How Hurricane Maria Could Change Puerto Rico’s Political Future
How Hurricane Maria Could Change Puerto Rico’s Political Future
In the windowless backroom kitchen of the Loisaida community and arts center in Lower Manhattan, Aris Mejías cradles a...
In the windowless backroom kitchen of the Loisaida community and arts center in Lower Manhattan, Aris Mejías cradles a plastic ziplock with the last of the dark-roast coffee she brought back from her native Puerto Rico. “It’s probably extinct,” she says. “Ay Díos, I think I’m gonna cry.” Mejías’s eyes are red and sunken. Neither she nor Isabel Gandía has slept much since Hurricane Maria tore through the southeast Caribbean in late September. They’ve been too busy coordinating a donation drive to bring emergency aid to Puerto Rico. At 3:30 in the afternoon, Gandía is only just getting around to breakfast.
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Charters’ exorbitant fees hinder efforts to obtain public info
Public records requests made to 10 publicly funded Boston charter schools have been thwarted by demands for fees...
Public records requests made to 10 publicly funded Boston charter schools have been thwarted by demands for fees totaling $91,440 from seven of the schools, according to Russ Davis, director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice and a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.
The requests for information were made on behalf of the MEJA, a coalition of labor, faith and social justice organizations, and concerned whether information on parents of charter school students was provided to two pro-charter advocacy organizations.
“The demands for absurdly high fees to comply with our requests underscore an appalling lack of transparency on the part of these publicly funded Commonwealth charter schools,” said Davis.
This issue underscores problems that would be addressed in a public records access bill that Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the State House News Service may come to the floor for a vote next week.
Kyle Serrette, the director of education justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, who has issued similar requests to both public school districts and to charter schools in other states, said that schools typically charge very little or no money to respond to public information requests.
“Exorbitant requests for fees like this by large school companies limit transparency and reduce public trust in these schools,” Serrette said.
MATCH Charter Public Middle School demanded the most for the information: $36,015 (click here to see letter). Roxbury Preparatory Charter School quoted the second-highest fee estimate, $12,500. To date, Boston Renaissance Charter Public School and Boston Preparatory Charter Public School have failed to respond.
UP Academy Dorchester, an in-district Horace Mann charter school, was the only one to respond with the information requested, providing its student records policy free of charge and stating that it has not engaged in any of the actions for which information was requested.
“These fee estimates from seven of the eight schools that responded are exorbitant and beyond our capacity to pay,” said Davis. “These charges violate the spirit and letter of our public records law.”
The MEJA requests were made in an attempt to determine the relationship between these Boston charter schools and two charter advocacy organizations —Families for Excellent Schools and the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. Specifically, the coalition is trying to determine whether the schools had any contracts with these groups, any policies related to providing outside groups with contact information for students’ families, and any record of providing these two outside groups with that contact information.
“We were concerned about reports that the charter schools may have been giving these corporate-backed, pro-charter organizations parent contact information so that parents could be enlisted to lobby on behalf of the charter school agenda,” said Davis. “If that has been going on, we believe the public has a right to know. Charter schools are publicly funded. We do not believe that public funds should be used to persuade parents to lobby on behalf of the private charter school industry.”
Families for Excellent Schools is a New York-based organization that supports Unify Boston and Great Schools Massachusetts, both of which are pro-charter advocacy groups. FES has received millions of dollars from corporate foundation groups, including the Broad Foundations and the Walton Family Foundation.
This chart indicates when the charter schools queried responded to the request for information, which was made in a letter dated Aug. 20, 2015. It also lists the fee estimate from each school and the name of the law firm, if any, that responded to the request.
