CPD IN THE NEWS

Last Tuesday, Alton Sterling was shot and killed while pinned on the ground by Baton Rouge police. The next day, Philando Castile was shot and killed by a cop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as he reached for his ID. On Thursday, protests swept across the country calling for an end to police killings of black and brown men. At one of those peaceful protests, in Dallas, a sniper opened fire from a vantage point above the march, trying to kill white police officers. Five officers died.

It was against this backdrop of deep social turmoil that dozens of community organizing groups from across the country came together in Pittsburgh for the People’s Convention.

Over the weekend, more than 1,500 community organizers and leaders—many of them Black and Latino—convened to discuss ways to create a more cohesive, powerful progressive grassroots network. It was the first step by the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive organization that is trying to fill the vacuum left in the wake of ACORN’s demise in 2010.

On top of the recent events in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas, the convention also came at a critical political moment—on the Republican side, Donald Trump’s campaign is increasingly stoking racial animosity; on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has worked to push his party’s platform leftward.

“We wanted to make it both a statement in the electoral moment and really a statement that transcends the electoral moment,” Brian Kettenring, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, told the Prospect at the convention. “We’re trying to stand in this particular moment but also not be captive to the narrow partisan politics of our country.”

The convention started off Friday with a march of more than 1,000 activists through the streets of downtown Pittsburgh, including stops outside the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to demand fair wages for workers; the Pittsburgh Federal Reserve to call for equitable economic policies for working families; and Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s office to protest his anti-immigration stances. Some onlookers joined the chanting—“What do we want? Justice. If we don’t get it? Shut it down,”—and raised their fists in solidarity. Others were visibly angry at the marchers’ message of justice for undocumented immigrants and victims of police brutality.

The following day, activists heard speeches from heavyweights of the progressive movement like Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and the Reverend William Barber III, leader of North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement, who both spoke powerfully about the recent killings and the need for a unified response.

“The country needs healing, but you can’t heal a dirty wound,” Ellison pronounced. “A dirty wound needs disinfectant.”

He pointed to the “amazingly poised” Diamond Reynolds, the fiancée of Philando Castile, who streamed the immediate aftermath of his shooting on Facebook, as a model for the movement. “We need to push back with the same presence of mind of Diamond Reynolds,” he said.

With the killings of Sterling and Castile fresh on everyone’s mind, the specter of police violence loomed large at the convention. But the People’s Convention also wove together the threads of today’s social justice movements—not just Black Lives Matter, but also those campaigning for immigration reform, the Fight for $15, LGBTQ rights, and environmental justice, in a way that made clear the intersectionality of modern progressive organizing.

“We’re all dealing with the various layers of oppression,” said Jose Lopez, organizing director for Make the Road New York. “Whether it’s workplace inequality, housing inequality, or the recent decision from the Supreme Court, which to a degree sent a message to our families that we’re going to create opportunity for a limited number of children but we’re going to throw away the key to the gate to this country when we begin to talk about their parents.”

“[This convention] created the space and now we have to make sure we continue to stay in contact—using CPD as the vehicle—so that we can build out a network of power that can transform everything from immigration reform to worker rights to housing rights to the attack of black and brown people in this country by police,” Lopez said.

Groups attending the convention included New York Communities for Change, which helped launch the Fight for $15 back in 2012 and is now turning its focus toward addressing affordable housing needs in the city; Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which, in response to the police killing of Jamar Clark helped organize a protest occupation outside a North Minneapolis police precinct that lasted 16 days; the Texas Workers Defense Project, a worker advocacy group that has improved labor standards in the Texas construction industry; and Make the Road state chapters that have led local fights against deportations. Some of these groups have collaborated before, while others have been somewhat isolated from other community organizing groups.

Community organizations lost much of their national clout in the wake of ACORN’s demise, which was brought about in 2009 by a conservative smear campaign. CPD’s goal now—and that of the organizations represented at the conference—is to rebuild such groups’ institutional power and make it a critical part of the broader progressive movement.

In recent years, that movement has had some signal successes, which conference workshops showcased: how SEIU successfully organized for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle; how black community groups in St. Louis helped create lasting momentum for policing reform in the wake of Ferguson; how the New York Working Families Party established a powerful electoral presence; how organizers in Florida worked for climate justice in communities vulnerable to climate change.

“We are beginning to launch a real national organizing framework—that’s something that really hadn’t been seen since ACORN went under,” said Jonathan Westin, executive director of New York Communities for Change. “I think this is the beginning of an intentional path forward to try to create real structural power for community institutions and neighborhoods that already exists in places like the labor movement.”

Creating such structural power, organizers admit, will be challenging. There’s a shortage of funding for community organizations, which has kept them closely tethered to more well-funded labor unions and foundations—and, in many ways, also tethered to their funders’ agendas. The central challenge is how to establish a sustainable and independent source of funding, as unions have done with member dues, in order for community power to become a singular force on its own.

Beyond that, a critical question for community organizers is how to capitalize on both the current social and political moment.  

“The genie is out the bottle with progressive politics,” Kettenring said. He believes that a strong force of community organizations can help direct the progressive movement’s current political capital in a way that avoids pitfalls of the past. “One of the historic strategic failures of the progressive movement has been its failure on race. So when you look at this convention and look at how diverse it is and how many of the organizations are rooted communities of color, you see the potentiality of how the community organizing sector can help root a more progressive, but also diverse politics.”

By Justin Miller

Source

COMMERCE CITY — On a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen teachers from the Adams 14 School District walked through a trailer park asking parents how they could do their jobs better.

