REPORT: Milwaukee School Discipline Guidelines Disproportionately Target Black and Latinx Students
REPORT: Milwaukee School Discipline Guidelines Disproportionately Target Black and Latinx Students
Despite costing millions of dollars, punitive student discipline strategies implemented by the Milwaukee Police...
Despite costing millions of dollars, punitive student discipline strategies implemented by the Milwaukee Police Department(MPD) over the last decade have failed to improve school safety in the city and have taken a disproportionate toll on students of color, according to a new report from The Center for Popular Democracy and Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT).
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Puerto Rican Families Displaced in Florida by Hurricane María Recruited as Potential Voters
Puerto Rican Families Displaced in Florida by Hurricane María Recruited as Potential Voters
The Summer for Puerto Rico campaign is spearheaded by Julio López Varona, the Director of Puerto Rico Diaspora...
The Summer for Puerto Rico campaign is spearheaded by Julio López Varona, the Director of Puerto Rico Diaspora Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. He emphasized that the focus of the campaign is on promoting political empowerment and literacy, by providing context on who are the lawmakers, and teaching communities about the effects of colonialism.
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Data on immigrants won't be safe from Trump, unless the data doesn't exist
Data on immigrants won't be safe from Trump, unless the data doesn't exist
When New York City implemented its IDNYC municipal ID system, it was meant to give undocumented immigrants a way to...
When New York City implemented its IDNYC municipal ID system, it was meant to give undocumented immigrants a way to access crucial services that require government identification. But as Donald Trump’s inauguration looms, a new lawsuit will test the wisdom of keeping sensitive data for the program.
A NEW LAWSUIT WILL TEST THE WISDOM OF HOLDING THE DATA
Two Republican state assembly members have sued to stop the destruction of records on hundreds of thousands of cardholders, and a court has decided that the records must remain, pending a hearing later this month. Soon after, Trump will take office, as advocates worry whether he’ll target the information to identify undocumented immigrants.
There is no guarantee the lawsuit will succeed, or that Trump will be able to use the records — which contain information on many people besides immigrants — for deportation purposes. But what looked like a clever bureaucratic gambit is unexpectedly something very different, and to immigrants, possibly more dangerous.
When it designed the IDNYC program, New York retained information on cardholders, but with a caveat: at the end of this year, the city would have the power to change how it holds the data. In an act of partisan gamesmanship, the clause in the local law amounted to a kill switch — one that was put in place, as one Councilman almost presciently put it, “in case a Tea Party Republican comes into office.”
THE CLEVER GAMBIT SUDDENLY LOOKS VERY DIFFERENT
The suit filed this week rests on New York’s state transparency law, known as the Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL. According to the suit, since there are no provisions in the law that allow for the destruction of government records, the city would be overstepping its bounds by destroying the IDNYC data, especially based on who is in office.
The dispute isn’t without precedent. In New Haven, Connecticut, a similar legal battle unfolded over the city’s municipal ID program. There, an anti-immigration group also sued the city under the state’s freedom of information law, with plans to turn the information over to ICE. In that case, the city beat back the lawsuit, but that won’t ensure the same outcome in New York.
“The city is violating state law,” Nicole Malliotakis, one of the Assembly members involved in the suit, told The Verge. “They are not doing what’s in the best interest of the citizens that they are representing.”
In many ways, the database debate parallels other stories of unintended consequences unfolding as the government prepares to transition from Obama to Trump. How will Trump use the surveillance apparatus created by Obama? What does this mean for the undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, who are staying through an Obama executive order?
THE DATABASE DEBATE PARALLELS STORIES UNFOLDING ACROSS GOVERNMENT
As the Center for Popular Democracy, which advocates for immigrants’ rights, pointed out in a report last year, there are two generally accepted ways to safeguard sensitive data: explicitly prevent its release in the legislation, or never provide the data in the first place. Cities have already proven that not retaining underlying personal information is viable — San Francisco operates a program without using underlying application documents, for one example.
