Presentan plan para obtener la ciudanía estatal en NY El proyecto concedería a los indocumentados neoyorquinos gran parte de los derechos que otorga la ciudadanía federal
El Diario - June 16, 2014 by Juan Matossian - Nueva York - Ante la inoperancia del Congreso para aprobar una reforma migratoria federal, legisladores neoyorquinos presentaron el lunes una...
El Diario - June 16, 2014 by Juan Matossian - Nueva York - Ante la inoperancia del Congreso para aprobar una reforma migratoria federal, legisladores neoyorquinos presentaron el lunes una propuesta para conceder la ciudanía estatal a los casi 2.7 millones de indocumentados del estado de Nueva York.
El proyecto de ley “New York is Home” (Nueva York es el hogar) concedería a los indocumentados neoyorquinos gran parte de los derechos que otorga la ciudadanía federal. Entre ellos, la posibilidad de tramitar una licencia para manejar, de obtener licencia profesional para trabajar, solicitar ayudas para estudiar en la universidad, acceder a cuidado de salud a través del Medicaid estatal, o de votar en las elecciones municipales y estatales.
“El estado debe de reconocer las contribuciones que hacen los residentes no ciudadanos que cumplen las reglas, trabajan aquí y pagan sus impuestos”, dijo el senador estatalGustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), que introdujo la medida en la legislatura estatal junto al asambleísta Karim Camara (D–Brooklyn). “La inclusión de los inmigrantes en nuestro sistema político y económico nos beneficiaría, mientras su exclusión nos perjudica a todos”.
Si la ley es aprobada, los indocumentados deberían cumplir una serie de requisitos para ser elegibles para la ciudadanía estatal. Los principales serían tener una prueba de identidad, demostrar que se ha residido al menos tres años en el estado y que se han pagado los impuestos durante ese tiempo, y un compromiso de cumplir las leyes neoyorquinas y la constitución estatal.
Las posibilidades de que la propuesta salga adelante son escasas, después que Albany ha rechazado o ni siquiera ha querido votar medidas menos ambiciosas de ayuda para los inmigrantes, como el DREAM Act o la licencia de manejar para indocumentados. Además, la legislatura estatal cierra su curso legislativo esta misma semana, por lo que la ley no podrá ser votada hasta el otoño.
El otro gran objetivo que persiguen los impulsores de la propuesta, que está respaldada por una gran coalición de organizaciones pro inmigrantes como Make the Road New York o Hispanic Federation, es que otros estados también presenten sus planes paralelos y seguir metiendo presión al Congreso para que vote la reforma migratoria.
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Bring Me The News
A group of Minnesota lawmakers will focus on closing racial disparities in the state.
Sen. Jeff Hayden and Sen. Bobby Joe Champion will co-chair the new...
A group of Minnesota lawmakers will focus on closing racial disparities in the state.
Sen. Jeff Hayden and Sen. Bobby Joe Champion will co-chair the new Subcommittee on Equity (which is part of the larger Finance Committee), according to a news release.
There are 15 lawmakers on the new subcommittee (nine DFLers, six Republicans) – you can see a full roster here. The subcommittee’s schedule will be posted here, though right now there are no meetings listed for the next two months.
The Senate DFL Caucus appointed the members, who will look to “address the complex and multifaceted challenges of racial and economic disparities,” according to a message from Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk’s office.
Racial disparities in Minnesota
There are serious problems when it comes to racial disparities in the state.
Unemployment among the black community in Minnesota continued to rise last year despite the decreasing unemployment rates for Hispanic and white people, according to the Department of Employment and Economic Development.
State numbers released last fall showed the average income of Minnesota’s African-Americans is falling and is now less than half of what white residents are making, with more than one-third of black households living in poverty.
Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country – with the jobless rate among blacks almost 3.7 times higher than among whites, according to a study released last year by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Financial site WalletHub ranked Minnesota as the worst state in the U.S. when it comes to racial integration, saying it has some of the highest racial gaps when it comes to median annual income, homeownership, the poverty rate and more.
All this (and more) led lawmakers to consider addressing racial inequity in a possible special session – but during talks, Gov. Mark Dayton noted there was “significant disagreement” between lawmakers on how to address the problem. And then the special session didn’t happen anyway. So if something gets done, it could be in the current Legislative session.
Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed budget includes $100 million to address racial disparities in the state, by expanding workforce programs, helping college completion and increasing home ownership among minorities, the Pioneer Press reported.
By Shaymus McLaughlin
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Tipirneni Gains Momentum In Last Week Of CD8 Special Elections, Outraises Lesko
Tipirneni Gains Momentum In Last Week Of CD8 Special Elections, Outraises Lesko
The democrat gained her financial advantage mostly through small donors, but also recently received support from healthcare activist Ady Barkan, who launched a six-figure ad campaign supporting...
