CPD IN THE NEWS

A group of Minnesota lawmakers will focus on closing racial disparities in the state.

Sen. Jeff Hayden and Sen. Bobby Joe Champion will co-chair the new Subcommittee on Equity (which is part of the larger Finance Committee), according to a news release.

There are 15 lawmakers on the new subcommittee (nine DFLers, six Republicans) – you can see a full roster here. The subcommittee’s schedule will be posted here, though right now there are no meetings listed for the next two months.

The Senate DFL Caucus appointed the members, who will look to “address the complex and multifaceted challenges of racial and economic disparities,” according to a message from Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk’s office.

Racial disparities in Minnesota

There are serious problems when it comes to racial disparities in the state.

Unemployment among the black community in Minnesota continued to rise last year despite the decreasing unemployment rates for Hispanic and white people, according to the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

State numbers released last fall showed the average income of Minnesota’s African-Americans is falling and is now less than half of what white residents are making, with more than one-third of black households living in poverty.

Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country – with the jobless rate among blacks almost 3.7 times higher than among whites, according to a study released last year by the Center for Popular Democracy.

Financial site WalletHub ranked Minnesota as the worst state in the U.S. when it comes to racial integration, saying it has some of the highest racial gaps when it comes to median annual income, homeownership, the poverty rate and more.

All this (and more) led lawmakers to consider addressing racial inequity in a possible special session – but during talks, Gov. Mark Dayton noted there was “significant disagreement” between lawmakers on how to address the problem. And then the special session didn’t happen anyway. So if something gets done, it could be in the current Legislative session.

Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed budget includes $100 million to address racial disparities in the state, by expanding workforce programs, helping college completion and increasing home ownership among minorities, the Pioneer Press reported.

By Shaymus McLaughlin

Source

Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve district banks Thursday, intending to highlight elevated unemployment among minority communities and urging officials not to raise interest rates any time soon.

Fed officials have indicated they plan to lift their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero, where it has been since late 2008, sometime this year if the economy continues to strengthen as expected.

The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January.

“The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.

The activists are planning actions outside the regional Fed banks of New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, N.C. (home to a branch of the Richmond Fed) and Dallas.

The Labor Department releases its February employment report on Friday.

Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said she and other community leaders have been frustrated by what they see as an opaque process for selecting the next Dallas Fed president. The current chief, Richard Fisher, is set to step down March 19.

Ms. Moeller said instead of getting a meeting with members of the Dallas Fed’s board of directors, which is in charge of the search, she and her delegation met with the bank’s general counsel in a session she described as not very helpful.

“This has been a comedy of pass the buck,” she said. “We don’t have a candidate—we’re just trying to talk processes.”

The Dallas Fed said it had recently met with the following groups regarding the search for a new bank president: Texas AFL-CIO, Texas Organizing Project, Jobs With Justice, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Workers Defense Project, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Harris County Central Labor Council and American Federation of Teachers.

“We had a productive conversation with representatives from these groups,” said James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed. “We were interested in hearing their views on the selection of a new Dallas Fed president, and hope we were able to provide useful information to them, as well.”

The Center for Popular Democracy and the Fed Up Coalition, the umbrella groups coordinating the protests, expressed dismay at the lack of transparency in the selection of Patrick Harker as the new Philadelphia Fed President.

“Despite repeated requests from community, consumer, labor and academic organizations and public officials within the region, the Philadelphia Fed refused to create any mechanisms for engagement with the public,” said Kendra Brooks of Action United in Philadelphia.

“Instead, the process was entirely opaque: nobody outside of the Federal Reserve knew who the candidates were or what the criteria were for selection. This process did a disservice to the Federal Reserve System and the people of the Philadelphia region.”

The Philadelphia Fed said in response: “Several of our staff members did meet with members from Action United to hear their concerns. The Philadelphia Fed also provided them the opportunity to provide names of potential candidates to our executive search firm.”

The same group of activists showed up at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium last summer and held a meeting with Janet Yellen at the Fed in November.

Last week, Ms. Yellen met with a group of conservative activists who argued the Fed’s low-rate policies were hurting rather than boosting employment.

The Great Recession has brought increased political scrutiny on the Fed, with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians calling for various changes in the central bank’s governance.

Source

Latin Times - Nov 07, 2013

Like the other 13 detainees set to appear before an immigration judge on Wednesday afternoon, Maximiliano Ortiz had been roused in the wee hours of the morning from his cell in a county jail.  Facing the judge at the Varick Street Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan, clothed in an orange jumpsuit, he looked groggy. 

"Are you arriving at this decision voluntarily?" the judge asked.  The interpreter translated the question into Spanish. 

"Yes," said Ortiz, and shortly afterward, having agreed to concede the charge of "entry without inspection" and accept an order of removal from the country, the first of about 190 poor, detained immigrant to receive pro bono legal representation via the city of New York was escorted out of the courtroom, chains jangling at his wrist and waist. 

