CPD IN THE NEWS

VT Digger - January 12, 2014, by Morgan True - Last week’s pro-universal health care demonstration during Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inaugural address drew attention locally and nationally, and left many wanting to know more about its organizers — the Vermont Workers’ Center, which has grown substantially in the past five years.

Founded nearly two decades ago as Central Vermonters for a Livable Wage, the nonprofit labor and human rights group has evolved into a substantial grassroots organization.

In 2001, as the Vermont Workers’ Center, the group affiliated with Jobs With Justice, a national pro-labor group, and is essentially that organization’s Vermont chapter. VWC founded the Health Care Is a Human Right campaign in 2008 because the cost of medical care and health insurance was creating crises for its members that “transcended” the workplace, according to the group’s website.

The campaign is viewed by some as a model for health care advocacy in other states.

Since launching the Health Care Is a Human Right Campaign, VWC’s annual budget has grown from $154,500 in 2008 to $638,700 in 2012, the latest publicly available tax filing from the group.

James Haslam, VWC’s director, said its current budget is close to $800,000, a more than fivefold increase since the campaign began. The money comes from donations and foundation grants in roughly equal parts, Haslam said.

The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is its largest grantor, providing $50,000 this year, Haslam said. It has given the group $160,000 since 2010, including $35,000 to offer guidance to similar groups across the U.S. Grantees are voted on by a committee of Ben & Jerry’s workers, according to a statement.

“The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation supports grassroots organizations throughout the U.S. that are working for progressive social change and a more equitable society,” according to the foundation’s statement.

VWC also chose to start collecting dues from its members in 2014, Haslam added. The dues follow a sliding scale based on members’ ability to pay, he said.

The grassroots activists have strong affiliations with national labor and human rights groups including Health Care Now, Labor for Single Payer, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, The Center for Popular Democracy and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, according to Haslam.

Kate Kanelstein, VWC’s lead organizer, is on Grassroots Global Justice Alliance’s national coordinating committee. Kanelstein was among those arrested during Thursday’s sit-in in the House chamber.

“We’re part of a broader people’s movement to turn things around for working people,” Haslam said.

Those connections have helped propel VWC to the forefront of national activism on universal public health care.

The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative provides strategic advice and training to VWC and similar groups throughout the U.S., said Anja Rudiger, director of programming for NESRI.

VWC has successfully, and appropriately, according to Rudiger, applied the principles of human rights advocacy to health policy by focusing on the hardship of individuals, rather than the “nitty-gritty” of policy debates.

By reframing access to health care as a human rights issue, VWC and others are able to highlight the injustices of the high cost of medical services and a for-profit health insurance system.

There are now Health Care Is a Human Right campaigns in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Maine. Groups in Oregon and Washington are also hoping to model health care advocacy work on the template created by VWC.

VWC is using the tactics and strategies of other human rights movements, including demonstrations and civil disobedience, which are well established, but have not previously been applied to health care, Rudiger said.

A ‘new environment’ and a national movement

Some have argued that last week’s demonstration hurt VWC’s credibility with the Legislature — one senator called the tactics “fascist” — but the demonstration has drawn increased attention from national groups and other advocates for universal health care.

Amnesty International, National Nurses United and more than 60 other labor and health care advocacy groups signed an open letter to the Vermont Legislature urging lawmakers to press on with Act 48, the state’s universal health care law. NESRI helped get many of the signatories to that letter, Rudiger said.

The Rev. William Barber, most famous for starting the Moral Monday movement, wrote a letter of solidarity, calling it immoral for people not to have access to medical care.

The backlash from lawmakers was anticipated, Haslam said, and he doesn’t think it hurts VWC’s ultimate goal of achieving universal access to health services.

“No one that truly supports universal health care is not going to support it because of a protest,” he said.

The visceral reaction from legislators may be partly because the Statehouse hasn’t been the venue for Occupy-esque demonstrations previously, said longtime State Curator David Schutz, though they’ve become increasingly common elsewhere in Vermont and nationally.

