111 Miles in Ten Days: Marchers Take Nonviolent Message From Charlottesville to D.C.
111 Miles in Ten Days: Marchers Take Nonviolent Message From Charlottesville to D.C.
About a hundred people are walking north from downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, the scene of a white supremacist...
About a hundred people are walking north from downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, the scene of a white supremacist rally and riot this month, to Washington, D.C., 111 miles away. The journey—a nonviolent response to the violence of the hate groups that descended on Charlottesville—is expected to take ten days.
They are led by the Reverend Cornell William Brooks, a civil rights lawyer and former president and CEO of the NAACP.
Read the full article here.
Yellen Meets With Activists Seeking Fed Reforms
ABC News - November 14, 2014, by Martin Crutsinger - A coalition of community groups and labor unions are "fed up" with...
ABC News - November 14, 2014, by Martin Crutsinger - A coalition of community groups and labor unions are "fed up" with the Federal Reserve.
More than two dozen activists demonstrated outside the Fed and then met with Chair Janet Yellen on Friday as part of a new campaign seeking policy reforms and a commitment to keep interest rates low until good jobs are plentiful for all workers. Although the labor market has steadily strengthened this year, wages have remained stagnant.
During the hour-long discussion with Yellen and three other Fed board members, coalition representatives discussed problems their communities were facing with high unemployment and weak wage growth.
Ady Barkan, one of the organizers of "Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Strong Economy," said Yellen and the other Fed officials listened but made no commitments about future Fed policy.
"It was a very good conversation," said Barkan, an attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy in Brooklyn. "They listened very intently, and they asked meaningful follow-up questions."
Fed officials confirmed that the meeting took place but declined to comment on the issues raised at the meeting.
The Fed's outreach to community activists was the latest move by Yellen to focus attention on lingering problems from the Great Recession. Wearing green tee-shirts with the phrase "What Recovery?" the group had protested outside of the Fed's headquarters on Constitution Avenue under the watchful eye of nine Fed security officers.
Members of the group, some of whom had demonstrated at a central bank gathering in August in Jackson Hole, Wyoming said it was important that Fed officials not be swayed by arguments that it needs to move quickly to raise interest rates to make sure inflation does not become a threat.
"The banks are the ones that crashed the economy ... but they're the ones who got the bonuses and the bailouts while workers and homeowners like me were left to drown," said Jean Andre, 48, of New York, who said he was having a tough time finding full-time work.
In addition to Yellen, the Fed officials who took part in the meeting were Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and Fed board members Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard.
Members of the coalition said about half of the meeting was taken up by their members telling stories about the difficulty in finding jobs, particularly in disadvantaged groups and communities dealing with unemployment much higher than the 5.8 percent national average.
The Fed officials also were presented a petition signed by 5,000 people around the country urging the central bank to keep interest rates low until the country reaches full employment.
The group also pushed for a more open process in the selection of presidents of the Fed's 12 regional banks. They say the current process is too secretive and dominated by officials from banks and other businesses with little input from the public. The regional presidents, along with Fed board members in Washington, participate in the deliberations to set interest rates.
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From a Contentious Election to a Stronger Democracy
From a Contentious Election to a Stronger Democracy
Reviving our democracy will be a paramount challenge for the new administration. The intertwined issues of race,...
Reviving our democracy will be a paramount challenge for the new administration. The intertwined issues of race, inequality, and democracy have been at the center of the 2016 campaign. Hillary Clinton put it well at the Democratic National Convention in July: “Our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should.” The close primary challenge to Clinton by Senator Bernie Sanders was driven by the widespread feeling that big money is crowding out the voices and views of the people. Fights over voting rights have roiled states around the country. And in a perverted way, these issues have fed Donald Trump’s appeal, too. Many Americans feel unheard and unrepresented. Trump conflates real issues of the dominance of money with the paranoid message that voter registration and voting tallies are “rigged” as well.
Fifteen years ago, in the wake of the debacle election of 2000, The American Prospect published a special report entitled “Democracy’s Moment.” Today is another such moment, when we urgently need to reclaim our democracy in order to restore both the legitimacy of government and its capacity to solve problems. But the promise of democratic revival will be realized only if an effective fight is made. That will require serious presidential leadership, congressional courage, state and municipal experimentation, real change in the Democratic Party, and, most of all, the active engagement and sustained pressure of an organized democracy movement.
At the center of these efforts are three key areas: the need for expanding access to registration and voting; measures to keep money from crowding out citizens’ voices; and reforming gerrymandering and redistricting. These are not just “good government” or “process” issues. They are intimately connected to the ability of government to engage citizens and solve problems.
Reclaiming our democracy is connected to achieving real debate and progress on key substantive issues.
Reclaiming our democracy is connected to achieving real debate and progress on key substantive issues. These include raising the economic floor, protecting and rebuilding the middle class, crafting inclusive immigration policies, making college truly affordable, winning police and criminal justice reform, addressing the consequences of globalization, and protecting our planet. If politics can be about these deeply felt issues, people will be less cynical about democracy and government, and more willing to participate. In turn, the increased participation made possible by making the process more accessible, less manipulated, and less dominated by big money will dramatically change the dynamics of issues as well as elections, and enable far more substantive victories going forward.
I. Fighting Voter Suppression and Expanding Access
Immediately after the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013, which overturned federal preclearance authority for voting-system changes in jurisdictions with records of discrimination, almost every state previously covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act raced to put voting restrictions in place that made it harder for communities of color, poor people, and young people to vote. In the name of “preventing fraud,” and even of saving money, restrictive measures were successfully passed in 22 states.
Since then, hard-fought political and judicial fights have been waged. While the terrain is still sharply contested, important victories have been won in preventing these suppressive practices from being fully implemented. One emblematic fight was in Alabama, where the legislature passed a strict photo-ID requirement for voter registration and the Motor Vehicles Department closed down almost all of its offices as a “cost-saving measure.” The fight ensued, and the state reopened most sites, but on a more limited basis. In North Carolina, the omnibus voter-suppression law passed in 2013 has been rolled back in court, provision by provision, in rulings by the Fourth Circuit that were recently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cynical purging of voter rolls is a problem in several states. In Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia, lawsuits by Dēmos and Common Cause are in process, challenging aggressive purging procedures employed by secretaries of state, which erase hundreds of thousands of potentially eligible people from the rolls and violate National Voter Registration Act requirements. In Georgia, between October 2012 and November 2014, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged more than 370,000 voters from the rolls for failure to vote, a number that far exceeded the number of all new voters registered. In Ohio, Secretary of State Jon Husted purged 144,000 voters from the state’s three largest counties in 2015. (On September 23, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down this purge as violating the National Voter Registration Act.)
Even when they are not manipulated for partisan purposes, voting systems in many states are outmoded, inefficient, and underfunded—and vulnerable to attack. Improving administration and coordination, and winning stronger standards and enforcement, is less sexy but really important. When the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed in 2002, the Election Assistance Commission (no authority in that title!) was designed to be weak, and partisan obstructionism over recent years has rendered it virtually useless. States have found ways to cooperate, such as through the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). But there is a desperate need for national standards, for new investments in voting machines and technologies, better training and pay for poll workers, all with absolute safeguards against hacking and fraud. The issues now arising about the potential for sophisticated foreign hacking should force far more attention to these administrative security issues, and also be the pivot to open a real discussion of professionalizing and standardizing our elections, as well as protecting them from electronic attack.
