Paid Sick Leave Now Mandatory for Most Businesses in Jersey City
The Jersey Journal - January 24, 2014, by Terrence McDonald - When Jersey City in September 2012 became the first New Jersey municipality to mandate that most private businesses provide paid sick...
The Jersey Journal - January 24, 2014, by Terrence McDonald - When Jersey City in September 2012 became the first New Jersey municipality to mandate that most private businesses provide paid sick leave for its workers, Mayor Steve Fulop predicted a legal fight.
Four months later, and no lawsuit filed, the measure is now law.
Fulop called today “very exciting.”
“I think it’s going to help tens of thousands of working families in Jersey City,” he said at an event at Saint Peter's University.
Jersey City is the sixth city in the nation to force private businesses to provide paid sick time. The law affects employers with 10 or more workers, and was opposed by state- and countywide business groups.
Paid sick time laws have become a favored cause of liberals and labor unions. Both groups hailed Jersey City when Fulop first proposed the measure last year, and they extolled the city again today.
“This law respects the dignity of workers, protects the public health and will mean savings for businesses big and small. When workers can earn sick days, everybody wins,” said Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, executive director of the New Jersey Citizen Action and spokesperson for the New Jersey Time to Care Coalition.
Other cities that have implemented similar mandates include Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle. New York City, which passed a similar law last year, is set to strengthen it under its new, more liberal mayor.
Business groups have opposed the mandate wherever it's been implemented, but in San Francisco, which in 2006 became the first in the nation to require paid sick leave, thanks to a voter referendum, some who opposed the requirement subsequently said it hadn't affected businesses much, if at all.
An audit in Washington, D.C., found the law had not led to fewer businesses opening, though local businesses owners said they had cut back on hours.
Michael Egenton, a senior vice president at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, fears that paid sick leave, together with new health-care regulations and the state’s new minimum-wage increase, could convince businesses to relocate.
Egenton also expressed concern about local governments implementing these types of regulations.
“Whatever happened to the freedom of enterprise?” he said today, adding that he believes business owners will reward employees with benefits like paid sick time even if the government doesn’t force them to.
“If you’re a good worker, your boss will give you sick time,” Egenton said.
Source
America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
![](/sites/default/files/newsdefault.jpg)
America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda...
...
Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda...
Read full article here.
Progressives Do Not Take The Fed Seriously. Meet The People Trying To Change That
Progressive activists have no shortage of ambitious economic policy goals. They include the $15 minimum wage, Social Security expansion, Medicare for all and debt-free college -- to name just a...
Progressive activists have no shortage of ambitious economic policy goals. They include the $15 minimum wage, Social Security expansion, Medicare for all and debt-free college -- to name just a few.
One item not on the list? Federal Reserve policy to create jobs and boost wages.
But a growing number of liberal-leaning economists and a new, Fed policy-centered coalition of progressive groups are trying to change that. They are on a mission to keep the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates until the economy sees real wage growth. It is a cause that they argue is essential to raising living standards and reducing income inequality, and they are making their case in policy papers, meetings with Federal Reserve officials and yes, even demonstrations. They believe that President Barack Obama has neglected the Fed -- even failing to fill two vacant seatson the Federal Reserve Board of Governors -- to the detriment of paychecks around the country.
The progressive economists and activists merely recognize what Wall Street has long accepted as true: The Fed’s monetary policy is one of if not the most important single factors in the real economy. In that battle to guide Fed policy, Wall Street is joined bythe GOP, which routinely pressures the Fed to rein itself in.
The degree to which the Fed turns the faucet of money on or off has a direct effect on the jobs available to Americans -- and the wages they are able to demand once they are working. In fact, slowing wage growth is a feature of Fed policy, not a bug. A decision to limit the flow of money, even if based on sound concerns about inflation, is designed to lower prices by putting thousands of Americans out of work and driving down wage growth.
Janet Yellen, a liberal-leaning economist who has long focused on wage growth, runs the Fed. Progressives successfully championed her for the post, derailing the bid of Obama’s top pick of Larry Summers, yet there has barely been a peep from them as Yellen and her colleagues consider putting the brakes on the economy.
To understand the case the progressives are making, it's important to know a little bit about the Fed, how it works and why it matters so much to the American economy.
How Does The Fed Work?
In controlling the country’s money supply, the Federal Reserve System, more commonly known as the “Fed,” is charged with what is often called a “dual mandate”: maximizing employment and maintaining stable prices. It does this primarily by adjusting the Federal Funds Rate, which is the interest rate at which banks lend to one another overnight using funds kept at the Federal Reserve. (It also can adjust theDiscount Rate, which is the rate at which the Fed lends to banks directly.) The Fed body responsible for adjusting the rate is the Federal Open Market Committee, which consists of 12 members -- seven presidentially appointed Federal Reserve Board governors, including the chair of the Fed, and a rotating group of five regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents.
