CPD IN THE NEWS

Immigrant activists on Thursday trumpeted the success of the city’s immigrant ID program and encouraged using it as a model for other localities.

The Center for Popular Democracy released a toolkit underlining the overall benefits of an accessible city identification card and how to implement the system into state policy and accept them as government issued cards.

“We hope this toolkit will be a resource and powerful tool that inspires advocates and community members everywhere to push for muni ID programs in their communities, showing what is possible when cities and localities take the lead,” said Shena Elrington, Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.

The ID NYC program has proved a success in less than a year issuing free, government issued identification cards to over 350,000 New York residents since its start in January 2015, according to the Center of Popular Democracy. Other cities such as Newark, New Jersey and Hartford, Connecticut have followed New York’s lead and adopted the municipal ID program, said Elrington.

As stated in a press release, a municipal ID gives all New York residents access to medical benefits, opening bank accounts and registering children for school (to name a few) regardless of sexual orientation, immigration status and other factors that deter an individual from receiving a government issued ID. Other benefits include discounts to city venues and attractions.

Councilman Carlos Menchaca led the group in chants of, “Si, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”) as he joined in celebration and encouraged them to continue to fight for their rights. The toolkit, he referred to as a “symbol of hope”, is only the beginning.

“You are changing the world for the entire United States,” he said to the crowd. “The ID is just the beginning, it is a gateway.”

Source: Brooklyn News Service

SILive - September 18, 2014, by Anna Sanders - Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday announced the launch of a new initiative to push for eligible immigrants to become U.S. citizens in the nation's three largest cities. 

"Cities for Citizenship" aims to increase naturalization programs and other efforts to help immigrants in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

"This win-win effort will help us create more inclusive cities that lift up everyone," de Blasio said in a statement announcing the initiative. "From increased economic activity to larger voting and tax bases, the advantages of citizenship will not only expand opportunity to our immigrant families, but to all New Yorkers and residents nationwide."

The de Blasio administration said increasing immigrant access to citizenship will help fight poverty and estimated that naturalizing 684,000 legal permanent residents will add up to $4.1 billion to the city's economy over a decade.

In a report released Wednesday, the Center for Popular Democracy estimated that there are about 750,000 legal permanent residents eligible for naturalization.

Citigroup, a corporate partner of the initiative, will contribute $1.15 million for the new initiative.  

New York City will use funds for NYCitizenship, a coordinated effort to connect low- and moderate-income New Yorkers to free legal assistance during the naturalization process. NYCitizenship works with city agencies to connect those in the city eligible to become U.S. citizens with assistance, such as legal advice, help on applications and financial counseling.

The NYCitizenship program has already helped more than 1,800 New Yorkers complete naturalization applications since 2012, according to the Center for Popular Democracy report.  

In addition to the initiative, the city's Office of Immigrant Affairs will also commission a study on the economic impact of citizenship programs nationwide.

Source

With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game.

Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly powerless to boost the global economy, even if they still have sway over capital markets. What is far more insidious to the Fed’s waning credibility is when former economists affiliated with the Fed start repeating mantras that until recently were only a prominent feature in the so-called fringe media.

This is precisely what happened today when former central bank staffer and Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, joined with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public.

Levin is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts.

All of that is not surprising. What he said to justify his new found cause, however, is.

“A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as “sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan.”

Why is that stunning? Because it has long been a bone of contention if only among the fringe media, that at its core the Fed is merely a private institution, beholden only to its de facto owners: not the people of the U.S. but to a small cabal of banks. Worse, the actual org chart of who owns what is not disclosed, even as the vast majority of the U.S. population remains deluded that the Fed is a publicly owned institution.

As the WSJ goes on to note, the former central bank staffer said he sees his ideas as designed to maintain the virtues the central bank already brings to the table. They aren’t targeted at changing how policy is conducted today. “What’s important here is that reform to the Federal Reserve can last for 100 years, not just the near term,” he said.

And this is coming from a former Fed employee and Ben Bernanke’s personal advisor! That in itself is a most striking development, because now that the insiders are finally speaking up, it will be a race among both current and prior Fed workers to reveal as much dirty laundry as possible ahead of what is increasingly being perceived by many as the Fed’s demise.