As these fights over voter suppression in the states have raged, Republicans in Congress have refused even to hold hearings on restoring the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. This is a turnaround by House and Senate Republicans on the law. In the VRA’s most recent reauthorization, in 2006, the Voting Rights Act passed 98–0 in the U.S. Senate, 390–33 in the House, and was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush. Better than almost anything, this shift shows the need for a major push on a Democracy Agenda in 2017.
However, the struggles on the state level have not been only defensive. There is an affirmative voting-access agenda as well—real reforms have been achieved, and significant groundwork has been laid for dramatic advancements in the future.
Expanding Voter Registration. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have adopted online registration, often with bipartisan support. Same-day registration, which has been shown to increase participation by 5 percent to 7 percent, is now law in 13 states and the District of Columbia. In three other states—California, Hawaii, and Vermont—the law has been passed but not yet implemented. In North Carolina, the attempt to rescind same-day registration has been one of the policies blocked by recent court actions. Preregistration of 16- and 17-year-olds brings young people into the system so they can be prepared to vote at 18, and more than half the country now offers the reform, in red and blue states alike.
Restoring Voting Rights. Significant progress has been made in several states toward restoring the voting rights of citizens with felony convictions. Maryland last year passed legislation restoring the right to vote to individuals upon completion of prison sentences, without having to wait until after probation or parole. When Governor Larry Hogan vetoed the bill, the House and Senate overrode him in February, restoring the voting rights of 40,000 people. In Virginia, despite strong opposition, Governor Terry McAuliffe recently restored the rights of 13,000 people, as the beginning of a larger process.
Expanding the Use of the NVRA. One creative approach has been the use by advocates of the provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA, often called “Motor Voter”), which requires state agencies—not just DMVs, but all agencies that offer federal benefits—to affirmatively offer people voter registration. De¯mos and Project Vote have led efforts to push state agencies to do their job, and more than three million additional voters have been registered at social-service agencies in 16 states that have changed their procedures, with the biggest gains being in Missouri and Ohio.
Automatic Voter Registration. AVR is a process in which the state, through state agencies (DMVs for now, but potentially others as well), places eligible voters automatically on the rolls. Oregon first passed the reform in March of 2015, and roughly 12,000 new voters per month have been added to the rolls—three times the registration rate before the state adopted AVR. California quickly followed Oregon, and Vermont, West Virginia, and Connecticut (by administrative order) have since adopted it, with some variations. The Illinois legislature passed AVR with strong bipartisan support just this May, but Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed the bill. With an override unlikely, advocates are uniting behind an effort for a veto-proof majority in 2017.
Expanding Early and Mail-in Voting. Early-voting opportunities have expanded significantly, and are now practiced in most states, either in precincts or at central vote centers. Voting by mail has been expanded as well. Both Washington and Oregon have gone almost exclusively to mail-in ballots, and Maryland recently expanded both mail-in and early-voting options. Colorado has built one of the most expansive systems, offering mail-in and early voting, with same-day registration available as well.
II. Fixing the Rigged System of Money in Politics
Despite the obvious and profound negative effects of our campaign-finance system, efforts to change the way money operates in our politics have been stymied at almost every turn. The campaign finance laws created after Watergate held for a while. But over the last 40 years, they have been undercut by a conservative legislative offensive, a relentless legal assault, terrible rulings from the Roberts Court, skillful evasion, partisan gridlock, and bipartisan political resistance at the state and national levels. Even though there is agreement among large majorities of voters of all party affiliations on the magnitude and impact of the problem, this has not produced the political will for the kind of major change that is needed.
Small-Donor Matching. Despite the money-is-speech doctrine, real gains can and have been made at the state and local level, mainly through systems of small-donor public financing. Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut, along with such cities as New York, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque, have succeeded in winning reforms that reduce or end reliance on the traditional donor class. Recently, reform coalitions have won new small-donor systems in Seattle and Montgomery County, Maryland. There are ballot initiatives set this November for Washington state, South Dakota, and Howard County, Maryland, and a successful advisory referendum in Chicago in February has set up the possibility for progress there.
These systems have been shown to produce real change. In Connecticut, whose system was adopted in 2005 and has been in place since the 2008 election cycle, candidates for governor, other state offices, and the legislature who opt in to the voluntary system raise a threshold amount in small donations, and then stop fundraising altogether, utilizing a state grant sufficient to run a serious campaign. Participation rates by Republicans and Democrats alike are very high—almost 75 percent in 2016—and there is strong bipartisan consensus that the system has been successful in changing how campaigns are run and—importantly—who can seriously contemplate running. It has also dramatically reduced the role of lobbyists, bundlers, and other moneyed players who traditionally dominated the halls of the State Capitol in Hartford.
In New York City, a strong matching program (6 to 1 for qualifying donations raised by candidates) coupled with term limits has been a powerful engine for change. It allowed a diverse and energetic pool of candidates to emerge, and set the stage for significant progressive victories at the city council and mayoral level. Efforts to expand the system statewide have so far met stiff resistance in the Republican Senate, but the expansion effort continues while the city system enjoys strong popular support.
The Courts and a New Jurisprudence. This is where major change could really begin. The new president will likely have multiple appointments to the Supreme Court. A new high court, looking objectively at what has happened to campaign spending and fundraising in the real world, could reverse the Citizens United and McCutcheon cases, and could and should go back to the original fundamentally flawed ruling in Buckley v. Valeo from 1976. That ruling laid down two horrible premises. First, that campaign spending is constitutionally protected speech. And second, that the only acceptable principle for limiting campaign spending is to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption.
But there is an obvious additional principle that is simple common sense, which is that a set of rules can be adopted and justified to ensure that every voice is heard in our democracy, not just ones that can buy the biggest bullhorn.
But there is an obvious additional principle that is simple common sense, which is that a set of rules can be adopted and justified to ensure that every voice is heard in our democracy, not just ones that can buy the biggest bullhorn. Laws based on this equity principle could be passed, and cases can be developed and brought as assiduously and strategically as those on the right have done in their pro-big-money crusade. If judges are chosen and confirmed who prioritize restoring democracy, a major shift can happen without a constitutional amendment. They need only read retired Justice John Paul Stevens’s testimony to Congress in April 2014:
For years the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence has been incorrectly predicated on the assumption that avoiding corruption or the appearance of corruption is the only justification for regulating campaign speech and the financing of political campaigns. That is quite wrong. … Like rules that govern athletic contests or adversary litigation, those rules should create a level playing field. … Just as procedures in contested litigation regulate speech in order to give adversary parties a fair and equal opportunity to persuade the decision-maker to rule in their favor, rules regulating political campaigns should have the same objective.
Disclosure. In addition to small-donor public financing, the voluntary nature of which abides by the Buckley and the Citizens United decisions, another set of reforms has expanded disclosure, to stem the tide of money from unrevealed and secret sources and shine the proverbial sunlight on how campaigns are paid for. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Colorado are among states that have strengthened their disclosure requirements.
Federal Reforms. Several pieces of reform legislation have been introduced in Congress. These have been stymied by Republican control of both houses, but that could soon change (see below).