Win or lose, if there’s any lesson for privacy advocates and local governments to carry from the unexpected battle over its data, it may be that even planned self-destruction is no impenetrable barrier against misuse. The best way to keep sensitive data private may still be to never hold the data at all.
By Colin Lecher
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Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal...
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal Obamacare.
Lining hallways across Washington, participants staged multiple demonstrations looking to voice their dissatisfaction with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's intent to dismantle Obamacare without a replacement following the implosion of the Republican Party's latest Senate health care bill.
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Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch New Studio PatMa Productions
Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch New Studio PatMa Productions
The studio has already set up partnerships with a number of organizations promoting diversity, inclusion, and human...
The studio has already set up partnerships with a number of organizations promoting diversity, inclusion, and human rights, among them the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Planned Parenthood.
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NYTimes Letter to the Editor: Deportations for Minor Offenses
New York Times - April 13, 2014 To the Editor: Re “...
New York Times - April 13, 2014
To the Editor:
Re “More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Data Shows” (front page, April 7):
It’s a mistake to focus the debate about immigration enforcement on the question of which immigrants are sufficiently “criminal” to deserve deportation. When the Obama administration talks about deporting people with convictions, they are talking about people who have already served their sentences for those convictions.
If you are a citizen who commits an offense, you pay the penalty issued by the criminal legal system, and then you are free to try to rebuild your life. If you are a noncitizen who commits that same offense and pays that same penalty, you can be subjected to the double punishment of permanent exile from your home and family.
This two-tiered system of justice is morally abhorrent regardless of how serious the underlying offense may have been. It’s an unfairness compounded by the well-documented unfairness of the criminal legal system itself, which disproportionately targets poor people and minorities.
Let’s not rely on our corrupt criminal justice system to justify the operations of our corrupt immigration system.
EMILY TUCKER Brooklyn, April 7, 2014
The writer is staff attorney for immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.
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Commentary: Emeryville action could change working world
Commentary: Emeryville action could change working world
Like many people, when the alarm goes off, I hit snooze a few times and wish for more sleep. But what gets me out of...
Like many people, when the alarm goes off, I hit snooze a few times and wish for more sleep. But what gets me out of bed is that precious hour I have with my young son. We eat breakfast together, we race to see who can get dressed first, and then I walk him to school.
I’m lucky– as a salaried employee at an organization that values flexibility and family, I can arrange my schedule around my son if need be. But for people working low-wage hourly jobs, that kind of control over their scheduling is virtually unheard of.
Today, corporations that pay low wages rarely provide their employees with full-time work or reliable hours. Take Manuel, who works at one of Emeryville’s many retail chains. He had his hours cut from 20 a week down to four, and then nothing for two weeks — throwing his family into massive debt.
Emeryville may be the first city in the East Bay to change that, where the City Council is voting on a Fair Workweek policy on Oct. 18. This is part of a simple set of standards needed to ensure that working people can afford to stay in the East Bay region.
What is a Fair Workweek? It means employers must provide reliable, predictable hours so their employees can budget. Workers get schedules two weeks in advance so they can plan childcare, second jobs, family time, and even rest. And when more hours are available, current employees get priority so they can get closer to full-time work.
In Emeryville, the policy would only apply to large companies with more than 12 locations worldwide. These simple improvements would cost employers almost nothing if they follow the law and have a huge impact on the lives of thousands of Emeryville workers. Hundreds of thousands more working people would benefit if other East Bay cities follow suit.
Emeryville’s own Economic Development Advisory Committee – the city’s business advisory group – said even they agree that increasing stability of schedules, reducing employee turnover, and decreasing underemployment in Emeryville is important. And that’s what a Fair Workweek policy would do.
Many companies are already doing the right thing. This policy would reinforce that good behavior and target companies that are bad actors. However, global, multi-billion dollar corporations and their lobbyists are coming out against this low-cost policy, claiming it will kill the economic climate. But I wonder: how exactly would reliable schedules hurt companies like IKEA, The Gap or Home Depot?