How the Fed chooses to adjust the money supply is what is known as monetary policy. In a weak economy, the Fed is inclined to engage in monetary stimulus, which means lowering rates to prompt a virtuous cycle of economic growth. Banks respond to the cheaper credit available to them by providing cheaper credit to consumers and businesses. Consumers benefit from lower interest rates on home mortgages, cars and student loans. Businesses get lower interest rates on the loans they need to pay employees, maintain inventory and pay other bills. The money consumers and business owners save on financing their debt then gets cycled back into the economy in demand for goods and services. This in turn stimulates hiring, lowering unemployment and ultimately raising wages as employers compete for workers.
If economic growth gets higher than the Fed believes is consistent with its inflation target, the Fed contracts the money supply, raising rates to prevent excessive inflation. That is because if debt remains cheap, wages could grow so high that businesses must constantly raise prices to remain afloat. People’s financial assets decline in value, as does the purchasing power of workers’ wages. The Fed adjusts rates with a target of 2 percent inflation, in an effort to avoid levels of inflation that would “reduce the public's ability to make accurate longer-term economic and financial decisions.”
While the 2 percent target has become sacred in Fed policy circles, it is based on no more evidence than any other figure -- and those other figures, such as target unemployment, are adjusted routinely. Taking some of the halo off the 2 percent number, some economists argue, would give the Fed much more flexibility to help workers.
What is often lost in the dry, bloodless discussion of raising rates is the consequences for regular people when the Fed moves in that direction. The goal of raising rates -- not an unfortunate, unintended consequence, but the actual policy goal -- is to throw people out of work and drive down wages. As people suffer, as their confidence is weakened, as their sense of dignity is undermined, they become meeker in the job market and as a result they stop pushing for a raise, or they accept a new position at a lower salary. With wages suppressed, companies don’t need to raise prices in order to continue growing profits, and the pressure on inflation is alleviated.
The Fed, liberal economists say, is planning to cause all of this pain with precious little evidence that it is even remotely necessary. Despite years of steady economic growth and rising employment, prices remain well below the Fed's inflation target.
There is, in fact, no evidence of much price inflation at all.
So Why Cause Needless Suffering?
The degree to which the Fed has emphasized employment and wages, versus the threat of inflation, has varied greatly over the decades based both on its leadership and economic circumstances. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, notes in his book The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, that starting in 1980, the Fed shifted its monetary policy in favor of the anti-inflation prong of its dual mandate at the expense of full employment. Paul Volcker, Fed chair from 1979 to 1987, increased interest rates to wipe out high inflation, allowing the unemployment rate to reach almost 11 percent in 1982. Since then, the Fed has shifted its monetary policies modestly based on circumstances. But with rare exception, it has not allowed unemployment to get low enough to generate significant wage growth for the large majority of American workers.
The severity of the recent recession yielded an unusually broad consensus in favor of keeping rates low. Since 2008, under both the Republican-appointed Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, and the current Democrat-appointed chair, Yellen, the federal funds rate has remained at what is known as the “zero lower bound” – between 0 and 0.25 percent. In fact, the Fed went even further, purchasing trillions in securities between 2008 and 2014, in a program known as quantitative easing. The aim of the program was to keep credit flowing by maintaining high demand for public and private debt.
Now, after positive GDP growth in 19 of the last 21 quarters since 2011 and the official unemployment rate nearing 5 percent, Yellen has indicated that the Fed will soon raise the rate. How much to raise the rate -- and when the Fed will do that -- is unclear. Unemployment remained flat from March to April, which may make the Fed more cautious. The next fed committee meeting is June 16-17, and the results of the meeting will be watched closely.
What Would Progressive Fed Policy Look Like?
Baker and other economists think the Fed should allow wages to grow more substantially before raising rates.
Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute, argues in an August 2014 fact sheet that the Fed should look for 3.5 percent growth. In the first quarter of 2015, wages were up 2.6 percent from the year before -- a growth rate that many economists say doesn't have a real impact on regular people's lives.
Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities and former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, shared Bivens’ preference for the Fed to wait for 3.5 percent nominal wage growth before raising the rate.
“The unemployment rate is within distance of [the Fed's full employment target], and yet inflation and wage pressures are nowhere to be seen,” Bernstein said. “My admonitions here are not to slow the economy down too soon, and that would be until GDP growth reaches workers through their paychecks.”
In short, these economists want Yellen to act more like Chair Alan Greenspan did in the late 1990s. At the time, Greenspan repeatedly declined to raise rates, claiming that the “softness in compensation growth” continued to make employment a greater concern than inflation. In doing so, Greenspan faced down criticism both from the financial industry and dissent from Fed committee members like Yellen, then the Fed governor.
The result of Greenspan’s decision, many argue, was one of the few periods of broadly distributed wage growth since before the 1973 recession. From 1995 to 2000, the bottom 20 percent of workers saw double-digit wage increases.
It is an odd turn considering that Greenspan’s handling of the dot-com and housing bubbles, and libertarian ideology, have made him a bête noire of the left.
“A lot of economists do not like to acknowledge it, but Greenspan -- and I have trashed him endlessly -- was not an orthodox economist,” Dean Baker said. “Greenspan did something nobody thought was right, and he was right. High school degree workers were getting pay raises. It was not Clinton, but Greenspan who did it.”
