A year after the election: Fighting for the freedom to thrive
A year after the election: Fighting for the freedom to thrive
This day last year we woke up to a national nightmare –one that has now evolved into a full-blown social, not to...
This day last year we woke up to a national nightmare –one that has now evolved into a full-blown social, not to mention constitutional, crisis.
Even as we remember November 8, 2016, we must acknowledge that today, many of us are waking up to the first clear sign that the wave of progressive activism that has successfully thwarted some the worst parts of this administration’s agenda, is also poised to have a real impact on electoral outcomes.
CPD's Josie Duffy Named City & State's 40 Under 40
Each year, City & State honors 40 talented individuals under the age of 40 who work in New York City government,...
Each year, City & State honors 40 talented individuals under the age of 40 who work in New York City government, politics, and advocacy. Rising Star members have already distinguished themselves in the eyes of their colleagues and are on their way to amassing many more noteworthy accomplishments.
CPD's Policy Advocate Josie Duffy was named a Rising Star member for the class of 2014. We are tremendously proud of Josie's accomplishment!
See the full issue here.
NY coalition pushes for reliable work schedules nationally
NY coalition pushes for reliable work schedules nationally
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A coalition of New York-based advocates on Tuesday launched a national campaign to press large...
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A coalition of New York-based advocates on Tuesday launched a national campaign to press large retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last-minute scheduling, which allows companies to assign shifts to workers with only a few hours’ notice.
The campaign follows recent agreements by several large retailers with New York’s attorney general to end the practice in that state.
The Center for Popular Democracy, the Rockefeller Foundation and the online organization Purpose are calling for scheduling at least two weeks in advance, eliminating on-call assignments that leave employees scrambling for child care, unable to hold second jobs and with uncertain paychecks.
“Already major employers are responding to mounting public pressure to deliver more stable work schedules to their front-line employees,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the center’s Fair Workweek Initiative. “This movement is about a greater voice in how much and when we work — predictable and stable hours, more input and the opportunity to work enough hours to make ends meet.”
They say three in five American workers — about 75 million people — are paid hourly, with recent job growth mainly in low-wage jobs, often part-time and subject to last-minute scheduling practices.
The Workshift campaign, formed by Purpose and the Rockefeller Foundation last year, says employer software aimed at savings and efficiency is behind the growth in last-minute worker scheduling with broad consequences. Those include lower pay, higher job turnover and unhealthy series of changing or extended shifts with little rest.
“For too long, hourly workers at retail chains, fast food companies and other businesses have been squeezed by companies who employ unfair scheduling practices to maximize their profits at the expense of their workers,” said Jose Martinez Diaz, Workshift campaign director. The organization is asking people to sign its online petition for predictable scheduling.
In December, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Pier 1 Imports had agreed to end on-call shifts at stores nationally, posting schedules at least 10 to 14 days in advance.
His office had sent letters to 14 retailers questioning the practice and citing possible violations of New York’s requirement to pay hourly staff for at least four hours when they report for work.
Retailers that have agreed to stop included Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret. Other companies contacted say they weren’t using on-call scheduling.
In April, attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia sent letters to retailers with outlets in their states expressing concerns about on-call scheduling. Companies included American Eagle, Aeropostale, Payless, Disney, Coach, PacSun, Forever 21, Vans, Justice Just for Girls, BCBG Maxazria, Tilly’s Inc., David’s Tea, Zumiez, Uniqlo and Carter’s.
The states were California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island.
By MICHAEL VIRTANEN
Source
Education ‘Day of Action’ set Monday in 60-plus cities
The Washington Post - December 6, 2013, by Valerie Strauss - A coalition of education, labor, civic and civil rights...
The Washington Post - December 6, 2013, by Valerie Strauss - A coalition of education, labor, civic and civil rights organizations, led by the American Federation of Teachers, is staging a “National Day of Action” on Monday with dozens of coordinated events in cities across the country that are aimed at building a national movement to fight corporate-influenced school reform and offer alternative ways to improve public education. The AFT is buying $1.2 million in radio, print and online ads to get out the message.
Protests have been building this year in different parts of the country against the education reform movement that is dominated by the use of standardized test scores as the chief “accountability” metric and school “choice” that has led to the growing privatization of public schools. The AFT says that Monday will be the first time so many events — protest marches, news conferences, and town halls scheduled in 60 cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston and other Texas cities, Boise, Los Angeles and several locations in Florida — have been coordinated to send a message to policymakers that school reform should be focused not on closing schools, punishing teachers and deluging kids with tests but on providing teachers and students with the resources they need to teach and learn.