Before the recession, big business painted doomsday scenarios saying that raising wages would force them to close shop. During the Great Recession, working people bore the brunt of tough times in the form of reduced pay, slashed benefits, and a cutback to part-time hours. And now that big business has not only recovered but is booming, companies are back to the mantra that improving standards for their workers will hurt them.
Common sense tells us that business — especially big business — is doing fine. Look at quarterly earning reports of Emeryville’s global retail chains. Sales tax revenue in Emeryville was up 2.4 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year according to the city’s Finance Department. Retail vacancies in the region are at a post-recession low of 6 percent. And of course, there are growing lines of cars and customers coming in and out of Emeryville’s shopping centers.
While business is thriving, working people have waited long enough for something so very basic: a single job that pays enough with enough hours to allow folks to meet their basic needs.
Raising the minimum wage helped struggling workers. Now we must finish the job by providing reliable, predictable hours. This economic boom shouldn’t just be a boon for shareholders. It should also lift the working people who are the backbone of our economy.
By Jennifer Lin
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Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to...
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to President Donald Trump.
A newly launched website called BackersOfHate.org breaks down how nine major corporations are affiliated with the Trump administration and the ways they will gain from the Trump agenda. The website also outlines current company policies that already negatively impact people of color, immigrants, Indigenous communities, and low income populations — similar to critiques of the Trump agenda.
Read the full article here.
EXCLUSIVE: Latino, immigrant construction workers more likely to die on job in NYC: study
New York Daily News – Thursday, October 24, 2013 - Just 41% of all construction workers in New York City identify...
New York Daily News – Thursday, October 24, 2013 -
Just 41% of all construction workers in New York City identify themselves as Latino — but they account for 74% of the fatalities from accidents.
One worker was pouring concrete in a construction site on Brooklyn’s Brighton 5th St. when the building’s fourth floor collapsed, smashing down to the second floor and crushing him to death.
Another was removing pipe from a warehouse when it suddenly shifted, causing him to fatally fall 10 feet to the ground.
A third was up on a ladder installing safety gear for a construction site when he accidentally touched a live electrical wire and fell through the building’s ceiling. He dropped 92 feet to his death.
All of these incidents happened in New York City in 2011, and when inspectors looked into the deaths, they found multiple workplace violations and, on a form, checked the same box — identifying the workers as “Latino and/or immigrant.”
Latino and immigrant construction workers are dying on the job in New York City in disproportionate numbers, according to a new study set to be released Thursday.
A review of all of the fatal falls on the job investigated by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2003 to 2011 found that 74% of construction workers who died were either U.S. born Latinos or immigrants.
According to census figures, just 41% of all construction workers in New York City identify themselves as Latino.
“The data we have demonstrates that Latinos and immigrants are more likely to die in these types of accidents,” said Connie Razza from the Center for Popular Democracy, which compiled the report.
Safety violations are more common at job sites run by smaller, non-union contractors — which in turn are more likely to hire immigrant day laborers, the report’s researchers said, citing a New York State Trial Lawyers Association study.
“Contractors aren’t taking simple steps to protect their workers,” said Razza. “They are not providing the training and the safety equipment that are required by law.”
Immigrant workers — especially day laborers — may be reluctant to report safety hazards because they are afraid of being told to leave for the day or losing their job altogether, advocates say.
Razza’s group is fighting potential changes to New York state’s scaffold law, which holds owners and contractors who did not follow safety rules fully liable for workplace injuries and deaths. They say the law gives businesses a strong incentive to keep workplaces safe.
“We really see that law as a necessary stopgap for the workers who work at elevations,” she said.
But contractors who are seeking to modify the law — so that jurors can consider evidence from contractors when making monetary decisions instead of holding them strictly liable — say it goes too far and has caused their insurance costs to skyrocket.
State Assembly leaders have historically blocked proposed changes.
“All we’re looking for is the ability to have the same right as anybody else would in the American jurisprudence system,” said Louis J. Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.
“Over the last 3 years, insurance costs for general liability on the private sector have increased over 300%.”
