People Before Profit blog

Public workers union moves conference as "Boycott Indiana" movement mushrooms

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 11:59:00 +0000

The public workers union, AFSCME, announced March 30 it will move its is 2015 Women's Conference, scheduled for October, out of Indianapolis "as a direct result of Gov. Mike Pence last week signing into law a bill that legalizes discrimination." The 1.6 million member union said in the media statement, "[It] cannot in good conscience make such a sizeable financial investment in Indiana knowing that women and men in that state are deliberately being targeted for discrimination."

Calling the highly controversial law "un-American" and an "embarrassment," the union says the law allows businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers. "It sets Indiana and our nation back decades in the struggle for civil rights. It is an embarrassment and cannot be tolerated." The union said its action to relocate the conference is "a sign of our disgust and disappointment" with the governor and the law.

Indiana made national news when Pence signed the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, March 26, drawing condemnation and outrage from Hoosiers and non-Hoosiers alike. Although there are other RFRA laws on 20 states' books and a federal law, the Indiana law is different because it allows individuals, private businesses and corporations to discriminate against LGBT Americans (or anybody else) based on their "religious beliefs." The law dovetails the infamous Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to refuse to offer birth control to its employees based on religious reasons.

Celebrities, companies and colleges responded swiftly to the new law. Salesforce.com banned employee travel to the state while the Yelp, a popular review website, pledged not to expand into the Hoosier state. The NCAA president said the law could lead to major changes in the college sports governing body's relationship to the state where Indianapolis is the site for the Final Four basketball semi-finals and championship game this year. Jason Collins, the NBA's first openly gay player, asked the governor in a tweet three days before Pence signed the bill, "@GovPenceIN‪, is it going to be legal for someone to discriminate against me & others when we come to the #FinalFour?"‬

Pence, clearly on the defensive during the Sunday morning news talk shows, claimed the Indiana law is similar to 19 other states that have so-called religious freedom laws, most passed two decades ago.

But in an analysis by Think Progress' Judd Legum, he writes such a claim "is simply not true" and warns that other states "are following Indiana's lead and broadening the language" of the older laws in significant ways.

"When the federal law was signed in 1993, it was thought 'to be about benign and relatively uncontroversial matters, such as allowing Muslim jail inmates to wear closely trimmed beards, or assuring that churches could feed homeless people in public parks,'" he writes. "Today, Indiana's law is driven 'by the politics of anti-gay backlash. Their most ardent supporters come from an increasingly angry, marginalized, and shrill subset of Christian conservative activists.'" The recent legal and political victories on marriage equality and interrelated sea change of public opinion are case in point.

Thirty law professors who are experts in religious freedom wrote in February that the Indiana law does not "mirror the language of the federal RFRA" and "will... create confusion, conflict, and a wave of litigation that will threaten the clarity of religious liberty rights in Indiana while undermining the state's ability to enforce other compelling interests."

They continued, "This confusion and conflict will increasingly take the form of private actors, such as employers, landlords, small business owners, or corporations, taking the law into their own hands and acting in ways that violate generally applicable laws on the grounds that they have a religious justification for doing so.

"Members of the public will then be asked to bear the cost of their employer's, their landlord's, their local shopkeeper's, or a police officer's private religious beliefs."

Freedom Indiana reported that Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard (R) announced at a press conference March 30 his opposition to the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This was followed by the Indianapolis City Council passing a bipartisan resolution 24-4 voicing their opposition to RFRA. The resolution, which was endorsed by the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, also called on the Indiana General Assembly to update existing state civil rights law "to ensure that gay and transgender Hoosiers cannot be discriminated against."

Writing on MSNBC, the actor and social media tour de force George Takei called for a boycott of the state to not only send a message but "to help stop the further erosion of our core civil values in other parts of this country."

Takei said although he is a Buddhist he "cannot help but think that if Christ ran a public establishment, it would be open to all, and He would be the last to refuse service to anyone. It is, simply put, the most un-Christian of notions."

