The Obamacare repeal battle showed the power and limits of grassroots organizing
The Obamacare repeal battle showed the power and limits of grassroots organizing
Jennifer Flynn Walker and Paul Davis are close friends, left-wing organizers who worked together as activists during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s and have trained hundreds of other activists...
Jennifer Flynn Walker and Paul Davis are close friends, left-wing organizers who worked together as activists during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s and have trained hundreds of other activists since.
They’ve also both dedicated much of their past seven months to fighting Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. But ask them what to make of the fight and you’ll hear wildly different answers.
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Activists to Protest at Regional Feds Ahead of Jobs Data
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve...
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve district banks Thursday, intending to highlight elevated unemployment among minority communities and urging officials not to raise interest rates any time soon.
Fed officials have indicated they plan to lift their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero, where it has been since late 2008, sometime this year if the economy continues to strengthen as expected.
The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January.
“The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
The activists are planning actions outside the regional Fed banks of New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, N.C. (home to a branch of the Richmond Fed) and Dallas.
The Labor Department releases its February employment report on Friday.
Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said she and other community leaders have been frustrated by what they see as an opaque process for selecting the next Dallas Fed president. The current chief, Richard Fisher, is set to step down March 19.
Ms. Moeller said instead of getting a meeting with members of the Dallas Fed’s board of directors, which is in charge of the search, she and her delegation met with the bank’s general counsel in a session she described as not very helpful.
“This has been a comedy of pass the buck,” she said. “We don’t have a candidate—we’re just trying to talk processes.”
The Dallas Fed said it had recently met with the following groups regarding the search for a new bank president: Texas AFL-CIO, Texas Organizing Project, Jobs With Justice, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Workers Defense Project, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Harris County Central Labor Council and American Federation of Teachers.
“We had a productive conversation with representatives from these groups,” said James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed. “We were interested in hearing their views on the selection of a new Dallas Fed president, and hope we were able to provide useful information to them, as well.”
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Fed Up Coalition, the umbrella groups coordinating the protests, expressed dismay at the lack of transparency in the selection of Patrick Harker as the new Philadelphia Fed President.
“Despite repeated requests from community, consumer, labor and academic organizations and public officials within the region, the Philadelphia Fed refused to create any mechanisms for engagement with the public,” said Kendra Brooks of Action United in Philadelphia.
“Instead, the process was entirely opaque: nobody outside of the Federal Reserve knew who the candidates were or what the criteria were for selection. This process did a disservice to the Federal Reserve System and the people of the Philadelphia region.”
The Philadelphia Fed said in response: “Several of our staff members did meet with members from Action United to hear their concerns. The Philadelphia Fed also provided them the opportunity to provide names of potential candidates to our executive search firm.”
The same group of activists showed up at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium last summer and held a meeting with Janet Yellen at the Fed in November.
Last week, Ms. Yellen met with a group of conservative activists who argued the Fed’s low-rate policies were hurting rather than boosting employment.
The Great Recession has brought increased political scrutiny on the Fed, with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians calling for various changes in the central bank’s governance.
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Calling all mayors: This is what police reform should look like
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has been a wake-up call for many Americans, shining a spotlight on what many...
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has been a wake-up call for many Americans, shining a spotlight on what many communities of color already knew—our policing and criminal justice systems are infused with systemic racial bias.
Thanks to the relentless work of community advocates, the aggressive police tactics that routinely threaten the lives and safety of people of color have garnered unprecedented national attention.
This attention, however, is no guarantee of real change. In fact, one year after Michael Brown’s killing, police shootings and protests continue in Ferguson, Missouri.
Despite the growing body of evidence on the nature and extent of the problem, the path towards meaningful reform has not been clear, leaving many local leaders at a loss as to how to move forward.
But the actions of local government—mayors in particular—couldn’t be more important. Channeling the current momentum into transformative change will require leadership across local, regional, and federal levels, but mayors are in a unique position to be the vanguard, taking trailblazing steps towards transforming how police departments interact with their communities.
While some have bemoaned a lack of consensus around a roadmap to police reform, those on the ground—community members, organizers, elected officials, police officers and chiefs—raise the concepts of accountability, oversight, community respect, and limiting the scope of policing again and again. Our organizations spent close to a year collecting success stories and insight from communities across the country, from Los Angeles to Cleveland to Baltimore, to create a toolkit for advocates working to end police violence. We identified several common principles that all mayors can—and should—put in place to establish sustainable, community-centered and controlled policing.
Several of these principles have received national attention, such as demilitarizing police departments, providing police recruits with training in racial bias, de-escalation, and conflict mediation, and making police more accountable to communities through civilian oversight bodies and independent investigations of alleged police misconduct. Thanks to the commitment of a proactive mayor, this kind of community accountability is already being put in place in Newark, which just approved a progressive Civilian Complaint Review Board that provides landmark community oversight in a city with a long history of police brutality.