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Can We Head Off a Long Hot Summer of Riots and Rebellion?
Huffington Post - 05.27.2015 - The nation's attention has been focused on the recent riots in Baltimore, but the harsh...
Huffington Post - 05.27.2015 - The nation's attention has been focused on the recent riots in Baltimore, but the harsh truth is that they could have happened in any major city. Indeed, we could see a long hot summer of urban (and, as in places like Ferguson, suburban) riots that would make the two-day disturbances in Baltimore seem trivial in comparison.
We can surely expect more turmoil next year, too, if social and economic conditions continue to deteriorate, and if candidates for president and Congress fail to make specific suggestions for addressing the suffering and hardship facing the nation.
But promises can only quell riots for so long. Hope soon turns to frustration, and then anger, unless there's real action to change conditions.
The turmoil in Baltimore followed the trajectory of the urban riots of the 1960s (in Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles, and 161 other cities) and subsequent civil disorders in Miami (1980), Los Angeles (1992) and elsewhere. It typically begins with an incident of police abuse against an African-American resident. Outraged members of the black community organize nonviolent protests, the police over-react and the protests become violent and threatening.
In Baltimore, the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old unarmed black man, at the hands of the police, triggered the demonstrations, but the city was already a powder keg of economic and racial grievances. The same is true in cities across America.
Fixing racist police practices and bias in our criminal justice system is important. But the underlying cause of riots is the hopelessness that comes with persistent poverty, unemployment, slum housing, widespread sickness, underfunded schools and lack of opportunity to escape such intolerable conditions.
Since Baltimore exploded, many pundits have taken to quoting Martin Luther King, who once said that "a riot is the language of the unheard." But few pundits have discovered another one of King's profound insights: "There is no noise as powerful as the sound of the marching feet of a determined people."
Riots are not truly political protests. They are expressions of hot anger -- outrage about social conditions. They do not have a clear objective, a policy agenda or a strategy for bringing about change. They are a wake-up call to those in power.
In contrast, social movements reflect cold anger. They are intentional and strategic. They take place when people are hopeful -- when people believe not only that things should be different, but also that they can be different.
Riots tell us what desperate people are against. Social movements tell us what hopeful people are for.
To avoid a long hot summer this year and in the future, but also to address the underlying causes and tensions in our communities, we need to do two things. First, strengthen and invest in the social movements -- grassroots organizing and coalition building -- that have emerged in cities across the country. Second, engage the country in a policy conversation about full employment, and then take action to guarantee every American a good job.
Invest in Grassroots Organizing and Coalition Building
Visiting the U.S. in the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was impressed by the outpouring of local voluntary organizations that brought Americans together to solve problems, provide a sense of community and public purpose, and tame the hyper-individualism that he considered a threat to democracy.
Every fight for social reform since then -- from the abolition movement to the labor movement's fight against sweatshops in the early 1900s, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, to the environmental and women's movements of the past half century -- has reflected elements of the self-help spirit that Tocqueville observed.
America's struggling families -- including the residents of poor communities, like inner city Baltimore -- need stronger vehicles to gain a voice in their cities and the larger society. This is the most effective alternative to riots.
Studies show that voluntary associations and interest groups today are titled toward affluent Americans. As political scientist Martin Gilens demonstrates in Affluence and Influence, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the policy preferences of the economically advantaged. But under specific circumstances -- especially during impending elections, and when ordinary Americans are well-organized -- the preferences of the middle class and the poor do matter.
Around the country, there are thousands of local nonprofit community groups that organize and mobilize people around their everyday concerns -- from the lack of stop signs at dangerous intersections, to police misconduct and racial profiling, to the proliferation of killings by people with assault weapons, to environmental and health hazards in poor communities, to predatory bank lending and the epidemic of foreclosures, to the repression of basic voting rights, to inadequate funding for public schools, to the shortage of decent affordable housing, to the lack of jobs and decent pay.
