Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the...
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the bank cut all ties with companies that profit from deportations.
Hector Vaca of Action NC says the goal of the event is to get Wells Fargo to pull its money out of private prisons and immigrant detention centers. The protesters are also demanding the bank use its political influence to stop plans for a wall along the Mexican border.
Read the full article here.
Philadelphia Hopes to Become Next Major City to Pass Fair Workweek Legislation
Philadelphia Hopes to Become Next Major City to Pass Fair Workweek Legislation
It is part of a larger, nationwide effort that has already been introduced in San Francisco, Seattle and New York....
It is part of a larger, nationwide effort that has already been introduced in San Francisco, Seattle and New York. Those cities passed similar legislation after increasing their minimum wage. Adding fair workweek standards was the logical next step, according to Rachel Deutsch, senior staff attorney for worker justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “Some companies are stuck in this philosophy that labor is the most malleable cost,” she said. “But there has been a ton of data that shows there are hidden costs to this business model that treat workers as disposable.”
Read the full article here.
A New Front On Immigration: NY Legislation Would Let Undocumented Vote, Drive
Buzzfeed - June 16, 2014 by Adrian Carrasquillo - New York Democrats announced Monday new legislation that would grant...
Buzzfeed - June 16, 2014 by Adrian Carrasquillo - New York Democrats announced Monday new legislation that would grant state citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants.
The bill could represent a bold new advocacy strategy: using states’ rights to secure legal protections for the undocumented.
York state senator Gustavo Rivera and assembly member Karim Camara’s bill would allow undocumented immigrants to vote, drive, receive professional licenses, run for civil office, and receive Medicaid as well as in-state tuition in New York by making them New York state citizens.
“It’s up to New York to figure out who it’s political community is,” said Peter Markowitz, professor at the Cardozo school of law, who made the legal case for the legislation through the country’s dual-sovereign structure. “New York gets to decide who is and who isn’t a New Yorker. The federal government may not interfere.”
The prospects for federal changes to U.S. immigration law took a hit last week after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary election loss, attributed by some as directly the result of attacks by Cantor’s opponent on his immigration record.
Flanked by activists in front of the Statue of Liberty Monday, Rivera struck a positive tone about the bill, called the New York is Home Act.
Immigrants would be eligible to become state citizens if they show proof of identity, proof of three years of New York State residency and proof of three years of New York State tax payments; the bill also requires a commitment to abide by state laws and uphold the state Constitution, and a willingness to serve on New York juries and to keep paying state taxes.
Rivera said the idea has been in the works for two years and called the legislation “bold,” not because of the pieces themselves, but because they are all in one bill.
“This is unlike SB1070,” Rivera told BuzzFeed after the event. “Arizona said, ‘We can do this and affect things on a federal level.’ No, you can’t. But the conversation we need to have is: What rights do we have in a state?”
Spokespeople for Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the first Latina in the role, said Monday they were reviewing the legislation.
“In light of inaction at the federal government, the administration is interested in learning about local initiatives to increase equality among immigrant communities,” de Blasio deputy press secretary Maibe Ponet said.
“Given congress’s failure to address immigration reform, people are obviously becoming increasingly frustrated, a spokesman for Mark-Viverito said. “[The speaker] is supportive of increasing voting rights and will be reviewing the legislation.”
Cesar Vargas, a DREAMer who has been fighting for the right to practice law as an undocumented immigrant, would benefit from the portion of the legislation that would give licenses for professions like lawyers, doctors, dentists, midwives and others. He said he is set to work with the mayor and the city council speaker to “see how they can support undocumented lawyers.”
“As we stand in front of the Statue of Liberty, we’re reminded of the American Dream, and I’m reminded of the dream of my mother for me to be a lawyer,” Vargas said.
Many sought to draw a parallel between the fight for marriage equality — and its stops and starts over the years.
“This will get a lot of attention for New York,” DREAMer Antonio Alarcon, 19, said. “It will take months to pass, we’re going to be fighting for this like they did for marriage equality.”
“Full equality and inclusion will gain momentum in our time,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of The Center for Popular Democracy.
He said his group is in discussion with four to five other states for similar legislation with the stated goal of putting “another horse in the race” in the way those who fought for marriage equality continued to refine what they were asking for.
