Jamie Dimon Steps in It
Jamie Dimon picked one hell of a week to lean in to Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, the day after the Washington Post revealed the president had shared highly classified information with Russian...
Jamie Dimon picked one hell of a week to lean in to Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, the day after the Washington Post revealed the president had shared highly classified information with Russian diplomats and a week after he fired James Comey, the veteran CEO of JPMorgan Chase told investors at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting that he wouldn’t step down from his perch on Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, an advisory council of powerful American executives. “He is the president of the United States. I believe he is the pilot flying our airplane,” Dimon said. “I would try to help any president of the United States, because I’m a patriot.” Dimon surely wishes he’d said something different. Only hours later came the news that according to a memo by Comey, Trump had asked the FBI director to end his agency’s inquiry into former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn—a revelation that has brought Trump’s presidency to its lowest, most tumultuous point yet.
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Protesters Call on Harvard to Divest from Puerto Rican Debt
Protesters Call on Harvard to Divest from Puerto Rican Debt
“We know that Harvard is a large university with a big endowment, and it can set a tone for how higher education universities invest,” protest organizer Julio Lopez Varona said. “It could make...
“We know that Harvard is a large university with a big endowment, and it can set a tone for how higher education universities invest,” protest organizer Julio Lopez Varona said. “It could make investments that are moral and not hurt anybody.”
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Conservatives May Control State Governments, But Progressives Are Rising
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in...
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in Washington is frustrating, the rightward lurch of statehouses could be devastating. Reveling in their newfound power, state lawmakers and their corporate allies are writing regressive policies that could hurt families by exacerbating inequality, further curtailing an already weakened democracy, and worsening an environmental crisis of global proportions.
From a law that would censor public university professors in Kansas to a governor who prohibits state officials from using the term “climate change” in Florida, ideologues in state capitols are wasting little time when it comes to enacting an extreme agenda. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wisconsin officially enacted right to work legislation on Monday, a policy that’s shown to lower wages and benefits by weakening the power of unions. Missouri, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois are all entertaining various versions of the law. In states like New York and Ohio, legislators are considering severe cuts to public education, while vastly expanding charter schools.
Of course, a look at key 2014 ballot initiatives shows voters held progressive values on issues like the minimum wage, paid sick days, and a millionaires tax. And just 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in 2014, meaning that there is surely a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.
The path to policies that put families first is not short, but a bold coalition across the country took an aggressive step forward this week.
On March 11th, under the banner “We Rise,” thousands of people joined more than 28 actions in 16 states to awaken that silent majority and call their legislators to account. A joint project of National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction and other allies across the country, the message of the day was simple: our cities and states belong to us, not big corporations and the wealthy. We can work together and push our legislators to enact an agenda that puts people and the planet before profits. And at each local action, leaders unveiled their proposals for what that agenda would look like in their cities and states.
In Minnesota, grassroots leaders are fighting for a proposal to re-enfranchise over 44,000 formerly incarcerated people. In Nevada, our allies are agitating for a $15 minimum wage. In Illinois, we are organizing for closing corporate tax loopholes and a financial transaction tax (a “LaSalle Street tax”) that would help plug the state’s budget hole. With each of these proposals, we are moving from defense to offense and changing the conversation about race, democracy and our economy.
We’ve seen over and over again in American history, change starts close to home – in our towns, cities and states. On March 11th, we saw a fresh reminder of the power of local change. Our families and communities are defining this new front in American public life, and we will continue rising to challenge corporate power and win the policies that put people and planet first - not last.
If November was a wave election, then this Spring will be a wave of bottom-up people power activism. What starts with defending people and our democracy from an extreme corporate conservative agenda, will pivot to offense as grassroots organizations across the country fight to fundamentally reshape our government and our economy from the bottom up. Expect an unabashedly bold agenda that holds the potential for awakening the progressive majority and ushering in a new era in America, an era where our country works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well connected.