III. Ending Gerrymandering and Fair Redistricting
In congressional delegations and many state legislatures, the partisan breakdown bears little resemblance to voter preferences. While it is difficult to argue exact correlations between craven district-drawing and the gap between the congressional party vote and the congressional delegation makeup (given unopposed races and other factors), the general relationship is very clear. In Pennsylvania, where Democrats received half the votes for Congress in 2012, the congressional delegation to the House is 13–5 Republican. In Michigan, the Democratic vote was more than 50 percent, and it is Republican by a 9–5 margin. In Florida, where Democrats received 45 percent of the vote, the delegation is Republican by 17 to 10. In Virginia, the vote was nearly half Democratic, while the congressional delegation is 8 to 3. And in North Carolina, the Democratic vote was more than half, and the delegation is 10 to 3. While this is not only a Republican offense (in Maryland, Democrats got 63 percent of the congressional vote, but the delegation is 7–1 Democratic), the preponderance of major recent examples are of Republican making. These are remarkable disparities, and similar ones can be shown for state legislative representation. (It is worth noting that in North Carolina in 2014, about half of the state legislative candidates ran unopposed.)
While scholars have pointed out that the country is re-segregating in its residential patterns, numbers this large can only be the result of conscious racial and partisan intent.
While scholars have pointed out that the country is re-segregating in its residential patterns, numbers this large can only be the result of conscious racial and partisan intent. And whereas gerrymandering once was a gentlemanly, bipartisan arrangement to protect incumbency, the more recent abuses have been to ensure partisan control of legislatures and to create absurd and permanent majorities in congressional delegations that do not reflect the state’s voting preferences by a long shot. The outcome was a direct result of “Operation REDMAP,” a successful Republican plan to target legislative races in 2010, specifically to ensure control of the redistricting process.
This kind of gerrymandering isn’t only about politics; it is also about race. The most egregious abuses are accomplished by “packing” and “cracking” black and Latino voters, either by putting them into very compact districts, or by spreading them across multiple districts while at the same time ensuring white and conservative dominance. Ironically, the defense of the redistricting plans most often offered is that they are not about race, but about partisan preferences. These are intertwined and unacceptable goals, both. In addition, the counting of prisoners as “residents” of rural districts where prisons are placed, rather than from the communities where they lived before their incarceration, is, given the racially skewed prison population, another way of limiting the power of communities of color. Again, some progress has been made recently, with states including California, Delaware, New York, and Maryland changing the way prisoners’ residence will be counted.
The good news on gerrymandering overall is that citizens around the country have been fighting back. Recent cases have been fought and mostly won in states as diverse as Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida.
Florida produced a major victory after a long fight when the state supreme court, generally regarded as conservative, ruled in 2015 that blatant partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution, and required new districts to be drawn. This year, all of Florida’s districts have new boundaries, and significantly more are competitive. The number of competitive congressional seats rose from ten to 14, and in the State Senate, competitive seats rose from 14 to 20. In addition, districts are far more compact, adhere better to existing geographical boundaries, and give communities of color enhanced opportunities to elect candidates of their choosing.
In North Carolina, the courts have required congressional and state legislative maps to be redrawn this year to reduce the racially discriminatory districting process. When the legislature drew the new maps, they assured the public that the new maps, which would retain the 10–3 Republican majority in that state’s congressional delegation, were not racially motivated, but rather based on partisan considerations. The maps are now being contested by Common Cause and others in a new lawsuit.
In addition to the court cases, efforts to form independent redistricting commissions have been gaining steam. Arizona and California led the way years ago, in California through a ballot initiative for an independent Citizen Redistricting Commission to draw the lines. The results have been a legislature and congressional campaigns that are both more competitive and more reflective of the state’s population than ever before. And the Supreme Court last year upheld the Arizona Redistricting Commission against an argument from Arizona legislators that the citizens had “usurped” power from the legislature. Another approach, utilized by Iowa for a number of years, gives power to nonpartisan legislative staff to draw the districts with the assistance of a citizen advisory commission. The legislature can veto a plan, but cannot make changes.
In addition to changing who draws the district lines, a second area for reform is the question of what criteria to use. Criteria that have been proposed by reformers include: keeping communities of interest together, expressly protecting the rights of communities of color to have opportunities to elect candidates of their choice; prohibiting favoritism for incumbency or party advantage; requiring districts to be compact and contiguous; keeping cities and counties whole; and potentially even requiring districts to be politically competitive. In Florida, the key to the success of the reform community in the court victories was a constitutional amendment adopted in 2010 that prohibited drawing districts that diminished the ability of minority voters to elect representatives of their choice, or plans designed for partisan advantage. Secondary standards included compactness, contiguity, and equality of population.
In Ohio, a rare bipartisan coalition supported a successful ballot initiative last November that prohibited the drawing of state House and Senate districts for political advantage, and added protections that will prevent one party from dominating the process. The vote was more than two to one, and advocates will continue to push to add congressional districts to those covered by the new law. In North Carolina, following the court victories, the End Gerrymandering Now coalition, with strong bipartisan support, including in the much maligned North Carolina legislature, has real possibilities for victory in the next year. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Missouri, efforts are afoot to enact fair redistricting criteria as well.
On gerrymandering, too, a federal approach is needed.
On gerrymandering, too, a federal approach is needed. The Redistricting Reform Act, sponsored by Representative Zoe Lofgren based on California’s experience, sets standards and mandates independent commissions for the drawing of districts. The Voting Rights Act could be effectively used to win fair districts free of racial bias, if it were reauthorized. And, looking at the Supreme Court, there are four cases (Harris v. McCrory in North Carolina; Whitford v. Nichol in Wisconsin; Shapiro v. McManus in Maryland; and Common Cause v. Rucho in North Carolina) that could clearly be headed to the Court. The Court upheld the Arizona process, but it needs to take a step further, using one or more of these cases, and give critical guidance to states around the country as they develop their redistricting plans after the 2020 census.
What It Will Take to Win
Policy ideas are critical, but without a political strategy, they can just be words on paper. And saying we need a strategy is very different than really developing a successful one. Here are some of the keys to success.
I. Presidential Leadership
Hillary Clinton, strongly influenced by the Sanders campaign and by democracy organizations, has stated strong support for voting rights and for changing the campaign-finance system. But she will need to prioritize democracy issues with a serious focus, and it will not be easy. On the one hand, there is clear public support for all these issues, which resonate with voters who believe the system is stacked, and that their voices don’t count. With voters of color in particular, there are decades experiencing active attempts to keep them away from the polls and to minimize their representation through racially based gerrymandering.
On the other hand, there will be major countervailing pulls. There will be the press of crises, foreign and domestic. There will be the demands of other major issues and constituencies whose issues have been unable to move for so long. And there will be the lure of opportunities for unlimited and interested fundraising, and doing political business as usual. Pay-to-play politics is so deeply ingrained in our political culture that breaking free from it would be an extraordinary challenge and accomplishment.
What would real presidential leadership look like? One major marker is sustained attention by the president and consistent talk about these issues, utilizing the presidential pulpit in her inauguration speech, in her travels around the country, and in her legislative priorities. But what are other concrete steps that can be taken?
The President and the Congress. Legislatively, there are a number of important pro-democracy possibilities. If the Senate turns Democratic, there is real potential. Senators Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and others all have real commitments to a democracy agenda. The dynamics in the House are far less predictable, but even if it remains in Republican hands, there may be some real opportunity in the unsettled post-election months.