Jose Davila, the vice president off policy and government relations at the Hispanic Federation echoed the belief that the legislation comes at an important time for the fight for changing U.S. immigration laws.
“Instead of tear families apart, we should be reframing the debate. What kind of state do we want to be?”
Source
How Laid-Off Toys R Us Workers Came Together To Fight Wall Street
How Laid-Off Toys R Us Workers Came Together To Fight Wall Street
The campaign took on the name Rise Up Retail, which is funded by the Organization United for Respect and the liberal...
The campaign took on the name Rise Up Retail, which is funded by the Organization United for Respect and the liberal advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy. Through Rise Up Retail, Garcia met fellow Toys R Us veterans agitating for severance pay, like Maryjane Williams.
Read the full article here.
The big 2016 minimum wage push just got a powerful new ally
A little over a year out from the presidential election, we already know the states where the fiercest battles will...
A little over a year out from the presidential election, we already know the states where the fiercest battles will likely be fought. But another electoral map is shaping up too: The states where voters will decide where to raise their minimum wage.
And soon, those pay-boosting ballot measures might have some serious money behind them. A large California union is seed funding an organization aimed at accelerating such campaigns around the country, seizing on growing public support for raising the minimum wage to heights that just one cycle ago would have seemed like total fantasy.
It’s called the Fairness Project, officially launching Thursday, and it’s already focusing on three jurisdictions: California, Maine and the District of Columbia, with potentially more to come as funding becomes available. And the group's main backer, the Service Employees International Union’s 80,000-person strong United Healthcare Workers local in California, says it’s talking with a handful more.
“This is the best value in American politics,” says SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan, who last year laid out a strategy to raise wages through ballot initiatives in the 24 states that allow them. “If you can amass $25 million, you can put a question in front of half the country that simply can’t be moved through legislatures because of big money in politics.”
The organization doesn’t have $25 million yet, just a couple million; Regan declined to specify exactly how much. SEIU headquarters, despite waging its own multi-million dollar “Fight for $15” campaign to raise wages around the country, has yet to pitch in (which may have something to do with the fact that Regan has had a testy relationship with SEIU’s president, Mary Kay Henry; SEIU declined to comment).
But Regan says he hopes that as union locals do their budgets for the 2016 campaigns, they’ll contribute, partly as a way to resuscitate the labor movement’s image. “Most of the discourse around unions is negative,” Regan says. "So the Fairness Project is saying, 'Look, we can win for tens of millions of people, just if we’re committed to doing this.'"
They’ve picked a soft target. According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, minimum wage measures have been tried 20 times in 16 states since 1996, and all but two succeeded. The earlier victories came in waves, starting with the “living wage” movement in the 1990s. The campaigns even work in conservative states: in 2004, John Kerry lost Florida, but a minimum wage hike passed with 70 percent of the vote.
Even though those measures may not have made it through state legislatures, in combination, they do seem to add momentum for minimum wage hikes on the federal level — Congress responded with legislation in 1997 after a spate of ballot initiatives, and again in 2007 and 2008. Sometimes, just the credible threat of a ballot initiative can spur state houses to action where previously they had no interest, although the final result may end up watered down.
Most recently, in 2014, minimum wage measures passed in Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota. This latest wave is even more ambitious than the first and second, says Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy — and it benefits from the narrative around inequality that arose during an economic recovery that delivered very little wage growth.
"In some ways the most powerful, because it’s the most visionary in terms of the Fight for $15,” Kettenring says. “What the project hits on that really makes sense is engaging inequality through the ballot initiative.”
Still, there’s no guarantee of success, and credible initiative campaigns do take money. They also have a lot of common needs, like polling, voter targeting, Website design, and message strategy. That’s where Ryan Johnson, the Fairness Project’s executive director, says the group can help.
“There are a lot of very expensive things with ballot initiatives,” Johnson says. “Things that work with presidential campaigns — could we take the lead in investing in those directly and at scale? It saves people a couple grand here, and couple grand there.”
It’s a model that’s worked for other causes, as well, such as marriage equality and medical marijuana. The ballot initiative process has long been used by both conservative and liberal groups, with varying degrees of scale, sometimes with the side effect of driving turnout for Democratic or Republican candidates.
