Why Texans Are Fighting Anti-Immigrant Legislation
Austin, Tex. — I’m a member of the Austin City Council, and this month Texas State Troopers arrested me for refusing to...
Austin, Tex. — I’m a member of the Austin City Council, and this month Texas State Troopers arrested me for refusing to leave Gov. Greg Abbott’s office during a protest against the anti-immigrant Senate Bill 4.
The bill, which Mr. Abbott signed May 6, represents the most dangerous type of legislative threat facing immigrants in our country. It has been called a “show me your papers” bill because it allows police officers — including those on college campuses — to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest, or even simply detain, including during traffic stops.
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Woman who confronted Flake 'relieved' he called for delaying Kavanaugh vote
Woman who confronted Flake 'relieved' he called for delaying Kavanaugh vote
Maria Gallagher, who on Friday confronted Sen. Jeff Flake with her story of sexual assault, said she was "relieved"...
Maria Gallagher, who on Friday confronted Sen. Jeff Flake with her story of sexual assault, said she was "relieved" when the Arizona Republican called for an FBI investigation into allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Gallagher, a resident of New York, stood next to Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, earlier Friday as the two held open the doors of an elevator Flake was taking on his way to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Soon after, Flake said he would vote to advance Kavanaugh's nomination to the Senate floor, but he said he wanted a vote in the full body delayed for one week while the FBI investigated the allegations.
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Should You Carry a Municipal ID Card?
OZY - April 29, 2014, by Pooja Bhatia - Comprehensive immigration reform is on again. No, it’s off again. No, it’s on...
OZY - April 29, 2014, by Pooja Bhatia - Comprehensive immigration reform is on again. No, it’s off again. No, it’s on again. Nope, it’s off again.
Take heart, CIR enthusiasts. As the back-and-forth over immigration reform enters its umpteenth year, a potential workaround might be coming to a city near you.
Since 2007, a handful of cities have issued municipal IDs to residents, regardless of their citizenship. The idea is to integrate undocumented immigrants by making it easier for them to open bank accounts, interact with the police, access city services and rent an apartment. Bringing the undocumented “out of the shadows” will improve civic life for everyone, proponents say.
It’s a warm-hearted move as well as a political calculation. The concept is generally popular in cities, which tend to lean liberal, and is sure to have long-range appeal among voters as national demographics shift. About a dozen cities are in some stage of the municipal ID process.
The line between protecting and branding residents can be a fine one.
But ID cards are not an easy way out of the immigration quagmire. Opponents argue that municipal IDs overstep local authority, could lead to fraud and lure terrorists. The earliest version won vicious backlash, including from federal authorities. Even those who support the cards stress the importance of sweating the small stuff, like card design and privacy controls. The big risk: Unless they’re popular with immigrants and non-immigrants alike, the ID cards can brand as outsiders the very people they attempt to embrace.
“It’s been trial and error for cities to even realize that it’s a risk and start guarding against it,” says Emily Tucker, an attorney at the Center of Popular Democracy who has studied the issue in depth.
This week, New York City will hold its first hearings on municipal ID legislation, a pet project of the new mayor, Bill de Blasio. If approved, New York’s program would be the most prominent of its kind. It would send a message, too, for New York City has a certain symbolic status in matters of security and immigration.
Proponents like Tucker are enthusiastic about New York’s foray into municipal IDs, if a bit wary. If not done right, they say, the ID cards won’t protect undocumented immigrants, but just sort and label them for easy deportation. The line between protecting and branding can be a fine one. The IDs tend to work best when other protections for undocumented residents are in place: confidentiality for city services, local law enforcement policies that limit interaction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other “sanctuary city” provisions. “Without those things, people won’t want to use the card — they’ll be too afraid,” says Tucker.
Cities vary enormously on this count: Some abide by the ICE’s “detainer requests,” holding suspected unauthorized immigrants in local jails until the federal authorities pick them up. Others refuse. Some jurisdictions allow police to act as ICE deputes. Others won’t allow police officers to inquire about immigration status.
California Highway Patrol officers lead an information session on obtaining a state driver’s license at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, Calif., on April 23, 2014.
New Haven, Conn., was the first municipality to adopt local IDs, in 2007, after a robber stabbed an immigrant to death. According to reports, undocumented immigrants were dubbed “walking ATMs” — often, they carried cash, as they couldn’t open bank accounts. New Haven’s program faced some backlash, including, allegedly, from federal authorities: Less than two days after the city passed municipal ID legislation, the ICE raided homes in the area and detained 32 immigrants.