First and foremost should be moving the Voting Rights Advancement Act, sponsored by Representative John Lewis and Senator Leahy. Nothing would bring the Democratic Party together in the Congress, and send a signal that the issues of race and representation will not be afterthoughts, more forcefully than this. In addition, moving the bill would call out the Republicans, particularly the House leadership, to demonstrate that the racism so shamefully present in this year’s presidential campaign does not represent Republicanism in this new moment. Speaker Paul Ryan, James Sensenbrenner, Tom Cole, and other House Republicans have stated publicly that they support restoring the Voting Rights Act. Yet they have caved to the right wing of the caucus. House Judiciary Chair Robert Goodlatte refused to hold a committee hearing on its restoration, perhaps to appease the Tea Party and white nationalist elements of his Roanoke-area district. Will this pattern simply continue, or might this be an opportunity to lead in a different way? And if the leadership can’t or won’t move, this would seem to be a perfect vehicle for a discharge petition that might alter the voting dynamic in the House in major ways.
In a similar vein is the Democracy Restoration Act, which would require restoration of the voting rights of citizens with felony convictions upon release from prison. This could affect several million people around the country, and connects to the momentum on criminal justice reform, an issue already with bipartisan support.
On the campaign-finance side, Democratic senators this year introduced the “We the People” package of reforms, which Hillary Clinton said she supports. It includes strengthening disclosure and lobbyist reporting and revolving-door provisions, reforming the Federal Election Commission, and introducing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Unfortunately, the package did not include a small donor–based public financing system for Congress. But the Durbin bill in the Senate (the Fair Elections Now Act) and the John Sarbanes bill in the House (Government by the People Act) create, in slightly different ways, such a system for congressional races. In addition, the Tom Udall-sponsored EMPOWER Act would restore the viability of the presidential public financing system. As of now, these bills have very little Republican support, and will be far more challenging to move than the Voting Rights Advancement Act. But the situation has gotten so clearly out of hand, and there is such strong support from voters across the spectrum, that it may be possible that with both presidential and congressional leadership, a new chemistry on the issue can be developed, at least enough to make the debate serious.
It seems as though this election season has shown the wisdom of clearly standing for the 99 percent, and for strengthening the Democratic Party’s commitment to fighting for racial and economic equity.
One important question the campaign-finance issue raises is where the Democratic Party wants to be on these fundamental issues of how the system runs. The Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Democracy Restoration Act have a very clear logic to them from Democrats’ political point of view. Fighting for an expanded electorate, increasing the representation of the new American majority, and opposing the forces of reaction on racial issues are clearly enough in the party’s self-interest. Even the restoration of voting rights for people with felony convictions, though it might have raised the specter of being “soft on crime” at one point, has moved into the Democrats’ advantage zone. But the issue of really changing the campaign-finance rules, like the issue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the rules of globalization, goes to the heart of what the Democratic Party stands for, and risks raising the old progressive-versus-Democratic Leadership Council conflicts that were so central to the Bill Clinton era. It seems as though this election season has shown the wisdom of clearly standing for the 99 percent, and for strengthening the Democratic Party’s commitment to fighting for racial and economic equity. But the pulls of the business lobby and the donor class will be a powerful siren call.
Executive Actions. There are a large number of executive orders, appointments, and other actions that could be taken by the president.
An executive order could require federal contractors to disclose their political contributions, which would have a major impact, since most of America’s largest corporations have federal contracts. This has been discussed at great length with the Obama White House, but has not been done. Such an order would dovetail well with a strong order on ethics and revolving doors.
The president has the authority to mandate that exchanges under the Affordable Care Act be designated as voter registration sites under the NVRA, and to consider other potential strengthening of NVRA provisions.
The president and Congress need to make sure that the 2020 census is adequately funded so that a full count of our diverse population can truly be made. And the census must count prisoners from the communities from which they come, and not from their involuntary rural addresses.
The Justice Department has a strikingly important role to play. Obama has ramped up the intensity and performance of the department’s Civil Rights Division in challenging voter-suppression efforts in states and municipalities, through Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. President Hillary Clinton could go even further. The DOJ has had limited involvement in challenging purging procedures that violate the NVRA and in enforcing other NVRA provisions, which could have a major impact on the voting rolls, including ensuring that state agencies are doing all they should. And the DOJ should maintain regular, consistent contact with civil-rights organizations and the democracy community overall.
Appointments to key positions will also have a major impact. While major attention has been paid to the importance of potential Supreme Court appointments, the appointment of judges in other jurisdictions could be instrumental in rewriting jurisprudence on campaign finance and in protecting the right to vote. And President Clinton’s appointments, not only to the FEC but to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, will all have major bearing on issues related to disclosure and political financing in general.
All of these actions would benefit tremendously if President Clinton were to create a serious program within the Domestic Policy Council to move a democracy agenda. It would be a critical boost to moving a legislative agenda and promoting its priority. It would also be an effective focal point for organizing the strategic elements of support for a multifaceted democracy agenda—cataloguing and promoting the variety of executive actions that could be taken, and coordinating with the broad range of constituency organizations and coalitions that have taken up democracy as a top-priority issue. Overall, it would be an effective and strategic way of demonstrating and concretizing presidential leadership.
II. States as Continuing Laboratories
Republicans hold 68 of 99 legislative chambers, and fully control redistricting in 18 states.
Beyond change at the federal level should Clinton be successful and gains are made at the congressional level, there will also be new opportunities for states to play their “laboratories of democracy” role. Republicans hold 68 of 99 legislative chambers, and fully control redistricting in 18 states. But there are 11 states where Democrats have the possibility of retaking control, including six Senate chambers—Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, New York, Washington, and West Virginia—where a shift of one seat would flip control, opening up possibilities on democracy issues as well as others.
New York is a very clear case in point. Over the last several years, a broad and strong coalition, led by Citizen Action of New York, Common Cause New York, major unions, and the Working Families Party, fought for a strong small-donor public financing system at the state level, modeled after the New York City program. The effort had strong legislative champions and passed the state Assembly. While the governor was the most unreliable of allies, the pivotal barrier was the Republican control of the New York State Senate, which is now evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. A major victory by Clinton could very possibly flip the Senate to Democratic control, which would give a major boost to the “Demand Democracy” campaign that is poised to renew its efforts in 2017. Given New York’s outsized role in national campaign finance, a victory there could have significant national implications.
III. Now More Than Ever, a Democracy Movement
Over the past decade, we have seen the intensification of strong grassroots action for democracy. To have any real hope that the president, Congress, state legislatures, the Democratic Party, and others will move these agenda items, there must be outside pressure, with real people, real numbers, and strong organizational coordination. Based on a number of developments, there is real hope that this can happen.
New social movements, organizations committed to fighting for racial equity, and organizations in the movement for immigrant inclusion have strongly connected to democracy and voting issues. For instance, the recent “Vision for Black Lives” platform adopted by Black Lives Matter and associated organizations strongly supported not only voting rights but also publicly financed elections. Organizations and movements that have not always given priority to democratic reforms, including the labor and environmental movements, have realized that democracy must be restored and enlivened if their issues are to have a real chance to win. Grassroots community and citizen organizations like People’s Action, PICO National Network, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Gamaliel Foundation network have added these issues to their agendas more than ever before.