These economists believe that postponing a rate hike is risk-free, because price inflation has remained defiantly low for so long. From April 2014 to April 2015, personal consumption expenditures excluding food and energy -- the metric the Fed uses to measure inflation -- went up just over 1 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That level of price inflation occurred during a period in which the economy created nearly 2.8 million more jobs, bringing the official unemployment rate from 6.2 percent to 5.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the long term, Bivens and Baker would like to see the Fed be altogether more concerned about wages and employment than inflation. They believe that the Fed’s price inflation target could go higher than 2 percent without tolerating dangerous inflation rates. A higher inflation target would have allowed the Fed to pursue a more aggressive quantitative easing program and push wages upward faster.
Baker says that the Fed should be most concerned about the rate at which prices are inflating, rather than a particular percentage range. And he believes that an uptick in inflation is rarely so abrupt as to be beyond adjustment.
“If we had a jump in inflation even from 1.5 percent to 2 percent and then 2.5 the next month, then I’d say we should hit on the brakes,” Baker said.
Other economists from major world financial bodies, like Olivier Blanchard of the International Monetary Fund and Eric Rosengren of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, have also publicly endorsed higher inflation targets.
More conservative economists argue that even if prices remain stable and low, a rate hike would head off asset inflation in, for example, the housing and stock markets. Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute, expressed concern that the Fed’s low interest rates have allowed financial asset prices and corporate leveraging to reach “disconcerting” levels.
The liberal economists share Calabria’s concerns about asset bubbles, but believe that the Fed has tools other than raising interest rates at its disposal to address them.They note that the Fed has the power to regulate the banks and other commercial institutions with which it does business.
The Fed, they say, also has a bully pulpit that can be used to dampen the excessive expectations of growth in a particular industry that lead assets to be overvalued. A July 2014 Monetary Policy Report by the Fed Board of Governors warned against high asset prices in the social media and biotechnology industries.
“For whatever reason, [Yellen] has not done it since,” said Baker of the Fed’s July 2014 cautionary remarks. “If you show the evidence that these are overpriced, it will have an impact on prices.”
How’s The Economy Doing?
Yellen has been a consistent advocate of monetary stimulus, keeping rates low and buying financial assets. As chair, Yellen has adopted a consensus-driven approach to her leadership, including listening to some more inflation-wary members of the Fed committee.
Baker estimates that a sustained series of rate hikes would reduce the economic growth rate by half a percentage point, and the economy would create 500,000 fewer jobs per year.
The low official unemployment rate hides the fact that millions of Americans have settled for part-time work or dropped out of the labor force entirely. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that when counting workers employed part-time for economic reasons, and those who have not looked for a job recently due to discouragement, the unemployment rate was 11.6 percent from the middle of 2014 through the beginning of 2015. Tellingly, despite the creation of 2.8 million jobs from April 2014 to April 2015, labor force participation remained flat at 62.8 percent.
Several small business owners who spoke to The Huffington Post also expressed concern about the fragile state of the recovery, and warned against a premature rate hike.
Mike Brey, CEO of Hobby Works, which has several retail locations in Maryland and Virginia, said that business only began to rebound in the latter half of 2014. Hobby Works employs 38 people. Brey recently rehired a worker for Hobby Works’ warehouse location, and plans to hire another employee if sales continue to pick up.
“I feel like we are in a recovery, but it has taken pretty long to get here,” Brey said. “To me, it still feels a little bit uneasy.”
Brey says the lower that Fed rates are, the better terms he gets on bulk purchases from wholesalers. A single quarter-point rate hike would probably not affect what Hobby Works does on a “day-to-day basis,” he says. Rather, he is more worried about the effects of a rate hike on the still-precarious consumer confidence of the lower-middle and middle-class consumers who frequent his stores.
Ron Nelsen, owner of Pioneer Door, a retail garage door company in Las Vegas, says that garage door sales have increased as consumers have begun buying homes in large numbers again.
“I think true consumer demand has been here for a year or two,” Nelsen said. “Maybe the end of 2013 and last year really felt like people were opening up their pockets again.”
Nelsen worried that a Fed rate hike could hurt the consumers who buy his company’s garage doors.
“If it affected my customers’ base disposable income, it would be huge,” he said.
Mobilizing Main Street -- and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard
Having ideas about what the Fed should do is one thing, and actually influencing the Fed’s decisions is another thing entirely. It is unclear exactly how to change a Fed decision, but it undoubtedly takes more than the public comments of a few economists.
Fed Up, a new coalition of community organizations and labor unions led by theCenter for Popular Democracy, is trying to turn the complex policy arguments of economists like Baker, Bivens and Bernstein into a grassroots political movement. The goal is to get the Fed to recommit itself to genuine, equitable full employment policies. In particular, Fed Up, whose main concern is aptly summed up by its homepage whatrecovery.org, has mobilized urban communities of color to lobby the Fed for pro-employment monetary policies that account for the disproportionately high unemployment and economic hardship levels in their communities.
Ady Barkan, a Center for Popular Democracy staff member who directs the Fed Up campaign, said that while Fed policy is more difficult to explain to community activists than issues like the minimum wage and Medicaid access, the coalition has made headway in educating people about the importance of the Fed to their daily lives.
