Vermont Workers’ Center at the Fore of Health Care Advocacy
VT Digger - January 12, 2014, by Morgan True - Last week’s pro-universal health care demonstration during Gov. Peter...
VT Digger - January 12, 2014, by Morgan True - Last week’s pro-universal health care demonstration during Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inaugural address drew attention locally and nationally, and left many wanting to know more about its organizers — the Vermont Workers’ Center, which has grown substantially in the past five years.
Founded nearly two decades ago as Central Vermonters for a Livable Wage, the nonprofit labor and human rights group has evolved into a substantial grassroots organization.
In 2001, as the Vermont Workers’ Center, the group affiliated with Jobs With Justice, a national pro-labor group, and is essentially that organization’s Vermont chapter. VWC founded the Health Care Is a Human Right campaign in 2008 because the cost of medical care and health insurance was creating crises for its members that “transcended” the workplace, according to the group’s website.
The campaign is viewed by some as a model for health care advocacy in other states.
Since launching the Health Care Is a Human Right Campaign, VWC’s annual budget has grown from $154,500 in 2008 to $638,700 in 2012, the latest publicly available tax filing from the group.
James Haslam, VWC’s director, said its current budget is close to $800,000, a more than fivefold increase since the campaign began. The money comes from donations and foundation grants in roughly equal parts, Haslam said.
The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is its largest grantor, providing $50,000 this year, Haslam said. It has given the group $160,000 since 2010, including $35,000 to offer guidance to similar groups across the U.S. Grantees are voted on by a committee of Ben & Jerry’s workers, according to a statement.
“The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation supports grassroots organizations throughout the U.S. that are working for progressive social change and a more equitable society,” according to the foundation’s statement.
VWC also chose to start collecting dues from its members in 2014, Haslam added. The dues follow a sliding scale based on members’ ability to pay, he said.
The grassroots activists have strong affiliations with national labor and human rights groups including Health Care Now, Labor for Single Payer, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, The Center for Popular Democracy and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, according to Haslam.
Kate Kanelstein, VWC’s lead organizer, is on Grassroots Global Justice Alliance’s national coordinating committee. Kanelstein was among those arrested during Thursday’s sit-in in the House chamber.
“We’re part of a broader people’s movement to turn things around for working people,” Haslam said.
Those connections have helped propel VWC to the forefront of national activism on universal public health care.
The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative provides strategic advice and training to VWC and similar groups throughout the U.S., said Anja Rudiger, director of programming for NESRI.
VWC has successfully, and appropriately, according to Rudiger, applied the principles of human rights advocacy to health policy by focusing on the hardship of individuals, rather than the “nitty-gritty” of policy debates.
By reframing access to health care as a human rights issue, VWC and others are able to highlight the injustices of the high cost of medical services and a for-profit health insurance system.
There are now Health Care Is a Human Right campaigns in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Maine. Groups in Oregon and Washington are also hoping to model health care advocacy work on the template created by VWC.
VWC is using the tactics and strategies of other human rights movements, including demonstrations and civil disobedience, which are well established, but have not previously been applied to health care, Rudiger said.
A ‘new environment’ and a national movement
Some have argued that last week’s demonstration hurt VWC’s credibility with the Legislature — one senator called the tactics “fascist” — but the demonstration has drawn increased attention from national groups and other advocates for universal health care.
Amnesty International, National Nurses United and more than 60 other labor and health care advocacy groups signed an open letter to the Vermont Legislature urging lawmakers to press on with Act 48, the state’s universal health care law. NESRI helped get many of the signatories to that letter, Rudiger said.
The Rev. William Barber, most famous for starting the Moral Monday movement, wrote a letter of solidarity, calling it immoral for people not to have access to medical care.
The backlash from lawmakers was anticipated, Haslam said, and he doesn’t think it hurts VWC’s ultimate goal of achieving universal access to health services.
“No one that truly supports universal health care is not going to support it because of a protest,” he said.
The visceral reaction from legislators may be partly because the Statehouse hasn’t been the venue for Occupy-esque demonstrations previously, said longtime State Curator David Schutz, though they’ve become increasingly common elsewhere in Vermont and nationally.
“It’s a new environment,” Schutz said, one ushered in by the October occupation of the governor’s offices in the nearby Pavilion Building.
That action was primarily the work of Rising Tide Vermont, the local affiliate of a national climate advocacy group, to protest the expansion of a Vermont Gas pipeline. The Workers’ Center helped organize that demonstration, which resulted in 64 arrests, though charges were later dropped.
Keith Brunner, the communication coordinator for the center, was among those arrested at the pipeline demonstration. Though he was present at the Statehouse last week, he was not arrested.