Groups such as the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the fledgling Black Lives Matter movement (created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin's murder in Florida) channel people's anger into constructive action around specific policy demands. Some of these groups are part of regional and national advocacy networks, such as the Center for Community Change, National People's Action, the Partnership for Working Families, US Action, PICO, the Industrial Areas Foundation and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Most of these organizations, however, operate on shoe-string budgets. In addition to dues and bake sales, they rely on private foundations to help them hire staff, maintain an office, conduct research and, occasionally, engage a lawyer. Their funding for organizing, research, publicity, policy advocacy and other tasks is minuscule when compared with big corporations that have armies of high-paid lobbyists, donate billions in campaign contributions and have huge war chests devoted to public relations and propaganda.
Despite a playing field that is tilted heavily in favor of big business and wealthy people, grassroots organizing groups and advocacy networks have won some significant victories at the local, state and federal levels.
A growing number of cities, including Seattle and Los Angeles, have adopted municipal wages that will reach $15 an hour within a few years. In response to pressure from community groups and its own employees, Walmart -- the nation's largest private employer with 1.3 million workers -- earlier this year, announced that it would boost pay for its lowest-level workers to at least $9 an hour starting this spring, and raise that to $10 next year. Walmart estimated that about 500,000 employees will receive a raise, totaling roughly $1 billion a year. In April, McDonald's announced its own wage increases -- also in response to protests by employees and community groups, as well as support from elected officials. The company said that, beginning July 1 of this year, starting wages at company-owned McDonald's would be one dollar over the locally mandated minimum wage. Last year, minimum wage increases passed by wide margins in five states, including decidedly red states like Arkansas, Alaska, South Dakota and Nebraska. Paid sick time passed by a wide margin in Massachusetts and in three cities. New York is moving rapidly toward high quality, free, full-day pre-kindergarten educational options for every family -- every child, rich, middle and poor. In California, there are significant efforts to curb carbon emissions and explicitly link those efforts to job creation and investment in low-income communities. The criminal justice reform movement has secured breakthroughs on "ban the box" that open up employment opportunities for the formerly incarcerated The immigrant rights movement has successfully pushed 20 states to authorize in-state college tuition for undocumented students The Black Lives Matter movement is connecting criminal justice and police reform to the "Fight for $15" among low-wage workers of color.These and other movements represent a powerful convergence of constituencies and social forces with the potential to reshape the national agenda. But to be effective, they need more resources to hire staff, reach more people in their communities and workplaces, and get their voices heard in the corridors of power.
America's foundations -- which are funded by wealthy people and corporations that get generous tax breaks for their philanthropic giving -- donate about $55 billion a year to a wide variety of causes. They devote less than to 10 percent of that amount to groups engaged in organizing and advocacy for social justice.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most foundations allocate the vast bulk of their donations to institutions (such as elite colleges and universities, hospitals, museums and others arts organizations) that primarily serve the affluent. It is time for these tax-exempt foundations to invest in organizations that promote grassroots organizing and help give working families and the poor a stronger voice in our democracy.
Inequality, Poverty, Joblessness and Economic Insecurity
Ironically, while most of the media were focusing on the Baltimore riots, it was John Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles's chief operating officer, who seized the opportunity to redirected attention to the root causes of the city's turmoil. He tweeted:
My greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night's property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American's civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
The shape of the current crisis is by now very familiar. The harsh reality is that no other wealthy nation allows the level of sheer destitution and misery found in the United States, including poverty, hunger, slums, homelessness and ill-health.
About 50 million Americans live below the official poverty line. One-third of the country-- over 100 million people-- cannot make ends meet. They don't earn enough to sustain their families. One in three American households say they are living paycheck to paycheck, continuously on the brink of financial disaster. A staggering 36 percent say that they or someone else in their household had to reduce meals or cut back on food to save money during the past year.
Because incomes and wages have declined, a record number of Americans are in debt. They mortgage their future to pay for their homes, a college education, and, with credit cards, day-to-day expenses
Some $7 trillion of Americans' household wealth evaporated in the housing crash that began in 2007. The burden has fallen disproportionately on African American and Latino families, who saw more than half of their total wealth disappear as a result of Wall Street's risky and reckless practices.
