'Kill the Bill' Sit-Ins Target Senators to Protest Health Bill
Outside the office of U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in Philadelphia Tuesday, a group of activists chanted, “Don't cut...
Outside the office of U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in Philadelphia Tuesday, a group of activists chanted, “Don't cut Medicaid, save our liberty," in a day of actions outside congressional offices in 39 states around the United States.
The national grassroots organization ADAPT of disability rights activists led the sit-in at the Republican's office.
Read the full article here.
Adovates for Reading ID cards vow to continue their efforts
Despite collective agreement by city officials, activists say the fight for creating a Reading city ID is nowhere near...
Despite collective agreement by city officials, activists say the fight for creating a Reading city ID is nowhere near over.
Make The Road Pennsylvania, a community action group leading the effort for municipal IDs, filled its Reading headquarters Thursday evening with people resolved to continue pushing for the initiative.
Reading City Council members and Mayor Wally Scott said Monday night that they would not pursue an ordinance setting up a program.
Make The Road submitted a draft ordinance for the creation of a city ID in May.
The IDs would help make everyday life easier for the elderly, undocumented immigrants, some Puerto Ricans and others who face hurdles getting ID, Make The Road says.
City officials cited several concerns about the draft ordinance, including the legality and costs of a program.
Make The Road organizers countered some of those reasons Thursday by naming 13 municipalities around the country that have already approved local IDs.
They also presented their own cost-analysis of the program which, under the group's estimates of an ID with a $30 price tag, would bring in about $130,000 for the city.
Gabriela Raful, president of the Berks County Bar Association Minority Law Committee, and Bernardo Carbajal and Abraham Cepeda, attorneys and Reading School Board members, also spoke with ID supporters.
The local bar association's board of directors endorsed the creation of a city ID Tuesday, but did not specifically endorse Make The Road's draft ordinance.
Though activists are determined, City Council President Jeffrey S. Waltman Sr. said Thursday afternoon that he doesn't think council will revisit the idea anytime soon.
"The bottom line is I don't foresee City Council taking the issue up in the near future," he said. "It deals with federal issues and with our city and our resources, we have to be focused on getting out of Act 47."
Waltman also said the draft ordinance would have to be significantly altered or completely rewritten for council to even remotely consider it.
At the council's meeting Monday, leaders expressed opposition to a stipulation in the ordinance that states the city would not be able to share cardholder information with federal authorities, such as Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
Scott did not return calls requesting comment Thursday, but expressed strong opposition at the council meeting to aspects in the draft ordinance, including the prohibition on information-sharing.
He had also questioned the constitutionality of the draft ordinance, an argument that Make The Road countered Thursday.
The Center For Popular Democracy, a social issues advocacy group based in Washington, helped craft the ordinance.
Emily Tucker, a senior staff attorney specializing in immigration law, said Thursday that in the other cities where similar legislation was introduced and passed, such as New York City and Newark, N.J., there had been no concerns from local officials about limits on information sharing.
Waltman said that the decision to not pursue the IDs is not to slight city residents, but that creating a municipal ID is an effort that the city cannot presently handle or is responsible to undertake.
Cepeda said city officials should not ignore an issue that he feels would be very beneficial to the Latino community.
"It shows that they either have an issue with the people they represent or they are clueless," Cepeda said.
By ANTHONY OROZCO
Source
Federal Reserve keeps key interest rate at zero, citing global turmoil
The Federal Reserve on Thursday voted to maintain its unprecedented support for the U.S. recovery, leaving a key...
The Federal Reserve on Thursday voted to maintain its unprecedented support for the U.S. recovery, leaving a key interest rate unchanged amid gathering clouds over the global economy.
In an official statement, the nation’s central bank said the job market is recovering and hiring is “solid.” But it expressed concern that inflation remains too low and exports have weakened. Meanwhile, the risk is building that turmoil overseas will drag down growth in America.
"Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term," the central bank's official statement read.
