CPD IN THE NEWS

What is the GOP and the conservative Right doing in response?

A leading left-wing community organizing group is building a massive grassroots advocacy and voter turnout operation in battleground states that could decide November’s presidential and Senate elections, documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal.

The Center for Popular Democracy is working to raise more than $7 million to support local and state-level organizing work that it hopes will translate issue-oriented advocacy into political power in November.

Documents detailing those efforts shed new light on how the left’s organizing apparatus is collaborating with prominent progressive groups such as MoveOn.org, labor unions, and foundations to build a campaign apparatus that can win short-term policy victories and translate those victories into a lasting political operation.

By Spencer Irvine

Source

The two-day event, Whose Recovery: A National Convening on Inequality, Race, and the Federal Reserve, is organized by the Fed Up campaign, a coalition of groups led by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. It serves as a counter-conference to the annual Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City symposium, where Fed officials come together to discuss monetary policy -- and which is currently taking place at the same resort as the Fed Up gathering.  

Fed Up’s member organizations brought over 100 primarily low-income grassroots activists from across the country for the gathering. It's a dramatic increase from its inaugural visit to Jackson Hole last year, when the campaign brought a group of 10 activists. 

The size of Fed Up’s delegation of activists and presence of prominent economists -- including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz -- attests to the rapid growth of a once-unlikely campaign that began just a year ago. Fed Up has managed to turn the esoteric issue of central bank interest rates into a key element of the progressive agenda -- and a rallying cry for low-income workers. 

Rod Adams, a recent college graduate from Minneapolis, said he was attending the convention because he was disappointed in the job market. Despite his college degree, he currently makes $10.10 an hour working at the Mall of America.

“I have seen Wall Street’s recovery and corporate America’s recovery -- where is ours?” Adams demanded, eliciting cheers at a spirited press conference outside the Jackson Lake Lodge on Thursday. 

The activists oppose the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates before the economy creates enough jobs to generate substantial wage growth for all workers. They believe that a premature interest rate hike would be especially harmful to workers in communities of color, who continue to suffer higher rates of unemployment than the overall population. Activists say this is partly the result of discrimination in the job market. Fed Up released a report on Thursday that uses original data to show that if there was the same low unemployment rate in every community in America, African-Americans and American Indians would experience the largest income gains.

The delegation plans to present officials attending the exclusive Fed symposium with an online petition opposing an interest rate hike that bears 110,000 signatures. The petition effort was the result of Fed Up's collaboration earlier this month with online progressive heavyweights including CREDO Action, Daily Kos, the Working Families Organization and Demand Progress. Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, gave the petition drive a high-profile boost with a popular video promoting the effort.

A similar petition that Fed Up brought last year had 10,000 signatures.

The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, which convenes the annual Jackson Hole symposium for Fed officials, declined to comment on this year's parallel protest conference. 

Kansas City Fed President Esther George met with Fed Up activists during last year's symposium.

Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, is not attending this year's symposium, precluding even the possibility of an impromptu encounter with protesters. 

“Janet Yellen is missing a great opportunity to see what real people look like,” Adams said. “We are not data on a spreadsheet.”

Proponents of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike in the near future argue that the Fed should begin raising rates to prevent excessive price and asset inflation. The Fed has a dual mandate to maintain full employment and stable price inflation. 

William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, signaled on Wednesday that they would postpone an interest rate hike that Fed officials had previously indicated would occur in September. Dudley said turmoil in China and other emerging market economies that sparked massive swings in the U.S. stock market earlier in the week made a September rate hike “less compelling.”

Josh Bivens, the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s research and policy director, applauded the Fed’s move away from an interest rate hike, but said the reason for the Fed’s decision confirmed the need for more grassroots activism.

“A week ago the case against raising rates for the labor market was clear as day, but all of a sudden when wealthy people lost money in the stock market the tide turned against a rate increase,” Bivens said at Thursday's press conference. “I’m happy rates are less likely to go up because of that, but it is a terrible reason.”

Source: Huffington Post

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker, one of the Fed system’s most outspoken advocates for higher short-term interest rates in recent years, will retire Oct. 1 after 28 years at the bank, the regional Fed bank said Tuesday.

The Richmond Fed’s board of directors has formed a search committee led by Chairwoman Margaret Lewis to find a new president, and has hired the firm of Heidrick & Struggles to assist in the search, the bank said. The bank intends to conduct “a nationwide search to identify a broad, diverse and highly qualified candidate pool for this leadership role,” it said.

Mr. Lacker became the second Fed official to announce his plans to retire in 2017. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart will step down at the end of February.

“Jeff has been an outstanding leader for the Richmond Fed and has made many contributions to the Federal Reserve System,” Ms. Lewis said in a statement announcing his departure.

A Richmond Fed spokesman said Mr. Lacker wants to return to teaching, writing and academic research, though he had no details on where Mr. Lacker may go after he leaves the bank later this year.

Mr. Lacker joined the Richmond Fed in 1989 and served in various leadership positions before becoming president in August 2004. For the past decade he has anchored the Fed’s hawkish wing, warning of the risks of rising inflation and dissenting often in favor of a higher benchmark federal-funds rate, which officials held near zero for six years following the financial crisis.