“It’s a new environment,” Schutz said, one ushered in by the October occupation of the governor’s offices in the nearby Pavilion Building.

That action was primarily the work of Rising Tide Vermont, the local affiliate of a national climate advocacy group, to protest the expansion of a Vermont Gas pipeline. The Workers’ Center helped organize that demonstration, which resulted in 64 arrests, though charges were later dropped.

Keith Brunner, the communication coordinator for the center, was among those arrested at the pipeline demonstration. Though he was present at the Statehouse last week, he was not arrested.

The only comparable event to Thursday’s demonstrations that took place in the Statehouse during the past 30 years was during the debate over civil unions in 2000, Schutz said.

It was necessary to rile official Vermont, Rudiger said, because it appears Shumlin has unilaterally stalled the state’s movement toward universal health care.

“It’s not about being disrespectful to lawmakers, it’s about highlighting the conditions in people’s lives that bring about those actions and that’s always what civil disobedience has been about,” she said.

Nationally, advocates for public universal health care were aware of the movement in Vermont, but few had received the news of Shumlin’s “wavering,” Haslam said.

Last week’s demonstration was an opportunity to get that message out and put Vermont back in the national spotlight in order to keep the momentum behind a universal health care program for the state, Haslam said.

VWC workers among those arrested last week

Many in Vermont’s political Twittersphere expressed surprise — or consternation — that several of Thursday’s demonstrators, including some who were arrested, are paid employees for the Workers’ Center.

In addition to Kanelstein, field organizers Shela Linton, Elizabeth Beatty-Owens, Avery Pittman and campaign coordinator Matt McGrath were among the 29 arrested.

Members, volunteers and staff were told at a planning meeting that the sit-in carried the risk of arrest, Haslam said. Those who participated in the sit-in chose to take that risk in order to push for legislative hearings on the governor’s single payer report.

The Workers’ Center employees who were arrested had “personal experiences with health care crises,” Haslam said. Many got involved because of that experience, and started out as members or volunteers before being hired.

Lobbying only a small part of what VWC does

The Workers’ Center is limited in its ability to lobby elected officials because it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The organization is aware of that line, and takes steps to make sure it’s not crossed, according to Haslam.

Its field organizers are registered lobbyists, Haslam said, which is corroborated by the Secretary of State’s database.

The IRS threshold for tax-exempt nonprofits is whether lobbying activities constitute “a substantial part of its overall activities,” with expenditures on lobbying capped at 20 percent for a group the size of VWC.

The Vermont Workers’ Center keeps time sheets and records expenditures to ensure they meet the expense limits, Haslam said. Its 2012 990 tax filing, the most recent available, says those expenditures are available on request and does not list them.

Lobbying as part of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign is not a substantial portion of the center’s overall operation, Haslam added.

The group is involved in community organizing and leadership development, and helps build grassroots networks and coalitions on a broad array of issues, primarily labor-related, he said.

The Workers’ Center has supported striking FairPoint workers, recently unionized home care workers and workers at the University of Vermont who are trying to form a union.

They operate a workers’ hotline to field workplace complaints and employ an accountability monitor to help enforce Burlington’s livable wage ordinance.

The Workers’ Center also runs the People’s University for Learning and Liberation with a staffer dedicated to preparing workshops, skill building, continuing education for its members and affiliated groups.

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Opponents of demonstrators urging the Democratic Party to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA) stand outside the office of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in Los Angeles Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018. California has the largest number of people who are affected by the law, also known as the Dream Act.

Read the full article here.

Lehigh Valley Live - April 10, 2013 - Waving American flags and carrying handmade signs, Lehigh Valley residents and workers rallied for immigration reform this morning in Salisbury Township. Speaking in Spanish, about 40 people chanted "What do we want? Justice! When? Now!" and shared stories of their experiences as undocumented immigrants living and working in the region.