The support will help campaigns that usually lack major corporate financing, and have to sustain themselves with volunteers and small dollar donations. Amy Halsted, of the Maine Peoples’ Alliance, says the organization received unprecedented financial support for its push to raise the state’s minimum wage to $12 by 2020 — it has raised about $150,000.
But it could use help with big-ticket items that are more efficiently provided by a central coordinating body, like consulting and tech support. And besides, a national campaign has a galvanizing effect in itself.
“One of the things we’re excited about is their ability to sustain that energy that exists nationally, and try to create an echo chamber,” she says. "The ability to connect all the movements I think is powerful and exciting, and makes our hundreds of volunteers feel connected to a big national campaign.”
The Fairness Project may not even be the only game in town when it comes to national support for minimum wage campaigns. Seattle billionaire Nick Hanauer, who helped bankroll the successful $15 an hour campaign there, isn’t contributing — he thinks the group has got the wrong message. “The majority of workers want the economy to grow,” he wrote in an e-mail, arguing that high wages are good for business. “Growth sells. Complaining about fairness does not.” (Regan says their initial focus groups responded well to the fairness message.)
But Hanauer may be supporting other campaigns independently — including a ballot initiative in his home state of Washington. “We hope to influence the messaging on a lot of the campaigns that will unfold in ’15 and ’16,” he says.
Ballots will likely becrowded with other measures, too — with more and more state legislatures controlled by Republicans, liberal groups are trying to put gun control and marijuana legalization questions before voters directly.
Facing that popular onslaught, the business community is weighing its options.
In some places, like Maine, the opposition might not be that fierce. Although business groups grumbled when the $12 statewide ballot initiative was introduced, the state’s biggest city — Portland — already passed a law that would raise the wage at least that high by 2018. On top of that, they’refighting a city vote on a local $15 minimum.
“$12 is not out of the question here, as long as it's statewide,” said Toby McGrath, who’s running the campaign against the $15 measure for the Portland Chamber of Commerce.
California, however, will see a more pitched battle. Business groups managed to stall a $13 minimum wage hike proposal in the legislature. Tom Scott, California’s state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, says there's still a lot of time yet to build an employer response to the ballot measure that labor backers say just got enough signatures to qualify.
“There’s going to be a huge coalition opposition a minimum wage increase,” he says. “This is a very long process. And the one thing about ballot initiatives — depending on how it’s worded, if it’s a yes or a no, in California, if I can in 15 seconds create confusion or questions, people will typically vote no.”
But if young people vote in large numbers, Scott worries they could be hard to beat. “I would just be fearful of the voter turnout,” he says, "and the demographics of who’s turning out.”
After publication, SEIU headquarters reached out to add the following statement:
SEIU works directly with our local unions in states to evaluate ballot initiatives on a state by state basis and determine which ones will advance better jobs and better wages for working people.
Source: Washington Post
New Report Details Plans for Low-Wage Worker Justice
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013 - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his...
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013 - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his minimum wage salary doesn't allow for him to afford public transportation, that's a problem.
Low-wage workers across the city have stood up in the past year to demand that such insecurity be eradicated and to pressure employers to finally begin to provide them with just compensation for their labor.
Building on the progress generated by these worker-led movements--in industries such as retail, fast-food, airline security and car washing--UnitedNY, the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups held a symposium and released a report yesterday analyzing the state of the city's low-wage worker movement.
"It's very difficult to try and make ends meet on $7.25 minimum wage in New York City," Alterique Hall, a worker in the fast-food industry, said during a news conference following the event. "Some nights you want to lay down cry because you [feel] like 'what's the point of going to work and putting all of myself into a job, [if] I'm going to be miserable when I get off work, miserable when I go home...and don't want to wake up and go to work the next day...to get disrespected, treated poorly and paid poorly.'"
Hall, who's been active in the push for fairer wages in the fast-food industry, is the worker who is often forced to embark on the three-hour treks to work. Hall said that his boss will sometimes said him home as a penalty for his tardiness--without considering the ridiculous journey he has to travel just to get to there.
