CPD IN THE NEWS

Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage

Voters at polling centers across Colorado will soon be deciding on Amendment 70, a measure that would alter the state constitution to increase the minimum wage from the current $8.31 per hour by yearly 90-cent increments to $12 in 2020. In 2020, it will be fixed at $12, except for yearly adjustments to account for inflation. Amendment 70 would further mandate that those inflation-tied adjustments only apply when they mean an increase in wages. In the past, when inflation was negative, minimum wage workers saw a pay cut.

Who’s behind it?

Supporters of the increase coalesced in mid-2016 into a group called Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, a coalition of unions, economic justice advocates and progressive policy analysts. Many of them had been part of an informal consortium of anti-poverty groups called The Everyone Economy that came together to strategize about raising the minimum wage back in February 2014. Partnering with Democratic legislators, they advocated for a pair of bills in the 2015 legislative session to help low-wage workers. One would have allowed municipalities to set their own minimums, and the other would have created a ballot measure to reach a $12.50 per hour minimum by 2020. Republicans killed both bills in the Senate.

Democrats floated another bill in 2016 to allow cities to set their own minimum wages, which met the same fate as its predecessors. After that, Everyone Economy members decided they had no recourse but to pursue a ballot measure themselves and formed Colorado Families for a Fair Wage.

Why $12 per hour and not $15?

The amendment’s proponents faced criticism for their decision to pursue $12 instead of $15 per hour in this week’s Westword cover story. According to the story, some former members of the coalition’s steering committee expressed deep dissatisfaction with its decision to pursue a $12 wage, arguing that, in doing so, the coalition shut out those whose voices were most pertinent to the effort — namely, dues-paying union members. They further take issue with the coalition’s failure to conduct focus groups composed of African-American working people, the demographic that would most benefit from a wage increase. CFFW spokesman Mike Kromrey now admits that was a mistake.

In its decision, the campaign relied on polling that showed that $12 per hour was more likely to pass. Campaign spokesman Timothy Markham dismissed any suggestion that the Westword story would affect the election outcome. “It might make for interesting gossip, but it doesn’t change the fundamental facts of the struggles Colorado workers are facing,” he said.

Interestingly, CFFW’s opponents on the right appropriated some of those far-left criticisms in the article and applied them to their own pitch. Keep Colorado Working, a conglomeration of chambers of commerce, industry groups and free-market business advocates that came together to oppose Amendment 70, sent a press release on Wednesday drawing attention to Westword’s report and castigating CFFW for deciding on their ballot language based on “polling, not policy impacts.”

The release does not mention the fact that those reports came from former CFFW members who wanted the minimum wage increase to be greater, not smaller, as Keep Colorado Working does.

How much firepower is against it?

Keep Colorado Working had a slower start raising funds, but has now raised $1.7 million. It has spent just under $1.4 million as of the most recent campaign finance filings, primarily on television advertising and consultants. About half of its funds ($650,000) come from the Alexandria, Virginia-based Workforce Fairness Institute. It has also gotten $525,000 from Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution, a committee that has donated hefty sums to pro-fracking campaigns and to a 2013 effort to recall legislators who had passed gun-control legislation.

For its part, CCFW has outraised its rivals almost 3 to 1, raising about $5.3 million in donations, much of which is from out-of-state groups like its largest donor, the Center for Popular Democracy, which has kicked in over $1 million. Its second-largest donor is the Palo Alto-based Fairness Project, which has contributed over $960,000 to CFFW and is also supporting minimum wage ballot measures in Maine, Arizona and Washington, D.C.

Keep Colorado Working wants to make sure you know that some of CFFW’s donors are not from Colorado. Virtually all of its communications use the terms “wealthy out of state special interests” liberally.

According to the most recent campaign finance filings, CFFW has spent $4.6 million  on television and digital advertising, outreach efforts like canvassing and hosting events, mailers, polling and research.

Keep Colorado Working did not respond to requests for comment in time for this story’s deadline.

Will it pass?

Early polls indicate that it will.

An August Magellan Strategies poll of 500 likely Colorado voters showed that 55 percent of respondents supported the measure, 42 percent were opposed and three percent were undecided. A September joint project between Colorado Mesa University, Rocky Mountain PBS and Franklin & Marshall College showed that 58 percent of respondents favored Amendment 70, with 36 percent opposed and seven percent undecided.

CFFW is also conducting its own internal polls and told The Independent that it is consistently getting positive results. Colorado politics expert Eric Sondermann also predicted that it will narrowly pass in a comprehensive ballot prediction for Westword.

CFFW’s case was buoyed in the fall months, starting with the release of a University of Denver study that tied Amendment 70 to a $400 million increase in state GDP. The logic is straightforward: when low-wage workers get a raise, they are very likely to spend it in their local economies, rather than filing it away. Not long after, Governor Hickenlooper endorsed the amendment, tethering worker pay raises to a boost for the overall economy.