The only comparable event to Thursday’s demonstrations that took place in the Statehouse during the past 30 years was during the debate over civil unions in 2000, Schutz said.
It was necessary to rile official Vermont, Rudiger said, because it appears Shumlin has unilaterally stalled the state’s movement toward universal health care.
“It’s not about being disrespectful to lawmakers, it’s about highlighting the conditions in people’s lives that bring about those actions and that’s always what civil disobedience has been about,” she said.
Nationally, advocates for public universal health care were aware of the movement in Vermont, but few had received the news of Shumlin’s “wavering,” Haslam said.
Last week’s demonstration was an opportunity to get that message out and put Vermont back in the national spotlight in order to keep the momentum behind a universal health care program for the state, Haslam said.
VWC workers among those arrested last week
Many in Vermont’s political Twittersphere expressed surprise — or consternation — that several of Thursday’s demonstrators, including some who were arrested, are paid employees for the Workers’ Center.
In addition to Kanelstein, field organizers Shela Linton, Elizabeth Beatty-Owens, Avery Pittman and campaign coordinator Matt McGrath were among the 29 arrested.
Members, volunteers and staff were told at a planning meeting that the sit-in carried the risk of arrest, Haslam said. Those who participated in the sit-in chose to take that risk in order to push for legislative hearings on the governor’s single payer report.
The Workers’ Center employees who were arrested had “personal experiences with health care crises,” Haslam said. Many got involved because of that experience, and started out as members or volunteers before being hired.
Lobbying only a small part of what VWC does
The Workers’ Center is limited in its ability to lobby elected officials because it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The organization is aware of that line, and takes steps to make sure it’s not crossed, according to Haslam.
Its field organizers are registered lobbyists, Haslam said, which is corroborated by the Secretary of State’s database.
The IRS threshold for tax-exempt nonprofits is whether lobbying activities constitute “a substantial part of its overall activities,” with expenditures on lobbying capped at 20 percent for a group the size of VWC.
The Vermont Workers’ Center keeps time sheets and records expenditures to ensure they meet the expense limits, Haslam said. Its 2012 990 tax filing, the most recent available, says those expenditures are available on request and does not list them.
Lobbying as part of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign is not a substantial portion of the center’s overall operation, Haslam added.
The group is involved in community organizing and leadership development, and helps build grassroots networks and coalitions on a broad array of issues, primarily labor-related, he said.
The Workers’ Center has supported striking FairPoint workers, recently unionized home care workers and workers at the University of Vermont who are trying to form a union.
They operate a workers’ hotline to field workplace complaints and employ an accountability monitor to help enforce Burlington’s livable wage ordinance.
The Workers’ Center also runs the People’s University for Learning and Liberation with a staffer dedicated to preparing workshops, skill building, continuing education for its members and affiliated groups.
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Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s...
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s practice of giving three days’ notice of work schedules has created a lot of stress in her life.
So, she made two trips to Salem this year with representatives of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 to lobby legislators on the workplace scheduling bill that passed June 29 with bipartisan support.
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Trump expected to nominate Powell for Fed chair
Most on Wall Street welcomed the news that Powell is the likely nominee. Investment bank Deutsche Bank put out a note...
Most on Wall Street welcomed the news that Powell is the likely nominee. Investment bank Deutsche Bank put out a note last week to clients saying Powell would be the best choice if Trump did not want to keep Yellen on. But some liberal groups, including Fed Up, were disappointed and see the selection of Powell as an attempt to make the Fed more favorable to big banks. "Jerome Powell's most important qualification is that he served with Janet Yellen. His confirmation should depend on his willingness to follow in Yellen's footsteps on both monetary and regulatory policy," said Shawn Sebastian, co-director of Fed Up, a campaign from the Center for Popular Democracy.
Read the full article here.
Report: Anti-gay Laws Drive Up Poverty Rates for LGBT People
Miami Herald - September 30, 2014, by Steve Rothaus - A report issued Tuesday shows that LGBT Americans face added...
Miami Herald - September 30, 2014, by Steve Rothaus - A report issued Tuesday shows that LGBT Americans face added financial burdens — and often higher poverty rates — because of antigay national, state and local legislation.
NBC News has covered the story, with a video of Arlene Goldberg, the Fort Myers widow who is suing Florida to recognize her marriage to longtime partner Carol Goldwasser.
Goldberg’s primary income is Social Security. Because Florida doesn’t recognize Goldberg’s marriage, she is unable to qualify as Goldwasser’s widow and collect her Social Security payments, which were $700 more each month than Goldberg’s.