The decision to keep the Fed’s benchmark interest rate at zero amounts to a recognition that the robust recovery central bank officials had hoped for when they launched into an uncharted era of easy money during the throes of the 2008 financial crisis has yet to materialize. The Fed has repeatedly pushed back the goal line as the economy failed to deliver. Seven years after the central bank cut its target rate to zero, Fed officials believe the recovery is not yet ready to stand on its own.
At the press conference that followed the rate announcement Thursday afternoon, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that a rate hike was still likely by the end of the year. But she reiterated that though “domestic developments have been strong, we want to see continued improvement in the labor market," and the central bank would like "to bolster our confidence that inflation will move toward" the Fed’s 2 percent target before a rate hike.
“We have very large drags from energy prices and import prices," Yellen said, adding that the central bank views those as transitory. As the labor market heals, "we will see further upward pressure on inflation," she said. “We expect to achieve our 2 percent goal over the medium term.”
Markets grew volatile immediately after news of the rate hold, going flat by the end of Yellen's press conference. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed down 0.4 percent and the Standard & Poor’s index closed down about 0.3 percent on Thursday.
Documents released by the Fed show most of the Fed's top brass now anticipate increasing rates only once this year, instead of twice. A growing minority think the central bank should not raise its benchmark rate this year at all, and one suggested it should stimulate the economy even more by taking the rate negative.
Three officials are advocating a 2016 liftoff, while one person pinned 2017 as the date -- longer than anyone has suggested so far.
“Even though the summer stresses in financial markets have abated, the impact of the intense market volatility on domestic economic activity is yet to fully play out,” Millan Mulraine, deputy chief U.S. macro strategist at TD Securities, wrote in a research note.
The Fed lowers its target rate when it wants to stimulate the economy by encouraging businesses and consumers to spend. It hikes when the economy begins to grow too quickly and inflation picks up, making saving money more attractive.
Timing, however, is crucial. If the Fed moves too soon, it risks undercutting the recovery’s momentum. Waiting too long could stock dangerous financial bubbles.
Yellen made reference to that risk at the press conference Thursday when asked whether the Fed should be moving sooner rather than later to raise the rates. "I don't think it's good policy to then have to slam on the brakes," she said.
The Fed modestly upgraded Thursday its expectation for economic growth this year from 1.9 percent to 2.1 percent, but the forecast is still lower than the robust expansion enjoyed a decade ago. The jobless rate has already fallen below the central bank's June estimate of 5.3 percent. The Fed adjusted its forecast to 5 percent. It also nudged up its estimate of core inflation from 1.3 percent to 1.4 percent.
In May, Yellen said speech that she expected the economy would be strong enough to raise the target rate by the end of the year. Other top Fed officials had signaled the long-awaited move could come during its meeting this month.
But that was before the jaw-dropping swings in financial markets over the past few weeks, including a 1,000-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average. Evidence is mounting that China’s breakneck economic growth is fizzling out faster than previously thought.
In the meantime, the strong U.S. dollar and low oil prices are weighing on inflation, which has run below the Fed’s target of 2 percent for years. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Nobel-laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers have all called on the central bank to hold off on a rate hike, at least for now.
“Now is the time for the Fed to do what is often hardest for policymakers,” Summers wrote in The Washington Post recently. “Stand still.”
The calls for delay are also coming from a populist campaign known as Fed Up, which protested outside of the central bank’s buildings Thursday. Several lawmakers joined the demonstration, including Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who is sponsoring a bill that would require the Fed to target a 4 percent unemployment rate.
Not everyone agrees the Fed should wait, however. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker dissented from the central bank’s vote on Thursday. In aspeech earlier this month, he pointed to strong consumer spending, the sharp decline in unemployment and a pickup in inflation measured since the beginning of the year as reasons a rate hike is warranted.
“I am not arguing that the economy is perfect, but nor is it on the ropes, requiring zero interest rates to get it back into the ring,” he said. “It’s time to align our monetary policy with the significant progress we have made.”