Photo: Thousands of opponents of Indiana Senate Bill 101, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, gathered on the lawn of the Indiana State House to rally against that legislation March 28. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler)

In women's history month: Lesbian rabbi leads Reform Jewish profession

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:36:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) - As a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in the 1980s, Denise L. Eger lived away from other seminarians. She quietly started a group for fellow gay and lesbian students, but held the meetings in another borough. By the time of her ordination, she was not formally out of the closet, but her sexuality was known, and no one would hire her. Later, she took the only job offered, with a synagogue formed expressly as a religious refuge for gays.

Since then, the Reform Jewish movement - Rabbi Eger's spiritual home since childhood - has traveled a long road toward recognizing and embracing same-sex relationships. That journey has led two weeks ago to Philadelphia, where she was installed as the first openly gay president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the rabbinical arm of Reform Judaism.

"It really shows an arc of LGBT civil rights," Rabbi Eger said in an interview. "I smile a lot - with a smile of incredulousness."

Rabbi Eger, the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Calif., is not the first openly gay or lesbian clergy member to lead an American rabbinical group. In 2007, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association chose Rabbi Toba Spitzer, a lesbian, as its national president. But Reform Jews, with 2,000 rabbis, 862 American congregations, and 2 million adherents, are the largest movement in American Judaism and have a broader role in the Jewish world.

Reform Judaism was the earliest of the major Jewish movements to take formal steps toward recognizing same-sex relationships. In 1977, the Reform movement called for civil rights protections for gays. By 1996, Reform rabbis backed same-sex civil marriage. But as these positions developed, gays and lesbians had to grapple with the uncertainties of pursuing ordination at a time when they could easily be kicked out of seminary over their sexuality, or graduate without a congregation willing to hire them.

Rabbi Eger, 55, began working in synagogues at age 12, in the mailroom of the Memphis congregation her family attended. Around the same time, she realized she was a lesbian. By college, Rabbi Eger knew she wanted to become a rabbi or cantor, even though she believed at the time that it meant she would have to sacrifice her hopes of having a spouse and children.

"It was impossible to reconcile being a rabbi and being a gay person or a lesbian person," she said.

During seminary, she had a girlfriend, and she said some people treated them as a couple. Some Reform synagogues had started outreach programs to gays and lesbians, and one congregation, in San Francisco, had an openly gay rabbi. But elsewhere rabbis were being forced out of congregations for their sexuality.

The need for positive role models

After Rabbi Eger was ordained in 1988, she started working at the Beth Chayim Chadashim synagogue in Los Angeles amid the AIDS crisis. She said that "standing over the graves of 28-year-olds and schlepping to the hospital five or six times a day" had intensified her commitment to gay rights. In 1990, she came out in a Los Angeles Times article, saying gay and lesbian Jews need positive role models.

"I took a great risk, but I didn't feel I could be authentic anymore - watching young men all around me die and not tell," she said.

Over the next two decades, gay acceptance became the norm in most American Jewish groups. In 2006, the Conservative Jewish movement, which holds a middle ground between the liberal Reform and the strict Orthodox, lifted its ban on gay ordination, and later introduced a prayer service for same-sex weddings. Orthodox Jews have held to the teaching that same-sex relationships are forbidden; at the same time, more Orthodox gays and lesbians are coming out and seeking recognition.

Rabbi Eger went on to hold several leadership positions within the Reform movement and in the Southern California Jewish community, and she helped write the Reform Jewish prayer service for same-sex marriages.

And, it turns out, she did not have to give up on having children or a spouse. The mother of a 21-year-old son, she is now engaged to be married.

"It's about human rights and human dignity," Rabbi Eger said. "If you can be a rabbi, if you can be a person of faith, if you can serve a community as their pastor, and you can have the opportunity to begin to reconcile all of those issues, it speaks volumes."

In a ceremony held Sunday, March 29 at her home temple in West Hollywood, Rabbi Eger joined an interfaith panel of leaders and activists in the historic struggle for LGBTQ equality in the religious community. The panel included the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church.

The long, patient campaign has been largely successful within Reform Judaism. In fact, at the convention where President Eger was installed, a new resolution on transgender inclusion in Jewish life was passed. "We now have the chance to connect with other national and international religious movements to make a difference," Eger stated. This moment expands "the opportunity to teach justice and make justice in the world."