Here’s a news release from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP):
Washington, D.C. — A landmark report released today paints a stark picture of the added financial burdens faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans because of anti-LGBT laws at the national, state and local levels. According to the report, these laws contribute to significantly higher rates of poverty among LGBT Americans and create unfair financial penalties in the form of higher taxes, reduced wages and Social Security income, increased healthcare costs, and more.
The momentum of recent court rulings overturning marriage bans across the country has created the impression that LGBT Americans are on the cusp of achieving full equality from coast-to-coast. But the new report, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for Being LGBT in America, documents how inequitable laws harm the economic well-being of LGBT people in three key ways: by enabling legal discrimination in jobs, housing, credit and other areas; by failing to recognize LGBT families, both in general and across a range of programs and laws designed to help American families; and by creating barriers to safe and affordable education for LGBT students and the children of LGBT parents.
Paying an Unfair Pricewas co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, National Association of Social Workers, and the National Education Association. It is available online at www.lgbtmap.org/unfair-price.
“Unfair laws deliver a one-two punch. They both drive poverty within the LGBT community and then hit people when they are down,” said Ineke Mushovic, Executive Director of MAP. “While families with means might be able to withstand the costs of extra taxation or the unfair denial of Social Security benefits, for an already-struggling family these financial penalties can mean the difference between getting by and getting evicted. Anti-LGBT laws do the most harm to the most vulnerable in the LGBT community, including those who are barely making ends meet, families with children, older adults, and people of color.”
The report documents the often-devastating consequences when the law fails LGBT families. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are almost twice as likely to be poor as children raised by married opposite-sex parents. Additionally, 15 percent of transgender workers have incomes of less than $10,000 per year; among the population as a whole, the comparable figure is just four percent. To demonstrate the connection between anti-LGBT laws and the finances of LGBT Americans and their families, the report outlines how LGBT people living in states with low levels of equality are more likely to be poor, both compared to their non-LGBT neighbors, and compared to their LGBT counterparts in state with high levels of equality. For example, the denial of marriage costs gay and lesbian families money; same-sex couples with children had just $689 less in household income than married opposite-sex couples in states with marriage and relationship recognition for same-sex couples, but had an astounding $8,912 less in household income in states lacking such protections.
DISCRIMINATORY LAWS CREATE A DEVASTATING CYCLE OF POVERTY
How do inequitable laws contribute to higher rates of poverty for LGBT people? The report documents how LGBT people in the United States face clear financial penalties because of three primary failures in the law.
1. Lack of protection from discrimination means that LGBT people can be fired, denied housing and credit, and refused medically-necessary healthcare simply because they are LGBT. The financial penalty: LGBT people can struggle to find work, make less on the job, and have higher housing and medical costs than their non-LGBT peers.
2. Refusal to recognize LGBT families means that LGBT families are denied many of thesame benefits afforded to non-LGBT families when it comes to health insurance, taxes, vital safety-net programs, and retirement planning. The financial penalty: LGBT families pay more for health insurance, taxes, and legal assistance, and may be unable to access essential protections for their families in times of crisis.
3. Failure to adequately protect LGBT students means that LGBT people and their families often face a hostile, unsafe, and unwelcoming environment in local schools, as well as discrimination in accessing financial aid and other support. The financial penalty: LGBT youth are more likely to perform poorly in school and to face challenges pursuing postsecondary educational opportunities, as can youth with LGBT parents. This, in turn, can reduce their earnings over time, as well as their chances of having successful jobs and careers.
“Imagine losing your job or your home simply because of who you are or whom you love. Imagine having to choose between paying the rent and finding legal help so you can establish parenting rights for the child you have been raising from birth,” said Laura E. Durso, Director LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress at CAP. “These are just a couple of the added costs that are harming the economic security of LGBT people across the country. It is unfair and un-American that LGBT people are penalized because of who they are, and it has real and profound effects on their ability to stay out of poverty and provide for their families.”
Paying an Unfair Price offers broad recommendations for helping strengthen economic security for LGBT Americans. Recommendations include: instituting basic nondiscrimination protections at the federal and state level; allowing same-sex couples to marry in all states; allowing LGBT parents to form legal ties with the children they are raising; andprotecting students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“At a time when so many American families are struggling to make ends meet, the report's findings point to an even bleaker reality for those who are both LGBT and people of color," said Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy. "Unchecked employment discrimination and laws that needlessly increase the costs of healthcare, housing and childcare are doing profound harm to our economic strength as a nation. This report offers real-life policy solutions that, if implemented, would protect some of our most vulnerable individuals and families."