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Central Bankers to Confront Stock-Market Turmoil at Fed’s Annual Jackson Hole Retreat
Gathering at the mountain getaway in recent Augusts, the stewards of global currency have contended with the looming collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, global deflation worries in 2010, serial...
Gathering at the mountain getaway in recent Augusts, the stewards of global currency have contended with the looming collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, global deflation worries in 2010, serial Greek fiscal meltdowns and other dramas. This time, they confront a big disparity between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China.
The U.S. has recovered enough from the last financial crisis that Fed officials have been preparing to raise interest rates to prevent overheating down the road. But China appears to have lost economic momentum, driving the People’s Bank of China to cut rates and take other measures to boost growth. Markets have responded to these conflicting forces with turbulence, creating new uncertainties for policy makers about the economic outlook.
Before this week’s turmoil, Fed officials had signaled they might move as soon as next month to start lifting their benchmark interest rate from near zero, where it has been since December 2008. It was shaping up to be a tough decision even before the stock-market corrections around the globe. Now, the odds of a rate increase in September appear to have diminished, though a move is still possible if markets stabilize and new economic data show the U.S. economy is strengthening despite threats abroad.
New reports on Tuesday showed increases in U.S. consumer confidence and new home sales in August and July, respectively, reasons for Fed officials not to become too glum about the U.S. outlook.
“Prior to these market events in the last few days, I thought that this was about as close to a 50/50 call as you can get,” said former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder of the odds that the central bank would raise U.S. rates in September. If markets don’t stabilize, he said, the Fed would likely hold off on a rate increase.
“If the markets are in anything close to the sort of tizzy they have been in the last few days, then the Fed will not throw a match into the fire” when it meets September 16-17, said Mr. Blinder, a Princeton University professor and friend of Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen.
Ms. Yellen will not be attending this year’s Jackson Hole conference, but Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer is scheduled to deliver remarks there Saturday on inflation. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi won’t be there, but the ECB and many of the world’s other central banks will be represented by senior officials. The meeting has included top central bankers from Turkey, Malta, Sweden, South Korea and beyond in the past.
It is a fraught moment for all of the world’s central banks. China’s repeated efforts to stimulate growth don’t seem to be working. China’s central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Tuesday and its stock market fell.
Many other economies are trapped in the middle of a global monetary tug of war between the two economic giants, especially emerging markets and commodity-producing countries. Their economies have been hit by China’s slowdown. At the same time, their currencies have been declining against the dollar as the Fed prepares for higher rates. If central banks in places such as Brazil, South Africa or Russia try to stimulate their economies by cutting interest rates, they risk capital flight and potentially destabilizing currency depreciation. If they don’t, they risk deep recessions.
One potential fault line that Fed officials are watching carefully: Heavy loads of U.S. dollar debt accumulated by local companies in emerging markets. Total corporate bonds outstanding in emerging markets have almost doubled since 2008 to $6.8 trillion, according to Institute of International Finance estimates. The share of this debt issued in U.S. dollars rose from less than 15% in 2008 to more than 40% in the first five months of 2015.
Those debts become harder to pay off as the dollar appreciates. It is up more than 7% against a broad basket of other currencies so far this year.
The central banks also face skepticism about the paths they are charting. “Our global economy is fixated on central banks and the latest utterance of the monetary authorities,” said Judy Shelton,senior fellow of the Atlas Network, a free-market think tank participating in a parallel conference critical of the Fed this week, also in Wyoming. The title of her panel, “What Happens if Central Bankers are Wrong?”
Central banks for the major developed economies, including the Fed, responded to the post-financial crisis period of slow economic growth and low inflation by pushing short-term interest rates to near zero and launching bond-buying programs to drive long-term interest rates down, too.
Many central bankers say the economy would have been in much worse shape, possibly a repeat of the Great Depression, without the support. Critics like Ms. Shelton say the policies failed to produce the higher inflation or faster growth desired.
