CPD IN THE NEWS

Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the black community reparations for “systematic discrimination in law enforcement.”

“Thinking about decriminalization with reparations—the idea is we that have extracted literally millions of dollars from communities, we have destroyed families,” said Marbre Shahly-Butts, deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, during her address at the State Innovation Exchange in Washington, D.C. “Mass incarceration has led to the destruction of communities across the country. We can track which communities, like we have that data.”

“And so if we’re going to be decriminalizing things like marijuana, all of the profit from that should go back to the folks we’ve extracted it from,” she continued.

The focus of state legislators should be “state budgets and then reparations,” Shahly-Butts said.

“‘Reparations’ makes people kind of uncomfortable, so we can call it ‘reinvestment’ if you want to. Use whatever language makes you happy inside,” she said.

Fellow panelist Dante Barry, executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, also recommended some type of “reinvestment” to help black youth and said New York City would be better off investing $100 million in the black community rather than hiring more police.

“In terms of response around black youth unemployment, it gets back to this whole piece around reinvestment,” Barry said. “What would you do with $100 million? How would we better use that money to provide jobs for unemployed youth, to provide housing, to have mental health access. … It’s really about how do we rethink some of our budgetary needs and how we’re putting power behind the way that we can really incorporate reinvestment in communities.”

If there were one policy he would want state legislators to prioritize, Barry said it would be a ban on all guns on campus.

Source: Biz Pac Review

As a muted telenovela played on a T.V. overhead, Jorge Roldan inched toward the microphone in a basement radio studio in Corona, Queens.

Speaking in Spanish, Roldan, a coordinator at the Laborers’ International Union of North America who is based in Long Island City, reminded his audience, mainly construction workers, that their bosses are obligated to give them respirators when they work on jobs involving airborne contaminants like asbestos.

“New York is an old city – many buildings have asbestos,” he said. “Wash your clothes in two different machines. The asbestos resist everything.”

His advice was standard fare for Sin Fronteras. Since April, the hour-long program has brought together six Latinos weekly to offer advice on a delicate topic for the Latino immigrant community: the exploitation and mistreatment of undocumented laborers.

Translated “Without Frontiers,” the offering is the only public-affairs program of 91.9 Radio Impacto 2, an unlicensed Spanish-language music station founded in 2008 that caters to the Ecuadorian population. Sin Fronteras focuses on worker-safety issues, but also promotes cultural events in the Ecuadorian and Latino community. Its guests have included Queens Assemblyman Francisco Moya and Ecuadorian Consul General Linda Machuca, among other local leaders.

More than 98,000 Ecuadorians live in Queens. Latinos account for over 27 percent of the borough population and are a nearly equal percentage of the construction workers citywide, according to a 2015 report by the New York Committee for Operational Safety & Health, a labor advocacy group. An investigation in 2013 by the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy found that between 2003 to 2011, Latino and/or immigrant workers made up three quarters of fatal falls at construction sites in New York City.

“We don’t want more of our people to die,” said Sin Fronteras’ founder, Rosita Cali, an Ecuadorian immigrant who also co-directs Padres en Acción, an organization in Jackson Heights that offers workplace safety trainings sponsored by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – known as “OSHA classes.”

“Workers have to protect themselves,” she said. “They have the right to say, ‘no, I’m not going to go on that ladder.’ They have a voice and a vote.”

Juan, a 28-year-old Ecuadorian construction worker, represents the people the program tries to reach. An undocumented immigrant, he said he has been a construction worker since March and makes $17 an hour, nearly one-third more than in his previous job working in a kitchen. But about two months ago, he said, he started feeling sick after working with fiberglass insulation in a building in Brooklyn.

Juan said he asked his construction supervisor for a mask, but was told that there were none available.

“They told us that there weren’t any, that we would have to wait,” said the worker, who asked that his last name not be published. “The day went by, and then the week. How can that be?”

By the end of the week, he said, he had an obstructed sense of smell, body aches and a cough, which his doctor attributed to inhalation of fiberglass.

“When you remove the insulation, the dust rises – even your skin starts to sting,” said Juan.

Christina Fox, the work center coordinator for New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a non-profit based in Jackson Heights, said the Latino laborers she works with often don’t report injuries to their supervisors. She explained that workers might not think their injuries are severe enough or don’t know that they have a right to receive compensation.

Attending a workplace safety class could change this.

“A worker will be able to go to their job, recognize there’s a crack in the retaining wall, stop, and tell their supervisor,” she said. “But low-income workers don’t [always] have the flexibility to leave the job. A lot of workers might enter that risk situation.”