In its official statement, the Fed attempted to assure investors and the public that after the first rate hike, it expects to make subsequent hikes only gradually. Though most officials predicted the Fed would raise its target rate several times next year, they also forecast it would remain below its historic norm of about 4 percent for several years. Fed documents released Thursday show the long-run median estimate at just 3.5 percent.
Each hike will also likely be small, analysts expect just one quarter of one percent. That would allow the central bank to assess how an economy grown accustomed to easy money operates under a new regime.
“One should never discount the importance of an interest rate change by a central bank merely because it looks small,” said Scott Sumner, an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Some pretty big avalanches have started from a small pebble being dislodged.”
Source: Washington Post
'I was demanding a connection': Ana Maria Archila reflects on confronting Jeff Flake
'I was demanding a connection': Ana Maria Archila reflects on confronting Jeff Flake
Ana Maria Archila had never told her father that she was sexually abused as a child. But after she confronted a U.S....
Ana Maria Archila had never told her father that she was sexually abused as a child.
But after she confronted a U.S. senator about President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and the video started going viral, she thought it was time to share her story.
“I always carried the fear that my parents would feel that they had failed in taking care of me if I told them,” Archila said Friday night in a phone interview with The Washington Post.
Read the full article here.
Plan aimed at cutting ties between pension fund and companies profiting from Trump's immigration stance
Plan aimed at cutting ties between pension fund and companies profiting from Trump's immigration stance
A state lawmaker from Queens announced plans Thursday to file legislation aimed at cutting ties between the New York...
A state lawmaker from Queens announced plans Thursday to file legislation aimed at cutting ties between the New York pension fund and companies that stand to profit financially from President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Assemb. Francisco Moya (D-Queens), speaking at a rally in midtown Manhattan with dozens of immigration and affordable housing activists, said he would soon introduce a bill to require the state to divest its more than $178 billion pension fund from corporations that back Trump’s agenda — including banks that finance immigration detention centers, and contractors involved with the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Read the full article here.
‘Clopening’ time: Seattle on the clock for secure scheduling
‘Clopening’ time: Seattle on the clock for secure scheduling
The subject has been bubbling up in Seattle public discourse for around six months now. Last fall, local progressive...
The subject has been bubbling up in Seattle public discourse for around six months now. Last fall, local progressive labor advocacy organization Working Washington and Starbucks baristas protested their inconsistent and unpredictable work schedules, which labor advocates say act as barriers for low-income workers to scheduling life necessities like college classes or childcare or budgeting living expenses. A few months later, in his 2016 state of the city speech, Mayor Ed Murray highlighted secure scheduling as a key low-wage worker equity issue and said his office would work with the City Council to address it.
“We know that having a secure schedule of hours helps workers plan their budget, plan for childcare, enroll in school or take a second job – and we know schedule predictability will most help low-wage hourly workers,” Murray said in his speech.
SECURE SCHEDULING
Here are a couple chances to get involved or learn more: Thursday night, “join a live tele-town hall over the phone and over the internet about the fight for secure scheduling in Seattle. When: 6:00 pm, Thursday, May 26, 2016. Where: You can listen in live over the phone by calling 855-756-7520 Ext. 32020#, or join live online athttp://workingwa.org/ourtimecounts/townhall.” On Friday, the committee will hear from Lonnie Goldan, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied the issue, on her findings and national data. Tune in to Seattle Channel at 9:30AM to watch. On June 16th,Working Washington is holding a “Secure Scheduling Story Slam.”
With a $15 minimum wage already under Seattle’s belt, City Hall along with labor and business interests have turned their attention to the next big issue affecting the city’s proletariat and their bosses: secure scheduling.
“The response has moved pretty quickly from when workers first spoke out about it, and that’s heartening. There’s been a tremendous amount of support expressed by both the council and the mayor’s office on the need to move forward and do something to address secure scheduling,” said Sage Wilson, a spokesperson for Working Washington. “This is a really urgent issue for workers week to week.”