"Working hard, and working as hard as you can, isn't paying off for them," mayoral hopeful and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, said during the news conference. "They're being underemployed, They're being underpaid. They're being taken advantage of. They're being ignored. They're becoming a permanent underclass in the city of New York."
The UnitedNY and CPD report lays out four specific initiatives that workers and advocates must pressure the city to implement in order to help better the plight of low-wage workers. The reports calls on the city and employers to :
[Raise] standards for low-wage workers. [Regulate] high-violation industries where labor abuses are rampant. [Establish] a Mayor's Office of Labor Standards to ensure that employment laws are enforced. [Urge] the State to allow NYC to set a minimum wage higher than the State minimum--due to the higher cost of living in the City.The report pays close attention to the need for City Council to pass the paid sick-leave bill, and increase the minimum wage in the city to $10/hour--a salary that would net a worker with regular hours about $20,000/year in earnings.
"We can't continue to be a Tale of Two Cities, where the path to the middle class keeps fading for thousands of New Yorkers," said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. "We must break the logjam and pass paid sick leave in the City Council. We have to protect low-wage workers fighting union busting employers. We can't tolerate inaction any longer. It's time for real action to fight for working families."
During one of the symposium workshops, a panel of labor experts discussed the obstacles facing low-wage workers in their fight to obtain such rights.
"[We've] shifted from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy," Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University, said during the discussion. "[The job market is filled with] part-time jobs, low wages, no benefits, no social contract, no ability to move up in the job the way 20th century workers were able to."
Warren says that the quality of jobs in the American economy will only decline if something isn't done. He noted that 24 percent of jobs were low-wage in 2009. By 2020, that number is expected to nearly double and hit 40 percent. To make matters worse, technological "advances" are expected to increase unemployment rates by 3-5 percent moving forward.
"We're looking at an economy only of low-wage work in the future, but also of high and permanent levels of unemployment," Warren said.
The panel was moderated by acclaimed labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse of the N.Y. Times and included Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor of labor for U.S. Department of Labor and Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.
Several panelists stressed the need to combat attacks from right-minded forces seeking to erode worker wage and benefit rights. Falcon says that those fighting for worker rights must correct popular narratives, many of which categorize wage and benefit increases for workers as business-killers.
"When we talk about the minimum wage, the immediate response from business is, we're going to lose jobs because, we're only going to be able to hire a few people. We have to have an answer to that objection," Falcon said. "Through raising the minimum wage, you create job growth in terms of people being able to put more money into the economy. You're [putting] less pressure on social welfare systems...the system is still subsidizing business [when the public provides] welfare and other social services."
Warren* argued a similar point.
"I think we have to be much more explicit about targeting the right the way that they've targeted us. There's a reason why the right has gone after public sector unionism," Warren* said. "They know that's where the heart of the labor movement is in terms of funding and in terms of membership. We have to get smarter about which parts of the right do we target to destroy ideologically, organizationally so that we can advance further our movements. "
Source
Five Key Questions to Ask Now About Charter Schools
Washington Post - January 23, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - You can tell that National School Choice Week is nearly upon...
Washington Post - January 23, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - You can tell that National School Choice Week is nearly upon us — it runs from Jan. 25- 31 — by the number of announcements coming forth hailing the greatness of school choice.
Jeb Bush’s Florida-based Foundation for Excellence in Education put out an announcement that it would participate in a march next week in Texas to support school choice (with one of the speakers being Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, Jeb’s son). There’s a new poll by the pro-choice American Federation for Children showing (I bet you can guess) that most Americans support school choice. Etc., etc.
There is other school choice news too, but you won’t hear it from the pro-choice folks. This comes from 10th Period blog, by Steven Dyer, a lawyer who is the education policy fellow at Innovation Ohio and who once served as a state representative and was the chief legislative architect for Ohio’s Evidence Based Model of school funding:
In a disturbing new report from State Auditor David Yost, officials found that at one Ohio charter school, the state was paying the school to educate about 160 students, yet none, that’s right, zero, were actually at the school. And that’s just the worst of a really chilling report, which, if the results are extrapolated across the life of the Ohio charter school program, means taxpayers have paid more than $2 billion for kids to be educated in charter schools who weren’t even there. Here are the takeaways:
Seven of 30 schools had headcounts more than two standard deviations below the amount the school told the state it had.