“We have developed materials explaining why the Fed matters and why higher interest rates could hurt you,” Barkan said. “It is not just that it will mean higher mortgage rates, car rates and student loan rates, but that when the economy slows down, workers have less leverage. We are finding that people are excited by it and recognize why it matters to them.”
Fed Up released a study in March, "Wall Street, Main Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard: Why African Americans Must Not Be Left Out of the Federal Reserve’s Full-Employment Mandate," highlighting the still-high unemployment rate among black Americans, and lopsided impact of the Great Recession on black wealth and wages. In 2014, the study reports, black unemployment remained at 11.4 percent, while it was 5.3 percent for whites.
The study notes that even prior to the recession, African-Americans were losing ground economically. The median black worker suffered a 3.1 percent wage cut from 2000 to 2014, the study says, compared to a 2.5 percent increase for the median white worker. Between 2007 and 2013, median household wealth declined 43 percent among African-Americans, compared with 27 percent for whites.
In addition to calling on the Fed to postpone any planned rate hikes, Fed Up is asking for structural reforms that would broaden its mandate and subject it to greater influence from working people. It wants the Fed to study the effects of inequality and how non-monetary policies like the minimum wage affect the economy. It recommends making the selection of regional Fed presidents more transparent and open to public input. And it is demanding that Fed officials meet regularly with working people and community organizations.
Fed Up organized press conferences in eight cities with regional Federal Reserve banks in March to publicize the study’s findings about racial disparities in wages and employment. In November, Fed Up activists met with Yellen, Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, and Governors Lael Brainerd and Jerome Powell in Washington.
Barkan believes the Fed governors were receptive to Fed Up’s stance.
“They listened very carefully and asked good follow-up questions and seemed to be really moved and grateful for the conversation,” Barkan said.
While Fed Up has convened meetings and published reports, it has not shied away from public protests. In what the Wall Street Journal called “a first for Jackson Hole,”Fed Up sent a group to protest a possible rate hike at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, meeting in August 2014. The protests yielded a meeting between the group and Kansas City Fed President Esther George. Fed Up says it has scheduled additional meetings with regional Fed presidents.
Lobbying the Fed is a delicate task because it is seen as novel -- even subversive. The Fed has traditionally been viewed as a nonpartisan, technocratic institution that should be left to its own devices by politicians and political movements.
But progressive advocates argue that the Fed has not always been impartial. Regional Fed presidents and Fed governors routinely survey business and financial leaders to help make interest rate decisions. And the mere fact that regional Fed presidents are largely elected by private bankers, these progressives say, means that the financial community has an outsize say in Fed policy.
“What central bank independence has really meant is independence from all sectors except the financial sector,” Bivens said. “Organized labor? Of course they should not be allowed to have a voice at the central bank, but the financial sector does.”
What's more, progressives note, the political right has wasted no time heaping criticism on the Fed for what it perceives as excessive stimulus. And attacking the Fed has not just been a campaign trope for tea party-friendly presidential candidates like Rick Perry. Congressional Republicans regularly pressure Yellen, too. In an April hearing, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, complained to Yellen that the Fed was supposed to check Congress’ desire for looser monetary policy, but now Congress found itself trying to check the Fed.
A couple months before that, Garrett questioned Yellen about a speech she gave on economic inequality. He argued that the timing of the speech -- it was a few weeks before the 2014 midterm elections -- "clearly indicate[s] that the Fed is already acting and making decisions clearly on a partisan political basis."
“In recent years, [the Fed is] just getting criticized up and down from the right that they are priming the pump for hyperinflation,” Bivens said. “If the right is going to pressure them, pressure from the left is more important than ever.”
Source: Huffington Post
Live coverage of the Local Progress and the People's Convention in Pittsburgh
![](/sites/default/files/newsdefault.jpg)
Live coverage of the Local Progress and the People's Convention in Pittsburgh
This weekend we'll be covering events at the Local Progress National Convening and Center for Popular Democracy's People's Convention that are happening in Pittsburgh this weekend. More than 1,000...
This weekend we'll be covering events at the Local Progress National Convening and Center for Popular Democracy's People's Convention that are happening in Pittsburgh this weekend. More than 1,000 grassroots activists and 100 elected municipal officials will attend conference sessions and a rally in the city from July 7-9. Follow our live blog for coverage.
People's Convention addresses Immigrants rights
This weekend during a panel discussion on immigration at the Local Progress conference, “sanctuary cities” were front and center. In places that have been classified as sanctuary cities, local law enforcement is dissuaded and sometimes barred from providing information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sanctuary cities have been a red hot topic in Pennsylvania recently with Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey trying (and failing) to pass a bill that would cut off funding to sanctuary cities and Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Katie McGinty telling the Mayor of Philadelphia that his sanctuary city bill needs altering.
Opponents of sanctuary cities believe they lead to undocumented immigrants, who are arrested for violent crimes or terroristic charges, avoiding deportation. But advocates say these policies protect undocumented immigrants, who are charged with minor crimes, from falling into the hands of ICE.