As the Fed considers when to start raising rates, officials are getting pressure from several sides. While many free-market advocates would like the central bank to move, liberal activists plan to press the Fed this week to hold rates near zero to promote economic growth and more hiring.
“The economy is too weak to warrant interest-rate hikes,” said Shawn Sebastian, policy analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning group, in a statement on Tuesday.
Academics don’t provide clear direction. In competing newspaper opinion pieces this week, Harvard professors Martin Feldstein andLawrence Summers, who have served as economic advisers to Republicans and Democrats, respectively, argued for and against a Fed rate increase in September.
From the maelstrom, Fed officials are trying to respond to the unfolding economic outlook.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart on Monday said he still expects the central bank to raise rates this year, but he didn’t say when. That marked a subtle shift since Aug. 4, when he told The Wall Street Journal he believed the economy was ready for a rate increasein September.
Current developments like “the appreciation of the dollar, the devaluation of the Chinese currency and the further decline of oil prices are complicating factors in predicting the pace of growth,” Mr. Lockhart said Monday. But, he noted, “our baseline forecast at the Atlanta Fed is for moderate growth with continuing employment gains and a gradually rising rate of inflation.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Shutting Down the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Working at The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Kate has partnered with youth-led organizations on various policy initiatives and community organizing campaigns, and has represented young...
Working at The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Kate has partnered with youth-led organizations on various policy initiatives and community organizing campaigns, and has represented young people facing school suspensions. At Proskauer, she has conducted trainings and served as a mentor and supervisor, enabling our lawyers to make a real difference in school suspension hearings. Even when a suspension cannot be avoided, an attorney may be able to help reduce its duration or secure other benefits, such as help for a learning disability, or a transfer to a school that is better-suited to the student.
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NY Democrats Seek Citizen Rights for Illegal Immigrants
New York Post - September 15, 2014, by Carl Campanile - Illegal aliens in New York could score billions in Medicaid and college-tuition money — along with driver’s licenses, voting rights and...
New York Post - September 15, 2014, by Carl Campanile - Illegal aliens in New York could score billions in Medicaid and college-tuition money — along with driver’s licenses, voting rights and even the ability to run for office — if Democrats win control of the state Senate in November, the Post has learned.
A little-known bill, dubbed “New York is Home,” would offer the most sweeping amnesty available anywhere in the country to nearly 3 million noncitizens living in the Empire State.
It would bar police from releasing any information about them to the feds, unless it involves a criminal warrant unrelated to their immigration status.
Under the proposed legislation, undocumented immigrants could also apply for professional licenses and serve on juries.
The plan hinges on Democrats — who now control both the governorship and the state Assembly — wresting control of the Senate from Republicans, who oppose immigration amnesty.
Bronx Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who is sponsoring the legislation in the upper chamber, said he thinks the bill would be in position to be passed “if we have a stable Democratic majority in the Senate.”
He also likened his measure to the campaigns to legalize same-sex marriage and medical marijuana.
“It’s something I believe in,” Rivera said Sunday night. “It’s something the state can do and should do.
Democratic Brooklyn Assemblyman Karim Camara, the chief Assembly sponsor, agreed that taking the Senate was key, saying “The bill would have a better shot at passing with a Democratic Senate.”
“I look forward [to] having a robust conversation about how significant this bill is.”
But the GOP plans on using the proposal to warn voters how radical New York would become if Democrats take charge.
Republicans are already referring to it as the “illegal immigrants benefits legislation” and will make the bill their poster child in elections in more conservative upstate and suburban districts.
“This bill could pass if the Democrats are in charge of the Senate. They’re out of their minds,” said Sen. Marty Golden (R-Brooklyn).
“This is astounding. This undermines our nation’s immigration laws and procedures.”
Said state Conservative Party chairman Mike Long: “This is absolutely amnesty. It disregards the laws of the United States. It’s unconscionable,” Long added.
The bill was introduced during the waning days of the legislative session in June, and is backed by immigrant-rights groups including Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, and La Fuente.