Although the city has stood by its program– it’s issued some 10,000 IDs– it’s not clear how functional the IDs are. Cashiers often don’t accept it, researchers found, and it served mostly to underscore the city’s pro-immigrant attitude.
Since 2007, Oakland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and several localities in New Jersey have all joined suit. Programs in Richmond and Los Angeles have been approved, and local governments from Philadelphia to Iowa City and Phoenix are contemplating issuing cards, too.
The local ID programs are yet another instance of cities taking “an affirmative step toward securing interests of their residents in the face of congressional inaction,” says Peter Bailon, a lawyer at the progressive American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange. They also demonstrate cities’ ability to enact progressive agendas that likely wouldn’t fly nationally.
But are cities exceeding their authority? “It’s not just usurping but contravening federal law,” says Ira Melhman, spokesperson for the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). There’s controversy here. Although the federal government places control over immigration firmly within its authority, the law does not explicitly forbid the issuance of local IDs, proponents say. And the feds have tended to turn a blind eye to the programs.
Mehlman and others say they also worry about terrorism. They argue that municipal ID requirements are lax and could allow criminals to procure false identification. Official documentation, even if limited to a few municipal venues, could serve as “breeder documents” for other IDs, they say. New York state Senator Greg Ball blasted the municipal ID plan as the “de Blasio Terrorist Empowerment Act.”
ID proponents dismiss such fears as absurd. The IDs, they point out, have stringent eligibility requirements and limited jurisdiction. They don’t replace federal identification documents such as passports, social security cards or tax identification numbers. Their main concern is that the IDs actually be used.
It may not be so easy to circumvent the federal government though, even for cities that are relatively friendly to the undocumented, like New York. De Blasio’s administration has already issued notice that it could put out bid specifications for ID cards, but the City Council has lagged. Only 15 council members have come out saying they favor the legislation, short of the 26 needed for a majority.
Of course, with hearings starting tomorrow, that could change quickly. Are you ready for your New Yorker ID, New Yorkers?
SourceThe Fed needs a revolution: Why America’s central bank is failing — and how we can make it work for us
The Fed needs a revolution: Why America’s central bank is failing — and how we can make it work for us
One reality hanging over the presidential election and our politics in general is this: No matter what terrific plan a...
One reality hanging over the presidential election and our politics in general is this: No matter what terrific plan a politician has for creating jobs and boosting wages, it must contend with the Federal Reserve’s ability to unilaterally counteract it. If the Fed decides higher wages risk inflation, they can raise interest rates and deliberately strangle economic growth, reversing the wage effect. Why come up with ways to grow the economy, then, if the Fed will react by intentionally slowing it?
The reason the Fed operates as a wet blanket on the economy has to do with who really controls the institution. If the desires of bankers and the rich outweigh the desires of laborers, then their fear of inflation (which cuts into their profits) will always take precedence over full employment. Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke unwittingly gave a perfect example of that yesterday. Talking about how the Fed could institute “helicopter drops” of money to supplement federal spending and jump-start the economy, he stated from the outset, “no responsible government would ever literally drop money from the sky.” Who sets the boundaries of what’s “responsible” matters a great deal here.
To make the central bank work in the public interest rather than the interests of a select few, you must reform the very structure of the Federal Reserve. That’s the purpose of a new proposal from Andrew Levin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and former advisor to Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen. In conjunction with the activist group Fed Up, which advocates for pro-worker policies at the Fed, Levin has devised a framework to make the central bank a fully public institution, with all the transparency and accountability demanded of other government entities.
It’s such an important idea that Warren Gunnels, policy director for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, talked it up yesterday on a conference call with Levin. While stopping short of endorsing taking the Fed public, Gunnels did say, “Senator Sanders believes we need to made the Fed a more democratic institution, responsive to the concerns of all Americans, not a few billionaires on Wall Street.”
Right now, the Fed is a quasi-public, quasi-private hybrid, taking advantage of that status to maintain high levels of secrecy. Members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, like other federal agencies. But the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks are legally owned by commercial banks in each of those regions. Banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo hold stock in these regional banks, which happen to be one of their primary regulators.
This was how central banks worldwide operated at the time of the Fed’s founding, but that has changed. “Every other central bank around the world is fully public,” Professor Levin said, citing the Bank of Canada’s shift in the 1930s and the Bank of England in the 1940s.
