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Hillary Clinton's support from financial institutions has always been her Achilles heel but running counter to this criticism is her pledge to end systemic racism. The two are actually closely related and if she is to make good on her promises on racial justice, she will have to test those close connections to Wall Street by directly pushing for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and closing the carried interest tax loophole.

 

The Movement for Black Lives' policy platform calls for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law that separated commercial and investment banking. The law has lately become a core focus of economic progressives. 

Groups involved with the Movement for Black Lives see it as a key way to advance economic racial justice. Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about the policy – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration. The absence of an impermeable boundary between commercial and investing functions both instigated and then accelerated the 2008 financial crisis, forcing millions to lose their homes and jobs. 

Communities of color were hit hard and recovered more slowly. Mortgage lenders like Wells Fargo systemically targeted black and brown borrowers for subprime loans, putting many at risk of foreclosure. In the years after the recession, many of these lenders settled multi-billion-dollar discrimination lawsuits years after the damage had been done. 

Also, a 2015 American Civil Liberties Union study showed that black families continued to lose wealth years after the recession – even as white families began to climb out. The average black household lost 40 percent of its non-home equity wealth.

 

"Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about Glass Steagall – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration."

Home ownership is one of the most stable and reliable ways to acquire wealth in America, and the massive loss of homes among black and brown communities during the 2008 crisis will take decades to recover from. A new Glass-Steagall would help prevent banks from getting bigger and riskier, stopping them from coming back to black and brown neighborhoods and destroying even more wealth.

The carried interest tax loophole is another example. Eliminating this loophole, which lets private equity firms and hedge funds avoid taxes on part of their income, could raise $180 billion. It might sound like a drop in the bucket in the context of a national budget, but when you look closer, it is money that could make a huge difference.

It is also money that could have drastic implications for cities and states around the country that claim they don't have enough funding. The City of Chicago is facing a massive school funding crisis of more than a billion dollars. The hedge fund-cozy Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner routinely go to the school district for more concessions to make up the gap.

In the meantime, billionaire hedge-funders use the carried interest loophole to get out of paying taxes that translates into much needed revenue. The details of closing the loophole should be worked out by economists, but one thing is clear: if we keep a loophole that costs us billions of dollars while closing schools in black and brown neighborhoods, we are making a strong statement about the level of racial injustice we are willing to accept.

If Hillary Clinton wins the election, she will enter office at one of the most racially charged moments in American history. It is also a moment of some of the greatest income inequality in history – a reality even starker for black and brown communities. If we truly want to achieve racial justice, we should look at policies that prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis. Closing the carried interest loophole and reinstating a modern Glass-Steagall are the tip of the iceberg. It is up to us to push Clinton for more.

Commentary by Maurice Weeks, who leads the housing & Wall Street accountability campaign at Center for Popular Democracy. Follow him on Twitter @mo87mo87.

By Maurice Weeks

Source

Take a moment and imagine that you are on a train — let’s say a train serving wine as you traverse through picturesque Napa Valley. You are with a group of your peers. You are adults and enjoying your time of fellowship. But because of a perceived notion that you are not fit for that environment you are unceremoniously removed from the train. Can you imagine the indignity of this encounter? Think about the anxiety this situation may cause. Think about the disrespect that you would feel.

Believe it or not, this is the reality for a large portion of the African American community. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, more African American adults feel discriminated against while shopping than doing anything. This sentiment includes encounters with the police.

A report released by the Center for Popular Democracy confirms these perceptions felt by African Americans. The report found that African American consumers are seven times more likely to be targeted as potential thieves as are white customers.

However, research on shoplifting trends in retail stores found no differences by race or ethnicity. Some research even suggests that African Americans are less likely to engage in shoplifting than are other groups. That means African Americans are being overly targeted by retailers while the real criminals get away.

This form of discrimination is not new. It is an adaptation of previous forms of discrimination transformed anew due to significant gains in civil rights protections. This form of discrimination has a name: consumer racial profiling.

Consumer racial profiling is particularly troublesome because it disproportionately affects African American women, a consumer group who engages in the retail sector at significantly higher rates than men.

The image that I asked you to conjure was not of my own making. It actually happened to a group of Black women. Notwithstanding the fact these train riders reached a final settlement just last month, California and other states can do a great deal more to end the consumer racial profiling that plagues retail environments.