School Response Date Records Produced Fee Estimate Firm Boston Collegiate Charter 21-Aug-15 $7,250 Krokidas & Bluestein KIPP Academy Boston Elementary and Middle 28-Aug-15 $9,560 Krokidas & Bluestein Brooke Roslindale Charter 28-Aug-15 $7,500 Krokidas & Bluestein Neighborhood House Charter 28-Aug-15 $8,615 Krokidas & Bluestein Excel Academy - East Boston 28-Aug-15 $10,000 Krokidas & Bluestein UP Academy Charter - Horace Mann 01-Sep-15 04-Sep-15 $0 None Roxbury Preparatory Charter 22-Sep-15 $12,500 None Match Charter Public Middle 25-Sep-15 $36,015 Krokidas & Bluestein Boston Renaissance Charter Public Boston Preparatory Charter Public
Excerpts from guidance from the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office on what fees may be charged for providing public records:
“In the interest of open government, all records custodians are strongly urged to waive the fees associated with access to public records, but are not required to do so under the law.” “A records custodian may charge and recover a fee for the time he or she spends searching, redacting, photocopying and refiling a record. The hourly rate may not be greater than the prorated hourly wage of the lowest paid employee who is capable of performing the task. A records custodian may not recover fees associated with record organization.”Public Records Request made by the service Muckrock on behalf of MEJA on Aug. 20.
Dear Records Officer:
Pursuant to Massachusetts Public Records Act § 66-10 et seq., I am writing to request the following records:
Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, a/k/a Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, if applicable. Copies of any policies relating to the transmission of student records to a third party, promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any school policies relating specifically to the disclosure of student “directory information” to third parties promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent School Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc. in the previous two years, if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association in the previous two years, if applicable.Source: Massachusetts Teachers Association
Fed moves to quell charges of opacity, lack of diversity
Fed moves to quell charges of opacity, lack of diversity
The Federal Reserve has rolled out a series of announcements, online forums and meetings with Americans this year in...
The Federal Reserve has rolled out a series of announcements, online forums and meetings with Americans this year in response to outspoken civic groups and many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, calling for a more transparent and inclusive U.S. central bank.
The latest critique came this week when Fed Up, a labor-affiliated coalition pushing for reforms, said it was "disappointing" that Nicole Taylor, a black woman and dean of community engagement and diversity at Stanford University whose term as director at the San Francisco Fed soon expires, would be succeeded on the board by Sanford Michelman, a white man who is co-founder of law firm Michelman & Robinson LLP.
"It's definitely a step back in terms of what I'd like to see on our board. We're working actively to build representation of women and minorities," John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, said on Wednesday in response to reporters' questions, noting the decision was made by private banks in his district.
After years of resisting more overt political efforts to curb its independence, the Fed this year has appeared willing to shine a light on its historically opaque process of choosing district Fed presidents, and also to show it is more sensitive to racial and gender diversity.
After the Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks last year all chose as presidents men with past ties to Goldman Sachs, the Atlanta Fed hosted a public webcast this month and said it seeks a "diverse set of candidates" for its new chief, raising hopes it would name the first black or Latino Fed president in the central bank's 103-year history.
"It's not just because we want to go and say we're diverse," Loretta Mester, Cleveland Fed president, said at a meeting with workers a day after her bank launched online applications for the public to recommend directors and advisers. "It's about getting different view points that are very helpful to us in ... thinking about the economy and understanding the trends."
The regional Fed presidents have rotating votes on policy, except for the head of the New York Fed who has a permanent voting role. Unlike Fed governors who are selected by the White House and approved by the Senate, the presidents are chosen by their district directors, half of whom are themselves picked by private local banks that technically own the Fed banks.
Critics say the dizzying structure leaves the Fed beholden to bankers who do not represent the public, and they point out that 11 of 12 district presidents are white while 10 are men.
By Jonathan Spicer and Dion Rabouin
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Equal pay is widely understood to be a feminist issue — so why isn't the Fight for $15?
Equal pay is widely understood to be a feminist issue — so why isn't the Fight for $15?
The idea that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work is probably among the least controversial feminist...
The idea that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work is probably among the least controversial feminist positions because, in 2017, it's pretty difficult to argue against.
Hollywood actresses like Patricia Arquette have traded in their standard acceptance speeches for impassioned calls for wage equality, while Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg created a whole new brand of feminism when she began coaching women on how to combat workplace inequality by "leaning in," making equal pay part of a mainstream dialogue...
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Protesters Converge On Stephen Schwarzman's Water Mill Home
Protesters Converge On Stephen Schwarzman's Water Mill Home
About 35 protesters from various political organizations—the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New...