Not only does having private banks own a chunk of the Fed raise questions about regulatory supervision, it implicitly privileges banker concerns over the public at large. This is particularly important because the Fed has failed as an institution consistently over the past decade.
First it failed to identify an $8 trillion housing bubble, along with increases in leverage and derivatives exposure that magnified the housing collapse into a larger crisis. Then, it failed to deploy all its policy tools and allowed a slow recovery to take hold that left millions of workers behind, as growth never caught up to its expectations. British economist Simon Wren-Lewis believes the third big mistake is happening now, through premature interest rate hikes to return to “normal” operations. “Central banks are wasting a huge amount of potential resources” by tightening too quickly, Wren-Lewis says. For everyday Americans, that translates into millions more people out of work than necessary.
So Levin’s plan would cash out the banks’ stock, and begin to remove their influence over the Fed. The board of directors of the regional Fed banks, which currently includes commercial bank executives, would be chosen through a representative process with mandates for diversity (no African-American has ever served as a regional Fed president) and a variety of viewpoints. Nobody affiliated with a financial institution overseen by the Fed could serve on any regional board.
These newly elected boards of directors would choose the regional presidents, which have a say on monetary policy decisions. That selection process would include public hearings and feedback. Under the current system, Fed presidents are re-elected through a pro forma process, with no opportunity for public engagement. Four of the 12 regional presidents were formerly executives at Goldman Sachs, and it’s hard to call that a coincidence.
In addition to breaking the conflict of interest inherent in current Fed governance, making the institution public would subject it to disclosure requirements, Freedom of Information Act requests, and external reviews that all other public agencies must submit to. Levin’s proposal calls for an annual Government Accountability Office review of Fed policies and procedures, and would allow the Fed’s inspector general new authority to investigate the regional banks.
The Levin proposal too often makes concessions to preserving central bank “independence,” like preserving the regional structure and giving Fed officials nonrenewable seven-year terms, which seems a little arbitrary. This impulse also led Democrats to reject Sen. Rand Paul’s legislation to audit the Fed earlier this year. The rhetoric of Federal Reserve “independence” conceals an institutional capture that allows it to ignore workers’ needs in favor of the wealthy. And its persistent failures and banker influence weaken the case for that independence.
Nevertheless, the heart of the proposal is to return democracy to the Fed, so the institution will edge away from its commitment to capital over labor. “The fundamental piece is that the Fed must be a public institution,” said Ady Barkan of the Fed Up Coalition.
Liberals too often ignore the Fed and the role it plays in the economy, but that’s starting to change. An obscure piece of the Federal Reserve Act statute identified by then-House staffer Matt Stoller led to a remarkable cut of billions of dollars in subsidies to big banks last year, under a Republican-majority Congress. Now the Fed Up coalition is not only rolling out this reform plan, but pushing the presidential candidates to answer whether the Fed should deliberately slow down the economy, make sure their institution looks like the general public, and reduce the power of private banks on its operations. (Bernie Sanders laid out his views on Fed reform in the New York Times last December, some of which intersect with the Fed Up proposal. Warren Gunnels, Sanders’ Policy Director, would only say that the Fed Up plan “deserves serious consideration.”)
A public, inclusive debate over Fed transparency and accountability is critical, given the importance of this institution to the economy. “These reforms would put the Fed on a path to serving the public for the next 100 years,” said Professor Levin. And that has to mean all the public, through democratic principles, not just the executives at our biggest banks.
By David Dayen
Source
For Many Americans, the Great Recession Never Ended. Is the Fed About to Make It Worse?
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid,...
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science, completing a series of related internships, and presenting original research across the country, Reid could not find a job in her field and, instead, pieces together a nine-hour-per-week tutoring job and a 20-hour-per-week cosmetology gig. The 25-year-old knows that an interest-rate hike will hurt her chances of finding the kinds of jobs for which she has trained, and earning the wage increase she so desperately needs.
A Fed decision to raise interest rates, expected sometime this year, amounts to a vote of confidence in the economy—a declaration that we have achieved the robust recovery we need. “We are close to where we want to be, and we now think that the economy cannot only tolerate but needs higher interest rates,” the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress during a July 15 policy briefing.
But for many millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive, and for them, a rate hike will be disastrous. It will put the brakes on an economy still trudging toward stability; stall progress on unemployment, especially for African-Americans; and slow wage growth even more for the vast majority of American workers.