In addition, coordination among established organizations, and newer ones, in the money-in-politics field, the redistricting field, and in the voting-rights field has strengthened significantly over the last several years. This year’s combined effort under the banner of “Fighting Big Money,” led by Every Voice, Common Cause, Public Citizen, and others, has been a successful example, as were Democracy Spring and the Democracy Awakening. Civil-rights and voting-rights organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, have worked well in a coordinated way to stand up to the onrush of voter suppression. And the Democracy Initiative, with 60 organizations from all of these issue areas, is an entity solely committed to advancing this collaboration.
And, of course, the Sanders campaign mobilized tens of thousands of activists and influenced millions of people on the connected issues of economic and political inequality, and highlighted the assaults on our democracy in a way that energized the fight for reform. The campaign’s offshoot, Our Revolution, will certainly be in this fight as well.
The key will be in building a coordinated campaign for democracy that has the breadth of issue makeup, the diversity of organizations, and the ability to coordinate and move effectively together on behalf of the Democracy Agenda. Racial justice, economic equity, and real democracy are inextricably intertwined, and the movements to achieve them will need to consistently make those links clear, and work together to move the president and Congress on all three in reciprocal ways. The movement will need a federal focus and a state focus, and will need to recognize that focusing on policy wins in the short term is essential, while continuously bearing in mind that these issues need to be made front and center for candidates running in the 2018 election as well. Candidates for office need to win or lose based on their commitment to these issues, and electing champions for democracy will be a critical component of the work ahead. All the while, the movement will need to be looking further ahead to the incredibly consequential election of 2020.
This election has the potential to open up an extraordinary moment in the life of our democracy, including in the way we practice democracy itself. Or it can be another missed opportunity, superseded by other issues and undone by a failure to creatively assemble the elements necessary to win and coordinate them in the most effective and inclusive ways. The elements for success are present in extremely propitious ways, but it will take determined leadership by the president, congressional leaders, state legislatures, and a real grassroots movement to seize this new Democracy Moment. If it can be done, the benefits of fighting and winning on these issues now will reverberate for a long time to come.
By Miles Rapoport
Source
How Walmart Persuades Its Workers Not to Unionize
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room,...
One former Walmart store manager tells the story that after discovering a pro-union flyer in his store’s men’s room, he informed company headquarters and within 24 hours, an anti-union SWAT team flew to his store in a corporate jet. And when the meat department of a Walmart store in Texas became the retailer’s only operation in the United States to unionize, back in 2000, Walmart announced plans two weeks later to use prepackaged meat and eliminate butchers at that store and 179 others.
With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.
Walmart maintains a steady drumbeat of anti-union information at its more than 4,000 U.S. stores, requiring new hires—there are hundreds of thousands each year—to watch a video that derides organized labor. Indeed, Walmart’s anti-union campaign goes back decades: There was “Labor Relations and You at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center,” a 1991 guide aimed at beating back the Teamsters at its warehouses, and then in 1997 came “A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free.” The first half of a statement in that toolbox has been repeatedly snickered at for being so egregiously false: “We are not anti-union; we are pro-associate.”
Early last year, Anonymous, a network of hacker activists, leaked two internal Walmart PowerPoint slideshows. One was a “Labor Relations Training” presentation for store managers that echoed the “Manager’s Toolbox” in suggesting that unions were money-grubbing outfits caring little about workers’ welfare. “Unions are a business, not a club or social organization—they want associates’ money,” the PowerPoint read. (Walmart confirmed the PowerPoints’ authenticity.) “Unions spend members’ dues money on things other than representing them,” it added.
Walmart is perfectly within its rights to communicate its stance to employees. While employers are legally barred from threatening store closures, layoffs, or loss of benefits because of unionization, they are free to tell workers why they oppose unions.
Walmart has battled for years against the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents employees at many grocery stores and retailers, and its offshoot, OUR Walmart, an association of Walmart employees. Walmart insists that the UFCW is out to damage Walmart’s business. The second PowerPoint that Anonymous leaked last year attacked OUR Walmart, asking, “Is OUR Walmart/UFCW here to help you? Answer: NO.”
Tensions have risen between the retailer and OUR Walmart in recent years, with the labor group organizing nationwide protests outside hundreds of stores each Black Friday. The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint in January of last year, accusing Walmart of illegally firing 19 OUR Walmart members and illegally disciplining more than 40 others after strikes and protests demanding higher pay. Walmart maintains that the firings and disciplining were legal and not in retaliation for protesting.
Getting a glimpse of Walmart’s internal PowerPoints and training manuals is rare, but one of Walmart’s orientation videos was leaked recently, and it again revealed Walmart’s anti-union efforts. Labor experts and Walmart employees say they were surprised at the blatant untruths in many of the video’s pro-company and anti-union statements.
Walmart confirmed the video’s authenticity and said the company showed it to new hires from 2009 through last year. Early on in the course of the video’s nine minutes, an actor dressed as a Walmart employee says, “You’re just beginning your career with us. It’s hard to grasp everything that’s available to you, like great benefits.”
Ken Jacobs, the chairman of the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center, suggested that this was essentially propaganda. “Walmart's benefits are well below the standard for union groceries,” he said. “They are not ‘great benefits’ by any standard.” A discounter like Walmart certainly doesn’t have the generous pensions or Cadillac health plans offered by some companies. Gertz, the overnight stocker in Denver, says her health plan is so stingy that she often doesn’t see a doctor when she’s sick because the deductible requires her to pay the first few thousand dollars out of pocket. Gertz said that when workers call in sick, their first day off comes out of their vacation days or personal days, not their paid sick days.
A spokesperson for Walmart says it will soon revamp its policy so that employees can use paid sick days starting on their first day out. The spokesperson added that its bonuses, 401(k) plan, and health plan are considerably better than at most other discounters—its 401(k) plan gives a dollar-for-dollar match for the first six percent of pay and the premium for its most popular health plan is just $21.90 every two weeks. That said, part-time workers, who represent nearly half its work force, don’t qualify for many of these benefits.
The leaked video also boasts, “There’s no retail company that offers more advancement and job security than Walmart.” Considering that some retailers are unionized with strong job-security provisions in their union contracts, some labor advocates wondered how Walmart could begin to assert that its job security is as strong as any other retailer’s.
“That’s patently false,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a division of the UFCW. “At Walmart you can be fired for any reason at all or no reason.” He contrasted Walmart, one of the nation’s many “at-will” employers, with retailers that are unionized or partly unionized, including Costco, Macy’s, H&M and Modell’s. At unionized stores, workers can only be fired “for cause,” meaning managers need a strong reason to fire someone—for example, stealing from a store or arriving 30 minutes late five days in a row. Moreover, workers in those unionized stores can usually challenge their dismissal by bringing in an impartial arbitrator who helps determine whether a firing was justified.
Walmart, in its orientation video, makes other attempts at belittling unions. It features an actor who says, “I was a union member at my last job. Everyone actually had to join the union . . . The thing I remember most about the union is that they took dues money out of my paycheck before I ever saw it, just like taxes.” The character’s assertion that he “had to join the union” diverges from the truth. The Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that workers cannot be required to join the union at a unionized workplace—although they can be required to pay union dues or fees (unless they live in one of the 25 states with “right to work” laws).
In the video, an actress standing in front of a rack of produce continues to hammer the message. “I always thought that unions were kind of like clubs or charities that were out to help workers,” she says. “Well, I found out that wasn’t exactly the case. The truth is unions are businesses, multimillion-dollar businesses that make their money by convincing people like you and me to give them a part of our paychecks.”