GOP officials maintain that amnesty for illegal aliens would open the door to fraud and abuse and increase the risk of terrorism.
For example, the bill would let illegals vote in local and state elections, but they would be barred by federal law from voting for presidential or congressional candidates.
Mayor de Blasio pushed through a new city law that created a municipal ID card that provides some benefits to noncitizens.
Camara, chairman of the New York State Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, insisted that only immigrants who prove they have been living productively would get benefits under his bill.
They would also have to show that they have been living in New York for at least three years and have paid taxes to the state.
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Mortgage Settlement Report Finds Banks Reluctant To Reduce Principal, Despite Promises
The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according...
The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according to a report released Thursday by the court-appointed monitor of the settlement, in the first nine months after the $25 billion deal was struck, fewer than 50,000 people received the most coveted form of relief: reduction of principal owed on a first mortgage.
Meanwhile, more than three times as many borrowers -- 169,000 -- agreed to a short sale, which requires they leave the property, according to the report.
Banks still have time to meet their obligations under the settlement, which requires that 30 percent of total relief come in the form of first mortgage principal reduction. But housing advocates say the limited progress so far -- just 14 percent of aid has gone to write down loan balances -- suggests that banks are avoiding, or at least delaying, their obligation to provide meaningful relief as they promised under the deal.
"The numbers are hugely out of whack," said Dan Petegorsky, a spokesman for a group called Campaign for a Fair Settlement. "In some cases banks are five or six times as likely to kick someone out of their house than they are to forgive their debt."
The fear, said Petegorsky and other advocates, is that with each passing month, more homeowners who could have been helped will fall into foreclosure. More than 4 million families have lost their homes since 2007, when the subprime housing market collapsed.
Under the mortgage settlement, reached last March with state and federal authorities, the five settling banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial -- agreed to resolve widespread mortgage fraud and mismanagement allegations. The deal also sought to close the book on the "robo-signing" scandal, in which bank representatives allegedly forged documents and signatures in order to speed foreclosures through the pipeline. (The deal is separate from an $8.5 billion legal agreement reached in January between 11 mortgage companies and two federal bank regulators over similar "servicing" abuse claims.)
The court appointed Joseph Smith, a former North Carolina banking commissioner, to oversee the $25 billion settlement. His report is based on data reported from the banks. Smith has not yet confirmed the data, he said.
Even so, his report offers a detailed state-by-state look at where the banks are directing the relief, and what options they are choosing to do so. All told, 550,000 people have received some sort of assistance valued at $45 billion, according to the report. (Because banks can claim different dollar credits for different activities, that figure does not mean they have exceeded what they promised under the settlement.)
In an interview, Smith said that while the banks are clearly favoring short sales over other forms of relief, he thinks they will ultimately forgive enough first mortgage principal debt to meet their obligations. As an example, he cited Ally Financial, the smallest of the settling institutions, which he certified had met its targets.
Smith said he believed that the "vast majority" of relief offered so far, which includes aid like interest reductions and forbearance agreements as well as principal reductions and short sales, has helped homeowners.
He said the banks still have work to do to meet the other major goal of the agreement: reforming how they manage the accounts of troubled borrowers. As of Oct 2., banks were supposed to have met 304 different standards or face financial penalties for failing to do so. Although he declined to discuss how widespread persistent problems might be, Smith noted in his report that his office had received 5,700 complaints from consumers in all states, along with 600 submissions from professionals. Complaints are on the rise, he said, though it isn't clear whether the jump is the result of the increased visibility of his office.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of the New York Attorney General, which had key roles in shaping the mortgage settlement, did not return requests for comment. In a statement, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the report "marks a major milestone in our efforts to assist struggling homeowners."
“We have already surpassed our initial expectations and the settlement is testament to the fact that large-scale principal reduction can be used an important tool in our efforts to prevent foreclosures without incurring negative results," he said.