“Teachers, parents, students and community members are banding together to demand a new direction for public education,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “In some ways, this Day of Action is years in the making. Parents, students, teachers and community members have been coming together in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to call out what’s not working and create solutions that do. Text-fixation, austerity, privatization, division, competition are not working for our students – as we saw in the PISA results this week. Our schools need evidence-based, community-based solutions like early childhood education, wraparound services, professional autonomy and development, parent voices and project-based learning. That’s what this Day of Action is about. That’s what reclaiming the promise is about. These are our schools and they need our solutions.”
Dozens of organizations representing parents, educators, clergy, civil rights activists, and community groups are participating in the event, which is being sponsored nationally by these groups: Alliance for Educational Justice, American Federation of Teachers, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Dignity in Schools Coalition, Gamaliel Network, Journey for Justice Alliance, Leadership Center for the Common Good, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Education Association, National Opportunity to Learn Campaign and the Service Employees International Union.
In October, a number of organizations came together to come up with a strategy to build a national movement around shared principles, which you can read find here. Among the principles:
Public schools are public institutions.
Our school districts should be committed to providing all children with the opportunity to attend a quality public school in their community. The corporate model of school reform seeks to turn public schools over to private managers and encourages competition — as opposed to collaboration — between schools and teachers. These strategies take away the public’s right to have a voice in their schools, and inherently create winners and losers among both schools and students. Our most vulnerable children become collateral damage in these reforms. We will not accept that …
Our voices matter.
Those closest to the education process — teachers, administrators, school staff, students and their parents and communities — must have a voice in education policy and practice. Our schools and districts should be guided by them, not by corporate executives, entrepreneurs or philanthropists. Top-down interventions rarely address the real needs of schools or students …
Strong public schools create strong communities.
Schools are community institutions as well as centers of learning. While education alone cannot eradicate poverty, schools can help to coordinate the supports and services their students and families need to thrive. Corporate reform strategies ignore the challenges that students bring with them to school each day, and view schools as separate and autonomous from the communities in which they sit.
• “Community Schools” that provide supports and services for students and their families, such as basic healthcare and dental care, mentoring programs, English language classes and more, help strengthen whole communities as well as individual students …
Assessments should be used to improve instruction.
Assessments are critical tools to guide teachers in improving their lesson plans and framing their instruction to meet the needs of individual students. We support accountability. But standardized assessments are misused when teachers are fired, schools are closed and students are penalized based on a single set of scores. Excessive high-stakes testing takes away valuable instructional time and narrows the curriculum — with the greatest impact on our most vulnerable students.
Quality teaching must be delivered by committed, respected and supported educators.
Today’s corporate reformers have launched a war on teachers. We believe that teachers should be honored. Teaching is a career, not a temporary stop on the way to one. Our teachers should be well-trained and supported. They should be given the opportunity to assume leadership roles in their schools. Highly qualified teachers and school staff are our schools’ greatest assets. Let’s treat them that way …
Schools must be welcoming and respectful places for all.
Schools should be welcoming and inclusive. Students, parents, educators and community residents should feel that their cultures and contributions are respected and valued. Schools that push out the most vulnerable students and treat parents as intruders cannot succeed in creating a strong learning environment. Respectful schools are better places to both work and learn …
Our schools must be fully funded for success and equity.
More than 50 years ago, in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that African-American students were being denied their constitutional right to an integrated and equitable public education. We have not come far enough. Today our schools remain segregated and unequal. When we shortchange some students, we shortchange our nation as a whole. It is time to fund public schools for success and equity, for we are destined to hand off the future of our nation to all our young people.
• We must end the practice of funding our schools based on local property wealth. Only when we take responsibility for all our schools, and all our children, will schools succeed for all our society …
The events planned for Monday’s National Day of Action include a town hall in Washington, D.C., at which teachers and parents will develop a community-driven vision for public schools, starting at 6 p.m. at Eastern High School. In New York City, union, community and youth partners fighting to win universal full-day prekindergarten will host a rally marking the start of a joint labor-community campaign to support new education initiatives as part of a “new day for public education in New York City” under Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio.
In Houston, union and community partners will hold a news conference and rally outside the school board offices, where they will call for an end to an overreliance on tests and for fair teacher evaluations. In Chicago, organized parents, teachers and youths will hold a news conference at City Hall and a march to the headquarters of corporate agents such as Loop Capital to demand equitable funding and a public voice in education. In Boise, Idaho, parents, teachers and several community organizations will gather around the state Capitol to support school funding for Idaho public schools, which have some of the lowest state funding in the country.
