How to Build the Movement for Progressive Power, the Urban Way
As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban...
As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban centers. From Atlanta to Seattle and points in between, cities have begun seizing the initiative, transforming themselves into laboratories for progressive change. Cities Rising is The Nation’s chronicle of those urban experiments.
Cities are where the action is these days. Progressive action, political action. From paid sick days to universal pre-K, fossil-fuel divestment to anti-fracking ordinances, police reform to immigrant rights, the country’s urban centers are leading the way, far outpacing the federal government in vision and action. Just look at the growing movement for a $15 minimum wage. While Bernie Sanders has been raising minimum-wage consciousness on the campaign trail—introducing a bill in July to raise the federal minimum to $15 and calling for the same during the first Democratic presidential debate—it was local politicians, with names barely known beyond their districts, who first heeded the call of struggling workers and made $15 a reality. Before Bernie, in other words, there was Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant, Ruth Atkins, and the Emeryville City Council.
In recognition of this moment, progressive politicians from cities around the country—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, and beyond—have joined forces to begin sharing their strategies for creative progressive change. Calling themselves Local Progress, they swap policy solutions to urgent, ongoing injustices like income inequality and police brutality, share model legislation and provide strategic support for legislative campaigns. Kind of like an urban anti-ALEC. Today, just three years after it was formed, more than 400 elected officials from 40 states are part of the effort. And the victories are beginning to add up—from paid parental leave in Boston to paid sick leave in New York City, socially responsible investing in Seattle to the use of eminent domain in Richmond, California, to slash homeowner debt.
This week, Local Progress members from all over the country are meeting in Los Angeles for the group’s fourth national gathering. From October 26 through 28, they aretrading their best ideas and strategies for building progressive local power—and combatting police violence, spreading the Fight for $15, expanding affordable housing, boosting civic engagement, and pushing the fight for LGBTQ rights beyond marriage equality.
Chuy Garcia, who gave Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel a run for his millions in this year’s election, will be on the scene, as will Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, and dozens of council members, alderman, and supervisors from around the country. If cities are the incubators of promising progressive ideas, this gathering is a bit like the annual science expo.
The Nation has asked four Local Progress stalwarts to share some of the policy solutions they’ll be discussing at the gathering. New York City Council members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos, and Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack all weighed in, offering thoughts on everything from humanizing the sharing economy to organizing for police reform, protecting sanctuary cities, and pushing back against privatization and regressive tax policy. Here’s what they said.
—Lizzy Ratner
PROTECTING WORKERS IN THE ON-DEMAND ECONOMY
By Brad Lander
Rides from Uber. Home cleaning from Handy. Meals from Seamless. Web design from Upwork. Even doctors from Medicast.
There’s no doubt the on-demand economy is convenient. Consumers can arrange for services at the tap of a touchscreen. Workers can choose their hours and earn a little extra cash.
But there’s a very dark side to the “sharing” economy: The benefits aren’t usually shared with the workers.
Working “by-the-gig” rarely provides job security, health insurance, paid sick days or family leave, on-the-job training, or retirement contributions. Workers lack the right to organize a union. And eight in 10 freelance workers report having been cheated out of wages they were owed.
President Obama and Democratic presidential candidates are finally talking about the issue. But the Republican Congress will likely block any progress. Marco Rubio recently called for even further deregulation, leaving workers at the mercy of multibillion-dollar corporations.
So cities are taking the lead in writing new rules, working with Local Progress, the National Employment Law Project, forward-thinking unions, and worker organizations to level the on-demand playing field.
In Seattle, City Council member Mike O’Brien is fighting for a bill that would allow drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other “ridesharing” companies to organize and bargain collectively so that workers have some voice in the terms and conditions of their work.
In New York City, we are working with the Freelancers Union to combat wage theft and late payment. When conventional employees are cheated out of wages, the state labor department can enforce and win double damages. The #FreelanceIsntFree campaign (which recently brought its message to the White House) would provide freelancers with similar protection.
Council Member Corey Johnson and I are working with the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance to mandate a “driver benefits fund” (funded by a small fare surcharge) to provide for-hire drivers with healthcare benefits—a first step toward the “Shared Security Account” that Nick Hanauer and David Rolf called for in a Democracy Journal article this summer. And we’re amending New York City’s human-rights laws to make clear they apply to independent workers. There is no reason Uber should be able to discriminate against drivers based on race or religion.