Christina Zavala, a parent of three students, had a list. At the top: stop the rampant bullying and pay more attention to her son, who has a learning disability.

“In my experience,” she said, “it doesn’t really feel like the teachers care.”

The cadre of teachers hope what they heard — good or bad — can help reshape their schools to better meet the needs of the mostly poor and Latino families that call Commerce City home. The teachers are advocating for a “community school model,” which in part calls for more partnerships with nonprofit groups to help curb the effects of poverty on the classroom.

“The only way we can make a difference with the families in our district is if we get involved,” said Barb McDowell, the Adams 14 teachers union president. “There are a lot of disenfranchised people. We’re not talking to the community.”

Relations between the Commerce City community and the 7,000-student school district have long been strained. Voters consistently have rejected pleas to increase local taxes to repair or replace aging schools and support educational programs. And in 2014, the U.S. Department of Education found the district had discriminated against Hispanic students and teachers.

The district’s response included more culturally responsive training for teachers and the creation of a committee of students to regularly talk about race issues.

Facing state sanctions for chronic poor performance on state English and math tests, the Adams 14 school district, just north of Denver, is overhauling many of its schools. The teachers union believes this provides an opening to put into practice some of the elements of the community school model. Schools are still finalizing their innovation plans, which are expected to be made public later this fall.

Teachers across Colorado are engaged in similar work. It’s all part of a statewide campaign organized by the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, called “The Schools Our Kids Deserve.”

The community school model can be traced back to the 1880s. Modern-day community schools have popped up in Chicago, Baltimore and Lincoln, Neb. Perhaps the most famous community school model is the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City.

In Colorado, the Edgewater Collective in Jefferson County and Blocks of Hope in neighboring Westminster Public Schools are two efforts to create something like a community school.

While supporters of the community schools model have long said that no two community schools should look the same because the needs of communities vary, there is a growing effort to identify common themes that apply everywhere, said Reuben Jacobson, deputy director for the Coalition of Community Schools.

The Colorado teachers union, working with the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools and the Center For Popular Democracy, has created its own list which includes strong and proven curriculum, community support services, and positive discipline practices.

Community engagement, like the work the teachers in Adams 14 are doing, is also a must.

Trish Ramsey, a teacher at Adams City Middle School, put it simply: “This is the first step to rebuild trust.”

By Nicholas Garcia

Source

As pageants go, here's one whose contestants might want Steve Harvey to spare them the crown.

The Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday debuted the Worst Employer in America Pageant theworstemployers.com. Eight companies, including Deerfield-based Walgreens, were selected as nominees, and people are being asked to vote on which is worst "based on such bad behaviors as a poor CEO to median worker pay ratio, failure to pay minimum wage and overtime, worker lawsuits against companies, or forcing workers to work through breaks, among other egregious practices."

A "winner" will be named Feb. 29. No word yet on the "prize," which will be announced the same day.

The nonprofit, which advocates for low-wage workers and immigrants among other progressive causes, is pitting two employers against each other in four categories. In banking, voters choose between Bank of America and Wells Fargo. In supermarkets, it's Sam's Club vs. Whole Foods. Among drugstores, Walgreens is up against CVS. And among pizza chains, Papa John's competes with Yum! Brands, owner of Pizza Hut.

"America's most recognizable brands are some of our biggest employers and we want to highlight their poor treatment of employees," JoEllen Chernow, director of economic justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement. "Consumers are no longer just judging companies on how much they like their products or the efficiency of their services. In 2016, customers care about how companies treat their workers full stop. Yup, it's a thing."

In selecting the nominees, the group considered national corporations that provide everyday services to consumers, have at least 20,000 employees, are ubiquitous brands and have recently been in the news for employee-related issues.

As they click through the contest, voters will find short explanations of what landed each company on the podium.

For Walgreens, the group claims "part-time workers can't afford to get sick," because only workers who average 30 hours or more a week are eligible for paid sick time. It also claims that the CEO's 2014 pay was 540 times the median pay of Walgreens workers. Total compensation for then-Walgreens CEO Gregory Wassonwas $16.7 million, the Tribune has reported.

Walgreens declined to comment. But a spokesperson clarified that its policy is that anyone who averages 20 hours a week qualifies for paid sick leave.

As for Walgreens' opponent, the group claims CVS' CEO got a 26 percent raise in 2014 that brought his salary to $23 million, while workers making $9 an hour got less than a 5 percent bump. It also accused the company of not offering part-timers paid sick leave and mentioned a lawsuit in New York alleging that workers were ordered to racially profile nonwhite shoppers.

In an emailed statement accusing the "pageant" of relying on inaccurate and incomplete information, CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis countered that its CEO pay is in line with industry standards and that workers who average 30 hours a week are eligible for benefits. He added that the company has firm nondiscrimination policies and is vigorously defending itself against the lawsuit.

Whole Foods spokesperson Allison Phelps noted that the company has been named one of Fortune's 100 best companies to work for for 18 consecutive years, a contest based on employee surveys.

Yum! Brands said it pays employees above the applicable minimum wage on average at its company-owned restaurants. Among the group's gripes with Yum was that it doesn't reimburse drivers for costs associated with delivery work, resulting in their receiving less than minimum wage.

Wells Fargo declined to comment. The other companies listed in the pageant did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Jennifer Flynn Walker and Paul Davis are close friends, left-wing organizers who worked together as activists during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s and have trained hundreds of other activists since.

They’ve also both dedicated much of their past seven months to fighting Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. But ask them what to make of the fight and you’ll hear wildly different answers.

Read the full article here.