About 35 protesters from various political organizations—the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, and Strong for All Economy Coalition—converged on the Water Mill Home of Stephen Schwarzman on Friday afternoon.
Mr. Schwarzman is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group and an adviser to President Donald Trump.
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Ten Ways to Combat Upward Redistribution of Income
Moyers & Co - January 1, 2015, by Dean Baker - The big gainers in the last three decades (aka the one percent) like...
Moyers & Co - January 1, 2015, by Dean Baker - The big gainers in the last three decades (aka the one percent) like to pretend that their good fortune was simply the result of the natural workings of the market. This backdrop largely limits political debate in Washington. The main difference is that the conservatives want to keep all the money for themselves, while the liberals are willing to toss a few crumbs to the rest of the country in the form of food stamps, healthcare insurance, and other transfers.
While the crumbs are helpful, the serious among us have to be thinking about the unrigging of the economy so that all the money doesn’t flow upward in the first place. Here are 10 ways in which we should be looking to change the structure of the market in 2015 so that all the money doesn’t flow to the one percent.
In all these areas changes will be difficult, since the one percent will use their wealth and power to ensure that the rules not be rewritten to benefit the bulk of the country. However, this list should provide a useful set of market-friendly policies that will lead to both more equality and more growth.
1. Expanded Trade in Medical Care
The Affordable Care Act extended coverage to millions of people and, for the first time, allows people the freedom to quit jobs they don’t like and still have access to insurance. Nonetheless, we still pay close to twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries.
If our trade policy were not dominated by protectionists, it would be directed toward making it easier for qualified foreign physicians to practice in the United States, potentially saving patients tens of billions every year. Even with the federal government committed to protectionist policies, nothing stops state governments from seeking out lower-cost care for Medicaid patients in other countries. The savings, which can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, can be shared with beneficiaries.
2. Prescription Drugs
This is part of the healthcare story, but a big-enough part to deserve a separate mention. Patent monopolies can allow drug companies to charge prices that are 100 times higher than the free-market price. The hepatitis-C drug Sovaldi sells in the United States for $84,000. The generic version is available in India for less than $1,000. State Medicaid programs can pay to send patients to India, along with one or more family members, and still have tens of thousands of savings that can be shared with beneficiaries.
3. Wall Street Sales Tax
The financial sector continues to rake in money at the expense of the rest of the country, courtesy of bailouts, too-big-to-fail insurance, and being largely exempt from taxes applied to other industries. Even the IMF argues that the financial sector is undertaxed.
While most members of Congress and presidential candidates are too indebted to Wall Street to push for a financial-transactions tax, states can get a foot in the door. It is possible to tax the transfer of mortgages on property within the state. A modest tax of 0.2 percentage points won’t affect normal mortgage issuance, but it will discourage the shuffling of mortgages and raise some serious revenue. This money can be used to fund needed public services and, in part, to support lower taxes in other areas.
4. Limiting CEO Pay
CEOs are able to arrange paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars in large part because corporate directors are effectively paid off to look the other way. The incentives can be radically altered if directors stood to lose their stipends if a say-on-pay vote by the shareholders was defeated.
State governments can put this into law for corporations chartered in their state. Also, any corporation can put this rule into their own bylaws. Since fewer than three percent of pay packages are voted down, any director who is confident enough that they will not be in the bottom three percent should be happy to support such a change in bylaws.
5. Limiting Pay at Nonprofits
Nonprofit organizations like universities, hospitals, and charities are hugely subsidized by taxpayers. Since most of their contributions come from people in the top income bracket, the ability to deduct charitable contributions effectively means that taxpayers are paying 40 cents of every dollar a rich person contributes.
Since taxpayers are out for much of the cost, it seems only fair to put some rules in place. (Actually, we already do.) How about a pay cap of $400,000 for any employee of a nonprofit? This is twice the pay of a cabinet officer. If a university or other nonprofit can’t find competent people who are prepared to work for twice the pay of a cabinet secretary, perhaps it is not the sort of organization that taxpayers should be supporting.
States can also get into the act on this one. Most states offer special tax treatment to nonprofits. They could apply the two-times-a-cabinet-member’s-pay rule to the nonprofits within their state.