Meanwhile, from San Francisco to Burlington, cities are establishing offices of labor standards and adopting other innovative approaches (like partnering with community-based organizations) to enforce the laws that protect workers. One task: making sure conventional employees aren’t illegally misclassified as independent workers by employers trying to cheat them out of benefits and protections (a big problem for day laborers and domestic workers). These offices can also make sure that companies who need licenses from the city get and keep them only if they respect local, state, and federal laws.
Ultimately, we’ll need national regulation to match the growing on-demand economy. But for now, progressive cities are bringing worker protections into the 21st century—and some real sharing into the sharing economy.
THE MUNICIPAL BATTLE FOR EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
By Antonio Reynoso
Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Sandra Bland. For more than a year, the senseless deaths of young black men and women by police officers or in police custody have dominated headlines and helped fuel a movement. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, this movement has been gaining ground in cities, towns, and counties across the country, spreading the call to end racist policing and begin enacting serious police reform. Its powerful message has reached all the way to the presidential campaign trail and beyond. But as the public waits for progress at the national level, change is already happening at the local level, thanks to powerful alliances between community activists and hundreds of local politicians.
In New York City, where I am a City Council member representingneighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, there is a desperate need for sensible reforms of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). For all to many New Yorkers, the excessive use of police force is a daily reality. The excessive surveillance of the Muslim community and a racialized stop-and-frisk policy also take their toll.
In response, organizations and progressive politicians have been fighting to improve accountability and transparency after years of racial profiling by the NYPD. The work has been supported by a broad coalition called Communities United for Police Reform, which has driven a strategic, multi-year campaign to knock on doors, organize the public, influence the public discourse, and pass legislation to implement smart reforms.
Communities want change, and they want to participate in the process of reforming the NYPD. So, working together, we’ve introduced the Right To Know Act as a way to meet their demands. These bills would require NYPD officers not only to identify themselves when stopping civilians but also to explain that the searches are voluntary and may be declined.
This is not the first time we have stood up for the people of our community. In 2013 and 2014, in partnership with Communities United for Police Reform, the City Council passed a series of bills known as the Community Safety Act, which together banned racial profiling by police and made it easier for New Yorkers who have experienced profiling to sue NYPD officers. The act also installed an independent inspector general to oversee the actions of the NYPD.
Of course, New York City is not the only city in our nation where racial profiling, unjust searches, and incidences of police brutality are common occurrences. Nor is it the only city where coalitions of community leaders and elected officials are working to improve the system. In the last year alone, communities have joined together with progressive local legislators to correct the imbalance of justice.
In Los Angeles County, the grassroots organization Dignity and Power Nowwon a transformative campaign, led by formerly incarcerated people and their families, to establish a strong civilian oversight commission for the sheriff’s department, which has an ugly history of violence against civilians on the streets and in county jails.
In Newark, community leaders partnered with Mayor Ras Baraka to create one of strongest civilian complaint review boards in the country, which has both a voice in disciplining police officers and a policy advisory role.
And in Minneapolis, a coalition led by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change succeeded in pressing the City Council to repeal spitting and loitering ordinances that were being disproportionately used to harass and harm black and Latino residents. They also won passage of a data-collection law that will begin to collect and publicize important evidence about the police department’s stop-and-frisk and use-of-force practices.
Members of Local Progress, partnering with community-based allies, have been central to these fights and many more, and we will continue combating such injustices across the United States, fighting for everyone to be treated equally under the law.
CITIES MUST LEAD THE NATION ON IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
By John Avalos
In the last few years, hundreds of cities across America have disentangled their police departments and jails from the federal immigrant-deportation machine, refusing to honor the Feds’ requests that cities detain immigrants past their release date so they could be picked up and deported. These policies protect immigrant families from the devastation of deportation and from crime, because they foster better relationships between the police and immigrant communities. The movement has been a bright spot for our country’s immigrant-rights movement.