“Clopenings” — when a worker works a late-night closing shift and is also directed to work a early-morning opening shift with only a few hours in between
On March 8th, the mayor’s office convened a group of stakeholders of both labor and employers representing—including representatives from the likes of Working Washington, the Washington Restaurant Association, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and unions like SEIU 775 and UFCW Local 21—who have been meeting separately and then “reporting out” regularly to the the city council’s committee on Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts (of which Herbold is the chair and District 3’s own Kshama Sawant is a committee member) on their discussions to help inform the Council. The mayor’s office says these stakeholders will be submitting formal recommendations to the council at some unidentified date.
The council committee has also been bringing in experts on the issue and model secure scheduling ordinances. Last week, the committee heard from representatives from the Center for Center for Popular Democracy (CPD)—a non-profit left advocacy group—on their model secure scheduling policy and the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, who enacted their own scheduling ordinance specifically for retail workers several years ago.
The Council and the mayor’s office also commissioned a study from researchers at the University of Washington Evan’s School of Public Policy and Governance on the state of irregular scheduling in Seattle, including focus groups and a employer/manager survey of scheduling practices. The study is slated to come back on July 4th.
The plan, according to staffers in Herbold’s office, is to keep meeting with the stakeholders, receiving input from experts and looking at available data into early June, after which Herbold’s office will start drafting the actual policy.
The claims of Working Washington and picketing Starbucks baristas have merit. Researchers in addition to advocates have documented the impacts of unpredictable scheduling on workers (especially employees receiving hourly compensation), namely the association between irregular schedules and work/family conflicts (like picking up kids from school or childcare), the inability to schedule and maintain routines (e.g college classes or other jobs), and general increased worker stress from having to be on-call all the time. These types of jobs are concentrated in the retail, food service, hospitality, and healthcare industries.
Last year’s report from the Restaurant Opportunity Center on the state of the restaurant industry in Seattle showed that 26% of local restaurant workers receive their schedules less than a week in advance and 30% see schedule changes every two weeks. And women and people of color (who are heavily represented in low-wage food industry jobs) are disproportionately impacted by erratic scheduling.
“The issues that we’ve heard most about from workers are about two weeks advance notice of schedules”
The utilization of new scheduling software by employers and managers has been identified as a major cause of irregular scheduling. Starbucks has come under fire in recent years for its scheduling policies, specifically its utilization of scheduling software designed to maximize company efficiency by predicting store traffic and corresponding required staffing levels when and where. Advocates say the software incentivizes managers to under-staff stores, keeps employee hours at part time levels (which also allows employers to avoid giving full-time employee benefits and overtime), and quickly patch together weekly schedules from a large pool of part-time employees, often with little advance notice for the employee.
One of the often cited extreme results of digitized, maximum-efficiency scheduling is “clopenings,” when a worker works a late-night closing shift and is also directed to work a early-morning opening shift with only a few hours in between.
Advocates want to see these issues addressed in any future policy in Seattle.
“The issues that we’ve heard most about from workers are about two weeks advance notice of schedules,” said Wilson of Working Washington. “There’s access to hours. before companies hire more and more extremely part time workers, they should give more hours to employees they already have. And then there’s the eliminating ‘clopening shifts’ and the right to rest. You should have the ability to rest at least eleven hours between shifts.”
What the final ordinance will look like is still unclear, though based on the arch of the committee and stakeholder discussions, we know what they’re considering. It’s a balancing act between the real need to crack down on scheduling policies that leave employees at the mercy of their employer and employer’s legitimate need for scheduling flexibility, such as when a restaurant gets slammed during a understaffed dinner rush or someone calls in sick.