The Lehigh Valley Campaign for Citizenship demonstration outside U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's office included representatives from local labor unions and kicked off the group's bus trip to Washington, D.C. There, they'll meet with Pennsylvania's Congressional legislators -- Sens. Toomey, R-Pa.,  and Bob Casey, D-Pa., plus U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican whose district includes parts of Northampton and Lehigh counties. They'll join thousands of other immigration reform advocates in a march on the Capitol.

A clear, short path to citizenship, the preservation of families, the protection of workers' rights and the rejection of measures that would increase deportation are all key components of comprehensive immigration reform, according to Max Cohen, a Center for Popular Democracy spokesman who helped organize today's event.

When Jasmine Leonor's father, Reyes Leonor, was arrested on unspecified charges, jailed and targeted for deportation to Mexico, she, her mother and siblings were left in limbo, the 16-year-old Liberty High School student said.

They didn't know when or if Reyes Leonor would be allowed to return home to run his business, El Mariachi Mini Market in Bethlehem, she said. The teen fought back tears as she described her family's fears during that time and their continued frustration with the system that led to his detainment.

Reyes Leonor avoided deportation and is back home, but said the experience motivated him to join the fight for immigration reform. He spoke passionately about how important it is for immigrants and others to step up and join this cause.

"I was able to do it. Everyone needs to fight for their rights. Everyone needs to fight to stay here," Reyes Leonor said. "We have to fight to get what we get. We have to fight like warriors."

The nation's current immigration policy puts an unnecessary strain on families and wastes money on the deportation of people who are hardworking, law-abiding and looking for their slice of the American dream, demonstrators said. The messages on some of their signs -- "Keep Families Together: Immigration Reform Now" and "Stop Deportation, Stop Separation" -- highlighted that point.

Tatiana Tooley, a U.S.-born Allentown resident whose parents emigrated from Panama, said, "I cry for the families that don't have family unity" because of deportation.

Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773, said immigration reform would protect all laborers from exploitation by unscrupulous employers. When undocumented immigrants are underpaid, paid off the books or forced to work excessive hours, it undermines the rights of everyone in the workplace, he said.

"For us, it's a matter of fairness and doing what's right for all workers," said Hower, who is a Whitehall Township commissioner.

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Miami Herald - September 30, 2014, by Steve Rothaus - A report issued Tuesday shows that LGBT Americans face added financial burdens — and often higher poverty rates — because of antigay national, state and local legislation.

NBC News has covered the story, with a video of Arlene Goldberg, the Fort Myers widow who is suing Florida to recognize her marriage to longtime partner Carol Goldwasser.

Goldberg’s primary income is Social Security. Because Florida doesn’t recognize Goldberg’s marriage, she is unable to qualify as Goldwasser’s widow and collect her Social Security payments, which were $700 more each month than Goldberg’s.

Here’s a news release from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP):

Washington, D.C. — A landmark report released today paints a stark picture of the added financial burdens faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans because of anti-LGBT laws at the national, state and local levels. According to the report, these laws contribute to significantly higher rates of poverty among LGBT Americans and create unfair financial penalties in the form of higher taxes, reduced wages and Social Security income, increased healthcare costs, and more.

The momentum of recent court rulings overturning marriage bans across the country has created the impression that LGBT Americans are on the cusp of achieving full equality from coast-to-coast. But the new report, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for Being LGBT in America, documents how inequitable laws harm the economic well-being of LGBT people in three key ways: by enabling legal discrimination in jobs, housing, credit and other areas; by failing to recognize LGBT families, both in general and across a range of programs and laws designed to help American families; and by creating barriers to safe and affordable education for LGBT students and the children of LGBT parents.

Paying an Unfair Pricewas co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, National Association of Social Workers, and the National Education Association. It is available online at www.lgbtmap.org/unfair-price.