“This is about trust between the community and the police department,” said Philadelphia City Councilor Helen Gym, who spoke during the panel discussion as a proponent of Philadelphia's sanctuary policy. “The community is not served when they fear the police.” The lack of a sanctuary policy in Allegheny County enabled the prosecution and possible deportation of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, who City Paper wrote about in a cover story in June. Esquivel-Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico living in Pittsburgh, was cited for driving without a valid license by Mount Lebanon Police and paid his fine in late April. Less than a week later he was detained by ICE.
Lt. Duane Fisher, of the Mount Lebanon Police, says the township's general policy is to make contact with ICE if police “find someone who is unlicensed” and to see whether ICE has “any reason to see if [the suspect] is wanted.” ICE officials have not returned multiple calls requesting information about Esquivel-Hernandez.
Gym says stories like these can harm relationships between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. “We don’t want people to be afraid to call the police to report crimes like burglary, etc.,” said Gym. “It is not the responsibility of local police departments to enforce immigration laws, since they are federal laws.”
She also adds that immigrants have helped Philadelphia grow after 50 years of losing population. Gym says that while the native-born population in Philadelphia has remained steady or dropped over the years, the foreign-born population has grown. “The vibrancy of Philadelphia, the part that seems exciting, hast to do with immigrants feeling welcome,” Gym says.
Other elected officials at the panel from across the country—even ones that are in rust belt cities like Pittsburgh—agreed that attracting immigrants is important to a region's prosperity. Summit County, Ohio County Councilor Liz Walters said immigrants and refugees breathe new life into struggling communities. Summit County, which is just south of Cleveland, has a manufacturing past and has been losing population for decades.
Even in the face of population decline, Walters said it has not been easy to sway other local politicians to the benefits of attracting and maintaining foreign-born populations. “For some, it's easier to see differences and so it's easy to be afraid,” said Walters.
But Walters said Summit County is starting to see successes. Akron, the county seat, now holds ethnic market bus tours where long-time residents sit next to social service providers and get to sample Italian, Mexican and Southeast Asian goods. She says strategies like these don’t just show people can live together, they are good for a region’s economy: “Any city that is not thinking about a [diverse] and global-minded local economy, is going to fall behind.”
— Ryan Deto
9-11 a.m. Fri., July 8
Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, spoke at Local Progress' national meeting about combating Islamophobia. - PHOTO BY ASHLEY MURRAY
Photo by Ashley Murray
Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, spoke at Local Progress' national meeting about combating Islamophobia.
Linda Sarsour is the executive director at the Arab American Association of New York and the co-founder of Empower Change, a Muslim online organizing platform. She spoke at this morning’s Local Progress panel discussion entitled “Our Role in this Political Moment: How local officials can fight back against hate, xenophobia and Islamophobia.” City Paper’s Ashley Murray caught up with her after the discussion.
Tell me about some of the work you’ve done in New York.
My organization predominately works with immigrants from the Arab world and South Asia and has been doing immigrants-rights work — language access to services for immigrants, police reform based on accounts of unwarranted surveillance against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. That work has really opened up doors for being part of broader social-justice movements in New York City that includes working on city-wide immigrant-rights legislation and police reform with black and Latino civil-rights groups. We’ve had a lot of wins in New York. We are one of the most welcoming immigrant cities in the country. We have language-access legislation where government agencies are mandated to [provide] language access. We have passed landmark civil-rights legislation [including] police-reform legislation, creat[ing] the first-ever independent oversight for the New York Police Department. Really it was the most directly impacted communities [who were] at the forefront of those fights. I have committed myself to intersectional organizing because people are intersectional. I mean Muslims are black, white, Latino, Asian, Arab, and we also understand that within all of our communities we’re so complex. So we’re working on multiple issues because we’re not one-issue communities.
One of the things you said on the panel today is that the same people who are promoting Islamophobia may also be against LGBTQ rights and promote deporting Latinos and separating them from their families. Can you talk about that intersection?
I like to look at things from a broader perspective, and because I'm an intersectional organizer, I get to see that the same legislators that are passing anti-LGBTQ laws are the ones passing anti-Sharia bills, which are basically limiting Muslims rights to practice Islam freely in this country. People who are unconditionally pro-police and anti-police reform [and] anti-refugee resettlement are mostly the same legislators around the country. Once we started understanding that, it really helped us build alliances so that when there is an anti -refugee legislation, different movements are showing up for others. When there is an anti-LGBTQ [bill], other communities are showing up. It’s been very powerful. We’ve been able to defeat a lot of anti-refugee legislation across the country. There have been hundreds of cities that have passed welcoming-immigrants resolutions. And I think many legislators are realizing opposition is not in opposition to one group. They are actually in opposition to multiple groups, many of whom are marginalized and minority communities.
Lastly, on the panel you talked about how “Daesh” uses Islamophobia as a tool. Can you talk about that? [Sarsour told the audience that she uses the Arabic acronym Daesh because the terrorist group does not like that name. Many English-speaking media outlets use the term “self-described Islamic State” or “ISIS”.]