The democrat gained her financial advantage mostly through small donors, but also recently received support from healthcare activist Ady Barkan, who launched a six-figure ad campaign supporting her bid for congress. Barkan’s group, Be A Hero plans on supporting Democratic candidates across the nation, starting with Tiperneni’s campaign in CD8.
Read the full article here.
2 Women Who Confronted Jeff Flake About Kavanaugh Vote in an Elevator Credited for 1 Week Delay
2 Women Who Confronted Jeff Flake About Kavanaugh Vote in an Elevator Credited for 1 Week Delay
Before Sen. Jeff Flake reversed his guarantee of a “yes” vote for Brett Kavanaugh and demanded an FBI investigation into the allegations, he was confronted by two women who said they were...
Before Sen. Jeff Flake reversed his guarantee of a “yes” vote for Brett Kavanaugh and demanded an FBI investigation into the allegations, he was confronted by two women who said they were survivors of sexual assault.
“Don’t look away from me. Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies,” Maria Gallagher angrily told Flake.
Gallagher, 23, was accompanied by activist Ana Maria Archila, who broke through a group of reporters to speak with him in an elevator.
Read the full article here.
Hearing on charter schools brings out varied opinions
State Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale got an earful during a daylong meeting in Philadelphia on Friday on ways to...
State Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale got an earful during a daylong meeting in Philadelphia on Friday on ways to improve the accountability and effectiveness of charter schools.
Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, warned that if Harrisburg passed pending legislation that would permit the unlimited growth of charters, the cost to the district would be so devastating that it might not be able to manage its own schools.
Lawrence Jones Jr., head of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School in Southwest Philadelphia, said the state needs to provide equitable funding for both district and charter schools.
"This grand experiment is one that is about to collapse under its own weight, because we are doing such a poor job in oversight," said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth.
Kyle Serrette, education director for the Washington-based Center for Popular Democracy, said his organization was stunned by the number of federal fraud cases involving charter officials that have occurred in Pennsylvania in recent years.
His group, which works with community groups and unions, called for "a comprehensive investigation that allows the public, regulators, and legislators to better understand the depth of the problem" to improve oversight.
And Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz told the auditor general that his office is taking another look at the district's charter school office and a group of city charter schools.
The review, which he expects to be completed in a few months, is a follow-up to a study his office completed in 2010 which found that the charter office "was not doing its job" overseeing the schools and that questionable practices were rampant at 13 charters it reviewed.
It was the fifth and final meeting that DePasquale has held across the state to gather input on improving the state's 174 taxpayer-funded charters, which enroll 120,000 students.
Philadelphia is home to 86 charters with 67,000 students.
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The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse
The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse
Escalating Fraud Warrants Immediate Federal and State Action to Protect Public...
The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And AbuseEscalating Fraud Warrants Immediate Federal and State Action to Protect Public Dollars and Prevent Financial MismanagementDownload the report hereApril 2015Executive SummaryA year ago, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) issued a report demonstrating that charter schools in 15 states—about one-third of the states with charter schools—had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past 12 months, millions of dollars of new alleged and confirmed financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools have come to light, bringing the new total to over $200 million.Despite the tremendous ongoing investment of public dollars to charter schools, government at all levels has failed to implement systems that proactively monitor charter schools for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. While charter schools are subject to significant reporting requirements by various public offices (including federal monitors, chartering entities, county superintendents, and state controllers and auditors), very few public offices regularly monitor for fraud.The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers, reporters, and investigations suggests that the fraud problem extends well beyond the cases we know about. According to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state, and local governments stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015.b 1 The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.Setting up systems that detect and deter charter school fraud is critical. Investments in strong oversight systems will almost certainly offset the necessary costs. We recommend the following reforms:
Mandate audits that are specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers. Clear planning-based public investments to ensure that any expansions of charter school investments ensure equity, transparency, and accountability. Increased transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.State and federal lawmakers should act now to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. While the majority of state legislative sessions are coming to an end, there is an opportunity to address the charter school fraud problem on a federal level by including strong oversight requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, some ESEA proposals do very little reduce the vulnerabilities that exist in the current law. If the Act is passed without the inclusion of the reforms outlined in this report, taxpayers stand to lose millions more dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.Download the report here
Más ciudades deben tomar las riendas sobre el salario mínimo
Este mes, el alcalde de la ciudad de Nueva York Bill de Blasio anunció un sueldo mínimo garantizado de $15 para todos los empleados del gobierno municipal para fines de 2018. Esta es una gran...
Este mes, el alcalde de la ciudad de Nueva York Bill de Blasio anunció un sueldo mínimo garantizado de $15 para todos los empleados del gobierno municipal para fines de 2018. Esta es una gran victoria para más de 50,000 empleados en toda la ciudad que pasan apuros para mantener a su familia, incluidos aquellos directamente en planilla y decenas de miles que trabajan en organizaciones sin fines de lucro contratadas por la ciudad.