There is a potential ways to find that middle ground, as was illustrated at last Tuesday’s committee meeting and presentations on CPD’s model ordinance and San Francisco’s own retail worker secure scheduling ordinance. Both the CPD and San Francisco model use a “predictability pay” mandate as an incentive for employers to give workers adequate notice, where employers would compensate a worker for an hour’s worth of wages if they fail to provide a schedule two weeks or more in advance, and then dialing it up for schedule changes or notices that occur within 24 hours by raising the mandated compensation to two to four hours of pay. The San Francisco ordinance does provide exceptions for employee initiated shift swaps, like when an employer needs another worker to cover the shift of an employee who is out sic). Both models also require that employers must make hours available to veteran employees before hiring more part-time employees, a requirement aimed at combating the proliferation of part-time employee labor.
“The policy is designed to both preserve the flexibility that workers and employers need in making work schedules while also promoting stability for hourly workers,” Rachel Deutsch of the CPD told the Council.
District 3’s Kshama Sawant told CHS that she wants to see a policy that affects all businesses in Seattle, not just big retail and foodservice businesses. San Francisco’s ordinance is structured to only affect big box retailers.
“While it’s true that the issue is experienced more by workers in the service industry and retail industry, like Starbucks, the best way to ensure secure scheduling for all workers is to ensure a citywide policy for all businesses across Seattle,” Sawant said.
Naturally, the issue pits the local labor and employer camps duking it out during Seattle’s $15 minimum wage debate against each other yet again. However the tone and dynamic of the debate in this round, is a little different, along with the format. While the Seattle Chamber of Commerce has indicated that it is certainly uncomfortable with the secure scheduling initiative and initial stakeholder discussions with council committee back in March resulted in the employer representatives claiming that scheduling wasn’t really a problem, loud pushback from the business community has been noticeably lacking in recent weeks.
“It was the early committee meetings that employers were spending time and energy to try and deny that scheduling was a problem,” said Wilson. “One the things that has happened through the stakeholder process is that employers have stopped trying to make that case. They’re largely in agreement [with labor] that people should have predictable schedules.”
Sierra Hansen, head of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, said that the issue is barely on the radar of the chamber’s board and that she hasn’t heard anything about it from member businesses.
“I would prefer we draft an ordinance and then debate it rather than closed room discussions and that the public got involved”
Wilson with Working Washington attributes the change in the dynamic of the stakeholder group conversations to the political climate of the city, the unity between the executive and the council to push the issue, and previous local labor victories, like $15 and paid sick and safe leave.
“It does seem to me to be both a product of the process as well as a strong consensus on Council and the mayor to do something on this,” said Wilson. “[And] the mood of the city is pretty clear: people want workers to have basic rights.”
Sawant, who was voted into office on her fiery platform of rent control, a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage, and a fundamental change in labor and equity in the city, said that the stakeholder workgroup process is “not an approach that I would choose.”
“I would prefer we draft an ordinance and then debate it rather than closed room discussions and that the public got involved,” said Sawant. “That’s how we won $15 dollar an hour, that’s how we won the SHA rent hikes. A lot of historic things have happened, and that’s because of the approach of my office.”
“What was different around $15 was that we were very clear. If you were for $15 you were with working people and had to go up against big business and be courageous about that,” Sawant said. “I know that there is this narrative from the mayor and big business and Tom Douglas that we won 15 because we all came together and agreed to raise the minimum wage. That’s absolutely untrue. The reason we won 15 is because we had a mass movement in Seattle.”
by Josh Kelety
Source
The Team That Helped Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Its Next Mission: Lifting Kerri Harris Over Sen. Tom Carper
The Team That Helped Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Its Next Mission: Lifting Kerri Harris Over Sen. Tom Carper
That volunteering eventually morphed into becoming a full-time community organizer, working both for Achievement...
That volunteering eventually morphed into becoming a full-time community organizer, working both for Achievement Matters, which aims to close the educational achievement gap, and with the Center for Popular Democracy. The tools she’s picked up as an organizer are now being put to work in her Senate race.
Read the full article here.
Youth of Color Demand Racial Justice in Gun Reform During #NationalSchoolWalkout
Youth of Color Demand Racial Justice in Gun Reform During #NationalSchoolWalkout
In the days leading up to today’s protest, young people of color released a petition that calls for gun reform and...