But during the last few months, the policies, and in some cases the very idea, of sanctuary cities has come under attack. The catalyst for these changes was an undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez who allegedly shot and killed a young white woman named Kate Steinle. He claims that the shooting was an accident, but her case has become a cause célèbre among opponents of immigrants because Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times previously, and had recently been released from jail in San Francisco without being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
San Francisco’s Due Process for All Ordinance, the latest update to its Sanctuary City policy, bars the sheriff from detaining people past their release date on behalf of ICE’s Secure Communities, or S-Comm, program. The goal of Due Process for All is to protect immigrants and their families from S-Comm, which created an immigration dragnet, deporting tens of thousands of immigrants and tearing their families apart. Due Process for All also enables immigrants to be integrated into San Francisco’s local law-enforcement efforts by promoting relationships between immigrant communities and the police. San Francisco has been at the leading edge of a national movement: across the nation, over 350 other local governments have recently adopted policies limiting collaboration with federal immigration officials.
But as a result of the widespread effort of local governments to limit coordination with the S-Comm, the federal government has tweaked and renamed its deportation effort the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which calls on local law enforcement to notify Homeland Security of a detainee’s release rather than detaining the individual past his or her release date. Like S-Comm, PEP has the same effect of weakening trust between immigrants and local law enforcement because local law enforcement is seen as an arm of federal immigration efforts.
The politics of race, citizen entitlement, and immigration reform have put San Francisco and other cities’ sanctuary-city policies squarely in the cross hairs of conservative extremists and political opportunists. From the highly polarizing presidential campaign of Donald Trump to the calculated posturing of Hillary Clinton (who supports PEP) to the election-year pandering of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, eager to blame the policy for Steinle’s death, politicians are scapegoating immigrants and undermining the sanctuary city policies that immigrants rely on for their security. Just last week, the US Senate narrowly failed to pass a Republican-backed bill that threatened to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities and increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who reenter the United States after deportation.
Some cities are already working to resist this pressure. On the same day that Senate Republicans sought to punish sanctuary cities, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming our commitment to the Due Process for All Ordinance and urging our sheriff not to comply with the new PEP program.
Cities around the country should follow suit and adopt a wide array of programs and policies to protect and empower immigrant communities. Like New Haven, they can establish Municipal ID cards to help immigrants navigate daily life; like Chicago, they can ensure that city services are available in multiple languages; like New York, they can provide quality free legal counsel to residents facing deportation; and like Los Angeles, they can conduct outreach programs and offer affordable citizenship preparation courses to help residents naturalize and gain the benefits of citizenship.
This moment is a pivotal one for our nation and the many cities that have sought to protect immigrants against deportation. We either succumb to the rightward push of the politics of race and citizen entitlement or we strengthen our efforts to protect and integrate immigrants and their families in recognition and honor of the contributions they make to our society. Local governments must lead our nation forward.
FIGHT FOR A PROGRESSIVE SOURCE OF REVENUE IN CHICAGO
By Scott Waguespack
The fiscal crisis that’s squeezing cities and towns across this country is perhaps at its most dramatic in Chicago.
Our municipal pension systems are woefully underfunded, the result of decades of failure by city and state governments to pay their share. Our schools are facing an enormous fiscal shortfall that could result in the firing of 5,000 teachers in the middle of the year. And we’re witnessing heartbreaking violence in our communities, the result of an overwhelmed police force and neighborhoods mired in economic hardship.
Simply put, our city has a cash problem.
To his credit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged this problem in his recent budget address, railing against the budgeting tricks of previous years and vowing to end the city’s structural deficit. Unfortunately, Mayor Emanuel reached into the same tired bag of tricks in order to solve the problem: regressive tax increases on working families and privatization of public services.
These are tricks we’re all too familiar with here in Chicago. We’ve already been through some of the worst privatization deals in the country, and we know full well from our experiences with parking meters and school janitors that it’s been a fiscal boondoggle resulting in higher costs and worse services for taxpayers. And the mayor’s regressive property-tax proposal is just another way to balance budgets by raising taxes on working families who are already struggling to get by.
Here’s the good news, though: Chicago is one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. There’s an enormous amount of capital flowing through this city every day. Chicago’s City Council Progressive Caucus, which I chair, has been advocating for common-sense tax ideas to direct some of these dollars toward crucial programs and services, easing the burden on working families without selling off public assets.