“Reducing the unfair financial penalties that LGBT people face in this country because they are LGBT is not that complicated. It is a simple matter of treating LGBT Americans equally under the law. For example, extending the freedom to marry, including LGBT students in safe schools laws, and ending the exclusion of LGBT people from laws meant to protect families when a parent dies or becomes disabled,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.
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Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May...
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May Day celebrations around the city on Monday.
A dozen protesters were arrested outside JPMorgan Chase’s Park Ave. headquarters, and demonstrators also gathered in front of a Wells Fargo bank nearby, highlighting the two institutions’ financing of private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
Read full article here.
Rivera and Camara Push 'Ambitious' Bill for Noncitizen Voting
Capital NY - June 16, 2014, By Nidhi Prakash - With just four remaining days in the state legislative session, sponsors...
Capital NY - June 16, 2014, By Nidhi Prakash - With just four remaining days in the state legislative session, sponsors of a new bill to grant citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants said they hope to begin building momentum for next session.
“First of all, this is obviously not something that is going to pass by the end of this week," said State Senator Gustavo Rivera, at a press conference in Battery Park City. "This was never about this particular legislative session. We’ve been working on it for almost two years, it’s a bold idea and we wanted to make sure it was thought out."
The bill, titled the New York is Home Act, would make it legal for undocumented immigrants in New York State to vote in local and state elections, get professional and drivers' licenses, and make them eligible for state-funded Medicaid and financial aid for higher education.
“What we’re doing today is we’re starting a conversation not only in New York, but hopefully across the country,” said Rivera, who was joined at the press conference by representatives from the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York.
Senator Rivera said he was choosing this moment to introduce the bill, despite nearing the end of the legislative session, partly because of a lack of movement in Washington on immigration reform. He pointed to the defeat last week of Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party candidate who criticized Cantor's support for limited immigration reform.
But some progressives have also balked at provisions in the proposed bill. Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for municipal ID cards for undocumented immigrants, but said last year he's "not comfortable" with the idea of noncitizen voting.
“We are certainly asking for everyone in the Senate and the Assembly as well as in other sectors—the mayor and the governor—to support it, and we will have conversations with them going forward," Rivera said. "We are just starting the conversation."
Assembly Member Karim Camara, the bill’s sponsor in the Assembly, said the broad scope of the bill could help other stalled measures, like the Dream Act and a bill to allow undocumented immigrants access to drivers' licenses.
“We’re hoping that by looking at this big picture, and this is probably one of the most ambitious efforts over at least the last decade or two, maybe those smaller pieces now seem like they’re not that big of a deal,” said Camara.
Camara said he hoped the bill would create momentum for other immigration reform initiatives by the start of the next legislative session.
“We didn’t break it into priorities in this bill, but we’re hoping that by looking at this overarching bill it’ll perhaps make those other smaller bills easier—drivers' license, Dream Act, et cetera,” he said.
Camara blamed the balance of power in the Senate for those bills being unsuccessful in the past, and said if that was to change there may be more hope for immigration reform on a state level.
“The Republican-led Senate has been a main challenge," he said. "We would have passed it this year if it was not for that. So of course there is that elephant in the room, that political dynamic that we can’t avoid, and if that’s not the case then we’ll appeal to individuals’ reason."
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Pittsburgh police tightening security for march after Dallas
Pittsburgh police tightening security for march after Dallas
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Pittsburgh police say they're using uniformed and plainclothes officers and "extreme caution" to...
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Pittsburgh police say they're using uniformed and plainclothes officers and "extreme caution" to safeguard police and the public at an activists march on Friday.
The march opening the People's Convention at the city's convention center is billed as protesting "growing inequality and a toxic atmosphere of hate." Organizers expect 1,500 activists to march through downtown protesting what they believe are various social ills.
Pittsburgh's Public Safety Department is working with the FBI and other law enforcement in the wake of sniper shootings that killed five police officers and wounded seven others at a protest march in Dallas on Thursday.
Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik also planned a noon Mass to pray for "peace and reconciliation."
And Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP'-yoo) says the Dallas murders "only discredit" such protesters' "legitimate anger."
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Can We Forgo Wells Fargo?
When disgraced Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was forced to resign a few weeks ago, it was a victory for economic justice...
When disgraced Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was forced to resign a few weeks ago, it was a victory for economic justice. But this move, however dramatic, does not go far enough to fix the problems with Wells Fargo and Wall Street.
Christina Livingston, executive director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).
A diverse array of progressive organizations are joining forces to not only end Wells Fargo's predatory practices, but also increase the pressure for broad Wall Street reform that puts people and communities first.