Although some union leaders have generous salaries, Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, said that unions aren’t for-profit businesses. “If unions are businesses, they’re the best example of the sharing economy we’ve seen,” Sachs said. “Here’s the business model: By sharing their resources, including their financial resources, workers make better lives for themselves and their families.” Thomas Kochan, an MIT professor of management, said that the phrase the actor uses—“clubs and charities”—“insults any new hire’s intelligence.” “Most people know what unions are and what they try to do,” Kochan said.
Indeed, one might ask, if unions are doing as little for workers as Walmart maintains, why then does Walmart bother to battle unions so aggressively? Walmart takes a far more jaundiced view of unions than do many Americans—for instance the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. “The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions,” the bishops once wrote in a pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All. And Pope John Paul II, never known as a raging liberal, called unions, “an indispensable element of social life.”
Brian Nick, a Walmart spokesman, explained why the company made the video. “The core reason to have the training and information on video, in and of itself, is we know that third-party groups often reach out to our associates,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to provide accurate information that gives our associates knowledge about their work environment and their own rights as associates.”
In boasting about Walmart, the video says, “Walmart jobs are flexible jobs, giving associates the opportunity to balance our personal life with our worklife.” But Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group, strongly disagreed. “I’ve spoken with countless Walmart associates who talk about how erratic their work schedules are, about how managers regularly disregard their requests for basic accommodations so they can go to school or take care of their families,” she said. Some Walmart workers say their stores slashed their hours when they asked managers to accommodate their college schedule or their efforts to hold a second job to make ends meet.
Brian Nick, the Walmart spokesman, said the company was improving its scheduling practices. Beginning next year, it will offer some employees fixed schedules each week—many employees complain that their work schedules change vastly week-to-week.
In urging workers to shun unions, the Walmart video says, “In recent years, union organizers have spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to convince Walmart associates to join a union, all without any success.” But that’s not quite true. The UFCW hasn’t sought to persuade Walmart employees to join a union in recent years, although it did help form OUR Walmart to push for better wages and working conditions. OUR Walmart claimed a victory in February when Walmart announced it would raise its base pay to $9 this year and $10 next year. A spokesperson for Walmart said it was responding to a tighter labor market and boasted that the move would mean raises for 500,000 workers.
The Walmart video is correct about at least one thing: Most of the recent unionization votes at Walmart stores in the U.S. were unsuccessful. For example, the tire and lube workers at two Walmart stores, in Colorado and Pennsylvania, voted overwhelmingly in 2005 against unionizing. But the UFCW had a big success in 2004, when it unionized a Walmart in Jonquiere, Quebec—a first in North America. Walmart closed that store shortly afterward, and Canada’s Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the shutdown was an illegal ploy to avoid having a union. Walmart has long argued that it closed the Jonquiere store because it was unprofitable and that the closing had nothing to do with the union. As for Walmart’s decision to suddenly begin using prepackaged meat after that meat department in Texas unionized in 2000, the company said that the timing was just a coincidence and that the decision had nothing to do with unionization.
This past April, Walmart abruptly announced it was closing its store in Pico Rivera, California, along with four other stores, for six months. Many workers saw that as a daunting anti-union statement—the Pico Rivera store has the nation’s most militant OUR Walmart chapter, having staged a sit-in and numerous other protests. Walmart, however, insisted that the closing was necessitated by “ongoing plumbing issues.”
Source: The Atlantic
Scaffold Law Debate Heats Up Over Dueling Reports on Safety and Costs
Legislative Gazetter - April 21, 2014, by Matthew Dondiego - A new report released last Thursday by a pro-labor, pro-...
Legislative Gazetter - April 21, 2014, by Matthew Dondiego - A new report released last Thursday by a pro-labor, pro-immigrant rights advocacy group criticizes the construction industry for using what they call misleading figures and cherry picking data to lobby against the state's controversial "scaffold law."
The scaffold law is a century-old law in place to protect worker's rights. Under the law, contractors and property owners serving as contractors are responsible for providing a safe work environment for their employees or become liable for any on-site injuries and accidents.
Opponents of the law point out that contractors are fully liable for workers' injuries even if it is determined the worker is at fault. Opponents say it is outdated and causes construction costs to rise due to the increased costs of insurance premiums. Supporters of the law say it provides common sense protection for workers performing a dangerous job and maintain that contractors are not held liable in court if proper safety precautions are in place.
The new report, titled Fatally Flawed and released by the Center for Popular Democracy, which is supported financially by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and labor unions, is a scathing criticism of a Rockefeller Institute study — which is frequently referenced by the construction industry — that concluded the scaffold law resulted in an additional 667 work site injuries and adds about $3 billion in additional costs to construction projects in New York state each year.
According to last week's report, the oft-cited Rockefeller Institute study is "fundamentally biased" and calls the New York Civil Justice Institute, which paid $82,800 to commission the Rockefeller study, "a poorly-disguised front group" for the construction industry aligned Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York. According to the report, the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York and the New York Civil Justice Institute share the same address, 19 Dove St, Suite 201, Albany, N.Y., and the same telephone and fax numbers.
"This [Rockefeller Institute] study was bought and paid for by the construction industry," Josie Duffy, a staff attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy. "This is a direct result of people who do not like the scaffold law for business reasons, paying for this report to be released."
On the claim that the scaffold law contributed an additional 667 injuries, the report says the Rockefeller Institute "confuses correlation with causation."
This claim, according the Center for Popular Democracy, is based on worker injury rates in "sub-sectors and non-construction industries," such as warehouse work, transportation, roofing, residential building construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade and utilities industries, and are compared to the rest of the nation.
"The authors assert that these differences are greater in New York and attribute these greater differences entirely to the scaffold law," the new report reads. "There is simply no basis to conclude that the scaffold law is the cause of these differences. Indeed, the authors provide no justification for comparing injury rates in construction with injury rates in less hazardous industries, or using those differences as a proxy for the impact of the scaffold law."
Duffy bluntly says that the scaffold law does not cause an increase in workplace accidents. She says the Rockefeller Institute's study, which was released in February, lacks factual evidence that the law makes work sites more dangerous and "that number is coming from nowhere."
"To me, that is the most egregious part of this whole report," Duffy said.
Despite the strong words used in the report and by Duffy, Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, says that the Rockefeller report "conclusively" found the law made construction sites more dangerous for workers.
He said that absolute liability for contractors creates "perverse incentives" for workers.
"Workers are not incentivized because they are never held responsible and contractors are not incentivized because they are guilty in nearly every circumstance," Stebbins said. "Only by apportioning liability to fault, as is done in every other state and every other part of our civil justice system, can we maintain balance and improve safety."
According to Stebbins, the report released by the Center for Popular Democracy last week is a "political hit piece, with no statistical merit or actual research of any kind. They cannot get researchers to back up their opinions, because the facts do not support the scaffold law."
Stebbins argues that absolute liability causes the insurance markets to treat sites with sterling safety records the same as companies with less stringent safety precautions. Opponents of the scaffold law say that absolute liability holds the company liable for the worker injuries regardless of who is actually found to be at fault.
Duffy however, said that companies are not automatically found to be liable for injuries sustained by workers on construction sites and are typically safe from injury-related costs so long as they had the proper safety precautions in place.
"What absolute liability means is that you have to pay for the costs of the injuries … and that's only going to happen if you're breaking the law," she explained. "What this law says is there has to be some level of protection for workers."