We’ve advocated for creating a special property-taxing district that covers the skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Too often, owners of these buildings hire politically connected firms to get enormous discounts on their assessments; a more fair valuation would generate substantial new revenue.
We support reforming the billion-dollar mayoral slush fund called “tax-increment financing.” We support fixing the problems in the infamous parking-meter privatization deal. We introduced an amendment that would tax big-box stores for the undue stress they put on our stormwater system, and have called for expanding the sales tax to include luxury services like pet grooming or portfolio management.
In short, the Progressive Caucus has progressive revenue ideas that will work for all of Chicago. We’ve convened a series of town hall meetings across the city, drawing crowds of hundreds of concerned neighbors, and have introduced a series of amendments to move this budget in the right direction.
As progressive leaders who love this city, our caucus knows we need new revenue to educate our children, care for those in need, and provide growth and opportunity in every community. For our city to prosper, those dollars must come from those who can most afford to pay, not from the pockets of working families.
These Organizations Are Working To Help Puerto Rico's Recovery Efforts
These Organizations Are Working To Help Puerto Rico's Recovery Efforts
Puerto Rico was badly damaged by Hurricane Maria. The storm caused billions of dollars worth of property damage....
Puerto Rico was badly damaged by Hurricane Maria. The storm caused billions of dollars worth of property damage. Efforts to repair and rebuild houses, roads, and telecom infrastructure are going to take months. Around half of the U.S. territory's residents lack cell phone service. More than eight out of every ten people in Puerto Rico still don't have electricity.
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Turning Immigrants Into Citizens Puts Money in L.A.'s Pocket
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are...
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are on-board with federal legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
Maybe we're just being selfish. It turns out that naturalization, the process of going from immigrant to citizen, puts cash in our pockets, concludes a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy, the National Partnership for New Americans, and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at USC Dornsife.
If we naturalized folks who are eligible but who are dragging their feet, L.A. would see as much as a $3.3 billion economic impact and as much as $320 million in additional tax revenues over a 10-year span, the report's authors say. Holy frijole.
The researchers say that naturalization makes immigrants eligible to get better jobs and better pay, which in turn helps them spend more money in their communities: "These increased earnings will lead to additional economic activity," the report says.
L.A. immigrants can earn as much as an extra $3,659 a year, more than in New York or Chicago, by starting the citizenship process, the academics say in the paper:
Clearly, naturalization benefits immigrants: it provides full civil and political rights, protects against deportation, eases travel abroad, and provides full access to government jobs and assistance.
While opponents of a pathway to citizenship often paint south-of-the-border immigrants as a burden on taxpayer resources, the paper argues that folks who fully legalize their allegiance to the United States actually contribute to our tax base.
Of course, what they're talking about is "increased naturalization" "over the status quo," according to the report. It's all about potential.
Getting immigrants to naturalize would require some heavy lifting, though.
One barrier to naturalization is the cost, the authors say, which has risen from $225 in 2000 to $680 in 2008. The cheaper U.S. Green Card ($450) "sets up an incentive to continue to defer naturalization," the study says.
The authors say more encouragement in cities like L.A. could go a long way toward seeing more folks naturalize. This week City Hall joined an effort, "Cities for Citizenship," to do just that.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy:
Cutting through the administrative and financial red tape of the naturalization process is an outgrowth of that leadership and will benefit millions of American families who have been excluded from the privileges of citizenship. We ask both city leadership and the immigrant community to join us in this initiative.
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Progressive Activists Take A Seat For The People At Federal Reserve Retreat
Progressive Activists Take A Seat For The People At Federal Reserve Retreat
Two years ago this week, the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy and allied groups launched the Fed Up campaign,...
Two years ago this week, the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy and allied groups launched the Fed Up campaign, aimed at making the Federal Reserve more accountable to workers and communities of color. They converged then on the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming, where Fed officials decamp every year to discuss policy and hobnob with the economic elite.
How much political headway has the campaign made since then? This year, Fed Up activists were essentially put on the schedule for senior Federal Reserve officials, with a major meeting at the Jackson Hole summit.
The group met Thursday, the first day of the summit, with eight of the 12 presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks and two members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Fed Up activists have met individually with the governors and regional bank presidents before; they spoke with some Fed officials less formally at the past two Jackson Hole gatherings. This is the first time, however, that their delegation of some 120 rank-and-file activists had met with so many of the central bank’s decision-makers in one place.
