Witching Hour interview: Fighting economic injustice with attorney Shawn Sebastian
Witching Hour interview: Fighting economic injustice with attorney Shawn Sebastian
We have not fully recovered from the 2008 crash,” Sebastian told Little Village. “The hole we were put into, the hole we were thrown into by the financial industry 10 years ago, we have not gotten...
We have not fully recovered from the 2008 crash,” Sebastian told Little Village. “The hole we were put into, the hole we were thrown into by the financial industry 10 years ago, we have not gotten out of yet. The wealth that was lost, no one has recovered from that. Everyone is poorer than they were, especially black families have had almost all of their wealth wiped out.
Read the full article here.
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
Source
A New Divestment Movement Against Trump Gears Up
A New Divestment Movement Against Trump Gears Up
New York City has pledged to divest its pension holdings from companies involved in the private prison industry. But the ultimate goal is to help build a mass movement against the White House....
New York City has pledged to divest its pension holdings from companies involved in the private prison industry. But the ultimate goal is to help build a mass movement against the White House.
Read the full article here.
Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte Monday but found the doors locked as they attempted to enter the building. A...
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte Monday but found the doors locked as they attempted to enter the building. A security guard accepted a letter from the group.
It was part of the grassroots fight to shield Mecklenburg County’s estimated 54,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Read full article here.
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s structural flaws have led to regulatory capture, which compromises its ability to set...
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s structural flaws have led to regulatory capture, which compromises its ability to set monetary and regulatory policy in a manner that isn’t tilted to favor those at the very top of the economic ladder. Trump may have broken a norm by commenting on monetary policy, but the Fed’s status quo is unaccountable, opaque decision-making shaped by deep conflicts of interest with the very financial institutions the Fed is ostensibly supposed to supervise.
Read the full article here.
Democratic Lawmakers Say Fed Should Increase Its Diversity
Democratic Lawmakers Say Fed Should Increase Its Diversity
The predominantly white male composition of Federal Reserve leadership is facing criticism from Democratic elected officials who believe the institution doesn’t adequately reflect the demographics...
The predominantly white male composition of Federal Reserve leadership is facing criticism from Democratic elected officials who believe the institution doesn’t adequately reflect the demographics of the nation it is meant to serve.
The legislators said in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Thursday that central bank leaders also are drawn too frequently from business and financial backgrounds. The letter to Ms. Yellen received support from the leading Democratic candidate for the White House, Hillary Clinton.
Eleven senators and 116 members of the House of Representatives signed the letter, which was organized by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. No Republicans participated, although they were given the opportunity to do so.
“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,” the letter said. “When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.”
While the Fed has made “some progress” on diversity issues, the central bank has “considerable work to do” to comply with its legal mandate to represent the interests and diversity of the American people, the letter said.
The Fed said in a statement that it “is committed to fostering diversity—by race, ethnicity, gender, and professional background—within its leadership ranks.” It added that when it comes to the members of the regional boards, “by law, we consider the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers. We also are aiming to increase ethnic and gender diversity.”
The Fed also cited a rise in both racial and gender diversity on the regional Fed boards, with 46% of all directors now meeting the label of “diverse.”
In February, Ms. Yellen also addressed the issue in testimony to Congress, saying officials in Washington are “constantly attentive in its oversight of the reserve banks to the issue of diversity of representation on those boards. And it has improved considerably.”
The legislators’ letter follows a report earlier in the year from the Center for Popular Democracy’s left-leaning Fed Up Coalition, which took a look at the Washington-based Fed governors, regional bank presidents and boards of directors overseeing the 12 regional banks. That report flagged the fact that even as the Fed is now led by a woman, three of five current governors are men, and all are white. Of the 12 regional Fed bank presidents, 11 are white, two are women, and one is Indian-American. The last black person to hold a top leadership role at the Fed was Roger Ferguson, a vice chairman who left in 2006.
Fed governors are nominated by the president and are subject to Senate approval. Regional Fed bank presidents are nominated by their local boards by members representing firms not regulated by the central bank, subject to the approval of the Fed board in Washington.
The Clinton campaign said the central bank is indeed ripe for change. “The Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole,” it said in a statement, adding that “commonsense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—are long overdue.”
Much of the criticism over Fed diversity centers on the make-up of the regional bank boards of directors, which are populated by members of the private sector and oversee the operations of the Fed banks.
The makeup of Fed bank president ranks has been criticized for other reasons as well. The leaders of the New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis branches have all worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs in some capacity.
The Federal Reserve in recent years has faced criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Many on the right have been angered by the central bank’s aggressive stimulus actions and its role in bailouts of the financial system, and some have wanted to audit the central bank’s process for making monetary policy and force the Fed to set policy based on an explicit and simple rule.