Under the deal, banks typically get more credit for meeting their obligations for offering principal reduction than they do for other types of aid, such as interest rate reductions or short sales. But in banking circles, principal reduction has remained the most controversial option. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under orders from Federal Housing Finance Administration acting director Edward DeMarco, have refused to permit principal reduction in most instances on their loans. Banks then can only offer these kinds of write-downs on the relatively small pool of loans they own themselves, or convince investors who bought shares of loan pools in the years before or after the housing collapse to go along. This difficulty could explain why banks appear to be lagging on principal-reduction offers.
Another possible explanation: not every borrower wants, nor would qualify for, a reduction in principal. For some, short sales are the best option. Under these agreements, the bank sells the house but doesn't hold the borrower financially accountable for the difference between the sale price and what is owed.
Even so, principal forgiveness on a first mortgage is clearly the most desirable option for most borrowers, said Elizabeth Lynch, an attorney at MFY Legal Services, which offers free legal aid in New York City. "It's the modification of the first loan that saves the home," she said.
According to Lynch, that isn't happening often enough. Instead, when banks do offer principal reduction, it most often comes on a second mortgage, also sometimes called a home equity loan, according to Smith's report. Bank of America, for example, reported it had extinguished -- forgiven the entire principal amount -- of 141,000 second mortgages, compared to just 21,000 first mortgages.
Lynch recently argued in a New York Times op-ed that eliminating a small second mortgage, though sometimes helpful, doesn't help the vast majority of borrowers struggling to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.
Bank of America, which has a financial obligation under the settlement roughly equal to that of the four other banks combined, said in a statement that by forgiving a second mortgage, "a reasonable payment through modification may be more attainable." Even so, the bank acknowledged, "foreclosure activities likely would have continued" in instances where a foreclosure proceeding on the first mortgage was already underway. In other words, the bank acknowledged that it can claim credit for meeting obligations under the mortgage settlement for forgiving a loan that likely never would have been paid off anyway, and in instances that do not help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
Homeowner advocates said the report also indicates that the five settling banks are targeting the most valuable loans for principal reduction, rather than those in low-income communities. The average amount of first mortgage principal reduction granted was nearly $130,000 -- just $40,000 or so less than the median home sale price for January in the U.S.
At Bank of America, first-lien forgiveness averaged $160,000 of first mortgage principal reduction per loan. Does that large figure mean that the bank has favored borrowers in high-cost areas like Southern California or New York? Does it suggest that the bank is more likely to forgive the debt on an expensive home than on one in a downtrodden area like Detroit or Cleveland, where home prices often don't climb above $50,000?
Smith said he hasn't vetted the data yet, but for homeowner advocates, not knowing the answer to those questions is the biggest frustration.
"We want greater transparency on these numbers," Lynch said. "We don't know what they are doing."
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The Fed can't afford to ignore the 'anguished cry' of working people
The Fed can't afford to ignore the 'anguished cry' of working people
The narrative emerging from the aftermath of the 2016 election is that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency on the back of populist economic insecurity, elected by voters who felt left behind by a...
The narrative emerging from the aftermath of the 2016 election is that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency on the back of populist economic insecurity, elected by voters who felt left behind by a globalized economy. While the official unemployment rate continued its descent below 5 percent, Trump claimed a 'real' unemployment rate of 40 percent was driving the frustration.
That rate is drawn from Trump's overactive imagination - like many of Trump's ravings. But the fact that workers so readily believed him while responding so eagerly to his economic message reflects the reality that wages have been stagnant for decades and that we are nowhere near a galloping economy. You'd be hard-pressed to find many Americans who believe the economy is so strong that it needs to be slowed down by higher interest rates right now.
The economic discontent is grounded in data. New research from economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that the bottom half of the population in the United States has experienced zero growth since the 1970s.
Even though average national income per adult grew by 61 percent from 1980 to 2014, the average pre-tax income of the bottom 50 percent of individual income earners stagnated at about $16,000 per adult after adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile, income more than doubled for the top 10 percent, more than tripled for the top 1 percent, and for those in the top 0.001 percent, grew more than seven times.