On Wednesday, a coalition of seven public defender, legal advocacy and community activist groups unveiled the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), the first program in the nation to win public funding for legal defense of detained immigrants who cannot afford to hire lawyers.  In June, the New York City Council appropriated $500,000 for the pilot, which organizers say will be enough to meet about 20 percent of each year's need.  Under the program, detainees whose income falls at no more than 200 percent of the federal poverty line can receive pro bono legal counsel from New York Immigrant Defenders, which consists of public defender offices The Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defense Services. 

Organizers of the project trace its descent to the efforts of Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Katzmann, who in 2010 commissioned two separate studies of detained immigrant representation in the city.  The odds those reports gave detainees were dim: of the 4,818 detainees who had to argue their case from 2005 to 2010, one found, only 3 percent of them did it successfully, compared to 74 percent of those who were represented and weren't held in detention in the time leading up to their appearance.  A separate study carried out previously by the City Bar Justice Center concluded that 39.2 percent of the 400 detainees it interviewed had "possibly meritorious claims for various forms of relief from removal". 

Immigration law is one of the most notoriously complex types, comparable to tax law.  But Lisa Schreibersdorf, founder and executive director of Brooklyn Defense Services, says detainees could win the right to remain in the country through a wide range of ways.  Some have status and don't know it.  "We had a kid who came to the country when he was two with his mom and dad.  The parents got separated, and he went to live with his mom.  His dad became a citizen before the kid turned 18.  Now, that's automatic citizenship for the child, but the kid didn't know.  When he was being interviewed by immigration officials, they'd ask if he was documented and he'd say, 'no'.  So off he goes."

Others who have green cards or visas might be able to stay because of a US citizen spouse; those without papers might be able to receive legal status of some sort - for example, victims of domestic violence or trafficking could apply for U or T visas, or young people who grew up in the US could apply for DACA. 

"People sometimes don't know, or they don't follow through and do it," she said.  "Even now that they're facing deportation, it's not too late.  You can still apply for those things, and that should actually negate the deportation proceeding.  That's really where I think most of the benefit is going to come from."

"Then there's the low-level criminal cases where deportation is not required and the judge has the ability to cancel the removal.  In that situation, a lawyer's very helpful because they explains to the judge what's going on with that family.  It's very hard for an individual who's unrepresented to know what to tell the judge, what kind of things are going to help them.  Plus it's very hard for people to speak in public.  That's what we're good at." 

On Wednesday, 10 of the 14 detainees who showed up for their initial court hearings were represented by lawyers provided by one of the two groups.  All of them were from Latin American countries.  Marianne Yang, the director of the immigration unit at Brooklyn Defense Services, says they expect demographics of clients to vary.  But according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse(TRAC), a database of information obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, out of the top ten most common nationalities, eight of them are in Latin America.  The most typical profile for a detainee in NYC's immigration system is a Mexican (26 percent of all nationalities; Dominicans make up another 15 percent) who has been charged with "entry without inspection" -- a charge which accounts for about 47 percent of all detainees and some 89 percent of those who are from Mexico. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency only goes after immigrants who fit in its priority categories: someone who has committed serious crimes while in the US lawfully, people who crossed the border illegally in recent times and has few community ties, and "egregious immigration violators", or those have committed fraud or violated immigration law on multiple occasions.  But organizers point to the case of Carlos Rodríguez Vásquez, a 27-year-old cook from the Dominican Republic and husband to a US citizen wife who was arrested by the NYPD for "trespassing" in the apartment building of a friend in Washington Heights.  "In court, they dropped the charges right away, because I'd never had any kind of trouble with the law," he said.  But he'd never filed the paperwork to declare his marriage to his wife in the United States, and the NYPD passed him off to ICE, which transferred him to a detention facility in Hudson County, New Jersey. 

His family shelled out for a lawyer.  But when his case went before a judge, Vásquez says, "The lawyer I hired made me sign a voluntary deportation agreement without talking to me about it, without me knowing."  He ended up calling the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which helped him win a retrial, but not before remaining in detention for an additional eight months.

In a report released on Thursday, the project's organizers argue that it makes good financial sense for the public, saying it will save New York state nearly $1.9 million per year in public health insurance spending, foster care services, and lost tax revenues.  It also says it'll help employers save $4 million annually which they lose through turnover when immigrants are forced to leave their jobs.  "Taken together," the report says, "these savings offset the majority of the investment needed to establish he program."

"It's presented as something which is just for immigrant families," said Brittny Saunders, senior staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. "But in reality it's for everybody."

Source:

Un reporte de las organizaciones Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, Enlace International y Strong Economy for All Coalition, reveló que las firmas JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo y BlackRock, ayudan a mantener y expandir un lucrativo negocio de $5,000 millones que criminaliza a las comunidades de color.

Lea el artículo completo aquí.