6. Applying Sales Tax to Internet Sales
Jeff Bezos has become one of the richest men in the world because he was successful in expanding Amazon into a huge retailer that doesn’t have to collect the same sales taxes as corner grocery stores. There is no excuse for giving special exemptions to Amazon and other Internet retailers. The states that don’t yet tax Internet sales in their state should move quickly to do so. It makes no sense to subsidize giant retailers like Amazon at the expense of traditional mom-and-pop retail outfits.
7. Democratizing the Sharing Economy
Start-ups like Airbnb and Uber have quickly turned into multi-billion-dollar businesses, in large part by evading the regulations that apply to their traditional competitors. The plan here should be to modernize the rules for taxis, hotels and other outposts of the “sharing” economy and be sure they apply to everyone equally. You don’t get to operate an unsafe taxi driven by an alcoholic just because it’s ordered over the Internet.
In the case of Airbnb, local governments could quickly add some new competition by having local websites where people could list available rooms without paying fees to Airbnb. The advantage to the cities is that they could be sure that these rooms met fire safety and other requirements. Then the only people who listed on Airbnb would be people renting fire traps or other illegal units or who were too ill-informed to save themselves the Airbnb commission. (This gives “sharing” economy a whole new meaning.)
8. The Overvalued Dollar
Our economists are learning and have discovered the problem of secular stagnation. This means that many economists now recognize that the economy can suffer from a persistent problem of inadequate demand, leading the economy to run at below-potential levels of output and to have excessive unemployment.
Unfortunately, most economists still don’t feel they can talk about the most obvious cause of the lack of demand: the country’s large trade deficit. The annual deficit is currently more than $500 billion (at three percent of GDP). This has the same effect on the economy as if consumers were to massively cut back their annual consumption by $500 billion and instead put this money under their mattress. The lost demand translates into more than six million jobs.
The obvious solution is to reduce the value of the dollar against other currencies in order to make US goods and services more competitive internationally. The value of the dollar is a matter that is determined at the national policy level. In principle the United States could be negotiating for a lower-valued dollar in a big trade agreement like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Instead it is pushing for stronger patent protection for Merck and Pfizer, stronger copyright protection for Disney and Mickey Mouse, and a system of business-friendly courts that can override laws in the United States and elsewhere.
9. Shorter Work Years and Work Weeks
If we can’t directly increase demand in the economy through lowering the value of the dollar, we can still increase the number of jobs by reducing the amount of time that people work on average. This is the secret of Germany’s economic miracle. It has had slower growth than the United States, yet it has seen a huge increase in employment in its recession recovery. The average work year in Germany has 20-percent fewer hours than in the United States.
One of the policies that has helped bring about job growth in Germany is work sharing. This policy encourages companies to cut back hours instead of laying off workers. Workers are compensated for their lost wages through the unemployment insurance system. Most states have work-sharing programs as part of their unemployment insurance system. The compensation rate is generally lower in the United States than in Germany (typically 50 percent, compared with 60 to 80 percent in Germany), but it still beats losing a job.
Other policies that go in the same direction are paid family leave and paid sick days. These policies are important in their own right but can help better divide the available work among those who want jobs. Another great feature of these policies is that we don’t have to wait for the president and Congress to take action. They can be implemented at the state and even local level.
10. The Federal Reserve Board
The last and possibly most important item on the list is the Federal Reserve Board. It will be coming under pressure from the Wall Street types to raise interest rates. The point of higher interest rates is to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. The Fed would do this because more jobs will mean that workers have more bargaining power and would be in a position to raise wages. In short a Fed move to raise interest rates is very directly about keeping workers from getting higher wages. (Most workers have only been able to achieve real wage gains when the unemployment rate has been low.)
Fortunately, there are efforts to apply some pressure in the opposite direction, most importantly by the Center for Popular Democracy. They aim to let the Fed governors in Washington and presidents of 12 district Fed banks know that people who care about jobs are watching the Fed’s actions. This should make it harder for the Fed to take steps to deliberately throw people out of work and reduce workers’ bargaining power.