In the days leading up to today’s protest, young people of color released a petition that calls for gun reform and school safety measures that center racial justice. In the petition, which was signed by several social justice organizations including Advancement Project, American Federation of Teachers and Center for Popular Democracy...
Read the full article here.
Should New Orleans Allow Undocumented Immigrants to Get City-issued ID Cards?
The Times-Picayune - December 16, 2014, by Robert McClendon - One of the centerpieces of New Orleans Councilwoman...
The Times-Picayune - December 16, 2014, by Robert McClendon - One of the centerpieces of New Orleans Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell's pro-immigrant policy package is a proposed municipal identification card program.
Let us know what you think of the idea by taking the poll below and sharing your views in the comment section.
ID cards are used in so many bureaucratic and commercial interactions that they are easy to take for granted. They are often required during interactions with police, when registering children for school and when opening open bank accounts.
Undocumented immigrants, however, are frequently unable to obtain what has become the most common form of government issued identification: the drivers license.
Louisiana, like many states, has strict eligibility rules for drivers licenses, requiring applicants to prove that they are either American citizens or in the country legally.
Without a state-issued ID, undocumented immigrants are frequently unable to accomplish basic tasks, according to advocacy groups. And, with Congress seemingly hopelessly deadlocked on a reform that would normalize the status of immigrants in the country illegally, that situation is unlikely to change any time soon.
Thus, groups like the center for popular democracy, a left-wing advocacy group, are pushing for cities to take matters into their own hands by creating municipal identification cards that do not require applicants to prove they are in the country legally.
The idea is still relatively new. The first community thought to have created a city-ID program is New Haven, Connecticut, which launched its program in 2007. It's unclear how many cities nationwide have followed suit.
A white paper issued by the Center for Popular Democracy says that other cities with local ID programs include: San Francisco; New York; Richmond, California; Oakland, California; Los Angeles; Washington DC and several municipalities in New Jersey.
Critics of such programs say they undermine security by making it easier to obtain government identification and some have said it will make it easier for non-citizens to vote.
Anti-immigrant hardliners have said they like the strict state laws in place precisely because they make life more difficult for immigrants. The harder life is for immigrants, the more likely they are to "self deport," the activists say.
A city-issued ID program is among many policy changes that Cantrell says she will propose in a non-binding resolution early next year.
Source
Martin Luther King, institutions and power
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and...
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of the new book 'The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity.'
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gestures during a speech at a Chicago Freedom Movement rally at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 10, 1966. (Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images)
When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, he was in Memphis, supporting striking sanitation workers. By that time in his crusade for racial justice, he had elevated full employment to a key plank in his platform. The full name of the March on Washington was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A common placard held up that day read, “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom,” a powerful economic equation indeed.
In my experience, too few people remember this aspect of King’s movement, instead emphasizing his stirring spiritual commitment to racial inclusion. But King was of course thoroughly versed in the reality of the institutional barriers blocking blacks and his unique genius was to combine deep spiritual awareness with an equally deep understanding of the role of power in economic outcomes. That’s one reason he was in Memphis, supporting the union.
In 1967, King called for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.” He particularly understood the power, for better or worse, of American institutions, most notably of course, the institution of racism, which so successfully blocked African Americans from decent homes, jobs, schools and opportunities.
But countervailing institutions existed within his vision as well, including the church and the union, and, if it could be forced to live up to its promise, the government. Even the institutions of the consumer economy and the job market could, with the right force and strategy, including boycotts that flexed black consumer muscle and equal opportunity laws, be nudged in the direction of racial justice.
To some readers, this “institutional” framework may be confusing. What do I mean by referencing the consumer or job markets or racism or unions, as “institutions”? This certainly doesn’t square with the classic economic explanation of how the economy works: profit-maximizing individuals achieving optimal social welfare by each individual pursuing their goals.