This week, the Federal Reserve is nearly certain to hike interest rates for the second time in a decade, following last December's quarter-point increase in the federal-funds rate. This tightening of monetary policy is intended to slow down economic growth, reduce job creation, and prevent wages from rising.
In the wake of the 2016 election, do Fed officials really think that the American people want a slower, weaker economy than the one we have now?
"The Fed is one of the few institutions that remains largely independent from presidential interference and it must step up to the leadership that these times demand."
The Fed is now more important than ever. We are entering an era in which President-elect Donald Trump will control the Treasury Department and Republicans will control both houses of Congress. Federal public policy will be aimed at further enriching the 1 percent and leaving American workers out in the cold.
The Fed is one of the few institutions that remains largely independent from presidential interference and it must step up to the leadership that these times demand. The Fed needs to be an ally for working families during a period when they are otherwise under assault from every other part of government.
This week, Fed policy-makers will point to the November jobs report, showing a decline in unemployment to 4.6 percent from 4.9 percent the previous month, to justify a rate increase. Much of this decline can be attributed to people who've simply given up looking for work -- or, in economic parlance, a decline in labor force participation.
A far more accurate indicator of a full-employment economy is wage growth, which was weaker in November than it was in preceding months. Wage growth grew 2.5 percent in November on an annual basis, slower than October's 2.8 percent increase and September's 2.7 percent rise.
Wage growth is far from the 3.5 percent or higher we would expect in a full-employment economy.
Inflation, too, has hovered around 1 percent for most of the year, well below the Fed's already-low 2 percent stated inflation target. Tentative rises in September and October, to 1.5 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, hardly call for a pre-emptive interest rise.
If the Fed were to raise rates this week, it would be out of line with rates in Japan and Europe, which are at 0 or in negative territory, and above the U.K.'s rate of 0.25 percent. The central banks in these other countries realize that inflation is not a real threat and that tighter labor markets are a far more important goal.
The Fed should not only take into account the global context but also listen to the anguished cry of working and middle class voters. If the election has taught the Fed nothing else, it should be that we cannot afford to ignore the economic reality of working people.
By Ady Barkan
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New Zealand says tweak to c.bank mandate fits within "global zeitgeist"
New Zealand says tweak to c.bank mandate fits within "global zeitgeist"
New Zealand's decision to change its central bank's inflation-targeting mandate, which has served as a model for the rest of the world, partly reflects a global shift on the role of monetary...
New Zealand's decision to change its central bank's inflation-targeting mandate, which has served as a model for the rest of the world, partly reflects a global shift on the role of monetary policy since the 2008-09 financial crisis, according to Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
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Meet the Group of Feisty Urban Progressives Who Want to Transform the Country One City at a Time
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of change often scoffed at their more patient comrades in city government, calling...
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of change often scoffed at their more patient comrades in city government, calling them “sewer socialists.” The latter, however, numbered in the hundreds, and, in their heyday, were quite influential in cities both large and small. After being elected to municipal positions on the Socialist Party ticket, they labored mightily to improve local services, from public sanitation to street repair. They even encroached on private markets by expanding public housing and experimenting with municipal ownership of utilities.
The national expansion of popular democracy sought by these left-wing reformers was, sadly, never achieved under their party banner. But several decades later, their many ideas for putting government to work for the people found traction during the New Deal. Programs to promote social equality and economic opportunity first tested at the state or local level became a Depression-era lifeline for millions of Americans nationwide.
In the twenty-first century, many on the left still yearn for economic and policy victories on the scale of the 1930s and the emergence at the federal level of a counter-force that might one again curb the influence of corporate America. While waiting for that second coming, progressive activists have, like the “sewer socialists” of old, been forced to grapple with serious problems—national and even global in nature—at the municipal level instead.