“It is kind of like a mini-FOMC,” said Fed Up campaign manager Jordan Haedtler prior to the event, likening it to a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policymaking body.
The progressive campaign is calling for the central bank to wait for the economic recovery to reach more broadly across America before raising its benchmark interest rate again, a move that slows the pace of economic growth to head off price inflation.
It has also criticized the Fed for the lack of racial, gender and professional background diversity among its senior officials, arguing that only a central bank that looks like America can craft policy in the best interests of all citizens.
The Fed officials at the meeting were Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which hosts the annual symposium; New York Fed president William Dudley; Dallas Fed president Robert Kaplan; Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari; Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester; Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren; San Francisco Fed president John Williams; Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker, and Fed governors Stanley Fischer and Lael Brainard.
“They were really impressed with how well prepared we were,” said Haedtler after the meeting. “They were heartened by the discussion.”
“We’ll see how things go in September,” he added, referring to the next opportunity for an interest rate hike.
Bill Medley, a spokesman for the Kansas City Fed, also gave positive feedback about the meeting.
“It was a productive dialogue, as it always is, and we look forward to continuing the conversation,” Medley said.
Fed Up has had a banner year so far. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton embraced the broad contours of its platform in May after weeks of private discussion with group representatives.
“Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue,” a Clinton spokesman said at the time.
But Clinton stopped short of signing on to a bolder reform proposal that Fed Up rolled out in April, which would turn the central bank system into an entirely public institution. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is already a federal agency, whose top officials are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But the 12 regional banks it supervises are owned by the private financial institutions they serve. (Fed Up released a more detailed version of its idea on Monday.)
The private nature of these banks is a major reason why they are run overwhelmingly by white men with backgrounds in finance, Fed Up argues. There has never been a black or Latino president of one of the regional banks, the group notes in its reform proposal, and one-third of the current bank heads are alumni of Wall Street power player Goldman Sachs.
Fed Up’s moment at this year’s Jackson Hole symposium was not without its hiccups.
Earlier this month, Fed Up were informed that the Jackson Lake Lodge had canceled over a dozen of its room reservations. The hotel said a “computer glitch” had led to the overbooking of 18 rooms. But the fact that 13 of those rooms were booked by Fed Up raised concerns that they were being targeted.
Although the activists found lodging at a nearby resort, Fed Up filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, and members of Congress sympathetic to their cause sent Fed Chair Janet Yellen a letter asking for an explanation.
In an apparent gesture of detente, George, the Kansas City Fed president, offered Fed Up the big meeting, and the campaign withdrew its objections to the lodging snafu.
Fed Up agreed also to limit its presence in the lodge’s halls during a scheduled cocktail hour. In the past, activists have clustered inside the hotel to confront Fed officials in person. The group held a press conference-cum-rally outside the lodge before Thursday’s meeting. It also plans to run teach-in seminars and to canvass the city’s low-income neighborhoods to spread the word about Fed reform.
But Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager, wanted to focus on Thursday’s meeting. It is evidence, he said, that his fledgling movement’s priorities have made it into the mainstream.
“We have clearly reshaped the discourse,” Haedtler said.
By Daniel Marans
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Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the...
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the bank cut all ties with companies that profit from deportations.
Hector Vaca of Action NC says the goal of the event is to get Wells Fargo to pull its money out of private prisons and immigrant detention centers. The protesters are also demanding the bank use its political influence to stop plans for a wall along the Mexican border.
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Under Trump, local governments become activists
Under Trump, local governments become activists
Christine Knapp had been on maternity leave for nearly three months, but on Wednesday the director of the mayor’s...
Christine Knapp had been on maternity leave for nearly three months, but on Wednesday the director of the mayor’s Office of Sustainability hoisted a diaper bag on her shoulder, packed her 11-week-old daughter, Sabine, into a stroller, maneuvered into a creaky elevator in City Hall, and rode up to the mayor’s reception room. This was just too important to miss.
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A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto...
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto Ricans will hold you accountable,” said Julio López Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the leading activist groups on the Puerto Rican debt crisis. “There’s a question about what are those investments, and if that question is not answered that is extremely concerning.”