To be sure, Levin’s personal campaign for Fed transformation will not be easy, and as the WSJ writes, what is being sought by Mr. Levin and the activists is significant and would require congressional action. Ady Barkan, who leads the Fed Up campaign, said the Fed’s current structure “is an embarrassment to America” and Fed leaders haven’t been “willing or able” to make changes.

Specifically, Levin wants the 12 regional Fed banks to be brought fully into the government. He also wants the process of selecting new bank presidents—they are key regulators and contributors in setting interest-rate policy—opened up more fully to public input, as well as term limits for Fed officials.

This would represent a revolution to the internal staffing of the Fed, which will no longer be at the mercy of its now-defunct shareholders, America’s commercial banks; it would also mean that Goldman Sachs would lose all its leverage as the world’s biggest central bank incubator, a revolving door relationship which has allowed the Manhattan firm to dominate the world of finance for the decades.

Levin’s proposal was made in conjunction with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition, a group that has been pressuring the central bank for more accountability for some time. The left-leaning group has been critical of the structure of the regional banks, and has been pressing the Fed to hold off on raising rates in a bid to make sure the recovery is enjoyed not just by the wealthy, in their view.

The proposal was revealed on a conference call that also included a representative from Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, although all campaigns were invited to participate.

The WSJ adds that according to Levin, who knows the Fed’s operating structure intimately, says the members of the regional Fed bank boards of directors, the majority of whom are selected by the private banks with the approval of the Washington-based governors, should be chosen differently. The professor says director slots now reserved for financial professionals regulated by the Fed should be eliminated, and that directors who oversee and advise the regional banks should be selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials. These directors also should better represent the diversity of the U.S.

Levin also wants formal public input into the selection of new bank presidents, with candidates’ names known publicly and a process that allows for public comment in a way that doesn’t now exist. The professor also wants all Fed officials to serve for single seven-year terms, which would give them the needed distance from the political process while eliminating situations where some policy makers stay at the bank for decades. Alan Greenspan, for example, was Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.

As the WSJ conveniently adds, the selection of regional bank presidents has become a hot-button issue. Currently, the leaders of the New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks are helmed by men who formerly worked for or had close connections to investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Levin called for watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office to annually review and report on Fed operations, including the regional Fed banks. He also wants the regional Fed banks to be covered under the Freedom of Information Act. A regular annual review hopefully would insulate the effort from perceptions of political interference, Mr. Levin said.

* * *

While ending the Fed may still seem like a pipe dream, at least until the market’s next major crash at which point the population may  finally turn on the culprit behind America’s serial boom-bust culture, the U.S. central bank, Levin’s proposal would get to the heart of the most insidious conflict of interest in the US: the fact that the Federal Reserve works not for the people of America, but for its owners – the banks.

Which is also why, sadly, this proposal will be dead on arrival, as its passage would represent the biggest loss for Wall Street in the past 103 years, far more significant than anything Dodd-Frank could hope to accomplish.

By Zero Hedge

Source

Less than a year after San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind fair scheduling ordinance for retail employers, progressive activists in Minneapolis began pushing for an even stronger scheduling ordinance of their own—along with paid sick leave, wage theft protections, and the possibility of a $15 minimum wage. 

But the campaign, dubbed the Working Families Agenda, ran into a roadblock earlier this month when its most powerful political ally, Mayor Betsy Hodges, decided to abandon the fair scheduling component. Language in the proposed ordinance called for scheduling notice of at least two weeks in advance and extra “predictability pay” for workers who were scheduled after that threshold. 

Those requirements quickly awoke the local business lobby, typically a fairly dormant political power in a city with a strong progressive streak. In late September, opponents formed the Workforce Fairness Coalition by the Chamber of Commerce, and included prominent members like the Minnesota Business Partnership (which represents about 80 businesses, including Target, U.S. Bancorp and Xcel Energy) and the Minnesota Restaurant Association. They took specific issue with the scheduling law, saying that it would impede operations and could force businesses to flee the city. 

Many progressive activists don’t buy that argument.

“We heard the same arguments from the Chamber of Commerce that are being made in Minneapolis,” says Gordon Mar, who led the campaign to pass San Francisco’s Retail Worker Bill of Rights, which includes fair scheduling. “As we’ve been implementing the law, those arguments have proven to be just as hollow as they were in business’s opposition to other worker-friendly laws."

