CPD IN THE NEWS

Johansson and the John Gore Organization partnered for a benefit performance of Our Town in Atlanta.

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The Huffington Post - November 21, 2013, by Ana María Archila - As progressives, we need to dramatically increase our scale and reach to win. With the merger of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and the Leadership Center for the Common Good (LCCG) in January 2014, we are poised to do just that. The stakes are high. The crisis in American society is severe: Inequality is now at the highest level ever recorded. In 2012, the top 1 percent of U.S. households received 19.3 percent of all household income.

The income gap between white and non-white America is growing even faster. Between 2005 and 2009, median white wealth declined by 16 percent, while median black wealth dropped by 53 percent and Latino wealth declined by 66 percent. Increasing economic inequality is being matched by increasing political inequality. Our democracy and the political participation of people of color, young people and the elderly are being eroded by state legislatures, with the tacit support of the Supreme Court.

All this would be much worse of course, if not for the work of the progressive organizations and movements that have fought inequality and racism for decades.

We can, and must, go farther and faster to fight inequality, the erosion of democracy and racial injustice. There is a growing opportunity to challenge the status quo and to build a society characterized by opportunity, equality and inclusion. Increasingly strong and assertive community organizations across the country are stepping up to demand better. Immigrant organizations, worker centers, progressive unions, elected officials and people of faith are envisioning and creating more inclusive and equitable cities and states, even in spite of our failed national politics.

The most successful community campaigns present a new vision for change, a creativity and fearlessness to promote policies many have thought unachievable, as well as a canny understanding of how to navigate local political forces.

My organization, the Center for Popular Democracy, works at the center of this emerging new politics, working to build the capacity and resilience of rooted, democratic, community-organizing institutions. We feel the urgency to grow our movement, to build new strength, to share organizing models and strategies more broadly, and to replicate campaigns and tactics that work to confront racial and economic inequality.

Just as our movement needs more power and reach, so do we. That's why we are merging with the Leadership Center for the Common Good to create a newly powerful Center for Popular Democracy on January 1, 2014. Our organizations' sister c4 organizations, Action for the Common Good and Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund will also merge to create a newly powerful Action for the Common Good. Part campaign center, part capacity builder, part policy shop, our merged and expanded organizations will work together to more effectively build the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda. From recent successes, we have a sense of what is possible when working communities are well organized, resourced and equipped to demand change. In New York, coalitions of community groups, progressive unions, and faith networks came together this year to secure a raft of impressive victories, from a raise in the state's minimum wage, to the adoption of paid sick days' legislation in New York City to the passage of pro-immigrant language access initiatives in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. And, in the face of fierce opposition from outgoing Mayor Bloomberg, CPD and our allies secured passage of new laws to stop the discriminatory policing tactics of the NYPD -- Stop and Frisk. CPD brought our policy expertise, strategy insights, and coalition coordination experience to these fights -- helping drive them to victory.

The New York victories mirror the work we are engaged in across the country -- in 27 states with more than 90 partners nationally. Through strategic and sustained local and state victories, driven by strong community and labor partners, and supported in important ways by CPD, we can secure tangible improvements in working people's lives and generate the upward pressure and momentum necessary to refocus national policy on furthering values of equity, opportunity and democracy for all.

Strong local organizations with a clear vision and an appetite for bold action are well able to scale up to win national victories when strategic opportunities present themselves. Last May, for example, the Home Defenders League, a project of LCCG and many close allies, staged a dramatic week of action which included civil disobedience by foreclosed homeowners at the Department of Justice as well as at other sites. Their actions tied together the simmering public outrage over the lack of prosecutions of Wall Street banks with a need to find relief for the hard hit families and communities. Five months later, reports of a pending $13 billion federal settlement with JPMorgan Chase suggest the long fight may be about to yield results.

The launch of the merged and expanded Center for Popular Democracy and Action for the Common Good is our ambitious move to help increase the strength, scale and reach of community organizing. Together, we are stronger. Together, we can build the power we need to win.

Source

The Nation - April 28, 2015, by Brad Lander & Karl Kumodzi - In August 2014, the municipality of Ferguson, Missouri erupted onto the national scene. In the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, we learned much about economic and political life in Ferguson and greater St. Louis County.

To many, it was no surprise to learn that, for years, African-American residents of municipalities throughout St. Louis County have been disproportionately and illegally stopped for minor offenses. Blacks are far more likely to be stopped, searched, ticketed, fined, and arrested. Many wind up jailed, leading to a cycle of lost jobs, drivers’ licenses, homes, or child custody. Some are beaten, terrorized, or—like Michael Brown—even killed.

It was more surprising to learn that in Ferguson, “Driving While Black” isn’t only about racial profiling: it’s also about municipal revenue. Fines and court fees have become the city’s second largest revenue source, and the over-criminalization of Black people has become a strategy for collecting taxes.

It is important to understand and address the revenue crisis facing U.S. municipalities. As cities have become unable to pay their bills, they often turn to regressive strategies that disproportionately harm people of color and low-income residents.

Ithaca, NY is like Ferguson. Up until January 2014, residents had to pay for installations and repairs of public sidewalks adjoining their properties—with one notable case in which 28 homeowners were forced to pay a combined $100,000 out of their personal pockets to the city for repairs. Detroit, MI is like Ferguson. After the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, the city’s water department responded to pressures to lower their $90 million portion of the overall $20 billion debt by shutting off crucial water services to mostly Black low-income residents who owed over a mere $150 on their water bills. This April, Baltimore followed Detroit’s lead.