Here’s how an action in Philadelphia is described on the event list:
A powerful contingent of community and youth groups, parents and labor unions will rally outside Gov. Tom Corbett’s Philadelphia office in coordination with partners in Pittsburgh, followed by a march to the corporate office of Loop Capital, an Illinois bank that has contributed to the privatizing of schools in Chicago and handed out bad interest loans that have crippled Philadelphia’s school system. The union-community alliance is fighting to restore statewide education funding, establish a new equitable education funding formula in 2014, and demand that Loop Capital pay back the bad loans.
The sponsors are the National Day of Action are planning more action in the spring.
Source
The Activists Who Helped Shut Down Trump’s CEO Councils
The Activists Who Helped Shut Down Trump’s CEO Councils
The CEOs who made up two White House advisory councils have fled like rats on a sinking ship. Their exodus — a dramatic...
The CEOs who made up two White House advisory councils have fled like rats on a sinking ship. Their exodus — a dramatic rebuke of Donald Trump — came within 48 hours of the incendiary August 15 press conference where the president praised some of the participants of last week’s white supremacist rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia.
But many of the CEOs on these councils had been under heavy pressure to disavow Trump’s agenda of hate and racism even before Charlottesville. That pressure came from grass-roots activists.
The Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change and several other immigrant and worker advocates had led that activist campaign, targeting the leaders of nine major corporations affiliated with the Trump administration. The campaign, working through a website called Corporate Backers of Hate, detailed the connections between the nine companies and the Trump administration and encouraged people to send emails to both the CEOs involved and members of their corporate boards.
Read the full article here.
Anti-Kavanaugh Groups Could Lose Non-Profit Status for Disrupting Hearings
Anti-Kavanaugh Groups Could Lose Non-Profit Status for Disrupting Hearings
Over 200 people were arrested during the four days of hearings, held Sept. 4 to 7, for disrupting the hearings. They...
Over 200 people were arrested during the four days of hearings, held Sept. 4 to 7, for disrupting the hearings. They were organized by Women’s March and Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA), both holding 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations, as well as Housing Works, which holds the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status reserved for charitable organizations.
Read the full article here.
Critics of Fed on Left and Right Prepare to Head to Jackson Hole
At least two groups—one on the right and one from the left—are expected to show up in some fashion to press the Fed to...
At least two groups—one on the right and one from the left—are expected to show up in some fashion to press the Fed to change its policies.
The conference, Aug. 27-29, will draw Fed officials, foreign central bankers, academic economists, reporters and others to talk about inflation and monetary policy in view of Grand Teton mountain range.
Just a short-drive away from the conference, the conservative American Principles Project has scheduled another conference to discuss how the group believes the Fed has failed to defend the dollar and promote prosperity. This gathering is titled, “Central Banks: The Problem or the Solution?”
Liberal-leaning activists from the Fed Up Coalition–representing unions, community activists and policy advocates–are also expected to gather in Jackson Hole, much as they did last year, to urge the Fed to change its structure to become more open and democratic.
The group opposes raising short-term interest rates from near zero now. The members want the Fed to maintain its ultra-easy policy to spur the economy and lift more of the nation’s workers out of troubled economic conditions. Members of the group have been meeting with Fed officials lately to voice their concerns.
The Kansas City Fed conference in Jackson Hole gives central bank officials a chance to socialize, hike, debate major issues facing the global economy and occasionally make major policy speeches. Attendance is strictly by invitation-only.
APP monetary-policy director Steven Lonegan said the aim of his event is to refocus the Fed on defending the dollar. “We are really challenging the Fed toe to toe on their own turf” by coming to Jackson Hole, he said.
The broader mission of the conference, Mr. Lonegan said, was to engage the nation’s political candidates to speak about the Fed. He said all known candidates have been asked to appear at the event, although none have so far accepted.
The APP event includes representatives from the Heritage Foundation, economists, Fox Business Network personality John Stossel, and a member of the British Parliament, according to the conference program.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Top Federal Reserve pick is controversial for Wells Fargo oversight and lack of diversity
Top Federal Reserve pick is controversial for Wells Fargo oversight and lack of diversity
Shawn Sebastian, field director of Fed Up, a campaign by labor, community and liberal activist groups that wants the...
Shawn Sebastian, field director of Fed Up, a campaign by labor, community and liberal activist groups that wants the Fed to enact pro-worker policies, said the choice of Williams damaged the Fed’s legitimacy and credibility.“Today, the Federal Reserve concluded another opaque and controversial Reserve Bank presidential selection process by ignoring the demands of the public and choosing yet another white man whose record on Wall Street regulation and full employment raises serious questions,” he said.
Read the full article here.
A New Law Is Letting Uber Drivers Unionize
A New Law Is Letting Uber Drivers Unionize
After ride-hailing companies descended on Seattle and began slashing drivers’ pay, the City Council stepped in with a...