The institutional framework, with its emphasis on historical, legal and cultural practices (norms) embedded in economic systems, stands in stark contrast to the market forces framework. Surely no one could question whether the legal system or the housing market black people faced in King’s time, not to mention our own, promoted objective, blind justice. Discrimination in schools, the economy, and almost every other walk of life could not and cannot possibly be viewed as a fair or merit-based system.
Honoring King’s vision and legacy thus requires not simply remembering his most well-known dream: a racially inclusive society very different from the one that existed in his, or sadly, our own time. It requires recognizing the need to redistribute the power from the oppressive, exclusionary institutions, many of the same ones — housing, schools, criminal justice, the economy — he fought for until the day he was taken from us.
What does honoring that vision mean today?
Although I certainly don’t advocate giving up on President-elect Donald Trump’s administration before it has started, all signs suggest that it and the Republican-led Congress will hurt, not help, the economically less advantaged. Republican budgets threaten to undermine the safety net, Trump’s proposed tax policy squanders fiscal resources on tax cuts for the rich, undermining opportunities for those stuck in places without adequate educational or employment opportunities. There’s talk among Republicans of trying to get more states to pass “right to work” laws that undermine unions and cut workers’ pay. Listening to Ben Carson’s hearing for secretary of housing and urban development quickly disabuses one of hope that he’ll tackle the legacy of segregated housing that remains a serious problem. As far as reforming the institutionalized racism the remains embedded in our criminal justice and policing systems, again, it’s awfully hard to be hopeful.
There are, however, many levels of institutional norms, laws and practices. The Fight for Fifteen has been immensely successful in raising minimum wages at the state and sub-state levels. I can’t prove this, but I’d bet that without Black Lives Matter, there would be no “blistering report” from the Justice Department on the racial practices of the Chicago Police Department. The activist group “Fed Up” has had great success elevating the issue of economic justice as regards Federal Reserve policy, a policy area that even liberal presidents have avoided getting into.
As I recently wrote regarding “ban the box,” a policy designed to give job-seekers with criminal records a fairer shot at employment:
Nineteen states and over 100 cities and counties have already taken similar action for government employees, and seven states (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island) plus Washington, DC and 26 cities and counties have extended ban the box policies to cover private employers. Some private businesses, including Walmart, Koch Industries, Target, Starbucks, Home Depot, and Bed, Bath & Beyond, have also adopted these policies on their own.
This last part about the private businesses is instructive. The Selma bus boycott was, of course, in no small part an economic action: Black people would not pay for discrimination. Regarding full employment, King realized that at high levels of unemployment, it’s costless to discriminate against a significant swath of potential workers. But when the job market tightens up, discriminating against a needed worker means leaving profit on the table.
Especially in the age of Trump, when so many Americans feel as if representative democracy is seriously on the ropes, it seems a no-brainer to channel King and once again tap the power of boycotts and leaning on businesses to do the right thing. It makes no sense at all to cede this field to Trump as he nonsensically claims (and gets) credit for job creation that already was happening.
My intuition is that many businesses, as in the ban-the-box example, would be willing to help push back on the institutional injustices that persist. Higher and more equal pay scales, implementation of the updated, higher overtime threshold that was wrongly blocked by a Texas judge (in fact, many businesses, to their credit, have gone ahead with this change), not blocking collective bargaining if their workers want to exercise that right, flexible scheduling policies that help parents balance work and family — there’s no reason for progressives not to fight for these ideas at the sub-national level and the private sector.
Although these sub-national fights are more likely where the action is for the next few years, meaningful action is developing at the national level as well. King would have easily recognized the Trump phenomenon as the work of exclusive institutions once again grabbing the power and would have organized accordingly and effectively. As we speak, many of us are trying to block the repeal of health-care reform in this spirit. The Indivisible Movement and the Women’s March would also have been highly familiar to Dr. King.
But on whatever level or in whatever sector the fight takes place, as we celebrate King’s indelible contributions, let us recall his understanding of power, the institutions that power supported and his admonitions to us not to rest until much more of that power lies in the hands of those who still command far too little of it.
By Jared Bernstein
Source
20 hours ago
3 days ago