“Unfair laws deliver a one-two punch. They both drive poverty within the LGBT community and then hit people when they are down,” said Ineke Mushovic, Executive Director of MAP. “While families with means might be able to withstand the costs of extra taxation or the unfair denial of Social Security benefits, for an already-struggling family these financial penalties can mean the difference between getting by and getting evicted. Anti-LGBT laws do the most harm to the most vulnerable in the LGBT community, including those who are barely making ends meet, families with children, older adults, and people of color.”

The report documents the often-devastating consequences when the law fails LGBT families. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are almost twice as likely to be poor as children raised by married opposite-sex parents. Additionally, 15 percent of transgender workers have incomes of less than $10,000 per year; among the population as a whole, the comparable figure is just four percent. To demonstrate the connection between anti-LGBT laws and the finances of LGBT Americans and their families, the report outlines how LGBT people living in states with low levels of equality are more likely to be poor, both compared to their non-LGBT neighbors, and compared to their LGBT counterparts in state with high levels of equality. For example, the denial of marriage costs gay and lesbian families money; same-sex couples with children had just $689 less in household income than married opposite-sex couples in states with marriage and relationship recognition for same-sex couples, but had an astounding $8,912 less in household income in states lacking such protections.

DISCRIMINATORY LAWS CREATE A DEVASTATING CYCLE OF POVERTY

How do inequitable laws contribute to higher rates of poverty for LGBT people? The report documents how LGBT people in the United States face clear financial penalties because of three primary failures in the law.

1. Lack of protection from discrimination means that LGBT people can be fired, denied housing and credit, and refused medically-necessary healthcare simply because they are LGBT. The financial penalty: LGBT people can struggle to find work, make less on the job, and have higher housing and medical costs than their non-LGBT peers.

2. Refusal to recognize LGBT families means that LGBT families are denied many of thesame benefits afforded to non-LGBT families when it comes to health insurance, taxes, vital safety-net programs, and retirement planning. The financial penalty: LGBT families pay more for health insurance, taxes, and legal assistance, and may be unable to access essential protections for their families in times of crisis.

3. Failure to adequately protect LGBT students means that LGBT people and their families often face a hostile, unsafe, and unwelcoming environment in local schools, as well as discrimination in accessing financial aid and other support. The financial penalty: LGBT youth are more likely to perform poorly in school and to face challenges pursuing postsecondary educational opportunities, as can youth with LGBT parents. This, in turn, can reduce their earnings over time, as well as their chances of having successful jobs and careers.

“Imagine losing your job or your home simply because of who you are or whom you love. Imagine having to choose between paying the rent and finding legal help so you can establish parenting rights for the child you have been raising from birth,” said Laura E. Durso, Director LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress at CAP. “These are just a couple of the added costs that are harming the economic security of LGBT people across the country. It is unfair and un-American that LGBT people are penalized because of who they are, and it has real and profound effects on their ability to stay out of poverty and provide for their families.”

Paying an Unfair Price offers broad recommendations for helping strengthen economic security for LGBT Americans. Recommendations include: instituting basic nondiscrimination protections at the federal and state level; allowing same-sex couples to marry in all states; allowing LGBT parents to form legal ties with the children they are raising; andprotecting students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“At a time when so many American families are struggling to make ends meet, the report's findings point to an even bleaker reality for those who are both LGBT and people of color," said Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy. "Unchecked employment discrimination and laws that needlessly increase the costs of healthcare, housing and childcare are doing profound harm to our economic strength as a nation. This report offers real-life policy solutions that, if implemented, would protect some of our most vulnerable individuals and families."

“Reducing the unfair financial penalties that LGBT people face in this country because they are LGBT is not that complicated. It is a simple matter of treating LGBT Americans equally under the law. For example, extending the freedom to marry, including LGBT students in safe schools laws, and ending the exclusion of LGBT people from laws meant to protect families when a parent dies or becomes disabled,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.

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