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges ran in 2013 on a campaign that promised to directly address the city’s stark racial disparities, aspiring for a “One Minneapolis.” The city has some of the largest gaps in the country between whites and people of color for a number of indicators including rates of high school graduation, homeownership, low-level arrests and employment. 

Those disparities are rampant in the workplace, too. For example, 63 percent of white workers in Minneapolis have access to earned sick time compared with just 32 percent of Latino workers. A Minnesota Department of Health report found that 79 percent of food workers—many of whom are minorities—lacked paid sick time. 

In her 2015 State of the City address just six months ago, Hodges outlined an agenda she said would address economic disparities, specifically calling for an ambitious plan to implement fair scheduling, wage theft protection and paid sick leave. But since then, Hodges appears to have taken business’s concerns to heart. 

“When it comes to fair, predictable scheduling, I have heard from many people, including many business owners, that the issue is complicated and that more time is needed to engage in this important issue,” the mayor said in a statement on October 14. “As a result, I have come to the conclusion that we are not in a position to resolve the concerns satisfactorily on the timeline currently contemplated.”

While Hodges pledged to continue pushing for paid sick leave and wage theft enforcement, activists felt blindsided by her sudden retreat. 

“Our progressive champions were not prepared for the pushback and frankly folded under the pressure, … caving to conservative business elements,” says Anthony Newby, executive director for Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, a member of the coalition supporting these policies. “Where does [Hodges] want to be allied? With working people or with the worst actors of the business community?”

The day after Hodges’ announcement, about 300 people streamed into City Hall in downtown Minneapolis to reaffirm support for all aspects of the Working Families Agenda. Workers and organizers spoke about the daily burdens of low-wage work and how they contribute to the racial disparities that plague a city often portrayed as a progressive wonderland. Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds described the city’s situation as a tale of two cities: “It’s the best of times if you’re white and the worst of times if you’re black.” 

While the scheduling law language had not been set in stone, many businesses were concerned with its details. At first, advanced notice for schedules was set at four weeks, which was eventually scaled back to two. For every change an employer made to a worker’s schedule within two weeks of the shift, that worker would earn an hour’s wage worth of “predictability pay.” For any schedule change within 24 hours of a shift, a worker would get four hours’ pay. 

Opponents were quick to cast this as an unrealistic policy with a costly burden placed on employers, and would be completely unworkable for restaurants, retailers and many other businesses that they say are dependent on “flexible” scheduling models. Advocates are quick to point out, though, that current workplace scheduling standards put all the cost on workers. For example, if a worker relies on childcare during her shifts and an employer tells her to stay late, many childcare centers charge fees for late pickups; or, having already spent money on childcare and transit, she could arrive at work to find her shift has been cut. 

On fair scheduling, says Elianne Farhat with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative, it’s clear there’s going to be a cost. “What gets lost in the conversation is that it’s not that there isn’t a cost right now— it’s just that the workers are bearing that cost,” Farhat says. “What [fair scheduling] is trying to do is balance that cost.” 

Despite Hodges’ call for more time to parse out details on scheduling, activists aren’t backing off. Her announcement seems to have galvanized many local organizations that previously were on the fence. Organizers say they will continue to advocate for paid sick leave and wage theft protections in the immediate future while aiming for an eventual victory on fair scheduling. 

Compromises will likely need to be made. While San Francisco’s scheduling law applied only to big chain stores, Minneapolis’s fair scheduling proposal is universal. That may need to be scaled back, according to activists: Some added flexibility for “predictability pay” requirements may be needed, and further discussion about phase-in periods for smaller businesses will likely be coming. But organizers say they didn’t expect an easy path to passing the strongest scheduling law in the country. In fact, at a city council meeting last week two members announced a plan to refer the proposed paid sick leave policy to a new committee made up of workers, labor leaders, employers and business associations that would meet in mid-November and hash out details.

“‘No’ is not an answer. The question is what does it take to get a yes,” says Newby. “We need to figure out what is that sweet spot that’s gonna work for us. That may take a little bit more time.”

Source: In These Times