Some of the bravest (or most ambitious) among them have sought and won local elected office. So, in city halls across the country, they are now trying to deploy the limited resources of local government to fight poverty, inequality and environmental degradation at a moment when higher levels of government have failed to address such problems or made them worse. To maintain public support, these reform-minded mayors, city councilors, county commissioners and allied civil servants must be as concerned about street paving and policing as saving the planet from global warming.
Until recently, most of these “pothole progressives” have toiled largely in isolation. They chipped away at local injustice or city hall dysfunction in ad hoc fashion with little national infrastructure to sustain or support them. But as their ranks have swelled in recent years, several networks have developed to promote greater coordination of this difficult work through systematic sharing of information, ideas, and technical expertise.
From December 4 to 6, the only of these groups to focus exclusively on cities, Local Progress, hosted a lively and racially diverse “convening” in New York City to celebrate recent municipal election victories and progressive policy wins, while laying the groundwork for more. Local Progress is funded by several national unions and social-change foundations. Its individual and organizational affiliates profess a “shared commitment to a strong middle and working class, equal justice under law, sustainable and livable cities, and good government that serves the public interest effectively.” Its mission? “To drive public policy at the local level—an area of governance that is too often ignored by the progressive movement.”
Among the “electeds” gathered in New York City for the Local Progress third annual meeting, there was little moping about the Democratic Party’s now much weakened condition in various state capitols and Washington, DC, as a result of last month’s midterm elections. Instead, they and their larger supporting cast of labor and community organizers, public policy advocates and social-change funders all resolved to expand their influence at the local level, where reform is still possible. To hasten this goal, the organizers distributed a sixty-page compilation of “case studies and best practices” from around the country, co-produced with the Center for Popular Democracy. This dense, well-documented guide provides an ambitious blueprint for improving local labor standards, housing and education, policing practices, environmental sustainability, treatment of immigrants, voting rights and financing of elections.
Local Progress has recruited 400 members in forty states; about a third turned up for its latest annual meeting, with impressive representation from the city councils of San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Mayoral participants included everyone from the high-profile chief executive of the host city, Bill de Blasio, to his far less well-known, but equally feisty, West Coast counterpart, Meghan Sahli-Wells. She hails from Culver City, California, a Los Angeles County enclave with a population smaller than some New York City neighborhoods.
But that difference in scale hasn’t stopped Sahli-Wells from making waves of her own, as an enviro-oriented “bike mayor” who helped secure a ban on single-use plastic bags and has been working tirelessly to ban fracking as well. Now her talk about property tax reform has local realtors organizing against her and wishing she had never been chosen by her council peers to be the city’s part-time mayor. “My Chamber of Commerce hates me,” she reported, but expressed confidence that “harnessing the power of community” would enable her to overcome business opposition to some of her future plans.
De Blasio welcomed such diverse colleagues amid the ornate surroundings of the New York City Council chamber. He was joined by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Brooklyn councilmember Brad Lander, who both described the salutary effect of having a Progressive Caucus of nineteen in the city’s fifty-one-member leadership body.
The Big Apple’s affable, lanky mayor quickly gave what an alarmed New York Post called, the next day, “a fawning shout-out to Seattle.” And indeed, de Blasio did hail Seattle city councilmember Nick Licata, chair of Local Progress, and others from “the Left Coast,” for their leading role in the nationwide minimum-wage campaign that has now bettered the pay of seven million workers. “We all reference each other,” de Blasio noted. “We all build on each other’s work…. Every time we succeed, it builds momentum for other cities.”
The job of Local Progress members, the mayor argued, is to be organizers, not just elected officials. As a result of the group’s collective efforts, “change is coming from the grassroots and working its way up—real, sustained and lasting change.”
In the smaller strategy sessions that followed, participants shared information and ideas on a wide range of topics. These included “participatory budgeting”—an experiment now underway in New York City to solicit neighborhood input on spending priorities—and multi-state efforts to expand public financing of candidates for local and county office. According to Emmanuel Caicedo, state affairs manager for Demos who spoke at the conference, this election reform was a key factor in making progressives more competitive electorally in New York City and enabling them, once in office, to expand the reach of paid sick day legislation. “Without this matching funds system, councilmembers would not be able to do the right thing for their constituents, “ he said.