After ride-hailing companies descended on Seattle and began slashing drivers’ pay, the City Council stepped in with a novel solution.
As the gig economy grows, companies like Airbnb and Uber are challenging cities by reshaping entire industries, often harming workers in the process. The challenge for progressive-minded legislators has been that existing regulations have often proven inadequate. Recently, however, local policymakers have begun proposing innovative ways to cope with the changes.
In Seattle, this battle has played out around ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft. When the companies were first legalized in the city in 2014, they presented themselves as a needed transport service that let drivers make money outside of the rigid regulations imposed on the taxi industry. Those claims lost credibility over the next year, however, as Uber drivers’ pay was slashed from $2 per mile to about $1.20 per mile. As cuts deepened, drivers found it increasingly hard to make an income—and many taxi firms found it almost impossible to compete.
We clearly needed a solution. Although collective bargaining had never been tried in the gig economy, a Seattle labor lawyer named Dmitri Iglitzin who’d been mulling the possibility for years approached me with a groundbreaking idea: Rather than tinkering around the edges with new regulations, why not let for-hire drivers unionize and set their own terms?
The premise was intriguing: If Uber and Lyft are going to claim that drivers are independent contractors, then let’s take them at their word and insist that drivers be allowed to negotiate the terms of their contract with these multibillion-dollar companies. While federal law preempts localities from encouraging unionization for private-sector employees, independent contractors are exempt. We believe this means that cities can allow drivers the right to collectively bargain to negotiate a better quality of life and a more reliable transportation service, in a way that regulations cannot.
The timing couldn’t have been better. In the year after Uber and Lyft first began operation, the narrative in Seattle had shifted: The companies, once seen as upstart innovators, came to be seen as major corporations intent on asserting power to the detriment of workers.
Uber and Lyft drivers had already set up an association of app-based drivers through the Teamsters, which represented taxi drivers in Seattle. United, they were starting to raise their voices. They organized rallies and protests highlighting their struggles and testified at City Hall about their limited pay, long hours, and arbitrary deactivation. Growing popular outrage turned up the heat.
Surprisingly, even as criticism rose, both Uber and Lyft did little to fight back. It wasn’t because the companies didn’t have the will or capacity. Only a year earlier, in 2014, they had put up a major fight after the Seattle City Council proposed placing a cap on for-hire vehicles.
This time though, it was clear that they could not win over public opinion. As driver earnings spiraled downward, it was hard for anybody to deny that there was a problem with the companies’ treatment of their workers—and that something needed to be done about it.
Rather than tinkering around the edges with new regulations, why not let for-hire drivers unionize and set their own terms?
In December 2015, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a law letting Uber and Lyft drivers bargain collectively and establish a process for binding arbitration. In coming months, we will finalize the rules and determine which union or association can represent drivers, who can then vote on whether they want to be represented or not. The US Chamber of Commerce is already suing, hoping that the courts determine that federal law preempts the Seattle law.
Even though contract negotiations are months away, the idea has already caught on in other cities and states. New York and Cincinnati are considering regulations that would expand collective bargaining rights to some gig-economy workers. And in California a similar law was introduced in the State Assembly (although it’s been withdrawn for the moment).
The on-demand economy is delivering important new benefits to consumers. But if we are going to build a more equitable society, we’ll need rules of the road to ensure workers are treated with dignity. Cities have a powerful role in realizing that vision.
By MIKE O'BRIEN
Source
Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Challenger Has a Chance
Source: ...
Source: The New Republic
During the presidential primary, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has managed the impressive feat of angering virtually every liberal in America. Bernie Sanders supporters think she displays a transparent biasfor Hillary Clinton. Party stalwarts, including Clinton fans, criticize the decision tohide primary debates on weekend nights, ceding hours of free media time to Republicans in the formative stages of the election. And in a recent interview with the New York Times Magazine, Wasserman Schultz insulted millennial women for being “complacent” about abortion rights. This is an incomplete list.
In two separate petitions, more than 94,000 people have demanded that Wasserman Schultz resign as DNC chair. But back in her district, in Hollywood, Florida, Timothy Canova has another idea: vote her out of office.
Last Thursday, Canova, a former aide to the late Sen. Paul Tsongas and a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law, jumped into the Democratic primary in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. It’s Wasserman Schultz’s first primary challenge ever, and with frustration running high against her, it’s almost certain to draw national attention. But Canova first became interested in challenging Wasserman Schultz not because of her actions as DNC chair, but because of her record.