These cities are like Ferguson because of a common underlying problem: All across America, cities and towns are struggling to maintain enough revenue to provide crucial services to residents. The collateral damage of this revenue crisis—over-criminalization, utility shut-offs, the withdrawal of public services, and slashed budgets for schools—is dire.

Local Progress, a national network of progressive municipal elected officials, is working to address inequality from an often overlooked source: municipal budgets. In our new report, Progressive Policies for Raising Municipal Revenue, Local Progress lays out forward-thinking strategies and policy options that cities can pursue to restructure their revenue streams in a way that doesn’t fall disproportionately on the backs of their most vulnerable residents.

The roots of the municipal revenue crisis were decades in the making. Following the post-war desegregation of housing and education, and other civil rights victories of the 50’s and 60’s, racial animosity and the conservative backlash against taxation—referred to by historians as the tax revolt—helped to fuel the exodus of higher-income families from urban centers to suburban enclaves.

This “white flight” dramatically eroded the tax base of urban centers like Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis—and later of first-ring suburban municipalities like Ferguson.

The tax revolt also led directly to policies that dramatically reduced the ability of cities to collect enough revenue through property and other taxes. Most dramatic was the 1976 passage of Prop 13 in California, which contributed heavily to the erosion of California’s public education system and other public services.

In 2008, the Great Recession caused the municipal revenue crisis that had been brewing for decades to explode, spurring significant and rapid declines in general fund revenues for municipalities. In order to deal with the impacts of this dramatic shortfall, cities were forced to cut personnel, cancel capital projects (and their much-needed jobs), and slash funding for education, parks, libraries, sanitation, and more. These cuts hit low-income families the hardest. And they are especially harmful to Black families because African-Americans are 30 percent more likely to be employed by the public sector than other workers.

The strategies that many municipalities adopted to address the crisis hit low-income people of color the hardest. When property tax revenue declined in St. Louis County, fines-and-fees revenue increased in order to maintain revenue. Tickets are issued for everything from failure to cut one’s lawn to sleeping over at someone’s house without being on the occupancy certificate. In nearby Edmundson, the city averages $600 per person per year in court fines, and forecasts increasing revenue from these fines in their future budget proposals – essentially creating a hidden tax on the most vulnerable residents. Black residents throughout the region report feeling “as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue.”

Many towns have resorted to privatizing formerly public responsibilities such as trash collection, sewage, roads, parks, and introducing new fees to force residents to foot the bill directly. These fees and taxes are often extremely regressive, because as everyone is forced to pay a flat rate, poor people end up paying a higher percentage of their income. A recent study conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the nationwide average effective state and local tax rates are 10.9% for the poorest fifth of taxpayers and 5.4% for the wealthiest 1 percent. In fact, in the ten states with the most regressive tax structures, the poorest fifth pay as much as seven times the percentage of their income in taxes and fees as the wealthiest residents do.

Addressing the municipal revenue crisis is, therefore, a central barrier to achieving racial and economic justice in our urban centers, and to rebuilding a more democratic, just, and livable America with genuinely shared prosperity.

Luckily, there are creative and progressive strategies that municipalities can adopt to generate more revenue in a progressive way, such as:

● Expanding the progressivity of existing local income taxes by creating more tax brackets with greater differences between brackets, and doing the same for property taxes in order to generate more revenue from commercial and high-end development.

● Eliminating corporate tax breaks at the city level, particularly Tax Increment Financing and business improvement districts that come with tax breaks

● Restructuring fines so that residents pay different rates based on income. A $200 traffic ticket has no deterrent effect for a millionaire, but can be devastating for a low wage worker; a more rational fine system, like the one adopted in Finland, would be more fair and generate more revenue.

● Mandating that major tax-exempt institutions like hospitals and universities make genuine and fair payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) to help cover the costs of crucial city services that they use.

● Converting city services into municipality-owned utilities when possible, charging utility fees to all users, and applying conservation pricing so lower-income households pay a lower rate while bulk users—such as commercial and industry—pay higher rates

● Forming statewide coalitions of municipal elected officials, grassroots organizations, school boards, and other affected parties to change preemption and revenue policies at the state level.

These policy innovations and many more are detailed in our report.

Cities are America’s bedrock and its future: both for our country and for the progressive movement. Cities are home to 67% of the population, account for 75% of our GDP, and house our best public institutions and infrastructure.

The policy recommendations laid out by Local Progress in our new report can help municipalities develop progressive revenue solutions—so they can pay for public education, health, and housing programs that help families thrive, invest in the infrastructure of public transportation, climate resilience, parks that sustainable cities need, and stimulate inclusive economic growth that creates good jobs.

Through progressive revenue strategies, cities can turn the Ferguson-like cycle of disinvestment and inequality into a cycle of reinvestment and opportunity—and help make sure that our cities can become the models for our vision of a more progressive and prosperous America.

Source

A campaign supported by the advocacy groups Center for Popular Democracy and Gleason's group applauded the move in a news release as "the first important step in ensuring that Toys R Us employees who lost their livelihood receive the support they were promised."

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