Through a new "Forgo Wells" campaign, they are pushing city councils, state legislatures, school boards, and other public bodies to stop doing business with Wells Fargo. And they've already scored some wins.
The groups launching this divestment campaign include national organizations like Jobs with Justice, the Communications Workers of America, and Center for Popular Democracy, as well as local groups like New York Communities for Change, Minnesota-based Isaiah, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).
Inequality.org co-editor Sarah Anderson interviewed ACCE's executive director, Christina Livingston, about her involvement in the Forgo Wells campaign.
Sarah Anderson: How did you come to be involved in this campaign?
Christina Livingston: Since our doors opened in 2010, Wall Street accountability work has been a staple issue. That's because so many of the issues people are battling have connections to Wall Street banks. From the foreclosure crisis, to wealth stripping of cities and municipalities, to student debt, and beyond, Wall Street banks and hedge funds are behaving in ways that harm you and me for the sake of unchecked power and greed.
Last year we engaged in a campaign organizing bank workers under our worker justice campaign umbrella and quickly realized that bank workers were being treated poorly by the big banks in many ways, including the use of unrealistic sales goals.
Working with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), we began to research how widespread these sales goals were and the impact they were having on workers. We didn't know then that because of these sales goals Wells Fargo workers were being compelled to open fraudulent accounts. However, given our interactions with Wells Fargo in the past, we were not surprised to find that such a widespread fraudulent practice existed. In fact, this is very reminiscent of the robo-signing practice Wells Fargo was found guilty of during the height of the foreclosure crisis.
What role will ACCE be playing in the Forgo Wells campaign?
Given that Wells Fargo is based in San Francisco, we felt compelled to immediately begin working with some of our largest California cities to call on the city government to take action. Already the Los Angeles City Council and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have moved to suspend business with Wells Fargo and we plan to move at least 2-3 other cities in the coming months to take action. We are also encouraging organizing groups in other states to work with their legislators to suspend business with Wells at the state or city level.
Why is this a strategic moment for targeting Wells Fargo?
First, hubris and exploitation is in their DNA. They have never worked with community organizations, and racially biased marketing and fraud is baked into their way of doing business. It is sort of like a game of Jenga (or house of cards). Once you pull out that piece that makes the tower fall, which in this case was the fraud that front-line workers were forced to commit, you unearth many more parts of fraudulent behavior, and realize it is pervasive through everything.
Just a couple days ago, Wells reached a $50 million settlement for mortgage appraisal fraud. There are so many ways in which they are corrupt, and their tentacles are everywhere. They are invested big in private prisons, police foundations, the Dakota Access pipeline, Puerto Rican bonds. Basically, they are invested everywhere, and bad things come from their investments.
Do you see any potential for building alliances that cut across partisan lines in this campaign?
We think so. Part of the right-wing pushback against Hillary Clinton is that she has been friends with Wall Street. People do not trust her to stand up to the banks and hedge funds. Some of Trump's economic appeal has been his willingness to "tell it like it is." And there are unfortunately some Bernie followers who are supporting Trump. The anti-Wall Street message holds both major parties accountable.
Is this campaign just about Wells Fargo or are you trying to address broader problems with Wall Street?
This is absolutely not just a campaign about Wells Fargo, it is about all the big banks and hedge funds that are implementing practices and policies that hurt communities in order to deliver for the wealthy few at the top. Wells is emblematic of what everyone else is doing.
What would victory look like for you?
If we are really successful, we would see the break-up of Wells Fargo and would send a message that banks will be held responsible for the ways they treat their workers, shareholders, and customers. Along the way, we hope to get a fair amount of justice in monetary settlements, rights for workers, and divestment from a host of racist and exploitative investments.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
By Sarah Anderson
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Jeff Flake jokes about moment when sexual assault survivors confronted him on elevator
Jeff Flake jokes about moment when sexual assault survivors confronted him on elevator
Sen. Jeff Flake cracked a joke Saturday about the viral moment we was confronted by sexual assault survivors on an...
Sen. Jeff Flake cracked a joke Saturday about the viral moment we was confronted by sexual assault survivors on an elevator last week over his support for embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Read the full article here.
Today we CAN do something to honor Heather Heyer. We can stand up against the hate that killed her.
Today we CAN do something to honor Heather Heyer. We can stand up against the hate that killed her.
We can honor Heather in the same way she stood up for justice and equality. We can rise up against the hate that took...
We can honor Heather in the same way she stood up for justice and equality. We can rise up against the hate that took her life and that targets even more of our fellow Americans. There are events taking place all across the country today against the hate and violence on display in Charlottesville this weekend. Find one and be there. If you can’t, please help spread the word so others may do so.
Read the full article here.
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