I think Islamophobia is systemic targeting and discriminating against Muslims in America, and what it does is it isolates Muslim Americans from the larger American society. It puts people farther into the margins and what that does is, and especially when elected officials in particular are in the media spouting anti-Muslim rhetoric, it actually gives fuel to violent extremists on the other side of the world — and particularly watching Daesh create these social-media videos where they actually quote people like Trump. This feeds into the narrative that they are trying to propose that the West is at war with Islam and that you are not welcomed in your countries, you are a minority, you are at the margin. They use this very problematic rhetoric that is actually based on things people in our country have said. So I always tell people to be careful of what type of ammunition you’re giving to the violent extremists. Unity is the enemy of terrorism, and what Daesh does not want to see is people coming together saying, "We stand with our Muslim neighbors, we stand with our LGBT neighbors." They don’t want to see people working together. And I think we’ve done a very good job in some parts of the country, in places like New York City, where we said, "We’re not going to be divided. We’re not going to let Daesh divide us; we’re not going to let the right-wing divide us."
— Ashley Murray
6-8 p.m. Thu., July 7
Culver City, Calif., City Councilor Meghan Sahli-Wells spoke to a crowd of locally elected woman officials.
Culver City, Calif., City Councilor Meghan Sahli-Wells spoke to a crowd of locally elected woman officials.
Ana Maria Archila stood at the front of a small conference room and emotionally said, "All of you represent what's possible. I need you." She told this to a small conference room of locally elected woman officials after talking about her 4-year-old daughter who told her mom that she could "be Michelle" but couldn't be president.
"She's only 4, but she already learned gender roles. That's why I need you," Archila said.
Nearly 40 women — including local city councilors, county supervisors and school-board members from as close as Wilkinsburg, Pa., to as far as Tacoma, Wash. — gathered for the Local Progress' Inagural Women's Caucus Gathering to kick off the weekend at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. Local Progress, which has the tagline "The National Municipal Policy Network," is part of the Center for Public Democracy, also holding its People's Convention in town this weekend.
The purpose of the Local Progress national meeting is to "create a community to share best practices around policy and learn from campaign best practices," says Sarah Johnson, co-director of the organization. "We think local progress can play a role in supporting women."
Meghan Sahli-Wells, a city councilor from Culver City, Calif., said that although her city was founded 100 years ago, there have only been five women elected to local government. "We can still count the number on one hand," she said, holding five fingers up to drive home the point.
Various participants shared concerns about obstacles for women wanting to run — like lack of a network to raise capital — and issues once in office — like needing a career mentor.
Sequanna Taylor, now a supervisor for the 2nd District of Milwaukee County, said, "I didn't have the money, but I couldn't let that be an issue. I was out in blizzards getting signatures." Taylor said when her county came under financial distress, she grew concerned about representation in her district and decided to run. She said the board had a reputation for being made up of "good old boys."
"I have to make sure they [District 2 residents] have a voice," Taylor said.
A collective, disappointed "wow" could be heard when political scientist Dana Brown, of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University, told the room that 82 percent of the locally elected officials in Pa.'s 67 counties are male. Her organization is a bipartisan center that encourages women to run for office.
"Public policy is happening whether women are at the table or not," Brown said. "Somewhere right now there is a vote happening. ... We, in Pa., have a long way to go."
She shared research findings that show when women are at the table, they change agendas by bringing a new perspective; change procedures by changing content of discussions and enforcing transparency; and change policy outcomes because they use more collaborative and inclusive language in negotiations.
Two local politicians attended the discussion — Pittsburgh City Councilor Natalia Rudiak and Wilkinsburg Council Vice President Marita Garrett.
Rudiak said that when she was a young activist, "a man always had the megaphone [at protests]. I remember wondering if I'll ever have it." Now Rudiak, one of the youngest people ever elected to council, says "I'm doing everything I can locally to get women elected."
— Ashley Murray
By Rebecca Addison, Ryan Deto and Ashley Murray
Source
Aloha State Welcomes Same-Day Voter Registration
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 30, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy
(973) 464-9224; tjhelm@...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973) 464-9224; tjhelm@populardemocracy.org
Hawaii Passes Same-Day Voter Registration in Move to Expand Electorate and Make Voting More Accessible Hawaii to Become 13th State Plus District of Columbia to Allow SDR(HONOLULU) – Both houses of the Hawaii legislature passed Same Day Registration (SDR) yesterday. The bill, HB2590, known locally as “Late Registration” will allow Hawaiians who missed the state’s 30-day voter registration deadline to register and vote during the state’s early voting period or on Election Day. The bill passed with 34 Ayes in the Senate, 40 Ayes in the House, and now goes to Governor Neil Abercrombie for his signature.
SDR is a proven means of increasing voter participation. States with SDR led the nation in voter turnout by 10 percentage points in the 2012 presidential election. It will help boost voting rates in Hawaii, the state with the lowest voter turnout rate in the country.
Today’s vote is the culmination of a long, multi-year effort. Led by Hawaii Common Cause, the legislative campaign was supported by a number of organizations representing Hawaii voters, including Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), the Center for Popular Democracy’s state partner organization in Hawaii.
“The Center for Popular Democracy congratulates the people of the Aloha State for taking the next steps toward a more inclusive, popular democracy,” said Katrina Gamble, Director of Civic Engagement and Politics at the Center for Popular Democracy.