Nine of 30 schools that had headcounts at least 10% below what the charter told the state it had, though it was less than two standard deviations.
The remaining 14 had headcounts that weren’t off by as much.
However, 27 of 30 schools had fewer students at the school than they were being paid to educate by the state
This means that more than 1/2 of all the charter schools chosen at random had significantly fewer students attending their schools than the state was paying them to educate, while 90% had at least some fewer amount.
So in honor of National School Choice Week, here are five questions that should be asked about charter schools, which today enroll about 2.57 million students in more than 6,000 charter schools nationwide.
The questions, and supporting material, come from the Center for Popular Democracy, which has exposed over $100 million public tax funds stolen in the charter school industry in a report titled, “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.”
Here are the center’s questions: 1. How much money has your state lost to charter waste, fraud and abuse?
With at least $100 million tax dollars lost to fraud, waste, or abuse by charter operators in the United States, there is significant progress needed before the charter sector can claim best practices on fraud and abuse. What’s worse, given the scant auditing and little regulation, the fraud uncovered so far might only be scratching the surface. The types of fraud fall into six major categories: [Reference: CPD report, May 2014] • Charter operators using public funds illegally for personal gain; • School revenue used to illegally support other charter operator businesses; • Mismanagement that puts children in actual or potential danger; • Charters illegally requesting public dollars for services not provided; • Charter operators illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenues; and, • Charter operators mismanaging public funds and schools.
2. Are charter operators required to establish strong business practices that guard against fraud, waste, mismanagement, and abuse? Do regulators in your state have the authority and resources to regularly assess charter school business practices?
Despite millions of dollars lost to shady practices, charter operators are overwhelmingly not required by law to establish strong business practices that protect against fraud and waste. We need change:
* Charter schools should institute an internal fraud risk management program, including an annual fraud risk assessment. * Oversight agencies should regularly audit charter schools and use methodologies that are specifically designed to assess the effectiveness of charter school business practices and uncover fraud.
3. Does your state require charter school operators and their boards of directors to provide adequate documentation to regulators ensuring funds are spent on student success?
Across the country, investigations led by attorneys general, state auditors and charter authorizers have found significant cases of waste, fraud and abuse in our nation’s charter schools. The majority of investigations are initiated by whistleblowers because most regulators do not have the resources to proactively search for fraud, waste, or abuse of public tax dollars. [References:CPD report, December 2014; CPD report, October 2014]
4. Can your state adequately monitor the way charters spend public dollars including who charter operators are subcontracting with for public services?
Because most charter schools laws do not adequately empower state regulators, regulators are often unable to monitor the legality of the operations of companies that provide educational services to charter schools. For example, Pete Grannis, New York State’s First Deputy Comptroller, reported recently that charter school audits by his office have found “practices that are questionable at best, illegal at worst” at some charter schools.[1] While his office would like to investigate all aspects of a charter operators business practices, they do not have the authority. To reform the system, he believes that “as a condition for agreeing to approve a new charter school or renew an existing one, charter regulators could require schools and their management companies to agree to provide any and all financial records related to the school.” [2]
This example typifies the lack of authority given to charter oversight bodies. Lawmakers should act to amend their charter school laws to give charter oversight bodies the powers to audit all levels of a charter schools operations, including their parent companies and the companies they contract out their educational services to.
5. Are online charter operators audited for quality of services provided to students and financial transparency?
Online charter schools represent another rapidly growing sector. The rapid growth has made the online charter school industry susceptible to similar pitfalls facing the poorly regulated charter industry as whole. As one longtime academic researcher puts it, “The current climate of elementary and secondary school reform that promotes uncritical acceptance of any and all virtual education innovations is not supported by educational research. A model that is built around churn is not sustainable; the unchecked growth of virtual schools is essentially an education tech bubble.”[3]
Given the poor outcomes being generated by most online charter schools, state regulators should be empowered with more authority to ensure these schools are not violating state laws or their charter agreements.
