CPD IN THE NEWS

Few people outside the Beltway and San Antonio, where he was mayor, have ever heard of Julián Castro, the centrist Democrat Clinton picked as her running mate over a year ago. (It's supposed to be a surprise so… shhhhhhhhh.) Anyway, once she settled on Castro she asked him to get a tutor and learn to speak passable español– he already had one, a Jewish lady from Laredo– and she told Obama to give him some cabinet position to raise his stature. (His twin brother, Joaquín, is a New Dem congressman and vigorous Hillary surrogate.) They figured he wouldn't be able to screw anything up if they made him Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He's been told to stop telling reporters that “Joaquín and I got into Stanford because of affirmative action. I scored 1210 on my SATs, which was lower than the median matriculating student. But I did fine in college and in law school. So did Joaquín. I’m a strong supporter of affirmative action because I’ve seen it work in my own life.” His appeal to fellow Hispanic voters may be limited by his own assimilation. He's the son of Rosie Castro, an inspiring activist who helped found La Raza but he supports “free” trade, including NAFTA, advocates an energy policy that includes fossil fuels, believes in balanced budgets and refers to David Souter as his ideal Supreme Court justice. Hillary's kind of Democrat.

Castro “has all the assets to become the next favorite son,” is how John A. Garcia, a political-science professor at the University of Arizona, puts it. “He has an elite education, which has given him a national network, and a quiet, serious public persona that appeals to a lot of younger Hispanic voters,” Garcia says. “People look at him and say, ‘Finally, we have somebody who won’t screw up.’ Of course, he’s still young, and he might be too good to be true, but if I were betting on the next national Hispanic political leader, I’d bet on Julián.”

In 1984, Mexican-American political activists were thrilled when Walter Mondale publicly considered Cisneros for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. But second place no longer seems such a great prize. “In 1984, there were 20 million Hispanics in America,” according to the political activist Antonio Gonzalez, who heads the William C. Velasquez Institute. “Today, we are 50 million, and more and more people are registering to vote.” Who they will vote for and what issues will cement their party loyalty is one of the great questions of American politics. This year Democrats hope to exploit the ire among Hispanics over the new G.O.P.-inspired law in Arizona that empowers local police forces to crack down on illegal immigrants.

This week, progressive groups shined a different kind of light on Julian-boy-wonder than he's been used to. I got this from Rootstrikers, for example, yesterday:

Imagine if the federal government was helping big bankers on Wall Street profit off the foreclosure crisis they helped create.

Sadly, you don’t have to imagine.

Under Secretary Julian Castro, the federal housing department has operated an egregious Wall Street giveaway.

The program is supposed to stabilize communities by transferring overdue mortgage loans to institutions that will help homeowners avoid foreclosure– instead, 98% of recent mortgage sales have gone straight to Wall Street, and at a HUGE discount.

Today, we’re launching a major campaign at DontSellOurHomesToWallStreet.org with partners representing some of the hardest hit communities. We’re demanding that Secretary Castro stops selling our communities to Wall Street and focuses on helping people stay in their homes.

Housing advocates have been advocating for fixes to this “Distressed Assets Stabilization Program” for years.

Big names have spoken up too– last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out the department for “lining up with the Wall Street speculators.”

Under pressure, last April Secretary Castro’s Department of Housing and Urban Development promised to reform the program and help homeowners avoid foreclosure by selling more overdue mortgage loans to nonprofit community organizations rather than Wall Street banks.

Those were empty promises. The two most recent sales under Secretary Castro have sent 98% of the mortgages straight to Wall Street– and at rock-bottom prices.

A measly 1% got sold to nonprofit community organizations, which can better work with homeowners to figure out a plan to keep them in their homes.

Just last week, Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Raul Grijalva sent a letter to Secretary Castro calling for fundamental reforms of HUD’s mortgage sales.

Today, we’re joining that effort alongside a national coalition of 14 housing advocacy, civil rights, and progressive groups, from Presente.org to the Working Families Party to MoveOn.org.