That’s my list of the top 10 places where progressives can focus in 2015 on restructuring the economy in ways that prevent income from flowing upward. The list is hardly exhaustive, and I left out some obvious important areas, like strengthening unions, because everyone should know them. Let’s hope for a good year and some real progress in turning the economy around.
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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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NYTimes Letter to the Editor: Deportations for Minor Offenses
New York Times - April 13, 2014 To the Editor: Re “...
New York Times - April 13, 2014
To the Editor:
Re “More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Data Shows” (front page, April 7):
It’s a mistake to focus the debate about immigration enforcement on the question of which immigrants are sufficiently “criminal” to deserve deportation. When the Obama administration talks about deporting people with convictions, they are talking about people who have already served their sentences for those convictions.
If you are a citizen who commits an offense, you pay the penalty issued by the criminal legal system, and then you are free to try to rebuild your life. If you are a noncitizen who commits that same offense and pays that same penalty, you can be subjected to the double punishment of permanent exile from your home and family.
This two-tiered system of justice is morally abhorrent regardless of how serious the underlying offense may have been. It’s an unfairness compounded by the well-documented unfairness of the criminal legal system itself, which disproportionately targets poor people and minorities.
Let’s not rely on our corrupt criminal justice system to justify the operations of our corrupt immigration system.
EMILY TUCKER Brooklyn, April 7, 2014
The writer is staff attorney for immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.
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Rally scheduled and website started in support for Pittsburgh immigrant in process of being deported
Rally scheduled and website started in support for Pittsburgh immigrant in process of being deported
After City Paper reported the story of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no...
After City Paper reported the story of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no criminal record who is currently in the process of being deported, CP editor Charlie Deitch called for Pittsburghers to get involved in the fight to keep Esquivel-Hernandez in the Steel City.
And many have responded. On July 8, more than 100 marchers will rally in support of Esquivel-Hernandez and “to oppose the politics of hate and fear,” according to the group’s Facebook page. The supporters are particularly calling out presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, from Pa., for their remarks and actions against undocumented immigrants. (Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists, and Toomey sponsored a bill to block funding to “sanctuary cities,” or ones that refuse to communicate with the Department of Homeland Security about undocumented immigrants without warrants; the bill was blocked recently by U.S. Senate Democrats.)
In fact, Esquivel-Hernandez was picked up by immigration officers most likely because he had been cited for driving without a valid license in Mount Lebanon, a town without a sanctuary city-like policy. Lt. Duane Fisher, of the Mount Lebanon Police, says the township's general policy is to make contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if police “find someone who is unlicensed” and to see whether ICE has “any reason to see if [the suspect] is wanted.” Fisher says that from there, Mount Lebanon police don’t follow up on the case, and that it becomes ICE’s call. Pittsburgh, while not a sanctuary city, has a policy to not initiate contact with ICE, but will cooperate if contacted.
Immigration will be a main topic at the public march on Friday, which will coincide with the People’s Convention being held Downtown, and begins at 2:30 p.m. at 10th Street and Penn Avenue. For those wishing to provide further support to the Esquivel-Hernandez family, a website has been created (keeptheesquivelfamilytogether.com) where supporters can sign a letter to U.S. District Attorney David Hickton, who is prosecuting the case against Esquivel-Hernandez, that asks Hickton to drop the felony re-entry charges.
The groups rallying around Esquivel-Hernandez include the Pittsburgh chapter of the Labor Council for Latino Advancement, Latino outreach group Casa San José, nonprofit coalition One Pittsburgh, and social-justice-advocacy group the Thomas Merton Center.
A message in support of Esquivel-Hernandez is written on the website: “We sincerely believe Hickton is using this charge to brand Martín as a criminal deserving of jail time and immediate deportation. Martín does not belong in a prison cell. He should be back with his family and the community that loves and needs him the most.”
Esquivel-Hernandez has been in Pittsburgh for more than four years and has been involved in an assessment of Latino needs for Allegheny County; advocated for better translation services in Pittsburgh schools; and marched in immigrant-rights rallies.
The Obama administration has said that it will prosecute undocumented immigrants who threaten public safety, but the advocacy groups claim that Esquivel-Hernandez does not fit into that category given his lack of a criminal record and positive involvement in the community.