Keep Colorado Working countered with another study, commissioned by the Common Sense Policy Roundtable, which concludes that the increase would lead to a decline in income and massive layoffs. But critics say that CSPR’s ties to groups like EIS Solutions, a PR outfit with several oil and gas clients, and Americans for Prosperity, the oil and gas giant Koch brothers’ political arm, undermine the study’s integrity.

Proponents are feeling optimistic as they buckle down for the the pre-election weekend. Andy Jacob, political director for SEIU Local 105, which is CFFW member, said that the group will spend the weekend making phone calls, knocking on doors, communicating with members and “doing everything we can to get this passed.”

If it passes, will it really be a game-changer for workers?

Whether Amendment 70 passes or fails, the work is just beginning for Colorado labor unions and low-wage worker advocates. Most CFFW members acknowledge that $12 per hour is not in fact a living wage for workers with families in some parts of Colorado. Most estimates put a living wage for a single parent of two children in Denver at around $30 per hour. But advocates also believe that the current $8.31 per hour is inexcusable, and any more than $12 is not politically viable. 

There’s a sense of immediacy among CFFW members. One hears the term “right now” a lot. They would rather take a safe bet than a real gamble when so many people’s livelihoods hang in the balance.

“Do we go with something that we know is going to be tough but that we know we can win on, or do we go with 15, which the Denver area might be ready for but the state isn’t, and we lose?” SEIU’s Jacob asked.

He works with low-wage union members every day and he believes he’s doing right by them. “‘12 by 2020’ will impact half a million people in Colorado,” Jacob said. “Don’t tell those people this isn’t going to help them. It is.”

By Eliza Carter

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Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of bankers in key central bank positions on Thursday, marking a major coup for national progressive groups championing reform.

“The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the wellbeing of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “That’s why 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.”

The campaign also provided insight into the type of Federal Reserve governors that Clinton would appoint.

“Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry,” Ferguson said.

The announcement brings the Democratic presidential front-runner closer to the position of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders proposed barring financial executives from sitting on the boards of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks in an op-ed in The New York Times in December.

The Clinton campaign statement came in response to a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen from 11 Democratic senators and 116 House Democrats. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the Fed to appoint more women and people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while expanding the representation of consumer and labor groups on regional Fed bank boards.

Currently, the vast majority of Fed bank board directors are white men. People representing either the financial industry or other major business sectors also occupy most of the seats.

It appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities.

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

The Fed’s control over monetary policy allows it to raise borrowing costs to head off inflation and reduce them to maximize employment. The members of Congress who wrote to Yellen argue that the disproportionate influence of financial officials and the lack of diversity at the Fed hamper its sensitivity to groups with a more precarious position in the job market.

Clinton had said virtually nothing about her agenda for the powerful central bank until now.

The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy that has been at the forefront of recent efforts to make Federal Reserve reform a key part of the liberal agenda, confirmed that it has been in talks with the Clinton campaign for months.

“Secretary Clinton did the right thing today by coming out in favor of reforming the Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, director of Fed Up. “We’re very excited that she listened to the voices of community leaders from around the country who have said that we need a Federal Reserve that reflects and represents the American people and that creates a strong economy for all.” 

Some liberal economists previously noted that Clinton’s reticence about the Fed was inconsistent with her stated plans to return the country to the prosperity of the late 1990s, which enabled widespread wage growth. They argue that the era’s well-distributed economic gains were due in no small part to the permissive monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.

Dean Baker, one such economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was elated to hear about Clinton’s remarks.

“Holy shit — that’s great news,” Baker said in an email upon receiving the news.

“While Senators Sanders, Warren, and others on the left side of the party took the lead, it appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities,” Baker continued. “There is also agreement that the Fed’s current archaic structure needs to be changed.”

By Daniel Marans

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On August 1 the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of over sixty organizations, rolled out  “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice,” an ambitious document described by the press as the first signs of what young black activists “really want.” It lays out six demands aimed at ending all forms of violence and injustice endured by black people; redirecting resources from prisons and the military to education, health, and safety; creating a just, democratically controlled economy; and securing black political power within a genuinely inclusive democracy. Backing the demands are forty separate proposals and thirty-four policy briefs, replete with data, context, and legislative recommendations.

But the document quickly came under attack for its statement on Palestine, which calls Israel an apartheid state and characterizes the ongoing war in Gaza and the West Bank as genocide. Dozens of publications and media outlets devoted extensive coverage to the controversy around this single aspect of the platform, including The Guardian, the Washington Post, The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Of course, M4BL is not the first to argue that Israeli policies meet the UN definitions of apartheid. (The 1965 International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the 1975 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid define it as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”) Nor is M4BL the first group to use the term “genocide” to describe the plight of Palestinians under occupation and settlement. The renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, for example, wrote of the war on Gaza in 2014 as “incremental genocide.” That Israel’s actions in Gaza correspond with the UN definition of genocide to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by causing “serious bodily or mental harm” to group members is a legitimate argument to make.