And here’s another reason our pressure is likely to work:

Julian Castro is widely rumored to be a likely vice-presidential nominee. But becoming vice president will be tough if he doesn’t first prove he’s willing to take on Wall Street, and not just pad their profit margins.

Politico's Edward-Issac Dovere asserted yesterday that the dozen groups stirring the pot on Castro were sending a message to Hillary. “They’re just as open with their political aims,” he wrote: “to publicly discredit Castro as a progressive, latching onto the mortgage issue to seed enough suspicion to keep him off Clinton’s shortlist.

“It’s a situation where the Clinton campaign wants Castro to be a major asset to her chances of winning the White House, and unless he changes his position related to foreclosures and loans, he’ll be a toxic asset to the Clinton campaign,” said Matt Nelson, the managing director for Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latino organizing group that focuses on social justice.

“All year, we’ve seen the candidates tripping over themselves to show how tough they’ll be on Wall Street,” said Kurt Walters, the campaign manager for Root Strikers, a 501(c4) group of Demand Progress and its 2 million affiliated activists, who is planning to deliver the petitions to Castro’s office when they’re ready. “Then to turn around and take a step backwards on that exact question, and put someone who has been doing the exact opposite– I think it would be tough for a lot of people who care about Wall Street accountability to get excited about that pick.”

…“If Secretary Castro fails to create significant momentum in terms of stopping the sale of mortgages to Wall Street, then I do think it disqualifies him. But there’s time left on the clock,” said Jonathan Westin, the director of New York Communities for Change, which was formed out of the remains of the community activist group ACORN. “I think a lot of the progressive movement would not be in support of a Castro ticket if he fails to make traction here.”

…Maurice Weeks, an Atlanta-based organizer who works on housing justice in communities of color for the Center for Popular Democracy/CPD Action, said that Castro’s lack of action at HUD is breeding more gentrification and suffering in a way that should make blacks and Latinos pay attention.

…[Color of Change's Brandi] Collins said this complaint about Castro’s leadership is reflective of a whole range of issues her organization has had with what members say is the secretary’s closeness to Wall Street and lack of attention to black and brown communities.

“If he’s not showing up for our communities while the cameras aren’t there, we don’t know that he’ll show up when he’s on his way to the White House,” Collins said.

According to Julia Gordon, formerly at the Center for American Progress and currently an executive vice president at the National Community Stabilization Trust, the coalition may have a point– if only because it is taking advantage of opaque accounting at HUD. Gordon said she’s met often with HUD about these issues but hasn’t seen the kind of progress she’d like or evidence that the program matches the claims that officials make.

“We know it’s been good for investors. According to HUD, it’s been good for the fund, although the level of detail that they release to account for it is minimal. We really don’t know how good it’s been for the homeowners, and that’s where this wave of protests is coming from,” Gordon said… “Both HUD and [the Federal Housing Finance Agency] have let down communities by not focusing on what they want the buyer to do with these,” Gordon said, arguing that they’ve been focused instead on offloading the debt. “They’re just like, ‘Get it away from me.’”

The idea that Castro would be the first Latino on a national ticket means something, Nelson said, though he argued that this only adds to the burden for the secretary to show leadership on the mortgage issue in the way progressives want at this moment of added attention to their concerns.

Nelson said that at Presente, they think of it like a parable– it doesn’t make it any better to be hurt if the hurt is coming from one of their own.

There are two trees in a forest, Nelson said, and they see an ax coming to chop them down. “Don’t worry,” says one tree to the other, “the handle’s one of us.”

“Basically,” Nelson said, “we’re fighting to make sure Castro isn’t the handle.”

I'd guess Elizabeth Warren would be Bernie's first choice and that, given his age, she'd be the nominee for president in 2020. What a one-two punch that would be! Imagine a first woman president that is going to make voters think, we should get more like that!

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” — Sinclair Lewis

Source

Like many new organizations, Local Progress sprang from the ashes of a crisis.

In 2012, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, who represents Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, and Nick Licata, then Seattle council chair, had a phone call about how to deal with the tidal wave of foreclosed homes that had swept the country. A few loosely organized collectives had emerged around the challenge of blight, with some cities trying innovative and legally risky strategies like using the power of eminent domain to seize the foreclosed mortgages. But there wasn’t a place to convene like-minded local officials around that issue — or any other. “It really grew into 'hey, there should be something like this,'” Lander says.