“Hawaii’s adoption of Same Day Registration sets out a clear alternative to the voter suppression policies enacted by reactionary legislatures in states like Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. This will serve as a boon to efforts to expand the electorate across the country,” added Gamble.
“Arcane, outdated voting rules fall most heavily on young people, low-income citizens, and people of color – those with the lowest registration rate. Same Day Registration helps level the playing field for them by offering a major new opportunity to register to vote and participate in elections,” said Steven Carbó, Director of Voting Rights and Democracy Initiatives at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Over half a million eligible citizens didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election in Hawaii. Many were just not registered to vote. Allowing voter registration on Election Day will give citizens a second chance to meet their civic duty and vote.
Trump expected to nominate Powell for Fed chair
Most on Wall Street welcomed the news that Powell is the likely nominee. Investment bank Deutsche Bank put out a note last week to clients saying Powell would be the best choice if Trump did not...
Most on Wall Street welcomed the news that Powell is the likely nominee. Investment bank Deutsche Bank put out a note last week to clients saying Powell would be the best choice if Trump did not want to keep Yellen on. But some liberal groups, including Fed Up, were disappointed and see the selection of Powell as an attempt to make the Fed more favorable to big banks. "Jerome Powell's most important qualification is that he served with Janet Yellen. His confirmation should depend on his willingness to follow in Yellen's footsteps on both monetary and regulatory policy," said Shawn Sebastian, co-director of Fed Up, a campaign from the Center for Popular Democracy.
Read the full article here.
New York City Council Passes Bill Forcing Employers to Provide Paid Sick Leave
The New American - May 9th, 2013 - On Wednesday the New York City Council...
The New American - May 9th, 2013 - On Wednesday the New York City Council voted 45-3 to pass the New York City Earned Sick Time Act, a bill that will require employers with more than 20 employees to provide five paid sick days to each of them every year while mandating that those employees using their sick days can’t be fired. The law would become effective on January 1, 2014, and companies with more than 15 employees would be required to comply with the law starting in 2015.
Even if Mayor Bloomberg vetoes the bill, the council will likely override it, making the law effective anyway. This will impact the employers of more than one million employees who currently have no paid sick days provided for them. The costs to be borne by those employers weren't provided in any public announcements.
The AFL/CIO explained why such legislation was needed:
In addition to the potential loss of wages for working families, the lack of paid sick days forces many people to go to work when they are contagious and [make] co-workers and customers sick.
No paid sick time also decreases [the] productivity for workers who show up unable to perform to their normal level of ability.
The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) was joyous over the vote, calling it “a historic agreement to give over one million New Yorkers the right to take paid days off from work to care for themselves or a sick family member. The new legislation represents a major step forward for workers’ rights.” The CPD was joined by Make the Road New York; 32 BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union; NYC City Council’s Progressive Caucus; the Working Families Party; A Better Balance; and the NY Paid Sick Leave Coalition.
Bill Lipton of the Working Families Party was equally ecstatic: "This is a sweet victory. It provides economic security for New Yorkers, and a shot in the arm for the paid sick days movement across the country."
The bill was first introduced by council member Gale Brewer, a permanent politician and long-time progressive political activist, back in July 2009 but went nowhere for nearly four years, owing to resistance by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn’s change to allow a vote coincided nicely with her announcement in March to run to succeed Mayor Bloomberg.
Brewer exulted in the victory:
After 4 years of non-stop advocacy and coalition building, I want to thank the Paid Sick Days Coalition members and my Council colleagues with all my heart for support [of my bill] and never giving up.
I also extend my thanks to Speaker Quinn and her staff for their contributions to this legislation….
The argument over [paid sick leave] was always about common sense and fairness. I believe this law enshrines the principle that American exceptionalism is not just about large profits and small elites, but a workplace that is safe, fair and respectful of the lives of workers.
Approximately one million New Yorkers will now have the fundamental right to a paid day off when they or a family member falls ill, and no worker will be fired if they must stay home. This is a tremendous accomplishment of which all fair-minded New Yorkers can be proud.
Four major cities have already passed paid sick leave laws — Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. — while similar measures are being considered in 20 others. On the national level, two other progressives, Sen. Tom Harken (D-Iowa) and Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.), are pushing the Healthy Families Act, which proposes essentially the same thing as Brewer’s bill: seven paid sick days each year required to be paid for by employers with more than 15 employees. The National Partnership for Women & Families outlined the benefits of such national legislation:
• Paid sick days provide families with economic security;
• Providing paid sick days is cost effective to employers;
• Paid sick days reduce community contagion;
• Paid sick days can decrease health care costs.
Each of these assumptions can be rebutted successfully, but none does it better than Ayn Rand, who always asked “At whose expense?” and Henry Hazlitt in his book Economics in One Lesson, which also asked about the unseen consequences of such meddling. The "broken window fallacy" is also helpful in understanding what progressives refuse to see: Someone must pay for such mandates, usually someone silent or impotent, without enough political influence to stop such “progress” — usually the taxpayers or employers unlucky enough to have a successful business large enough to be included in the mandate.