According to Duffy, under the law companies still hold the right to argue their case in court and they are not automatically found responsible for every injury.
"It's important that employers get to have their voices heard in law, I support that this law allows people to get their voices heard on both sides and that's a very, very real protection," she said "Nothing happens automatically in this law and you can't even be taken to court unless your breaking the law in the first place."
The report also criticizes the Rockefeller Institute for failing to take into consideration certain conditions in New York that may affect the injury rates in the state. Such measures include New York generally has more high-level construction works which may drive up injury rates and New York construction workers are more likely to be union workers and therefore are more likely to report injuries. According to the report, Texas has one of the lowest construction injury rates yet is among the highest in construction fatality rates.
According to the report, "Such low-injury-rate states have artificially suppressed the US injury rate, which the paper nonetheless compares to the New York rate."
"This is a law that protects construction workers. Construction workers are doing a really difficult job and they're doing it every day and they are growing our economy," Duffy said. "Construction workers are literally the bread and butter of what makes New York City, New York City … and this is a state of construction."
Assemblyman Francisco Moya, a Democrat from Queens, said the Center for Popular Democracy's report "injected some truth into the politically-charged debate surrounding the scaffold law."
"Many untruths have been lobbed at the scaffold law in an attempt to dismantle it. This report makes clear that those untruths have unfortunately been crafted by parties who have a financial interest in watering down workplace protections," Moya, a staunch supporter of the law, said in an e-mail. "When it comes to life and death decisions about workplace safety, there's no room for politics. It has to be about facts. And the fact is that the Scaffold Law protects workers. That's the real bottom line."
Source
New Video: Preying on Puerto Rico, The Forgotten Citizens of Hedge Fund Island
New Video: Preying on Puerto Rico, The Forgotten Citizens of Hedge Fund Island
Last month I returned to my native Puerto Rico to attend a wedding and was catching up with family still on the Island...
Last month I returned to my native Puerto Rico to attend a wedding and was catching up with family still on the Island one evening. A couple of sips of whiskey in, and the truth came out: My wife’s father reported that he hadn’t received a paycheck in 3 months.
He is a doctor. A highly specialized one, And, with most of his patients coming through government insurance, he hadn’t seen a dime in payment.
Most Puerto Rican health care professionals try to hang on as long as possible. They want to stay in their homeland, be with their families and help make things better. But increasingly, they have no choice. Now many doctors are among the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who have become economic migrants, forced to flee from home because they simply cannot survive on patriotism and hope.
In 2014, 364 doctors left the island, the Puerto Rican Surgeons and Physicians Association reported. Last year, 500 practitioners packed up and got out.
“Don’t get hurt on a Sunday or a holiday,” one man recently told CNN after his uncle died because only 2 neurologists were on duty to serve the island’s 3.5 million “forgotten citizens.” (His family now calls the lines at the hospital “the walking dead.”)
Behind those staggering numbers is rapacious, hungry, heartless greed as embodied by two simple words: Hedge funds.
Just like Detroit, Greece and other places rocked by the recession and government mismanagement, Puerto Rico’s debt ballooned over the last decade, further exacerbated by colonial status and expiring tax incentives.
In 2012, hedge fund managers began to circle the Commonwealth, looking to reap billions – and experiment with new wealth extraction strategies that could be imported back to the American mainland. The short version: They bought Puerto Rican bonds after the price fell.
Now these “vulture” managers (as they are literally called for their creditor and distressed buying schemes – los buitres in Spanish) insist that any package from Washington that allows Puerto Rico to renegotiate its $72 billion debt puts Wall Street investors at the front of the line to get paid.
A handful are holding out for even more; refusing to accept any restructuring and demanding even more severe austerity measures and suffering so they don’t have to take any losses on their risky investment.
These carrion feeders are in fact, real human beings, acting in inhumane ways: Mark Brodsky, of the $4.5 billion Aurelius Capital and Andrew Feldstein, of the $20 billion BlueMountain Capital are two leaders of the vulture flock of hedge fund billionaires circling Puerto Rico trying to make huge profits from what’s turning into a full-scale humanitarian crisis.
Brodsky bought up the Island’s debt for as low as 29 cents on the dollar and now is demanding full repayment (Think Greece, and Argentina). He is helping fund economists who argue that vital government services must cease – and schools and hospitals must close - to extract full payment.
Feldstein has teams of lawyers fighting basic protections for Puerto Ricans in court and lobbyists taking the same case to Congress. On his dime they have launched a high profile and highly fraudulent media campaign to make sure Congress keeps working for the billionaires – and against teachers, students, the elderly… and my former neighbors and relatives.
Together with John Paulson – who literally bragged to his bros that together they could create the “Singapore of the Caribbean” and create a tax haven for themselves – these vulture investors are consuming the living, for their greed.
That’s why I’ve been working with Brave New Films and a large coalition, including Make the Road, New York Communities for Change, Organize NOW, Florida Institute for Reform & Empowerment, AFT, SEIU, NEA, New Jersey Communities United, Grassroots Collaborative , Center for Popular Democracy, Strong Economy for All, and Citizen Action, under the campaign banner Hedge Clippers, to help ordinary Puerto Ricans expose the truth about these bad actors and their flock.
Preying on Puerto Rico: Forgotten Citizens of Hedge Fund Island is a series of short film videos that Puerto Rican activists helped create to kick off an escalated series of large actions calling on those with the power to help to stand up for Puerto Ricans and stand up to los buitres.
These same leaders are behind a growing wave of protests on Capitol Hill, Wall Street, the Trump Towers and at the Federal Reserve Board offices in cities across the U.S.
They are getting attention and being heard, but the path forward is uphill. We need your help. With unemployment at 14% and 45 percent of Puerto Ricans living below the poverty line Puerto Rico is in a humanitarian crisis. PROMESA, the bill that just passed out of the US House and is on its way to the Senate, is a bad deal that will help the hedge funds, but not the Puerto Rican people.
Preying on Puerto Rico: Forgotten Citizens of HedgeFund Island is only the beginning of how we can use our voices and votes to help my father in-law remain on the Island to help save lives – and end this suffering caused by these vultures and the politicians that do their bidding.
Join us today to share these films – and call Feldstein and Brodsky to ask them: how many more billions do you need to make before you stop pillaging the poor?
By Julio López Varona / Brave New Films
Source
Arizona special election 2018: ALS patient and activist Ady Barkan stumps for Democrat Hiral Tipirneni
Arizona special election 2018: ALS patient and activist Ady Barkan stumps for Democrat Hiral Tipirneni
Be a Hero is an offshoot of the Center for Popular Democracy’s CPD Action group (Barkan previously worked for the...
Be a Hero is an offshoot of the Center for Popular Democracy’s CPD Action group (Barkan previously worked for the center) and will concentrate on boosting Democratic candidates focused on protecting health care and entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, as well as ousting Republican incumbents who voted for the GOP tax plan or have voiced support for cutting entitlements.
Read the full article here.
Activists at Jackson Hole See Recovery on Wall Street, ‘Not My Street’
The Wall Street Journal - August 22, 2014, by Pedro Nicolaci Da Costa - A group of activists has descended on the...
The Wall Street Journal - August 22, 2014, by Pedro Nicolaci Da Costa - A group of activists has descended on the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to tell central bank officials that any move to raise interest rates soon could wreak havoc on the lives of Americans still struggling with a weak economic recovery.