Rather than creating a new organization, Lander reached out to the Center for Popular Democracy, another young outfit that secured grants to support a few staff members for the project. They first gathered in 2012, at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington. The group has grown — with annual convenings and ones that are more ad hoc, like a forum in support of Seattle’s first-in-the-nation vote to raise its minimum wage to $15 in 2014. The show of solidarity helped. “One thing they said was, 'make it look like we’re not crazy,’” Lander says, of Seattle’s council.

Many cities have a klatch of liberal legislators who push for higher minimum wages, paid leave mandates, taxes on plastic bags and the like. By putting them in contact with one another and other community groups, Local Progress has in recent years created a policy feedback loop that’s accelerated the spread of new laws in municipalities across the country. In the absence of federal action on many issues, it’s trying to make local government into something that doesn’t just pick up the trash — but solves some of society’s biggest problems as well.

City-level cooperation, of course, isn’t a new idea.

Its first iteration came about a century ago, during the Progressive era, when urban leaders fought for home rule for cities in order to establish construction codes, health and safety standards, and the architecture of good government through state-based alliances called Municipal Leagues. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created programs that bypassed the more conservative governors and state legislatures, filtering aid for infrastructure projects through local Democratic machines.

That relationship started to weaken through the 1970s and ‘80s, when some Democrats migrated to the suburbs, urban politics became more racialized, and the flow of money slowed to a trickle.

“What’s new in the last 30 years is that federal role has been eroding, and by now it’s really difficult to get anything done,” says Margaret Weir, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in urban politics. "The Reagan administration signaled to cities that 'you’re pretty much on your own.’"

Meanwhile, the old Municipal Leagues had evolved into bodies like the National League of Cities and the National Council of State Legislators, which serve as convening entities — but don’t tend to push the policy envelope that much, so as to remain all-inclusive. Licata, in particular, was frustrated that there seemed to be more focus on issues of greater concern to small towns, rather than those of large cities; he also wanted to see more emphasis on issues of social justice and racial equity than the existing organizations were willing to take on.

"The old ones got defined in more nonpartisan terms,” says Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard. “Today’s progressives want a harder edge."

Creating an organization of self-described progressive elected leaders serves another purpose: It creates an easy and fast way for liberal activists to access the people most likely to take action.

"There wasn’t a place where you could find progressive elected officials in the aggregate. You’d find one here and you’d find one there,” says Angela Glover Blackwell, president of Policylink, which focuses on equity for communities of color. Local Progress “was a gold mine.”

So far, Local Progress has appealed to reform-oriented elected officials like D.C. City Councilmember Elissa Silverman, whom the organization recruited last year. In October, she made a quick trip to Los Angeles for the group’s first large convening, where she found about 100 people like her trying to think creatively about what local officials can do within the law — like require predictable schedules for retail employees, for example, or crack down on non-payment of freelancers.

"I was not totally sold on the value of going out there, but I said ‘what the hell,’ and I’m really glad I did,” Silverman says. Now, when she wants to workshop a new policy idea or learn what others had experienced with proposals that crop up in D.C. — like funding a new arena that will be used by a professional sports team, which Silverman opposes — she can tap into the network with one email to a listserv, or look up a policy toolkit that Local Progress’ small staff has put together on the issue.

A few months later, while introducing a proposal for public financing of municipal elections, she mentioned the experiences of three young council members she met at the conference: Antonio Reynoso, Ritchie Torres, and Carlos Menchaca of New York, all of whom had triumphed in unlikely campaigns against powerful opponents.

"Antonio in particular said 'Hey Elissa, if it wasn’t for public financing, I wouldn’t have been able to win,’ and that was very important for me to hear,” Silverman recalls. ”I was already convinced, but to have all three of them say that made a big impact.”

In trying to push a progressive agenda in cities, Local Progress hasn’t escaped opposition.