A diferencia de Seattle y Los Ángeles, donde los funcionarios municipales tienen el poder para aumentar el sueldo mínimo de todos los empleados de su ciudad, el alcalde De Blasio no puede aumentar los salarios de todos los trabajadores de la ciudad de Nueva York unilateralmente. El gobernador Andrew Cuomo y la legislatura estatal tienen ese poder. Los esfuerzos del gobernador por incrementar el salario mínimo a $15 se están viendo obstaculizados por el Senado estatal, que está controlado por los republicanos.
La decisión de De Blasio de aumentar los sueldos de los empleados municipales es un paso independiente crucial hacia una ciudad más equitativa y debe inspirar a otras ciudades en el país. También refleja el poder e ímpetu de un movimiento revolucionario encabezado por los trabajadores que exigen salarios más altos en todo el país.
Incluso mientras los gobiernos estatales y el gobierno federal arrastran los pies con respecto al asunto inevitable de un salario mínimo decente para las familias trabajadoras en los Estados Unidos, el audaz paso que dio De Blasio muestra que las ciudades pueden y deben tomar las riendas del problema.
El aumento del salario mínimo por el alcalde se produjo poco después de su anuncio el mes pasado de que a los 20,000 empleados no sindicalizados de la ciudad se les otorgaría seis semanas de licencia remunerada por maternidad/paternidad y hasta 12 semanas, cuando se combine con licencias existentes. El alcalde ahora ha pasado a negociar los mismos beneficios con los sindicatos de la ciudad. Nuevamente, los trabajadores del sector privado de la ciudad de Nueva York deben esperar a que Albany o Washington, D.C. tome medidas con respecto a licencia familiar pagada para todos.
Las medidas recientes del alcalde De Blasio apoyan su objetivo de sacar a 800,000 neoyorquinos de la pobreza durante los próximos diez años. Más de 20 por ciento de la población de la ciudad vive en condiciones de pobreza, un enorme sector de una ciudad normalmente relacionada con extraordinaria riqueza.
En los dos últimos años se ha visto un ímpetu sin paralelo de parte de los propios trabajadores exigiendo sueldos decentes, desde la ciudad de Nueva York hasta Los Ángeles y Chicago, lo que resultó en aumentos salariales para los trabajadores de negocios de comida rápida y otros grupos.
Los trabajadores no esperan pacientemente a los funcionarios públicos; se están organizando de manera sin precedente. Alcaldes progresistas como De Blasio están respondiendo con políticas sensatas, mientras los funcionarios que no desean responder ya saben lo que se viene. Ciudades como Los Ángeles, Nueva York y Chicago están preparando el terreno y mostrando que es posible actuar independientemente de gobiernos estatales y el gobierno federal.
Además, varios estados han promulgado leyes que aumentan el salario mínimo por encima del mísero estándar de $7.25 por hora. Actualmente se realizan campañas en 14 estados y cuatro ciudades para aumentar el sueldo mínimo y los estándares a favor de los trabajadores. El ímpetu se está convirtiendo en una avalancha que tendrá consecuencias profundas en las elecciones presidenciales del 2016.
Casi la mitad de los trabajadores del país ganan menos de $15 por hora y 43 millones se ven forzados a trabajar cuando están enfermos o tienen la necesidad urgente de cuidar a alguien, o de lo contrario, ponen en peligro su empleo. Es el momento de que las ciudades escuchen a sus trabajadores y pasen por encima de la pasividad estatal y federal a fin de permitir que millones de estadounidenses que trabajan muy duro mantengan a sus familias.
Source: El Diario
Activists Try to Turn Anti-Trump Protests Toward 9 Companies
Liberal activists have flooded their elected representatives with letters, calls, and town hall protests to encourage lawmakers to resist President Trump. Now, two activist groups are hoping to...
Liberal activists have flooded their elected representatives with letters, calls, and town hall protests to encourage lawmakers to resist President Trump. Now, two activist groups are hoping to turn the wave of anti-Trump outrage against nine corporations they say are enabling Trump's agenda.
The progressive alliance Center for Popular Democracy and immigrant rights group Make the Road New York have partnered to create a new platform to "name and shame" companies they say are working with Trump or profiting from what they describe as his "anti-immigrant, anti-worker" agenda.
Read full article here.
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
These Cities Aren’t Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Whether or Not to Gut Unions
These Cities Aren’t Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Whether or Not to Gut Unions
In the face of the Janus case, local elected officials across the country are renewing our efforts to help workers organize—in traditional ways, and in new ones. Brad Lander is a New York City...
In the face of the Janus case, local elected officials across the country are renewing our efforts to help workers organize—in traditional ways, and in new ones. Brad Lander is a New York City Council Member from Brooklyn and the chairman of the board of Local Progress, a national association of progressive municipal elected officials. Helen Gym is a Councilmember At Large from Philadelphia and Vice-Chair of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials.
Read the full article here.
3 days ago
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