The few mainstream reporters and pundits who considered the full M4BL document either reduced it to a laundry list of demands or positioned it as an alternative to the platform of the Democratic Party—or else focused on their own benighted astonishment that the movement has an agenda beyond curbing police violence. But anyone following Black Lives Matter from its inception in the killingtrayvonsaftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict should not be surprised by the document’s broad scope. Black Lives Matter founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi are veteran organizers with a distinguished record of fighting for economic justice, immigrant rights, gender equity, and ending mass incarceration. “A Vision for Black Lives” was not a response to the U.S. presidential election, nor to unfounded criticisms of the movement as “rudderless” or merely a hashtag. It was the product of a year of collective discussion, research, collaboration, and intense debate, beginning with the Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland last July, which initially brought together thirty different organizations. It was the product of some of the country’s greatest minds representing organizations such as the Black Youth Project 100, Million Hoodies, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, and Southerners on New Ground (SONG). As Marbre Stahly-Butts, a leader of the M4BL policy table explained, “We formed working groups, facilitated multiple convenings, drew on a range of expertise, and sought guidance from grassroots organizations, organizers and elders. As of today, well over sixty organizations and hundreds of people have contributed to the platform.”

The result is actually more than a platform. It is a remarkable blueprint for social transformation that ought to be read and discussed by everyone. The demands are not intended as Band-Aids to patch up the existing system but achievable goals that will produce deep structural changes and improve the lives of all Americans and much of the world. Thenjiwe McHarris, an eminent human rights activist and a principle coordinator of the M4BL policy table, put it best: “We hope that what has been created carries forward the legacy of our elders and our ancestors while imagining a world and a country profoundly different than what currently exists. For us and for those that will come after us.” The document was not drafted with the expectation that it will become the basis of a mass movement, or that it will replace the Democratic Party’s platform. Rather it is a vision statement for long-term, transformative organizing. Indeed, “A Vision for Black Lives” is less a political platform than a plan for ending structural racism, saving the planet, and transforming the entire nation—not just black lives.

If heeded, the call to “end the war on Black people” would not only reduce our vulnerability to poverty, prison, and premature death but also generate what I would call a peace dividend of billions of dollars. Demilitarizing the police, abolishing bail, decriminalizing drugs and sex work, and ending the criminalization of youth, transfolk, and gender-nonconforming people would dramatically diminish jail and prison populations, reduce police budgets, and make us safer. “A Vision for Black Lives” explicitly calls for divesting from prisons, policing, a failed war on drugs, fossil fuels, fiscal and trade policies that benefit the rich and deepen inequality, and a military budget in which two-thirds of the Pentagon’s spending goes to private contractors. The savings are to be invested in education, universal healthcare, housing, living wage jobs, “community-based drug and mental health treatment,” restorative justice, food justice, and green energy.

But the point is not simply to reinvest the peace dividend into existing social and economic structures. It is to change those structures—which is why “A Vision for Black Lives” emphasizes community control, self-determination, and “collective ownership” of certain economic institutions. It calls for community control over police and schools, participatory budgeting, the right to organize, financial and institutional support for cooperatives, and “fair development” policies based on human needs and community participation rather than market principles. Democratizing the institutions that have governed black communities for decades without accountability will go a long way toward securing a more permanent peace since it will finally end a relationship based on subjugation, subordination, and surveillance. And by insisting that such institutions be more attentive to the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable—working people and the poor, the homeless, the formerly incarcerated, the disabled, women, and the LGBTQ community—“A Vision for Black Lives” enriches our practice of democracy.

For example, “A Vision for Black Lives” advocates not only closing tax loopholes for the rich but revising a regressive tax policy in which the poorest 20 percent of the population pays on average twice as much in taxes as the richest 1 percent. M4BL supports a massive jobs program for black workers, but the organization’s proposal includes a living wage, protection and support for unions and worker centers, and anti-discrimination clauses that protect queer and trans employees, the disabled, and the formerly incarcerated. Unlike the Democratic Party, M4BL does not subscribe to the breadwinner model of jobs as the sole source of income. It instead supports a universal basic income (UBI) that “would meet basic human needs,” eliminate poverty, and ensure “economic security for all.” This is not a new idea; some kind of guaranteed annual income has been fundamental to other industrializing nations with strong social safety nets and vibrant economies, and the National Welfare Rights Organization proposed similar legislation nearly a half century ago. The American revolutionary Thomas Paine argued in the eighteenth century for the right of citizens to draw a basic income from the levying of property tax, as Elizabeth Anderson recently reminded. Ironically, the idea of a basic income or “negative income tax” also won support from neoliberal economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek—although for very different reasons. Because eligibility does not require means testing, a UBI would effectively reduce the size of government by eliminating the bureaucratic machine of social workers and investigators who police the dispensation of entitlements such as food stamps and welfare. And by divesting from an unwieldy and unjust prison-industrial complex, there would be more than enough revenue to create good-paying jobs and provide a basic income for all.