Some of the most formidable comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative membership organization that helps Republican state senators and representatives pass laws confining the size of government,often to tremendous effect. In 2014, liberals formed the State Innovation Exchange to try to serve as a counterweight, but its influence is so far fairly limited.

ALEC doesn’t have to fight Local Progress’ members directly. Instead, the group has favored “pre-emption” laws that enforce uniform rules across a state -- preventing a city on its own from passing stricter gun laws, or higher minimum wages. Pittsburgh’s new paid sick days ordinance, for example, was just thrown out by a court on the grounds that the city didn’t have the authority under state law to enact it.

“As cities step out and move the ball forward, states have come in to take away their power to do just that,” says Andrew Friedman, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, where Local Progress is housed.

About a year after Local Progress had its first meeting, ALEC formed the American City and Council Exchange, also focused on local jurisdictions. The group’s director, Jon Russell, met with LocalProgress co-founder Nick Licata, who had joined as a member to learn more about the group. Russell thinks they could find common ground on some issues, like openness and transparency in local government. But that doesn’t usually include the question of what cities should control, and what should be left to the state.

“There’s some situations where the state does a better job, and wants to have consistency,” Russell says. “What we tend to tell our members is to focus on what we do best — making sure our budgets are effective and efficient. Don’t get tied up in these political issues that more recently have crept into local government.” He thinks that local officials shouldn’t listen to environmental groups, for example, trying to ban fracking or keep coal trains from coming through town.

“If they want to work on state issues, they should run for state government,” Russell said, of the policy entrepreneurs. "People want their trash picked up. They want their police to respond to calls.  They want their fires put out.”

The central idea of Local Progress, however, is that no issue is out of bounds for city government. Besides environmental groups, it has heavy involvement from the labor movement; an AFL-CIO vice president sits on the organization’s board, and the conference in October had a session on the Service Employees International Union’s Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign, along with numerous appearances by union officials. Those outside groups are essential to getting new policy ideas into practice.

In time, Lander sees the direction of policy innovation starting to flow in reverse: From pioneering cities up to state and federal lawmakers, who might take cues from what appears to be a groundswell of support. He recently wonthe passage of a bill banning credit checks for employment, for example.

“Eventually that should be a national law or a CFPB regulation. That’s not going to happen until a lot of cities and states do it,” Lander says. “And if there’s a competition for who can do the strongest law, eventually it’ll make sense for businesses to say 'we should have a national law.'"

But right now not all cities are able to adopt the kinds of path-breaking new laws that councils can pull off in liberal enclaves on either coast. Take something like allowing Uber drivers to unionize, which could entail years of litigation while courts decide whether it’s kosher — as the mayor of Seattlepointed out in a letter to council members after they voted unanimously in favor of it. Being the first takes both political will and financial resources to enforce new mandates and weather the inevitable legal hiccups or unforeseen consequences that might require adjustments down the road.

That’s also where the leaders of Local Progress think a central clearinghouse of information could come in handy: It might help a city councilperson in Terre Haute, Ind., or Tempe, Ariz., avoid having to design an inclusionary zoning ordinance from scratch. Moreover, it makes members feel connected to a larger movement, rather than just slogging away in the trenches.

“It’s a question of looking at a progressive issue, and understanding that progressive issues do reflect the interests of everyone,” Licata says. “As an additive to the gas, we’re able to get more mileage and oomph on this issues.”

Source: Washington Post

Huffington Post - January 15, 2015, by Robert Borsage - Legislators in the new Congress haven't even cut the curtains for their offices, but it is already clear that the right has no clue and the "center" offers no hope.

Republican Mitch McConnell, newly installed as Senate majority leader, announced that his goal is not to be "scary." House Republican leader John Boehner declared his troops had to prove Republicans can "govern."

But Republicans are already tripping over those low bars. They stuffed the legislative docket with "message" bills to repeal Obamacare, rollback immigration reforms, and cripple agencies that protect the environment (Environmental Protection Agency), consumers (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), workers (the Labor Department) and taxpayers (cutting the IRS ability to police tax dodgers). They've already proved adept at backroom maneuvers to tuck Wall Street favors in "must-pass" legislation.