[1]https://www.propublica.org/article/ny-state-official-raises-alarm-on-charter-schools-and-gets-ignored [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/ny-state-official-raises-alarm-on-charter-schools-and-gets-ignored [3]http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/05/virtual-schools-annual-2013
Progressive Activists Keep Up Campaign to Thwart Rate Rises
NEW YORK—A group of activists lobbying the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates is pressing its...
NEW YORK—A group of activists lobbying the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates is pressing its campaign amid signs from the central bank that it is moving closer to lifting borrowing costs.
Members of the Fed Up Coalition, a left-leaning organization affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy and connected with labor unions and community groups, met with Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and other central bank governors late last year.
They recently have met with the leaders of the Boston, Kansas City and San Francisco Fed banks, and are scheduled to meet next with Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockharton Aug. 12 and with New York Fed President William Dudley on Aug. 14.
Most Fed officials, including Ms. Yellen, have indicated they expect to start raising short-term interest rates this year if the economy keeps improving. They have held their benchmark rate near zero since December 2008 to bolster the economy.
The activists say they want the Fed to hold off a bit longer to ensure the expansion benefits all Americans, not just the wealthiest.
They also want the Fed to become more open about its actions and how it selects the presidents of the 12 regional reserve banks.
And they want the Fed to engage with banks to promote affordable housing.
“Over the last few weeks we’ve had a lot of success engaging with Fed officials,” said Ady Barkan, who leads the Center for Popular Democracy Fed campaign. His group is “seeing that [Fed officials] are really being responsive” to the case they are making, he said.
Mr. Barkan said a recent meeting with St. Louis Fed President James Bullard was particularly fruitful. Mr. Bullard said in an interview with the Journal Friday the Fed has a balancing act when it comes to setting interest rate policy.
He favors raising interest rates this year and says the central bank’s September meeting is likely a good time to start.
“I think I have the better policy for the type of people they want to help,” Mr. Bullard said. “If you go for too much in monetary policy you can get some sort of financial bubbles and imbalances that fall apart and cause a recession,” and modest rate rises soon will help reduce those risks.
The activist group also is calling for greater representation on regional banks’ boards of directors for noncorporate interests. By law, the regional Fed directors are drawn from a mix of financial industry professionals, community and business leaders. Each board oversees individual reserve bank operations, and the directors from outside the financial sector manage the selection of new reserve bank presidents.
Mr. Barkan said Fed boards are dominated by the perspectives of leaders from large institutions. While he welcomes union and nonprofit representation on the boards, Mr. Barkan said the diversity should extend further and include a more ground-level perspective on how the economy is functioning.
Jean-Andre Sassine, age 48, of New York City, plans to attend the group’s meeting with Mr. Dudley. Mr. Sassine, who said he works on television and advertising productions, became interested in the Fed when his family ran into difficulties during the recession. He said that led him to ask questions about the role the central bank was playing to help everyday people.
When he went with the group to the meeting with Ms. Yellen, Mr. Sassine said he walked away with “the sense they aren’t used to dealing with people. It seems like they just get reports” and work off that data, and little else, to make their decisions, Mr. Sassine said.
“We are supposed to have input and recognition and we don’t have it,” Mr. Sassine said. “It can’t all be corporate heads and bankers…We’ve got to have real people who buy groceries” on the Fed’s various advisory boards, he said.
The Fed has tried to broaden its public outreach in recent years. The central bank this year has been recruiting people to serve on a new Community Advisory Council, which will meet twice a year with Washington-based Fed governors. Ms. Yellen last year visited a job-training program in Chicago and a nonprofit in Chelsea, Mass., that helps unemployed people find work.
Mr. Dudley has conducted a number of public tours of the New York Fed’s district, in which he has met with business leaders, academics, community groups and others. In a Wall Street Journal interview in March 2014 he explained he had been using the tours to make the Fed seem less abstract. And he also said the visits had in particular deepened his understanding of the housing crisis and sharpened his response to those troubles.
Staff at the regional Fed banks who have met with the activists say their meetings are part of regular efforts to engage with their communities, and can offer valuable insight into the state of the economy.
In a statement, the Atlanta Fed said it regularly meets with community based interest groups “through its various outreach programs including community and economic development, economic education, and supervision and regulation.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Police lay out security approach for People's March in wake of Dallas shootings
Police lay out security approach for People's March in wake of Dallas shootings
A scheduled protest march by a host of progressive advocacy groups as part of the Still We Rise convention downtown...