The general argument for raising interest rates is that it will prevent wage costs from pushing up inflation. However, there is no data suggesting price instability; nor is there any indication that wages have risen enough to spur such inflation. For the overwhelming majority of American workers, wages have stagnated or even dropped over the past 35 years, even as CEOs have seen their compensation grow 937 percent. During the same period, wage gaps between white workers and workers of color have increased, and black unemployment is at the level of white unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the labor-force participation rate is less than 63 percent, the lowest in nearly four decades, suggesting that many Americans have simply given up looking for work.
Yellen has herself often urged the Fed to look at the broadest possible employment picture. Yet, during her recent congressional testimony, shedownplayed the Fed’s ability to address racial disparities, saying that the central bank does not “have the tools to be able to address the structure of unemployment across groups” and that “there isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do” about it. She cited, rightly, a range of other factors, including disparate educational attainment and skill levels, that contribute to economic and social disparities between racial groups. But she also glossed over the importance of the economic environment in shaping workers’ unequal chances.
One defining metric in shaping workers’ chances is the unemployment rate. A high unemployment rate facilitates racial discrimination. When there are too many qualified job candidates for every job, employers can arbitrarily limit their labor pool based on unnecessary educational requirements, irrelevant credit or background checks, or straightforward bias. A tight labor market, by contrast, makes it much harder for employers to succumb to prejudices and overlook qualified workers simply because of bias. When the number of job seekers matches the number of job vacancies, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, injured veterans, and formerly incarcerated workers finally get their due in the workforce.
The late 1990s, when unemployment was at about 4 percent, bear out this thesis. During that rosier era, black unemployment was 7.6 percent, and the ratio of black family income to white family income rose substantially.
As the guardian of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has a number of tools for encouraging a tight labor market, and one of those tools is to keep interest rates low. By keeping rates low, the Fed creates a hospitable environment for job growth by lowering the borrowing costs for consumer and business spending—including hiring new workers. By contrast, raising rates deliberately suppresses spending by consumers and businesses. In the process, it slows job growth, holds down wages, and unnecessarily maintains racial disparities.
With so many workers still struggling, there is no need to cut off this recovery prematurely. Inflation remains below the Fed’s already-low 2 percent target, unemployment and underemployment are too high, and wage growth and labor-force participation are too low. In fact, the Fed should be doing everything within its power to keep nudging the recovery forward for the workers still caught in the slipstream of the Great Recession.
The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates this week, nor when it meets again six weeks after that. It should not raise rates at all in 2015. Doing so would cause tremendous harm to the aspirations and lives of tens of millions of working families, and would disproportionately hurt African-Americans.
MyAsia Reid knows the difference that a full-employment economy can make. She is ready to participate in the economic recovery. And she will be watching as the Fed decides whether to hold to a strategy of strengthening the recovery or pursue a new strategy that jeopardizes her chances and her community.
Source: The Nation
Connecting The Dots Between Banks and Immigrant Detention
July 26 was the deadline by which the government was ordered by a judge to reunite all immigrant children separated...
July 26 was the deadline by which the government was ordered by a judge to reunite all immigrant children separated from their parents in Trump's so-called zero-tolerance border policy earlier this year. But of the approximately 2,500 children that were separated 711 still remain without their parents after the deadline, lawyers for the government said. Of those, 431 cases remain where the parents were deported before getting their children back and the rest were "ineligible" to be returned as per the government. Meanwhile protesters across the country have continued confronting ICE offices and other institutions involved in the immigrant crackdown including banks that are financing private prisons for immigrants. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and BlackRock, have been targeted by activists this week after the Center for Popular Democracy released a report called Bankrolling Oppression. Eight people were arrested while protesting outside the home of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
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Hispanos afrontan barreras de idioma en NY, según informe
El Diario – August 5, 2013, by Ruth E. Hernández - Las agencias del Gobierno estatal de Nueva York tienen importantes...
El Diario – August 5, 2013, by Ruth E. Hernández - Las agencias del Gobierno estatal de Nueva York tienen importantes carencias a la hora de facilitar el acceso a sus servicios a los más de $2 millones de personas y familias que no dominan el inglés, según un estudio presentado hoy.
“Todavía queda mucho por hacer para romper las barreras del idioma y asegurar que reciban una competente y consistente asistencia”, señala el “Informe de Acceso a Lenguaje”, que destaca que esta situación dificulta a estas personas el poder obtener servicios básicos como el carné de conducir o denunciar un crimen.