It’s a scenario that Sin Fronteras aims to address. Cali began pushing for more workers’ rights classes several years ago. When she heard in 2013 that the Ecuadorian Consulate was running out of space to host OSHA classes, she offered up the basement of her jewelry store and barbershop in Corona – the same basement where her program is now recorded.

For two months, she said, dozens of immigrants flocked to her shop weekly to learn about their right to report workplace accidents, regardless of legal status.

“When I saw how huge and exaggerated the demand was, I said, ‘this can’t be – we’re going to hold classes in other places,'” recalled Cali.

She created Sin Fronteras to expand the outreach. Like the majority of the hosts on the program, she doesn’t have professional radio experience, but the station’s owners immediately liked the idea of a program that seeks to help the community. The six hosts on Sin Fronteras are all volunteers and include a lawyer who specializes in construction accidents and the founder of Padres en Acción, Ronaldo Bini, who speaks about public-safety measures.

“Because people lack knowledge, they aren’t prepared and lose the chance to build their lives,” said Cali. “We want people to listen to the radio programs and come here and take OSHA classes, scaffold classes for workers’ protection.”

Maria Fernanda Baquerizo, the community relations coordinator at New York’s Ecuadorian Consulate, said that labor abuse is prevalent in the largely undocumented Ecuadorian community in Queens.

“It’s very positive that our community, our immigrants, can listen to important information of where to receive help,” she said. “Because generally the people who are abused at work, the undocumented, think that their employers can abuse them and not pay them wages… Immigrants feel helpless, they feel alone. They don’t know how to move forward.”

By Leila Miller

Source

Millions of New Yorkers are celebrating a deal this week to raise the state’s minimum wage. The deal puts a better future in sight for families around the state and sends a powerful signal to other states considering wage hikes of their own.

The deal is a testament to the power of organizing. Today’s headlines would be unimaginable just a few years ago. When New York Communities for Change organized the first fast food worker strike – almost four years ago – people thought we were crazy.

As the federal government repeatedly stalled on a meaningful increase to the nationwide minimum wage, it seemed that higher wages were out of reach.

In response, fast-food and other low-wage workers rose up to fight for better wages and a better quality of life, sparking a movement that spread to cities and towns across the nation.

It is no coincidence that the Fight for $15 began right here in New York City. The level of inequality in our city has long been one of the worst of the country – and has grown to historic proportions in recent years.

According to a 2014 Census Bureau survey, the top 5 percent of Manhattan households made 88 times as much as the poorest 20 percent. And as of last year, workers earning minimum wage could not afford median rent in a single neighborhood in New York City.

Wages have long failed to keep pace with the growing cost of living. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute found that the statewide wage of $9.00 per hour was well below what it would be if it had simply kept pace with inflation since 1970. The same study found that, accounting for both inflation and a higher cost of living, the minimum wage today would match its 1970 value if it reached $14.27 per hour this year – nearly the level agreed on by the New York State Legislature.

Governor Cuomo made the right move last year by mandating higher wages for fast-food workers – those on the front lines fighting for reform. But leading industry by industry risked neglecting too many workers. In order to truly create change, the rules must apply equally to everybody. Last week’s deal did that, letting workers across the economy finally dream bigger than the next paycheck.

The deal is a victory for New York City workers. However, it bypasses hard-working families in Upstate New York. While over a million low-wage workers in the city will see their wages rise to $15 per hour by the end of 2018, those in Long Island will only reach $15 in almost six years and those upstate will need to wait five years only to reach $12.50. Although the deal allows wages to rise to $15 after that, the rate will depend on review and inflation and could take years.

It is a painfully long stretch given the growing cost of living north of the city. The New York State Comptroller, for example, has found housing costs skyrocketing, with at least one in five people in every county – including those far upstate like Warren and Monroe – spending more than a third of their salary on rent. In some counties half of residents must spend that much. With added expenses like utilities and food, it leaves little room to save up for college or retirement.

It is imperative that legislators now finish the job and give all New Yorkers a chance at a living wage.

Just days before Albany finalized its deal; California showed us that a $15 wage statewide is possible. Our state must fulfill the promise of Fight for $15 statewide and let all workers adequately provide for themselves and their families. Otherwise New Yorkers will continue doing what they have been doing for almost four years: risking everything to provide a better life for their families.

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By JoEllen Chernow &. Jonathan Westin

Source

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.