The current official unemployment rate is 5.4 percent, but it varies considerably by race. It is 4.7 percent for whites compared with 6.9 percent for Hispanics, and 9.6 percent for African-Americans. But several years into the so-called "recovery," the real unemployment rate -- which also includes discouraged workers who've given up trying to find a job and those who are employed part time but not able to secure full-time work -- is double the official rate.
Almost one-third of America's jobless have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Among those lucky enough to have jobs, women earn only 78 percent of what men make. African American women make 64 percent and Hispanic women 54 percent of men's earnings.
The United States is the most unequal of the world's wealthiest societies. The richest one percent of all Americans take home approximately 20 percent of the country's total income and owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth. Since 1979, wages for the richest one percent have increased by 138 percent; in contrast, wages for the bottom 90 percent have increased just 15 percent. In the last few years, as the country has struggled to recover from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, this top tier has received nearly all of the added income generated from economic growth.
A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that the $26.7 billion in bonuses handed to 165,200 executives by Wall Street banks in 2013 would be enough to more than double the pay for all 1,085,000 Americans who work full time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25-per-hour.
The low wages paid by many employers cost taxpayers about $153 billion each year by forcing employees to rely on public assistance to afford food, healthcare and other basic necessities, according to a recent study conducted by the University of California's Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. This is more than the annual budgets of the U.S. Department of Education and Health and Human Services combined.
A Policy Agenda for Good Jobs and Shared Prosperity
Fortunately, this situation can be fixed. In previous periods of American history when we faced an economic and moral crisis -- the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, the Depression of the 1930s, and the explosive racial divide of the 1960s -- reform movements mobilized new constituencies to promote bold solutions that changed public opinion and pushed elected officials to adopt new policies. Ideas that were once considered radical -- the minimum wage, Social Security, women's suffrage, the Voting Rights Act, consumer and environment protection laws and many others -- became viewed as common sense.
In response to our current crisis, a new wave of advocacy groups and policy experts has emerged to put new ideas on the table.
With the support of local advocacy groups, a growing wave of progressive mayors and other local officials in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Newark, Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles and elsewhere have sought to address the widening economic divide and persistent poverty in order to build an economy that works for all families. The growing number of cities with municipal minimum wage laws is only one aspects of this crescendo of conscience in favor of shared prosperity.
Think tanks like the Center for American Progress, the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute have released reports that provide bold prescriptions to the problems of inequality, poverty and joblessness.
A growing number of enlightened business leaders now recognize that we need policies that invest in good jobs, rather than our current short-term focus on enriching the already rich, especially those in the financial sector that caused the economic crash in the first place. Many now recognize that we cannot put most of our hopes simply in improving skills and education. Over the past generation, overall skills and educational levels have increased, but wages (even for those with college degrees) have stagnated.
Earlier this month, in the wake of the Baltimore uprising, and in anticipation of the next election cycle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz released a 115-page report, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy, that offered proposals to address income inequality and poverty. The "trickle-down" economics that has prevailed since 1980 has "decimated America's middle class," according to the report. "It's time to try something new," Stiglitz said, taking aim at excessive executive compensation, declining wages and labor standards, weak regulation of the financial industry and generous tax rates for the wealthy. They also called for universal pre-kindergarten, a federal paid family leave policy and a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage.
Also, last month, a coalition of advocacy groups -- including the Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, Jobs With Justice, Working Families Organization and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights -- launched a national campaign to advance the idea that every American should and can have access to a good job. Their plan, called Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All, is both audacious and simple: Everyone who wants a job should have assured access to a good job that provides dignity, a voice on the job, fair wages and good benefits.
A good job means one that pays enough to allow a family to buy or rent a decent home, put food on the table and clothes on their backs, afford health insurance and child care, send the kids to college, take a yearly vacation and retire with dignity. A good job means that parents don't have to juggle two or three jobs to stay afloat, and that they still have time to spend with their kids.