The truly "scary" agenda, however, is the legislation that McConnell and Boehner have teed up for bipartisan approval: authorization of the Keystone Pipeline is already on the president's desk; next comes fast track trade authority to grease the skids for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, corporate tax "reform" that "simplifies" the tax code and lowers rates, and inevitably a budget that will posture on a budget deficit that should be larger while ignoring the debilitating deficits that must be smaller (the public investment and trade deficits). It will starve already inadequate programs for the vulnerable, while larding more on an already bloated Pentagon.

These "bipartisan" measures assume that the best thing to do in a hole is to keep digging. Progressives will have their hands full simply trying to stop the parade of horrors, which will require either Democratic unity in the Senate or firm presidential vetoes -- both less than certain trumpets. Obstructing the horrible, however, necessary, is not sufficient. Republicans already suffer from the absence of any positive agenda. Their pollsters have finally accepted that they must find a populist voice, but thus far that entails not much more than donning a hardhat atop their uptown garb.

Confront and Counter

Progressives must find ways not simply to confront the Republican idiocies, but to counter with a bold reform agenda that commensurate with the size of our problems.

We suffer an economy that does not work for most Americans even in the fifth year of "recovery." This can only happen because the rules have been systematically rigged to favor the few. Changing that reality requires far more than a few sensible reforms. It requires taking on fundamentals at the heart of our economy: transforming our global tax and trade policies, shackling Wall Street, progressive taxes to pay for vital public investment, empowering workers and curbing perverse CEO compensation policies, reviving anti-trust, curbing money in politics, cleaning up Washington, capturing a lead in the green industrial revolution.

In this effort, President Obama will be at best a sunshine general. Hopefully, he will continue to frame vital wage reforms -- calling for lifting the minimum wage and guaranteed sick days and family leave, enforcing overtime, procurement reforms that give preference to "good jobs" employers. He will continue to build his legacy on the environment. But on fundamentals -- trade, Wall Street, public investment, anti-trust and more -- he's more part of the problem than the solution.

At the national level, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders have begun to take the lead. A broader formal or informal populist caucus in the Senate, and the strengthened Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House can help define and drive big alternatives, with outside allies rallying support and taking the names of the Blue Dog or Wall Street Democrats who don't get it. Major debates -- on trade, on taxes, on budgets -- can be occasions for offering real alternative directions.

The danger here is that the debate turns quickly to framing "message" bills rather than debating fundamental reform. The recent rollout of the Democratic middle-class tax cut shows the perils. The proposal excels for partisan positioning. It offers working Americans real money -- a $2,000 tax cut, paid for by taxes on the banks and the rich. It puts Republicans in a box, since they won't raise taxes to pay for the equivalent. But a tax cut competition with Republicans is something of a mugs game. It accepts the conservative notion that tax breaks offer workers the only hope for a raise. And by devoting progressive taxes to tax cuts, it defaults on addressing our debilitating public investment deficit. If Democrats aren't making the case for rebuilding our starved public sphere -- including basic infrastructure like roads, rail and sewers, providing the basics for schools, investing in R&D -- then we will all suffer.

The debate about agenda should not be left to legislators. The January AFL-CIO convocation on raising wages -- which will be echoed in forums across the country -- provides one example of how progressive groups can help frame and drive the reform debate.

Local Action; National Megaphone

With Washington largely gridlocked, progressives have sensibly turned more attention to driving reform at the state and local level. Given Republican gains at the state level, many of those battles will be defensive, against their assault on unions and worker rights, and their efforts to rollback environmental protection while constricting the rights of women, voters, and the vulnerable.

But in blue states like California and in blue cities even in the midst of red states, progressives should be championing fundamental reforms. Already significant progress has been made in raising the floor under workers -- raising the minimum wage and extending basic worker guarantees. Procurement reforms can offer preference to good jobs employers, and enforce buy America provisions. As California Governor Jerry Brown has shown, states can drive the climate debate, extending state renewable energy standards and providing markets for renewable energy. State taxes could favor companies that maintain less obscene ratios of CEO to worker pay.