Donations can also be given on the website, or people can send a check to Pittsburgh LCLAA with “solidarity with Esquivel family” written on the memo line. Checks can be mailed to:
Pittsburgh LCLAA
United Steelworkers
Attn.: Guillermo Perez
60 Blvd. of the Allies
Pittsburgh, PA. 15222
By Ryan Deto
Source
Communities Lose When HUD Sells Loans to Wall Street
The Hill - October 2, 2014, Rachel Laforest & Keven Whelan -James Cheeseman and his mother, Constance, have lived...
The Hill - October 2, 2014, Rachel Laforest & Keven Whelan -James Cheeseman and his mother, Constance, have lived in their Rosedale, New York home for the past five years. Like many Americans, they struggled during the recent economic downturn and have been trying to get a modification on their mortgage.
The bank that held their mortgage JPMorgan Chase, agreed to provide borrowers like them relief under a multi-billion dollar settlement with the Justice Department last year. But the Cheesemans' mortgage was insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). And before they could work out a deal with Chase, the bank had the FHA sell their loan to a new investor as part of a program, called the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program or DASP.
The program is supposed to have a dual purpose. First, the federal agency hopes to be able to use the funds received by DASP to right the balance sheet of the Federal Housing Authority’s mortgage insurance program. Second, the program is intended to “encourage public/private partnership to stabilize neighborhoods and home values in critical markets.”
According to HUD’s own data and reports, DASP is meeting the first objective and failing miserably at the second. Almost all loans sold through the DASP program went to for-profit firms and only a tiny handful (around 3 percent) of families whose loans were sold ended up with deals that kept them in their homes.
For homeowners like the Cheesemans, that failure has real-life consequences. When HUD, through DASP, sold their mortgage to another servicer, the Cheesemans lost their protections under the FHA program mandating an effort to modify the mortgage. Their new servicer, BSI Financial, was under no requirement to consider a mortgage modification. BSI doesn’t even participate in HAMP, a post-bailout program for major banks that facilitates loan modifications to keep families in their homes. The result? The Cheesemans and thousands of other homeowners throughout the country are at serious risk of losing their home.
A recent report, Vulture Capital Hits Home: How HUD is Helping Wall Street and Hurting Our Communities, published by the Right to the City Alliance and Center for Popular Democracy cited serious problems with DASP. First, the current structure of most DASP auctions considers only the highest bid without weighting the bidder’s track record of good outcomes for homeowners and communities. Secondly, the groups found that the current outcome requirements and reporting structure fail to hold purchasers accountable. Third, the current pre-sale certification phase does not ensure that the FHA modification process has been followed.
Organizations called “Community Development Financial Institutions” with a track record of helping consumers stay in their homes stand ready to be a part of an improved version of this program. If a reformed DASP program incentivized it, investors with a social purpose could also make money by negotiating win-win, sustainable mortgage modifications with homeowners.
But community-friendly organizations can’t even get to the table with the auction overheated by well-heeled Wall Street firms and private equity “vulture capital” firms.
When the highest bidder places profits first, homeowners and neighborhoods come last. The result: more and more American homeowners losing their homes to unnecessary foreclosures and more and more corporate landlords leasing homes at rates few of these former homeowners, let alone anyone else, can afford.
All of this is the consequence of a program developed and managed by HUD, a federal agency with a stated mission to advance affordable housing and sustainable communities.
This week, HUD plans to sell off another 15,000 American homes to Wall Street investors. These are 15,000 families, 15,000 neighbors and 15,000 futures. Many if not all of these homeowners will lose their share of the American dream as a result of these auctions.
HUD can and should halt this week’s sale and must implement the necessary reforms that have been proposed by a range of community and advocacy groups.
As we consider the results of the economic collapse and what has been called by some a recovery, it is important to note once again that many neighborhoods, especially in communities of color, haven’t bounced back.
Too often our government has put the interests of Wall Street above the needs of struggling families. HUD can do better by fixing the “Distressed Assets” program now.
Laforest is executive director of the Right To The City Alliance, based in New York City. Whelan is National Campaign director of the Home Defenders League. He lives in Minneapolis.
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