“This is the most liberal county in all of Florida,” Canova said in an interview, referring to Broward County, where most of Wasserman Schultz’s district resides (a small portion is in northern Miami-Dade County). But she more closely associates with her significant support from corporate donors, Canova argued. He listed several of Wasserman Schultz’s votes, such as blocking the SEC and IRS from disclosing corporate political spending (which was part of last month’s omnibus spending bill),opposing a medical marijuana ballot measure that got 58 percent of the vote in Florida, preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from regulating discrimination in auto lending and opposing their rules cracking down on payday lending, and supporting “fast track” authority for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“I think anyone who voted for fast track should be primaried. I believe that ordinary citizens have to step up,” Canova said.
Canova espouses many of the populist themes that attract the left: fighting corporate power, defending organized labor, and reducing income inequality. But this is not just a Bernie Sanders Democrat. You have to go back further. Tim Canova is a Marriner Eccles Democrat.
Eccles chaired the Federal Reserve during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. And Canova believes the central bank should revisit Eccles’s unorthodox strategies to jump-start a broad-based economic recovery. “In the 1930s, the regional Fed banks made loans directly to the people,” Canova said. “Instead of purchasing $4 trillion in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, [the Fed] could buy short-term municipal bonds and drive the yield to zero for state and local governments. They could push money into infrastructure, making loans to state infrastructure banks.” Canova has even suggested that the government create currency outside of the central bank, breaking their monopoly on the money supply, as President Abraham Lincoln did with the “Greenback” in the 1860s.
During World War II, FDR directed Eccles’s Fed to finance American war debt at low rates, eventually producing a stimulus that helped to end the Great Depression. It was a time when the Fed was far more accountable to democratically elected institutions, one that Canova looks back upon fondly. “People like to talk about the Fed’s independence, that’s really a cover for the Fed’s capture,” he said. “They look out for elite groups in society, and the hell with everybody else.”
A growing faction of progressives are beginning to return to their roots, asking whether Fed policies truly support the public interest. The Fed Up campaign, with which Canova has consulted, seeks to pressure the Fed to adopt pro-worker policies. A surprise movement in Congress just cut a 100 year-old subsidy the Fed handed out to banks by $7 billion. Even mainstream figures like economist Larry Summerswonder whether the Fed’s hybrid public/private structure, which critics believe makes it beholden to financial interests, makes sense.
Progressive debates on central banking are not as advanced here as in Europe, where British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wants a “quantitative easing for people,” where the central bank injects money directly into the economy rather than filtering it through financial institutions. But Canova, who says his views were most influenced by an undergraduate economics professor who taught with one book—John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—bridges this gap. Twenty years ago this week, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Timesopposing the reappointment of Alan Greenspan as Fed chair because of his support for high real interest rates. If elected this fall, he would instantly become the strongest advocate in Congress for a people’s Fed.
While Debbie Wasserman Schultz has few known views on the Federal Reserve, Canova’s populism offers a strong counterweight to her corporate-tinged philosophy. And even before that contrast plays out, the hunger for any challenge to Wasserman Schultz is palpable.
“The money is coming in more rapidly than believable,” said Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America PAC, which raises money for progressive Democrats. Wasserman Schultz has been on Klein’s radar since she, as chair of the “Red to Blue” campaign for electing House Democrats, refused to campaign against three Republicans in Florida because of prior friendships and their joint support for the state sugar industry.
Klein sent a Blue America fundraising email shortly after Canova’s announcement, and raised $7,000 within 12 hours, and over $10,000 at last count. The intensity of support reached beyond the PAC’s traditional donor base. “Our average donation is $45, but in this case we’re getting $3, $5,” Klein said. “For people who our donors have never heard of, it can take three-four months to do that. It’s just because ofDebbie Wasserman Schultz.”
Similarly, Canova says he’s seeing tens of thousands of visits to his website andFacebook page, suggesting support beyond south Florida. However, he wants to localize rather than nationalize the race. The district, initially drawn with Wasserman Schultz’s input when she served in the Florida state Senate, is now more Hispanic and less reliable for a politician who Canova believes has lost touch with her constituents.
“You talk to people at the Broward County Democratic clubs, they say she takes us for granted,” Canova said. The political model for his campaign is David Brat, another academic who took on a party leader—then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor—and defeated him, on the grounds that Cantor ignored his district amid constant corporate fundraising.
If there’s one thing Wasserman Schultz can do, it’s raise money—that’s why she chairs the party. She will have a big cash advantage and the power of incumbency. But Canova thinks he can outmatch her by riding the populist tide. “There’s a tendency to get so down about the system, but this is an interesting moment we’re living in,” Canova said. “This is a grassroots movement. We’re tapping in without even trying yet.”
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