U.S. unemployment has fallen fairly rapidly in recent months, to 6.2% in July, down from its post-recession peak of 10%. However, the activists said those numbers mask much deeper troubles in the country’s poorer neighborhoods. The unemployment rate for African-Americans, for instance, was 11.1% in July.
Reggie Rounds, 57 years old, came to the conference from Ferguson, Mo., the site of recent violent protests following the killing of an unarmed teenager by a police officer. During a brief conversation here with Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, Mr. Rounds, who is unemployed and says he hasn’t had regular work for years, urged the central bank to keep poor Americans on their minds as they make policy decisions.
“I deal with people who have educated themselves. These people, sir, are inundated with student loans. They’re making just not livable wages or not wages at all,” Mr. Rounds told Mr. Fischer. “We’re desperately needing a stimulant into this economy, and job creation, to get us going.”
Mr. Fischer responded: “That’s what the Fed has been trying to do and will continue to try to do.”
The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since December 2008 and bought more than $3 trillion in government and mortgage bonds to keep long-term rates low, spur investment and boost hiring.
However, recent improvements in the job market and a pickup in inflation have revived debate about when the central bank should begin lifting interest rates from rock-bottom lows. In her speech here Friday, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said if the labor market keeps improving faster than the Fed forecasts the central bank could raise rates sooner than expected. Many investors anticipate the first move in the summer of next year, a perception some top Fed officials have encouraged.
Representatives of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning national nonprofit organization, said they organized the activists’ trip to Jackson Hole. The participants argued that near-term rate increases could have a deep negative impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population.
Reuben Eckels, 51, a reverend from Wichita, Kan., said he had come to the conference to tell policy makers “how raising interest rates would affect the community in which I serve.” He and other activists played down the notion of a “skills gap” where workers might not have the qualifications for the jobs available.
“We have young people who are college students in our church who have a 4.0 [grade average], Dean’s list, they can’t find jobs,” he said. “So this is not about just raising the rates so we can offset an imbalance for those elderly who are trying to save their portfolio. This is about people on the street, everyday people … who are just trying to live a good quality of life.”
Shemethia Butler, 34, is one such individual. Hailing from Washington, D.C. the mother of two says she is dealing with extreme stress because the wages she earns at McDonald’s aren’t enough to cover her rent, much less basic expenses like food, electricity and transportation.
“I have no vehicle. My housing situation is stressful. I’m about to lose my apartment. I’m struggling really hard,” she said. “Things may be fine on Wall Street, but they’re not fine on my street.”
Source
Blacks Nearly Four Times More Likely Than Whites to Be Unemployed in Minnesota
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become...
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become quite fond of in this state: Minnesota is a great place to live -- for white people.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute released a study yesterday showing the statewide unemployment rate for black people is 11.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white people.
Black Minnesotans' unemployment rate is 3.7 times higher than white Minnesotans'. The study analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the only places with a larger gap were Wisconsin (4.6 times higher) and D.C. (5.6 times higher).
Minneapolis unemployment rates are lower than statewide, but the racial gap (3.9x) is even higher.
When these figures came out yesterday protesters from across the country lobbied the Federal Reserve to keep its interest rates low.
When interest rates are low it's easier for businesses to borrow money, and in theory, easier access to money means businesses can hire -- and pay -- more people. On the flip side, if interest rates are kept too low for too long inflation becomes a concern.
"Unemployment is slowly, slowly heading in the right direction, but raising interest rates at this point would really set minorities back," said Becky Dernbach with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which held a rally yesterday at its headquarters. "We think the Fed needs to pay special consideration to how the recovery has not hit certain communities at all."
NOC and its allies are supportive of Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, who favors keeping interest rates low, but he's stepping down in a year. Protesters made it clear yesterday they want a say in who takes his place.
"On a fundamental level, we need to have a voice in the process," said Dernbach.
Source
Newark Police first in N.J. to refuse to detain undocumented immigrants accused of minor crimes
The Star-Ledger – August 15, 2013, by James Queally - The Newark Police Department has become the first law enforcement...
The Star-Ledger – August 15, 2013, by James Queally -
The Newark Police Department has become the first law enforcement agency in New Jersey to refuse the federal government’s requests to detain people accused of minor crimes who are suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, according to immigration advocates.
In enacting the policy, Newark becomes the latest city to opt out of the most controversial part of the “Secure Communities” program implemented by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in 2011, which allows the agency to ask local police to hold any suspect for up to 48 hours if their immigration status is called into question.
In the past two years, cities and states across the nation, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Massachusetts and Connecticut, have adopted similar policies. Earlier this week, Orleans Parish sheriffs also said they will stop honoring the detainer requests.
“Secure Communities” was designed to enhance ICE’s ability to track dangerous criminals who are undocumented immigrants. Under the policy the Department of Homeland Security reviews fingerprints collected by local police during an arrest, which then allows ICE to issue the detainer requests. Immigration advocates, however, argue the policy has been misused, leading to the deportation of people accused of low-level offenses and inhibits collaboration between police and people who are undocumented.
Udi Ofer, the executive director of the state chapter of the ACLU, said Newark’s policy was a collaborative effort between the city, the ACLU and several immigrants rights groups.
“With this policy in place, Newark residents will not have to fear that something like a wrongful arrest for a minor offense will lead to deportation,” said Ofer. “It ensures that if you’re a victim of a crime, or have witnessed a crime, you can contact the police without having to fear deportation.
Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio signed the directive on July 24. Newark will no longer comply with ICE requests to hold suspects accused of crimes like shoplifting or vandalism.
City police will continue to share fingerprint information with federal investigators, according to DeMaio, who said the department received only eight detainer requests in 2012.
“If we arrest somebody for a disorderly persons offense and we get a detainer request we’re not going to hold them in our cell block,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten a detainer request on a guy with a misdemeanor.”
An ICE spokesman declined to comment directly on the policy. But immigrants rights advocates hailed the move as an olive branch to undocumented immigrants, who often hesitate to cooperate with police who are investigating serious crimes in their community for fear of deportation.
That fear has been evident in a series of community meetings in the Newark’s immigrant-heavy Ironbound neighborhood, which began after “Secure Communities” was implemented in New Jersey last year, said East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador.Amador has been present for a number of those sessions, and said the culture of fear created by the program stopped many undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes committed against them in the area.
“I agree totally with the policy,” he said. “The Newark Police Department already has enough problems to worry about, rather than being involved with matters that don’t belong to them.”
A representative for Mayor Cory Booker’s administration said the policy is a smart move that strengthens ties with city residents and maintains a relationship with ICE.
“The Newark Police Department’s policy improves community relations, while saving taxpayer money and ensuring that city, state, and federal officials continue to share critical information needed to prosecute criminals and keep our streets safe,” said city spokesman James Allen.
Nisha Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said ICE has misused the “Secure Communities” policy in other areas, and Newark’s directive will slowdown the agency if it attempts to start deportation proceedings against someone for a small-scale offense.
“They often will (issue) detainers in cases where it’s really minor, when the person is not a threat to society in any way,” she said.
New Jersey has one of the country’s largest immigrant populations and the state is home to more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants, according to Amy Gottlieb, director of the American Friends Service Committee. Gottlieb said she hopes to see other New Jersey law enforcement agencies echo Newark’s policy.
“Any detainer policy where people are aware that the police department is acting in support of the immigrant community is going to be helpful for police and immigrant relations,” she said.
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