El estudio, de la organización Se Hace Camino Nueva York, es el primer informe que se publica luego de que, en 2011, el gobernador de Nueva York, Andrew Cuomo, firmara una orden ejecutiva para garantizar que inmigrantes reciban, en los seis idiomas más hablados, los servicios de agencias estatales que brindan ayuda directa a la comunidad.
“Con esta orden la administración del gobernador Cuomo no sólo tomó un paso importante para garantizar el acceso a servicios del gobierno a los que aún no dominan el inglés, sino que demostró liderazgo a nivel nacional en este asunto”, indica el informe de la entidad sobre las agencias que más en contacto están con el público.
Sin embargo, reveló que, un año después de entrar en vigor esta medida, los inmigrantes afrontan dificultades para tener acceso a servicios importantes como puede ser un carné de conducir, recibir los cupones de alimentos porque los formularios no han sido traducidos en su idioma o solicitar el desempleo, entre otros trámites, dijo a Efe Theo Oshiro, codirector de la organización.
Entre los hallazgos destaca, que pese a los esfuerzos de las agencias gubernamentales, la mayoría de los inmigrantes no están recibiendo documentos importantes traducidos en su idioma, tal y como estipula la orden ejecutiva.
Cita como ejemplo que en Buffalo sólo el 11 % de los hispanos afirma recibir la documentación en su idioma, mientras que en los pueblos de la región central del estado la cifra fue del 45 %.
Igualmente el estudio mostró que a través del estado sólo el 45 % de las agencias están brindando servicios de interpretación.
En específico, señala que en el Departamento de Vehículos de Motor, una de las agencias que más público atiende, sólo se ofreció información en los idiomas establecidos en el 32 % de los casos, mientras que en el Departamento del Trabajo esta cifra aumenta al 61 %.
También indica que en aquellas agencias en las que se brindó esta posibilidad, el público estuvo complacido con la calidad del mismo.
En cuanto a la Policía estatal, Oshiro explicó que aquellas personas que acuden en busca de ayuda tienen que esperar mucho tiempo y que “no tiene ni siquiera puesto en su página que puede brindar servicios” en varios idiomas.
Durante la evaluación, los autores descubrieron que el estado contrata a agencias locales en varios de sus condados para suplir servicios, y que éstas están exentas de cumplir la orden ejecutiva.
“Eso no es aceptable. No entendemos por qué no les cubre la orden ejecutiva”, dijo Oshiro.
Indicó además que, aunque las agencias del estado con sedes en la Ciudad de Nueva York, mejoraron en un 15 % los servicios que brindan, desde que entró en vigor la orden ejecutiva, “el estudio muestra que les está tomando tiempo” cumplir con ella, lo que, según Oshiro, no es aceptable porque tuvieron tiempo para prepararse.
Entre las recomendaciones que aporta el reporte figura mejorar el acceso de interpretación y la traducción, desarrollar y distribuir una guía de cómo mejorar los servicios y establecer colaboraciones con organizaciones que estén en contacto con la comunidad que no domina el inglés.
El informe se realizó en cooperación con la oficina del gobernador y, de acuerdo con Oshiro, los autores se reunirán con sus representantes para saber qué pasos van a tomar para cumplir con la orden ejecutiva.
“El estudio es una herramienta para que la oficina del gobernador haga lo que deben hacer”, afirmó.
Source
Calls Renewed for Charter School Regulations
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of...
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of Philadelphia charter schools, concluding wasteful spending at the privately managed schools costs a yearly average of more than $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money, and more than $30 million since 1997.
“Pennsylvania lawmakers have not given oversight bodies the tools they need to detect that fraud and stop it early,” according to a report prepared by three nonprofit agencies, ACTION United, The Center For Popular Democracy, and Integrity In Education.
The three groups are part of the umbrella group, Philly Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), which continued to seek greater oversight of privately managed charter schools that are publicly funded like their district-run counterparts. The group’s members delivered copies of its findings and recommendations this week to the state Attorney General’s Office and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC), which oversees the city’s public school system.
ACTION United, which has criticized the school district for policies and practices it deems unfair, reported no significant action on the 20-page report released in September. The renewed push for increased regulations on charter schools comes as the state-controlled commission ended its seven-year ban on considering new charter school applications in an effort to control operating costs.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union wants the moratorium reinstated until measures are taken to increase charter school regulation and improve transparency. The state Legislature required the school district to start considering new charter school applications as a condition to receive a sales tax on cigarette packs sold in Philadelphia.
