wage said on Wednesday that the effort was helped considerably by his own timely loan of $100,000.
Bill Scheel is one of three founding partners of the public-relations and political-strategy firm Javelina, which Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families hired to run its campaign. The Phoenix-based firm got the job done in the form of Proposition 206, which will appear on the November 8 ballot.
Preliminary state campaign-finance records show that Bright Owl, a limited liability company of which Scheel is the sole member and manager, made a $100,000 contribution to the campaign on August 4.
Asked on Wednesday about the cash infusion, Scheel said the money is an interest-free loan, not a donation, and that it will be classified as such on the campaign's official pre-primary report, which is due to the state on Friday.
According to Scheel, the loan came in the nick of time to cover legal fees for an unexpected court challenge to the initiative, and was made possible by money he inherited after his parents died a few years ago.
"I couldn't think of a better way to honor their memory than to provide this loan, which has helped get our Healthy Working Families initiative on the ballot," he said.
If Arizona voters approve the measure, the state's minimum wage would go up to $10 an hour next year and rise to $12 in 2020.
But it almost didn't make the ballot. The Arizona Restaurant Association sued, claiming many of the petition gatherers hired by the campaign ineligible to collect signatures. The association wanted tens of thousands of signatures thrown out, potentially enough to knock the initiative off the ballot.
The campaign itself was in need of a raise.
Before Scheel's loan, the two largest payments to the campaign were a July 19 donation of $25,000 from the United Food and Commercial Workers union Region 8 States Council, and a May 12 donation of $25,000 from the California-based Fairness Project. Prior to that, records show, from January 1 to May 31, the effort was funded with $384,642 donated by the nonprofit activist group Living United for Change in Arizona, (LUCHA), which reportedly received money for the effort from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Popular Democracy.
During that same period in the first half of 2016, the group spent $337,975.59 on signature gatherers, printing services, and other expenses, including $3,000 in consulting fees paid to Tomas Robles, the campaign's chairman and LUCHA's executive director.
Scheel says the campaign pays his company $10,000 a month for campaign management, plus another $5,000 a month for communications, all of which is split by several people at Javelina.
On top of all those expenses came the legal bills for the lawsuit by the restaurant association.
"We didn't have money set aside for legal expenses," Scheel explained, adding that his loan was a "huge help" to the campaign. It was also a risk to put his own money on the line, he admitted.
"If the court had ruled against us last Friday, my $100,000 would be gone," he said. "Legal fees is basically what [the money] was spent on."
Arizona's Minimum-Wage Initiative Saved by Political Consultant's Inheritance
Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families
The group's tenacity, along with Scheel's inheritance money, paid off in the courtroom. Last week, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit because the association filed the complaint seven days after the signatures were submitted to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, exceeding the statutory limit of five days.
Now, the website for Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families lists Bright Owl as a major funding source, along with LUCHA, the UCFW, and the Fairness Project.
Scheel, who hasn't made any other contributions to the campaign, expects to be repaid out of donations that come in between now and November, he said.
"There will be future donations coming into the campaign from donors," he said. "About $1.5 million."
In response to questions from New Times, he said he hasn't made any deals with the unions and activist groups behind the campaign, nor does he expect anything in return other than repayment, if the group can manage it. His loan simply came at the right time and was a "huge help" to the legal effort that saved the initiative, he said.
"This really is a labor of love for me," Scheel said. "When I work on a campaign, I go all in. I want it to succeed."
By Ray Stern
Source
3 days ago
3 days ago