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A New Front On Immigration: NY Legislation Would Let Undocumented Vote, Drive
Buzzfeed - June 16, 2014 by Adrian Carrasquillo - New York Democrats announced Monday new legislation that would grant...
Buzzfeed - June 16, 2014 by Adrian Carrasquillo - New York Democrats announced Monday new legislation that would grant state citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants.
The bill could represent a bold new advocacy strategy: using states’ rights to secure legal protections for the undocumented.
York state senator Gustavo Rivera and assembly member Karim Camara’s bill would allow undocumented immigrants to vote, drive, receive professional licenses, run for civil office, and receive Medicaid as well as in-state tuition in New York by making them New York state citizens.
“It’s up to New York to figure out who it’s political community is,” said Peter Markowitz, professor at the Cardozo school of law, who made the legal case for the legislation through the country’s dual-sovereign structure. “New York gets to decide who is and who isn’t a New Yorker. The federal government may not interfere.”
The prospects for federal changes to U.S. immigration law took a hit last week after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary election loss, attributed by some as directly the result of attacks by Cantor’s opponent on his immigration record.
Flanked by activists in front of the Statue of Liberty Monday, Rivera struck a positive tone about the bill, called the New York is Home Act.
Immigrants would be eligible to become state citizens if they show proof of identity, proof of three years of New York State residency and proof of three years of New York State tax payments; the bill also requires a commitment to abide by state laws and uphold the state Constitution, and a willingness to serve on New York juries and to keep paying state taxes.
Rivera said the idea has been in the works for two years and called the legislation “bold,” not because of the pieces themselves, but because they are all in one bill.
“This is unlike SB1070,” Rivera told BuzzFeed after the event. “Arizona said, ‘We can do this and affect things on a federal level.’ No, you can’t. But the conversation we need to have is: What rights do we have in a state?”
Spokespeople for Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the first Latina in the role, said Monday they were reviewing the legislation.
“In light of inaction at the federal government, the administration is interested in learning about local initiatives to increase equality among immigrant communities,” de Blasio deputy press secretary Maibe Ponet said.
“Given congress’s failure to address immigration reform, people are obviously becoming increasingly frustrated, a spokesman for Mark-Viverito said. “[The speaker] is supportive of increasing voting rights and will be reviewing the legislation.”
Cesar Vargas, a DREAMer who has been fighting for the right to practice law as an undocumented immigrant, would benefit from the portion of the legislation that would give licenses for professions like lawyers, doctors, dentists, midwives and others. He said he is set to work with the mayor and the city council speaker to “see how they can support undocumented lawyers.”
“As we stand in front of the Statue of Liberty, we’re reminded of the American Dream, and I’m reminded of the dream of my mother for me to be a lawyer,” Vargas said.
Many sought to draw a parallel between the fight for marriage equality — and its stops and starts over the years.
“This will get a lot of attention for New York,” DREAMer Antonio Alarcon, 19, said. “It will take months to pass, we’re going to be fighting for this like they did for marriage equality.”
“Full equality and inclusion will gain momentum in our time,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of The Center for Popular Democracy.
He said his group is in discussion with four to five other states for similar legislation with the stated goal of putting “another horse in the race” in the way those who fought for marriage equality continued to refine what they were asking for.
Jose Davila, the vice president off policy and government relations at the Hispanic Federation echoed the belief that the legislation comes at an important time for the fight for changing U.S. immigration laws.
“Instead of tear families apart, we should be reframing the debate. What kind of state do we want to be?”
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'Welcome to Florida!'
'Welcome to Florida!'
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a...
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a meeting in October in New York, which led to the creation of Power For Puerto Rico, a coalition that includes longtime Latino civil rights organization Unidos.us, Make the Road, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Hedgeclippers (an organization focused on exposing the connections between Wall Street and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis).”
Read the full article here.
How to Join the ‘Day Without Immigrants’ on May Day
How to Join the ‘Day Without Immigrants’ on May Day
A coalition led by immigrants and workers is aiming to mark this year’s May Day with the biggest workers strike and...
A coalition led by immigrants and workers is aiming to mark this year’s May Day with the biggest workers strike and mobilization in over a decade...
Read full article here.
3 days ago
3 days ago