Local Progress workshop turnout and the intensity of discussion were both driven, in part, by the momentum of events unfolding outside the gathering. The latest round of national fast-food worker protests and street demonstrations in Manhattan over the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case provided an urgent backdrop for brainstorming about workers’ rights and major reform of US police departments.
On the labor front, city officials were reminded by several speakers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO that minimum wage hikes, statutory entitlement to paid sick days, and better enforcement of local labor standards still doesn’t give enough Americans the workplace voice that collective bargaining provides. More needs to be done, they argued, to help workers for government contractors or in public facilities, like airports, to win bargaining rights without management interference. “Having a union is necessary to sustain gains,” Héctor Figueroa, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, pointed out.
Few labor allies in Local Progress question the value of unionization—but some did express concern about unions being unhelpful in their own past municipal campaigns. For example, Anders Ibsen, an earnest 28-year-old city councilor from Washington State, sought advice from AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre about dealing with conservative “business unionists” who’ve tried to thwart progressive initiatives in Tacoma. In the same panel discussion, San Diego councilmember David Alvarez—a recent labor-backed candidate for mayor—recalled the initial opposition he faced from a major AFL-CIO affiliate. According to Alvarez, it took much patient relationship-building to win over this union, despite his strong commitment to local labor causes like taxi-driver organizing.
Before their gathering ended, most of the city officials present endorsed a Local Progress statement criticizing the “excessive use of force” by police officers in Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City. They urged federal officials to ensure “that cities around the country end discriminatory policing practices and replace them with programs that respect and empower residents…”
Just how to do that, at the local level, was the subject of much debate at a session on “Winning Real Police and Criminal Justice Reform.” Panelists discussed remedies like requiring police body cameras, retraining officers, recruiting more from minority communities, and offering them financial incentives for local residency. Lisa Daugaard, policy director for the Public Defender Association in Seattle, cautioned against quick fixes, including indiscriminate body camera use and training programs unaccompanied by real institutional change. “It’s easy to hold a three-day training session. It’s very difficult to have training change behavior, habits, instincts,” she said.
Daugaard reported on Seattle’s Community Police Commission (CPC), an oversight body, which she co-chairs and includes two active members of the police force. According to Daugaard, the CPC has spurred a “deeply transformative” shift in the treatment of jobless, homeless, addicted, and/or mentally ill residents previously targeted for police round-ups and jailing, with a disproportionate racial impact. By expanding relevant social services and, in effect, decriminalizing vagrancy and low-level drug dealing, Seattle has been able to “re-humanize” at least some “daily interactions between police and the community.”
And just as cities like Seattle can’t arrest their way out of petty crime spawned by poverty and unemployment, Daugaard warned against a singular focus on prosecutions of police misconduct, after the fact. Many such cases are likely to fail, she noted, and, even if successful, don’t transform the departmental culture or quality of police-community relationships. Jumaane Williams, a New York City councilmember from Brooklyn, agreed with Daugaard that community policing done right “works better than the lock-‘em-up strategy” that still prevails in most cities, even some with Local Progress ties. “The problem, “said Williams, “is when we send policemen to do the job that everyone needs to do. Public safety is an everybody kind of thing.”
Turning the overall Local Progress agenda into actual public policy in more places is also “an everybody kind of thing.” As Seattle’s Nick Licata observed, urban progressives “need both an outside and inside game” to win because neither street politics nor electoral victories alone can change the status quo sufficiently. Instead, he said, “you need people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.”
By bringing both catalysts for change together, in one organizational network, Local Progress is not blazing an entirely new path or one as explicitly anti-capitalist as left movement builders a century ago. But, in a modern political landscape otherwise bereft of many bright spots at the moment, contesting for power locally, in ecumenical fashion, still makes sense for any group of progressives with higher aspirations and longer-term societal goals.
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