As a society, we have to make sure that people who work can support their families and assure that everyone can retire in dignity.
During this election cycle, and over the next few years, this coalition of conscience hopes to inject the goal of a good job for all into the political debate and the national conversation. It is proposing solutions commensurate with the scale of the challenge -- rather than tinkering at the margins. The Putting Families First agenda has five key elements:
Guaranteeing Good Wages and Benefits. Requiring every job in the United States to meet a minimum standard of quality -- in wages, benefits, and working conditions -- and offer unhindered access to collective representation and a real voice for workers. Unlocking Opportunity in the Poorest Communities. Investing resources on a large scale to restart the economy in places where racial bias and sustained disinvestment have produced communities of concentrated poverty. Taxing concentrated wealth. Funding new investments in job creation, care, and economic renewal by taxing those who benefit most from the current economic model - investors, financiers, wealth managers, and individuals in the highest income brackets. Building a Clean Energy Economy. Using the large-scale investments required for transition to a clean energy future to create millions of good jobs that are accessible to all Americans, especially those hardest hit by hard times -- workers of color, women, and economically distressed communities. Valuing Families. Ending the systematic devaluation of care work, which disproportionately keeps women in poverty, by making high quality child care available to all working parents, raising the quality of jobs in the early childhood education and care fields, transforming homecare and providing financial support to unpaid caregivers.These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas. Many of them have already been adopted in cities and states, such as municipal minimum wage laws, paid family leave policies, green jobs ordinances, and state laws to improve conditions for nannies, maids, and other domestic workers. In many other countries, including the social democracies of Europe, Australia and Canada, most of these ideas are taken for granted.
It may appear paradoxical to propose a bold agenda for change at a time when Congress is paralyzed and the immediate prospect of bold federal action appears dim. But the moment is ripe. America seems to be holding its breath, trying to decide what kind of country it wants to be. We seem to be at one of those crossroad moments when attitudes are rapidly shifting, and significant reform is possible.
Americans are upset with widening inequality, the political influence of big business and declining living standards. Public opinion is generally favorable toward greater government activism to address poverty, inequality and opportunity. A national survey by the Pew Research Center last year found that 60 percent of Americans -- including 75 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and even 42 percent of Republicans -- think that the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy. The poll discovered that 69 percent of Americans believe that the government should do "a lot" or "some" to reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else. Nearly all Democrats (93 percent) and large majorities of independents (83 percent) and Republicans (64 percent) said they favor government action to reduce poverty.
Over half (54 percent) of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to expand programs for the poor, compared with one third (35 percent) who believe that lowering taxes on the wealthy to encourage investment and economic growth would be the more effective approach. A new national poll found that 63 percent of Americans support raising the federal wage threshold to that level. These are clear signs of a tectonic shift in our national thinking. But public opinion, on its own, doesn't translate into public policy. It has to be mobilized. As Cong. Keith Ellison of Minnesota has said: "Being right is not enough! We've got to organize."
The coalition behind the Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All plan intends to engage millions of Americans in multiple layers of civic action -- organizing, demonstrating, voting and advocating for legislation. They also want to encourage opinion leaders -- faith leaders, enlightened businesspersons, academics and policy analysts, columnists and editorial writers, and others -- to participate in a broad and deep national conversation about shifting our country's priorities toward full employment, clean energy and the other components of their agenda.
No time is better to do this than during a national election season, when the country is focusing on what candidates for president and Congress have to say about America's problems and potential.
If the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans aren't at the center of this debate, we can expect the ticking time bomb of urban unrest to explode in more and more communities. Without major reforms, the recent upheavals in Ferguson and Baltimore may simply be a precursor to a wave of 21st century riots.
To avoid more turmoil in our streets, and to address the growing frustration of a large segment of our society, we must focus the nation's attention on bold policy prescriptions to address the roots causes of poverty, inequality, joblessness and economic insecurity.
This isn't just an insurance policy against future riots. It is also a blueprint for a more livable, prosperous, and healthier society.
Source: Huffington Post
3 days ago
3 days ago