Specifically in California, a piece of legislation I have authored (AB 2707—the Stop Consumer Racial Profiling Act of 2016) will amend our state’s civil rights statute to include the definition of this demeaning practice and require the state’s civil rights watchdog to investigate reported incidences of the practice. It is my hope that this legislation would pass a vote of my colleagues and be signed by the Governor. But more important than the passage of a bill is the transformation of behaviors by retailers that violate the civil and human rights of African American consumers.

Corporate loss prevention schemes must be reformed, executives, managers and rank-and-file employees must be awakened, and people of goodwill must demand that the targeting of consumers by racial characteristic is factually and morally wrong. It must end.

A new civil rights consciousness has gripped a great deal of the country. Maybe we can address some of the challenges that still occur on the basis of race by turning the tide against consumer racial profiling and letting it be a thing of the past.

By Sebastian Ridley-Thomas

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The Hill - 05-06-2015  -  The strain from Modesta Toribio’s retail job weighed down her life. Despite working full-time as a cashier in Brooklyn, Modesta struggled to pay for rent, food, or transportation. The bills added up quickly. Taking the day off to care for a sick child meant risking losing her job. Going to school at night was not an option, and she could not arrange for steady childcare because her schedule changed every week.

Modesta’s story is not unique. It is the story of countless strivers who work to sustain their families, but collide against structural barriers that keep them from making ends meet.

In this case, Modesta and her co-workers took action, organized and won concessions from their boss. It was not easy – their boss initially retaliated by cutting their hours. But, the workers gained momentum, and eventually they won better pay and better treatment.

For millions of others, though, they still do not have the dignity of a good job.

That is why the Center for Popular Democracy is proud to have launched an ambitious campaign to win good wages, benefits and opportunity for all workers with the Center for Community Change, Jobs with Justice and Working Families Organization. Named Putting Families First, the campaign will advance the audacious idea that every American should and can have access to a good job.

It’s an effort undertaken with a sense of urgency. We know that good jobs and access to them for all cannot be achieved without confronting the deep history and continuing reality of racism and sexism in America, particularly as they play out in the labor market.

As such, we propose five straightforward and commonsense tenets:

Guaranteeing good wages and benefits. Investing resources on a large scale to restart the economy in places of concentrated poverty. Taxing concentrated wealth. Valuing our families and the work of women who care for children and elders Building a green economy.

What stands between us and an economy that works for everyone are rules that unfairly favor the greedy few because they are written by politicians beholden to wealthy special interests. But workers and families who are working together for change know well that rules written by the few can be re-written by the many.

Workers around the country are launching over 100 campaigns that embody an ambitious jobs agenda that includes everyone, elevating demands that speak to the reality of people throughout our country.

One example: making high quality child care available to all working parents, raising wages and benefits for the millions of women who work in early childhood education and care fields, changing the state and federal revenue models to make childcare more accessible, and providing financial support to unpaid caregivers.

Ensuring that all working families have access to quality, affordable childcare – and that the jobs in that industry provide living wages and good benefits – is crucial to women’s economic stability, especially women of color who are the vast majority of workers in this sector.

Winning these campaigns will make a huge difference for Modesta and her family, and for millions of families in this country who are struggling to make ends meet.

The reality is that there is bold action happening in every corner of this country. Whether we are talking about fast food workers striking across the country, or immigrant workers winning policies against wage theft, or entire communities organizing to win ballot initiatives to enact paid sick days and better wages.         

The American public is thirsty for a visible effort to create real, good, dignified jobs for everyone.

We are supporting important local fights that will produce very real change in the lives of workers. And we are changing the broader frame in which those fights are waged. We are not tinkering at the margins. We have our eyes set on transforming the country through campaigns in 41 states – campaigns that grow every day.

We are setting out to challenge the orthodoxies of both parties to focus on the real problem: the need to create jobs and improve wages.

Like Modesta and her co-workers, we are coming together to stand up for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and for America. We have a vision of honoring the dignity of work, and the dignity of the people who work. We believe that we can do better, but that we will have to challenge those who are stealing our wages, limiting our ability to sustain our families and destroying our planet in order to do so.

Putting Families First will change the national conversation about work and about greed, starting where it matters most: in our states.  It will enable us to live up to our collective responsibility to create the country that we want our children to live in.

Archila is co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.

Source: The Hill

When Mother's Day became a national holiday in the U.S. more than a century ago, women were a relative rarity in the workforce. Today's mom, by contrast, is largely a working mom. 

In half of American households, women are either the primary breadwinner or contribute more than 40 percent of the income. For most families, the added income from women going to work is the only thing that's kept family income steady, as individual worker wages have stagnated for the better part of four decades.

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