Mayors should also institute policies that scale back over-policing, especially for minor ‘broken-windows’ offenses that criminalize too many communities and burden already-impoverished households with exorbitant fees and fines. Ferguson’s court system became an infamous example, but routine targeting of and profiteering off of low-income communities of color is pervasive throughout the country. Local governments must not only fix broken municipal court systems but should also scale back the tide of criminalization through decriminalizing offenses that have nothing to do with public safety. With the strong support of the mayor, the Minneapolis City Council recently decriminalized two non-violent offenses—spitting and lurking—which had been used to racially profile.
The last piece of the puzzle may be politically controversial, but is absolutely fundamental to transforming our broken systems of policing and criminal justice and supporting safer and stronger communities. Local governments cannot continue to pour ever-increasing sums into city police budgets, while ignoring the most basic needs of residents living in over-policed areas: better schools, job opportunities, access to healthy food, affordable housing, and public transportation. Neighborhoods most afflicted by aggressive policing and high incarceration rates also have high levels of poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation. In many urban neighborhoods where millions of dollars are spent to lock up residents, the education infrastructure and larger social net are completely crippled. Investments to build up vulnerable communities need to be viewed as part of a comprehensive public safety strategy.
Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called for a Department of Justice investigation of the city’s police department only after tragedy struck and the community rose up in protest. It is time for the mayors of this country to instead take a proactive Mayoral Pledge to End Police Violenceto heal the wounds of broken policing and criminal justice policies before another devastating police killing.
Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink. Friedman is the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
Source: The Hill
Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in Pittsburgh this weekend.
The two conventions, aimed at social and...
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in Pittsburgh this weekend.
The two conventions, aimed at social and economic progress, will take on new perspectives in the wake of the police shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police officials also said Friday that officers will have a heightened awareness of safety in the wake of Thursday night's shooting in Dallas, Texas that killed five police officers and injured seven more.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a national nonprofit that fights for racial equality, worker and immigrant rights, is hosting its first People’s Convention. It’s taking place in Pittsburgh, partly because of the city’s labor roots, location and number of organizations willing to partner, organizers said.
The CPD’s Co-Executive Director Andrew Friedman said attendees are on the front lines of groups demanding higher wages, affordable housing and racial equality. The goal is to build a community of action and share best practices for inciting change.
“I think there’s a huge value in folks realizing they’re not fighting alone,” Friedman said, “and learning about other campaigns in other parts of the country, and sharing strategies that are proving effective.”
Friedman said the Convention will focus on new conversations in light of the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two black men shot by police this week.
“I think it’s going to have a huge influence, I think folks are coming to the convention with broken hearts and in very low spirits,” Friedman said. “I think folks are in mourning and in shock frankly from these two very painful videos that have surfaced.”
Across the street from the People’s Convention, the annual Local Progress Convening, a gathering of 100 elected officials from across the country, is also taking place this weekend. The convening is another event headed by the CPD, hosted by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and though separate from the People’s Convention, will have some coinciding events.
“In order to get any change accomplished, you need allies on the inside that are willing and able to move the levers of governmental power,” said Convening Co-Director Ady Barkan. “And you need advocates and community members and organized institutions on the outside pushing for those changes.”
Barkan said representatives from each gathering will speak at one another’s conventions.
Friedman said gun violence and opportunities for the African American community will now have a larger focus on the conference’s agenda. He said attendees include activists who focus on ending police violence in Minneapolis – the site of one of the recent shootings.
One of the conference’s events is a march through Pittsburgh protesting inequality in immigration policies, environmental care and workers’ wages.
Organizers said another stop at the courthouse has been added to the march to honor Black Lives Matter and discuss the week’s news.
By VIRGINIA ALVINO
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Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s practice of giving three days’ notice of work schedules has created a lot of...
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s practice of giving three days’ notice of work schedules has created a lot of stress in her life.
So, she made two trips to Salem this year with representatives of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 to lobby legislators on the workplace scheduling bill that passed June 29 with bipartisan support.
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Charter Schools Are Failing and Our Democracy Pays the Price
Charter Schools Are Failing and Our Democracy Pays the Price
Taxpayer dollars are filling the bank accounts of those who manage charter schools which is evident as research by In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy that exposed the...
Taxpayer dollars are filling the bank accounts of those who manage charter schools which is evident as research by In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy that exposed the financial fraud and corruption running rampant in these schools. In California, $6 billion of public funding has been funneled into charter schools and their respective management companies leaving public schools starved for required public monies.
Read the full article here.
The Controversial New Argument For The Fed To Raise Interest Rates
The Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rates, which banks use to lend to one another and determine the cost of credit throughout the rest of the economy, at or near zero since December...
The Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rates, which banks use to lend to one another and determine the cost of credit throughout the rest of the economy, at or near zero since December 2008. The central bank has maintained the low rates so as not to disrupt the country's recovery from the largest financial crisis and recession in decades.
But several current and former senior economic officials told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that the virtually unprecedented, prolonged period of near-zero rates risks depriving the Fed of the “ammunition” to address the next recession -- let alone another financial crisis. The Fed's primary method of economic stimulus, they note, has traditionally been cutting interest rates, something that is not possible if rates are already so low.