He was a voting member of the Fed’s policy committee in 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015, and dissented a total of 15 times out of 32 meetings.

Mr. Lacker also argued against the Fed’s interventions in financial markets throughout the financial crisis, and has said financial instability was worsened by expectations that the Fed would always provide a backstop for financial firms in trouble.

Over the past year, he has also argued against efforts to overhaul the Fed system, including measures that would subject the Fed’s interest-rate decisions to greater congressional scrutiny or tie its policy to a mathematical formula.

“I’m hoping that our leaders in Congress and the administration understand that our independence is of value and is important to the credibility of the country’s commitment to price stability and I hope they’re willing to proceed accordingly,” he said after the November presidential election.

Mr. Lacker said in a statement Tuesday he felt fortunate “to have participated in some of the most extraordinary policy deliberations in our nation’s history. It’s been my deepest privilege to lead the Richmond Fed and the dedicated people who work here.”

The search to replace Mr. Lacker is likely to face scrutiny from activists and congressional Democrats who have called for more diversity among the Fed’s upper ranks, as well as more openness about how it selects its regional bank leaders.

Following Mr. Lockhart’s announcement last year, the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign said it hoped the next Atlanta Fed president would be black or Hispanic, which would be a first for a regional Fed bank.

In an unusual move, a group of African-American House members wrote to Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and the chairman of the Atlanta Fed’s board urging them to consider candidates of diverse racial, ethnic, gender and professional backgrounds. The lawmakers also noted that most of the presidents worked at major financial firms before their appointments.

“We hope that candidates from distinctive sectors like academia, labor, and nonprofit organizations are given due consideration,” they wrote.

Before joining the Richmond Fed, Mr. Lacker was an assistant professor of economics at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University and previously worked at Wharton Econometrics in Philadelphia, the bank said.

The bank posted information about its search process on its website Tuesday.

By Kate Davidson

Source

Buzzfeed - June 16, 2014 by Adrian Carrasquillo - New York Democrats announced Monday new legislation that would grant state citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants.

The bill could represent a bold new advocacy strategy: using states’ rights to secure legal protections for the undocumented.

York state senator Gustavo Rivera and assembly member Karim Camara’s bill would allow undocumented immigrants to vote, drive, receive professional licenses, run for civil office, and receive Medicaid as well as in-state tuition in New York by making them New York state citizens.

“It’s up to New York to figure out who it’s political community is,” said Peter Markowitz, professor at the Cardozo school of law, who made the legal case for the legislation through the country’s dual-sovereign structure. “New York gets to decide who is and who isn’t a New Yorker. The federal government may not interfere.”

The prospects for federal changes to U.S. immigration law took a hit last week after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary election loss, attributed by some as directly the result of attacks by Cantor’s opponent on his immigration record.

Flanked by activists in front of the Statue of Liberty Monday, Rivera struck a positive tone about the bill, called the New York is Home Act.

Immigrants would be eligible to become state citizens if they show proof of identity, proof of three years of New York State residency and proof of three years of New York State tax payments; the bill also requires a commitment to abide by state laws and uphold the state Constitution, and a willingness to serve on New York juries and to keep paying state taxes.

Rivera said the idea has been in the works for two years and called the legislation “bold,” not because of the pieces themselves, but because they are all in one bill.

“This is unlike SB1070,” Rivera told BuzzFeed after the event. “Arizona said, ‘We can do this and affect things on a federal level.’ No, you can’t. But the conversation we need to have is: What rights do we have in a state?”

Spokespeople for Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the first Latina in the role, said Monday they were reviewing the legislation.

“In light of inaction at the federal government, the administration is interested in learning about local initiatives to increase equality among immigrant communities,” de Blasio deputy press secretary Maibe Ponet said.

“Given congress’s failure to address immigration reform, people are obviously becoming increasingly frustrated, a spokesman for Mark-Viverito said. “[The speaker] is supportive of increasing voting rights and will be reviewing the legislation.”

Cesar Vargas, a DREAMer who has been fighting for the right to practice law as an undocumented immigrant, would benefit from the portion of the legislation that would give licenses for professions like lawyers, doctors, dentists, midwives and others. He said he is set to work with the mayor and the city council speaker to “see how they can support undocumented lawyers.”

“As we stand in front of the Statue of Liberty, we’re reminded of the American Dream, and I’m reminded of the dream of my mother for me to be a lawyer,” Vargas said.

Many sought to draw a parallel between the fight for marriage equality — and its stops and starts over the years.

“This will get a lot of attention for New York,” DREAMer Antonio Alarcon, 19, said. “It will take months to pass, we’re going to be fighting for this like they did for marriage equality.”

“Full equality and inclusion will gain momentum in our time,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of The Center for Popular Democracy.

He said his group is in discussion with four to five other states for similar legislation with the stated goal of putting “another horse in the race” in the way those who fought for marriage equality continued to refine what they were asking for.

Jose Davila, the vice president off policy and government relations at the Hispanic Federation echoed the belief that the legislation comes at an important time for the fight for changing U.S. immigration laws.

“Instead of tear families apart, we should be reframing the debate. What kind of state do we want to be?”

Source