Local activists and educators called for the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether all charter schools have appropriate levels of internal controls and policies to prevent fraud. Oversight agencies have inadequate resources to maintain staff needed to assess fraud and conduct targeted audits.
The nonprofit organization asked 62 charter schools to provide details about fraud prevention practices, but about half of the respondents replied and only four school districts had adequate fraud prevention practices on the books.
Earlier this week, the group called for providing additional funding to the SRC for improving oversight of fraud risk management practices in all publicly funded schools. They made calls for more leadership from the governor’s office, and for granting authority to city or county controllers to assess fraud risk and conduct audits of school district’s finances.
There are only two auditors for the school district, with more than 200 public schools. And implementation of charter school fraud risk management programs has been lacking in publicly funded schools and fraudulent activities aren’t typically exposed by the type of audits that are conducted, according to PCAPS.
“General auditing techniques alone don’t uncover fraud,” according to the report.
Source
Fed Chair Candidate Kevin Warsh Draws Opposition From Left and Right
Fed Chair Candidate Kevin Warsh Draws Opposition From Left and Right
On a Wednesday in mid-September, a group of progressive activists concerned about the stewardship of the American...
On a Wednesday in mid-September, a group of progressive activists concerned about the stewardship of the American economy packed a meeting room on Capitol Hill with staff of Senate Democrats. Part strategy session and part pep talk, the gathering had a very specific aim.
“We’ll do whatever we can do to prevent Kevin Warsh from taking on the role of chair of the Federal Reserve,” Jennifer Epps-Addison, president of the Center for Popular Democracy, told the gathering.
Read the full article here.
Conservatives May Control State Governments, But Progressives Are Rising
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives...
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in Washington is frustrating, the rightward lurch of statehouses could be devastating. Reveling in their newfound power, state lawmakers and their corporate allies are writing regressive policies that could hurt families by exacerbating inequality, further curtailing an already weakened democracy, and worsening an environmental crisis of global proportions.
From a law that would censor public university professors in Kansas to a governor who prohibits state officials from using the term “climate change” in Florida, ideologues in state capitols are wasting little time when it comes to enacting an extreme agenda. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wisconsin officially enacted right to work legislation on Monday, a policy that’s shown to lower wages and benefits by weakening the power of unions. Missouri, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois are all entertaining various versions of the law. In states like New York and Ohio, legislators are considering severe cuts to public education, while vastly expanding charter schools.
Of course, a look at key 2014 ballot initiatives shows voters held progressive values on issues like the minimum wage, paid sick days, and a millionaires tax. And just 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in 2014, meaning that there is surely a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.
The path to policies that put families first is not short, but a bold coalition across the country took an aggressive step forward this week.
On March 11th, under the banner “We Rise,” thousands of people joined more than 28 actions in 16 states to awaken that silent majority and call their legislators to account. A joint project of National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction and other allies across the country, the message of the day was simple: our cities and states belong to us, not big corporations and the wealthy. We can work together and push our legislators to enact an agenda that puts people and the planet before profits. And at each local action, leaders unveiled their proposals for what that agenda would look like in their cities and states.
In Minnesota, grassroots leaders are fighting for a proposal to re-enfranchise over 44,000 formerly incarcerated people. In Nevada, our allies are agitating for a $15 minimum wage. In Illinois, we are organizing for closing corporate tax loopholes and a financial transaction tax (a “LaSalle Street tax”) that would help plug the state’s budget hole. With each of these proposals, we are moving from defense to offense and changing the conversation about race, democracy and our economy.
We’ve seen over and over again in American history, change starts close to home – in our towns, cities and states. On March 11th, we saw a fresh reminder of the power of local change. Our families and communities are defining this new front in American public life, and we will continue rising to challenge corporate power and win the policies that put people and planet first - not last.
If November was a wave election, then this Spring will be a wave of bottom-up people power activism. What starts with defending people and our democracy from an extreme corporate conservative agenda, will pivot to offense as grassroots organizations across the country fight to fundamentally reshape our government and our economy from the bottom up. Expect an unabashedly bold agenda that holds the potential for awakening the progressive majority and ushering in a new era in America, an era where our country works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well connected.
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