On the left, some have said the Fed has pursued policies that have promoted income inequality and the interests of the financial sector. The low level of diversity has become a more prominent concern in recent months in part because of the report from the Fed Up Coalition.
Meanwhile, former Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said in a blog post in January that a lack of black representation at the Fed appears to have left central bankers insufficiently attuned to the economic troubles of the African-American community.
The Fed has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Last week, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump said he likely would replace Ms. Yellen if he were president. On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has long been a critic of the Fed.
By MICHAEL S. DERBY
Source
Divided Democrats face liberal backlash on immigration
Divided Democrats face liberal backlash on immigration
Opponents of demonstrators urging the Democratic Party to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA) stand outside the office of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in...
Opponents of demonstrators urging the Democratic Party to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA) stand outside the office of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in Los Angeles Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018. California has the largest number of people who are affected by the law, also known as the Dream Act.
Read the full article here.
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
The public compact
The public compact
It is always amusing to be the subject of a John McClaughry jeremiad. While I don’t mind being labeled as the “foremost defender” of public education, he insists on giving me full personal credit...
It is always amusing to be the subject of a John McClaughry jeremiad. While I don’t mind being labeled as the “foremost defender” of public education, he insists on giving me full personal credit for what is a state school board position.
In the instant case, John appears to be affronted by the suggestion that private (independent) schools that take public money must actually be held accountable for that money. This principle is at the core of the state board’s review of the independent school rules. Now this seems like a straightforward and fundamentally democratic concept that is generally accepted, but it has been a long-standing problem for some.
The law (16 VSA 166) provides a list of reporting requirements for independent schools if they want to chow down at the public trough. Unfortunately, as far back as the 1914 Carnegie Commission, we find evidence of the refusal of some independent schools to provide private school data even though it was the law of the land. (At that time, the Cubs were still basking in the glory of their World Series victory.)
The second paramount principle is that we have to educate all the children — regardless of needs and handicaps. That’s a necessity in a democracy. Denying a child admission on the basis of a handicap is, in most cases, illegal. Furthermore, it’s wrong. Public schools serve every child. The false fear John peddles is that the private school can’t afford to serve these children. That’s incorrect. It’s really quite simple. While great eruptions of umbrage are displayed, this problem has been solved for years. The private school contracts with (or hires) a specialist who bills the costs back to the public school. Approval in a given area requires that one sheet of paper be filed with the state. As simple as the solution actually is, some independent schools refuse to adopt an equal opportunity policy.
Instead, John proposes that Vermont “clone” Florida’s McKay Scholarship program where parents can choose the school for their handicapped child. That hasn’t worked out too well. If you think a “business management class” that sends students onto the street to panhandle is an acceptable education, then the McKay program may be just your thing. The Florida Department of Education has uncovered “substantial fraud,” including schools that don’t exist, non-existent students, and classes held in condemned buildings and public parks. And the state of Florida does not have the staff to adequately monitor the program. This is a recipe for abuse. Last May, the Center for Popular Democracy estimated that $216 million in charter school money went out the back door.
Finally, John raises the cost question and says private school scholarships would be “less expensive.” Yet he also criticizes the cost of the state’s excess public school capacity. Now let’s look at Vermont’s private independent school numbers. In 1998, there were 68 independent schools, and by 2016, the number had exploded to 93. In the decade 2004-14, independent school enrollments went down from 4,361 to 3,392. A 37 percent increase in schools with a 29 percent drop in students suggests somebody needs to revisit their business plan.
Taking it all together, (1) all who profit from the public treasury must be accountable for that money, (2) children have the right to be admitted to private schools, free of discrimination, on an equal opportunity basis, (3) private schools are a part of our system, (4) the public purse must be protected from fraud and abuse, and (5) directly or indirectly building and operating a parallel school system would be inordinately expensive and wasteful. Do these principles sound reasonable?
William J. Mathis is managing director of the National Education Policy Center and a member of the Vermont state Board of Education. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the views of any group with which he is associated.
Source
Data Brief: Challenges Facing Albuquerque’s Modern Workforce
Bernalillo County, New Mexico has almost 472,000 hourly workers—nearly two-thirds of its total workforceb—who would benefit from updating workplace protections to match our modern workweek. Across...
Bernalillo County, New Mexico has almost 472,000 hourly workers—nearly two-thirds of its total workforceb—who would benefit from updating workplace protections to match our modern workweek. Across multiple measures, hourly workers are more likely than salaried workers to experience volatile, precarious schedules. A national survey found that 41 percent of early-career hourly workers know their schedules a week or less in advance and half of the hourly workers in the study said their schedules were decided by their employer alone. Nearly three-quarters of hourly workers reported that their weekly work hours had fluctuated in the past month.
This brief examines who the County’s nearly half-million hourly workers are; the working conditions they face; and the tailored policies that public officials can enact to match the changing rhythms of today’s workplace.
Download the report here:
4 days ago
4 days ago