A scheduled protest march by a host of progressive advocacy groups as part of the Still We Rise convention downtown came with an added dose of tension and scrutiny a day after a protest in Dallas culminated in the shooting of five police officers.
The “People’s March” scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Friday is part of the opening festivities for Still We Rise, a convention organized by the Center for Popular Democracy that’s brought 1,500 people to the city to gather over various causes such as workers' rights, climate change, criminal justice reform and many others.
They’re causes that overlap with the protest march in Dallas over recent police shootings in Minnesota and New Orleans. At that march Thursday, snipers targeted police officers, killing five and wounding seven others, according to various reports.
The People’s March is expected to protest against UPMC, Bank of New York Mellon and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a parade that will trail from the David L. Convention Center hosting Still We Rise to the U.S. Steel Tower, headquarters for UPMC, then to One Oxford Centre and across the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Pittsburgh office of Pat Toomey.
A spokesman or BNYMellon declined comment on the event. A representative for UPMC did not return a call seeking comment.
A statement by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police laid out the public safety strategy and acknowledged calling on law enforcement resources beyond Pittsburgh.
“The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is committed to keeping people safe during this afternoon’s planned People’s Convention March that begins at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. There will be a visible presence of uniformed officers along with a not-so-visible presence of plain clothes officers,” reads the statement, quoting the event organizers’ intention of protesting growing inequality and “a toxic atmosphere of hate.”
“Officers will exercise extreme caution to ensure the safety of both our officers and the public,” continued the statement. “The Public Safety Department has been and will continue to be in communication with the FBI. The Police Bureau will work closely with law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels.”
The event otherwise marked a modest convention event for the city, in which the 1,500 attendees represent 2,587 room nights at downtown hotels such as the Omni William Penn, the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown, the Westin Convention Center and others.
The Still We Rise proceedings come on the same weekend that the city of Pittsburgh is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its incorporation as a city, including a Bicentennial Parade scheduled for Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m., just one of what’s expected to be more than 100 affiliated events throughout the city in the coming weeks.
Yet the city’s celebration of its birthday has been overshadowed by the shootings in Dallas and by the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that helped to trigger them.
Anticipating the anger and sadness from the shootings, on Friday Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, working with Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald, called for “communitywide peace summit” to be held sometime next week.
“We are all affected by the violence in our communities – whether it be here in Pittsburgh, in Dallas, or so many other cities – and we all must do everything we can to stop it,” he said in a prepared statement. “Pittsburgh is a strong and resilient place, and our bonds are even stronger when all of us in the city work together.”
Peduto announced the plan for the summit without a determined date at a meeting today of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials and other organization leaders from throughout the country.
By Tim Schooley
Source
Epic Charter School Fail Exposed
Capital & Main - October 2, 2014, by David Cohen - A $300,000 plane; $861,000 to pay off personal debts and keep...
Capital & Main - October 2, 2014, by David Cohen - A $300,000 plane; $861,000 to pay off personal debts and keep open a struggling restaurant. A down payment on a house and an office flush with flat-screen televisions, executive bathrooms and granite counter tops. This isn’t a list of expenditures from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, this represents a small slice of the more than $30 million of taxpayer funds that have been wasted through fraud and abuse in Pennsylvania’s charter schools since they first opened in 1997.
A new report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and Action United is blowing the lid off the lack of public oversight at Pennsylvania’s 186 charter schools.
Inadequate audit techniques, insufficient oversight staff and a lack of basic transparency have created a charter system that is ripe for abuse in the Keystone State. But there is hope. The report provides a detailed roadmap for Pennsylvania to create an effective oversight structure and provide meaningful protections that can curtail endemic fraud and waste.
The report calls for an immediate moratorium on new charters until the inadequate oversight system can be replaced with rigorous and transparent oversight. That’s the right first step.
According to the authors, charter school enrollment in the state has doubled three times since 2000 and Pennsylvania’s students, their families and taxpayers cannot afford to lose another $30 million. Pennsylvania’s students and taxpayers deserve better.
Source
1 month ago
1 month ago