Reducing the military is not just about resources; it is about ending war, at home and abroad. “A Vision for Black Lives” includes a devastating critique of U.S. foreign policy, including the escalation of the war on terror in Africa, machinations in Haiti, the recent coup in Honduras, ongoing support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the role of war and free-trade policies in fueling the global refugee crisis. M4BL’s critique of U.S. militarism is driven by Love—not the uncritical love of flag and nation we saw exhibited at both major party conventions, but a love of global humanity. “The movement for Black lives,” one policy brief explains, “must be tied to liberation movements around the world. The Black community is a global diaspora and our political demands must reflect this global reality. As it stands funds and resources needed to realize domestic demands are currently used for wars and violence destroying communities abroad.”

Finally, a peace dividend can fund M4BL’s most controversial demand: reparations. For M4BL, reparations would take the form of massive investment in black communities harmed by past and present policies of exploitation, theft, and disinvestment; free and open access to lifetime education and student debt forgiveness; and mandated changes in the school curriculum that acknowledge the impact of slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow in producing wealth and racial inequality. The latter is essential, since perhaps the greatest obstacle to reparations is the common narrative that American wealth is the product of individual hard work and initiative, while poverty results from misfortune, culture, bad behavior, or inadequate education. We have for too long had ample evidence that this is a lie. From generations of unfree, unpaid labor, from taxing black communities to subsidize separate but unequal institutions, from land dispossession and federal housing policies and corporate practices that conspire to keep housing values in black and brown communities significantly lower, resulting in massive loss of potential wealth—the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Structural racism is to blame for generations of inequality. Restoring some of that wealth in the form of education, housing, infrastructure, and jobs with living wages would not only begin to repair the relationship between black residents and the rest of the country, but also strengthen the economy as a whole.

To see how “A Vision for Black Lives” is also a vision for the country as a whole requires imagination. But it also requires seeing black people as fully human, as producers of wealth, sources of intellect, and as victims of crimes—whether the theft of our bodies, our labor, our children, our income, our security, or our psychological well-being. If we had the capacity to see structural racism and its consequences not as a black problem but as an American problem we have faced since colonial times, we may finally begin to hear what the Black Lives Matter movement has been saying all along: when all black lives are valued and the structures and practices that do harm to black communities are eliminated, we will change our country and possibly the world.

By ROBIN D.G. KELLEY

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The Washington Examiner - June 16, 2014, by Paul Bedard - The frustration with Washington's inaction on any type of immigration reform has forced proponents to shift their attention to states such as New York where a new plan was offered Monday to grant citizenship and voting rights after an illegal immigrant pays three years of taxes.

The Washington-based Center for Popular Democracy said the New York legislative effort to provide citizenship benefits to three million immigrants is the result of the fallout of congressional gridlock and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's defeat last week, which pundits blamed on his support for reform.

But that doesn’t mean immigration reform supporters have given up on a national solution. Center Co-Executive Director Andrew Friedman told Secrets, “We will definitely continue to work hard for federal reform, even as we push states to show leadership and do everything they can to promote immigrant inclusion and dignity, as well as economic expansion and growth.”

The New York legislation, titled “New York is Home Act,” sets requirements for immigrants to meet before they can apply for citizenship with New York's Office for New Americans, created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

Proof of identity.

Proof of three years of New York state residency.

Proof of three years of New York state tax payments.

Commitment to abide by New York laws and uphold the state constitution.

A willingness to serve on New York juries and to continue to pay state taxes.

In return, said Friedman's group in a release, immigrants would get New York state citizenship, financial aid for higher education, health care, drivers' licenses, professional licenses, the right to vote, the right to run for office, and protection against racial profiling.

“This bill is about New York state doing everything it can to promote the full equality of immigrants. State powers, though, are very different than federal powers, so the package of opportunities and benefits are different from any federal bill,” said Friedman, whose group is promoting similar plans in other states.

“Our state's hardworking non-citizens should have the opportunity to fully participate in the health and growth of our state,” said New York State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, the lead sponsor of the legislation.

“State citizenship should recognize and reward the contributions of noncitizen residents who play by the rules while living and working here,” added the state assembly sponsor, Karim Camara.

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