None of this will come easy, given the hold of corporate interests over state and local politics. Citizen groups like National People's Action, PICO, Jobs with Justice, LAANE, the Center for Popular Democracy along with labor unions like SEIU and AFSCME are already driving change. What is needed is a coherent strategy to provide a national megaphone that provides local reforms with national attention, demonstrating that progressives are not only on the case, but also on the march.

People in Motion

As the film Selma correctly makes clear about the transformation of civil rights in the 1960s, none of this will get done without people's movements -- people in motion protesting the rigged game and demanding a better deal.

Occupy Wall Street set the stage, awakening Americans and the mainstream media to the Gilded Age inequality that too many had come to accept as natural. The demonstrations of fast food workers and low wage government workers have begun to challenge the Wal-Mart low road in the economy. What progress has been made on immigration reform has come from aggressive popular mobilization. The environmental movement has begun to show its force in the streets. It would be useful to link with money in politics groups to expose and confront the entrenched interests and corrupted politicians that cling to climate denial. Students, graduates and parents should be rallying against the absurdity that getting a college education all say is necessary requires taking on debt burdens that all agree are ruinous.

What the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement, the Latino movements have shown over and over again is one simple truth: Those who benefit from a stacked deck won't call for a new deal. Fundamental change comes only when the oppressed make it impossible to sustain the old order.

2016: Who Is Prepared to Stand?

The mainstream media have already begun their saturation coverage of the 2016 presidential horserace. How will Hillary run? Will she be challenged by Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or another candidate on the left? Will Bush or Romney consolidate the Republican establishment? Who will emerge on the right? Where is the big money going in both parties?

In this coverage, platforms and reform ideas are contrasted with those of rival candidates, measured only for their potential political effectiveness. Congressional showdowns are measured by their potential effect on "the race." In the lead up to 2016, this is likely to disintegrate into the competitive posturing of ersatz populists. Absent is any measure of the ideas against the scope of the challenges Americans must struggle with everyday.

Filling this vacuum is the imperative for progressives. The real question isn't who is prepared to run, but who is prepared to stand for fundamental reform? This is one reason why progressive challengers in the primaries are so important. Hard-pressed Americans pay little attention to politics or to congressional debates. Presidential primaries often surprise because they are one occasion where, if activists are engaged, a broader public begins to pay attention.

Progressive challengers -- a Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown -- can force a debate on what it really takes to make this economy work for working people. They can expose the limits of the center reform agenda, and the scope of real alternatives. It would be a true tragedy if 2016 took place without a fundamental debate about the stark reality we face and the presidential contenders plan to do about it.

But again, no challenge in the Democratic Party will have legs unless people are in motion, mobilizing, challenging business as usual, and forcing politicians to get outside of their comfort zone. Dislodging the entrenched interests and big money that dominate our politics won't be easy. It won't happen in one election or with one movement. Democracy, as Bill Moyers has written, isn't easy. But it is our only hope.

Source

WHYY - October 1, 2014, by Tom Macdonald - A new report is calling for holding charter schools in Pennsylvania more accountable.Produced by the groups Center for Public Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United, the report says the $30 million in charter school fraud already discovered in Pennsylvania could be the tip of the iceberg because there isn't enough oversight.Kia Hinton of Action United says they are calling for reforms such as targeted audits because $30 million could have been put to much better use."Do you know what that could get us? That could get us more teachers so our classrooms don't have 40 students, that could get us textbooks, so our students have textbooks and that could get us support staff to support our teachers and our students," Hinton said.The groups are also calling for a moratorium on any new charter schools until more controls are implemented.Chinara Bioaal has a child in Philly schools and says the report is just a first step to end fraud."We will be conducting information requests on all charter schools to review board minutes to determine the quality or existence of their fraud risk management programs, we will challenge charter schools to sign the fraud risk management pledge adopting fraud risk management programs," Bioaal said.The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools responded to the report saying it supports prosecuting fraud and mismanagement. However "the report draws sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years, while ignoring numerous alleged and actual fraud and fiscal mismanagement in the districts."Source