Some of the unseen consequences would naturally include higher employment costs to the business owners, as these are, in effect, pay raises to employees. The business owners' higher costs would be reflected in higher prices to consumers, which would likely reduce competitive advantage in a market niche. More likely, however, owners will discover that they can’t afford all the people working for them and will be forced to reduce their payrolls through terminations or attrition. That will increase social costs, as those no longer working will start receiving unemployment benefits provided by the state.
In the longer run, however, making employers less competitive will shrink rather than expand the general economy. Some will not hire new workers. Others may decide to retire, deciding that it’s no longer worth the effort, as government becomes more and more intrusive. Still others may choose to move out of the city, or the state, to more tax-friendly environments, further reducing the city’s economic output.
The biggest cost of all, however, is the continued and growing acceptance of government intervention as a way to solve perceived social “problems” and giving progressives more opportunities to expand the power and reach of government
Perhaps the best rebuttal is to review the bill of rights of another country, well-known to historians, which also had a progressive agenda very similar to that of Quinn, Brewer, and the AFL/CIO. It stated:
Citizens … have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality….
Citizens … have the right to rest and leisure … the reduction of the working day to seven hours … [and] the institution of annual vacations with full pay….
Citizens … have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work … ensured by the extensive development of social insurance for workers and employees. [Emphasis added.]
These are, of course, the rights enshrined in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR.
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.
Source
Many residents stand against Donald Trump
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election.
“It was a rally and a march called together primarily by immigrants rights...
Queens residents have been among the thousands protesting President-elect Trump in Manhattan since the election.
“It was a rally and a march called together primarily by immigrants rights groups to provide a space for immigrant communities, people that are undocumented to be able to raise up the voices and the perpsectives of immigrant communities,” DRUM — South Asian Organizing Center Executive Director Fahd Ahmed told the Chronicle, adding that Sunday’s march would not be the last that they attend.
According to the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York, more than 15,000 immigrant New Yorkers and their supporters attended the event.
“Well, basically we were marching because we will not tolerate the hate agenda, we’re here to stay and we reject that,” Ozone Park resident Julissa Bisono said. “We want to make sure that New York City continues to be a sanctuary for immigrant families and that’s why we decided to march yesterday, to make sure that President-elect Trump hears our message.”
Kenneth Shelton, a St. John’s University student, organized the march on Saturday from Union Square to Trump Tower with the news outlet BlackMatters US.
“It was just for people to vent their frustration, get out there and protest but also to show that we’re unified,” Shelton said. “We need to organize ourselves into a movement socially, politically and economically.”
“We reject his hate and refuse to live in constant fear under a president who does not regard us as human,” Queens resident Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a prepared statement. “[Sunday’s] rally and march marks our first, though certainly not last, line of resistance against Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant regime.”
Queens is believed to have more unauthorized immigrants than any other borough, nearly 250,000, who could face deportation.
“The immigrant communities here, they’re real hard-working families and they’re scared,” Bisono said.
According to Bisono, there is a serious fear among immigrants that they could be harmed after last week’s election.
“We had kids that came who didn’t even go to school because they were afraid to not come back the next day,” she said. “We shouldn’t be living in fear.”
For people who feel like they may be threatened by the Trump administration, the protests were an opportunity to stand in solidarity with others who are as worried.
Ahmed, whose group is based in Jackson Heights and used to be called Desis Rising Up and Moving, said that the protests are “to get people out of fear, to get them out of isolation and to build with each other.”
Although Trump has urged his supporters to not hurt others and commit hate crimes, those have spiked nationwide in the days following his election victory.
“The large number of people that came to these actions have been black communities, Latino communities — the people explicitly being told that they need to watch out and will be targeted,” Ahmed said.
By Ryan Brady
Source
Coalition Calls for Racial Equality in Kansas City Economy
KSHB - March 5, 2014 - Following a Department of Justice report showing the Ferguson Police Department unfairly targeted African-Americans, a Kansas City coalition says there are racial...
KSHB - March 5, 2014 - Following a Department of Justice report showing the Ferguson Police Department unfairly targeted African-Americans, a Kansas City coalition says there are racial inequalities right here.
They say a recent economic report shows twice as many African-Americans in Kansas and Missouri are unemployed than white residents and that wages are too low to support a family.
"Our purpose here today is to call for a moral economy where wages actually provide hope for workers and their families,” Stan Runnels, a priest and CCO member, said.
The group is asking policy makers for a change.
Source
Seattle Scales Back Tax in Face of Amazon’s Revolt, but Tensions Linger
![](/sites/default/files/newsdefault.jpg)
Seattle Scales Back Tax in Face of Amazon’s Revolt, but Tensions Linger
Ms. Kniech was one of more than 50 local lawmakers in the United States who sent an open letter to Seattle leaders and residents on Monday supporting the tax and criticizing Amazon’s resistance to...
Ms. Kniech was one of more than 50 local lawmakers in the United States who sent an open letter to Seattle leaders and residents on Monday supporting the tax and criticizing Amazon’s resistance to it. “By threatening Seattle over this tax, Amazon is sending a message to all of our cities: we play by our own rules,” the letter said.
Read the full article here.
1 hour ago
1 day ago