That could force the government to rely disproportionately on fiscal stimulus, these experts warn, holding a recovery hostage to a partisan ideological divide that has paralyzed Congress and shows no signs of abating.
None of the officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal explicitly called for an interest rate increase in order to keep the Fed’s options open for the next crisis. The main reason that Fed officials publicly provide for a rate hike is still that they believe price inflation is on track to hit the Fed’s 2 percent target. (William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, signaled on Wednesday that the the Fed was reconsidering a September interest rate hike after several days of volatility in the stock market.)
But Fed watchers believe that a desire to replenish the Fed’s proverbial firepower for the next recession is part of the motivation of Fed officials who want to “normalize” -- i.e., increase -- rates.
Narayana Kocherlakota, the outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,vehemently opposes an interest rate hike in the near future. Kocherlakota nonetheless believesthat his central bank colleagues’ perception that low interest rates have given the Fed less “monetary policy ‘space’” will prompt them to raise rates sooner and higher than is desirable.
Jack McIntyre, a portfolio manager and senior research analyst at Brandywine Global, a Philadelphia-based asset management firm, also said those concerns are part of the Fed’s calculus. “Yes, the [Fed would] like to remove emergency-level monetary stimulus to build up ammunition for the next slowdown in the U.S. economy,” McIntyre told The Huffington Post. “It would be a net positive to move us off of zero interest rates to build up some ammunition so they can cut them when it slows down.”
Many economists insist, however, that these fears are misplaced. They instead argue that the best way for the Fed to prepare for the next recession is to prevent the economy from slowing down too soon in the near term.
“I would much rather have the Fed engage in slowdown and recession prevention by getting us to reach levels at which a rate hike would not be premature,” Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said earlier this week.
If the Fed raises rates in the coming months to give itself leeway for the next recession, Bivens warned, it risks “creating the crisis you are trying to have tools to fight against.”
Bivens is one of a number of liberal-leaning economists and activists who argue that the economy is still far from full employment. They want the Fed to wait for widespread wage growth to take hold before raising rates, and they were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Thursday and Friday to make their case to Fed officials directly.
When the economy slows down more substantially, Bivens said, the Fed could still stimulate growth using quantitative easing, the massive asset purchasing program it initiated during the most recent recession after interest rates had already bottomed out.
There are other even less conventional techniques available to the central bank, like instituting negative interest rates, which would effectively charge banks for depositing their money rather than lending. It is an idea that former Fed chair Ben Bernanke told The Wall Street Journal has merit.
Richard Parker, an economist at Harvard, agrees with Bivens and other economists that middle- and lower-income workers have yet to share in the gains of the current recovery, but is less worried about the damaging effect of a rate hike.
Instead, Parker believes that lawmakers and activists concerned about low wage growth should focus on changing the regulatory and fiscal policies that he believes would have a bigger impact.
Parker supports a “retained earnings tax” that would penalize corporations for hoarding cash for stock buybacks and other actions “meant to bolster share prices (and hence bonuses)” that do little for the real economy.
And while Parker acknowledges that partisan gridlock makes the prospects of pro-growth fiscal policy dim at the federal level, he sees the success of efforts to raise the minimum wage at the state and local level as a model for incremental progress.
“It is beginning to look like the early Progressive Era, when states were the laboratories for democracy,” he said.
Source: Huffington Post
U.S. lawmakers urge Yellen to diversify the Fed
U.S. lawmakers urge Yellen to diversify the Fed
U.S. lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen urging more diversity at the...
U.S. lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen urging more diversity at the U.S. central bank.
Ten of the Fed's 12 regional bank presidents are men; 11 of them are white, the letter noted.
"Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country cannot be understated," said the letter, signed by 116 members of Congress and 11 Senators.
The Fed has come under fire in recent months from both Republicans and Democrats, including candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign, for a range of perceived failings, from its process to deciding monetary policy to its governance. Those calls have emboldened lawmakers who seek to limit the Fed's powers and are prompting some current and former Fed officials to call for steps to placate the bank's harshest critics.
A Federal Reserve Board spokesman said the U.S. central bank was committed to diversity and was already taking steps to bring more women and minorities into its leadership ranks.
Minorities now make up 24 percent of regional Fed bank boards, up from 16 percent in 2010; 46 percent of all directors are either non-white or a woman, the spokesman said, adding, "we are striving to continue that progress."
Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by James Dalgleish
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Dream Come True
Dream Come True
Alyssa Milano and Ady Barkan attend the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest on Wednesday.
Alyssa Milano and Ady Barkan attend the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest on Wednesday.
See the photo here.
Corporate power on the agenda at Jackson Hole
Corporate power on the agenda at Jackson Hole
Protesters from the Fed Up group will once again be on hand this year.
Protesters from the Fed Up group will once again be on hand this year.
Read the full article here.
2 days ago
2 days ago