Eric A. Gordon contributed to this story.

Photo: Rabbi Denise Eger at Congregation Kol Ami, a Reform synagogue with gay and lesbian outreach programs, in West Hollywood, Calif. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Police settle lawsuit on use of chemical agents in Ferguson

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 13:02:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS- As part of a lawsuit settlement with Ferguson activists, three police departments agreed March 26 to restrict the use of tear gas and other chemical agents during peaceful demonstrations.

"This victory rests on the shoulders of the courageous protestors who are tirelessly demonstrating in the streets of Ferguson, and it's a testament to the powerful movement they have fostered," said Thomas Harvey of Arch City Defenders. Harvey, along with Denise Lieberman of the Advancement Project, represented the seven named Ferguson plaintiff[1]s who have agreed to dismiss their claims as part of the settlement.

Attorney's representing St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, and Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson signed off on the court order, agreeing to pay $2,500 in legal costs, and not use the threat of tear gas as a form of intimidation or punishment of individuals exercising their First Amendment Rights.

Noting in a joint statement, Lieberman explained that, "We had not seen this kind of excessive police force used against protestors since the civil rights movement of the 1960's," adding, "The use of tear gas in Ferguson has been a tactic to chill this movement, and today's consent decree will finally put a stop to those efforts."

Police Command will order their officers to comply with the settlement, and include the terms in their written policies by August 15.

Though police witnesses testified that these tactics were necessary to prevent looting and potentially save lives, U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson expressed empathy with the demonstrators but ultimately did not implement all of their demands in the order. Jackson rejected a demand that police be restricted to using chemical agents as a "last resort," saying that there was no legal way of defining that term.

Photo Aug. 17, 2014, police wait to advance after tear gas was used to disperse a crowd during a protest for Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Students in D.C. organize at debt's door: USSA LegCon 2015

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 12:13:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - "It's kinda like going to war, right?" inquires Student Labor Action Project national coordinator Beth Huang with a bright smile to boot. The twenty-five students who have taken a knee in front of her respond with smiles of their own. On a piece of butcher paper that's been painters-taped to the wall, there's a color-coded diagram of the property surrounding the Capitol where students and allies of the United States Student Association plan on making their stand.

Huang and the 25 are here as part of the United States Student Association's 46^th annual Legislative Conference or "LegCon," a three-day congregation of students from 14 states - all here to take a stand on issues, high on the list among them killer cuts to education and the $1.3 trillion in student debt hanging over an entire generation.

A few days earlier the House and Senate budget committees passed the Republican budget which, among other things, freezes Pell grants at their current maximum level of $5,775 for ten years and ends the Federal subsidized student loan program. In total, the education cuts will come out to $150 billion. The students call it a "raid on student aid" and on this cold and wet spring day in DC, students would not be deterred from making their voices heard.

The USSA is the country's oldest student group completely run by students (who are empowered to hire their modest staff, mostly recent college graduates). Their legacy, aggressive activism, is storied; from passing resolutions in 1967 to support the Black Power movement "by any means necessary" to the president of the organization finding himself on Nixon's infamous "enemies list" for exposing U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.

After half a century of being at the center of political movements the legacy continues. Aside from lobbying on and protesting around those issues one intuitively thinks of as student issues (such as access to affordable education and relief for student debt) the membership of the USSA sees student issues as intrinsically tied to economic, racial, and gender justice. They're working hard to change not only the laws of the land, but the culture. Workshops like "The Struggle for Racial Justice," "Un-Koch my Campus," and "Union 101" encouraged students, when addressing the space, to introduce themselves and to include their preferred gender pronouns for maximum inclusivity.

Ofelia Sanchez, a third-year student from the University of Central Florida, is at her second LegCon. She is currently president of her campus' Student Labor Action Project, or SLAP. SLAP is a joint project between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association. She facilitated the workshop entitled "Fighting for a Debt Free Future" that was centered on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

"If you work in the public sector, and that can be a wide variety of things like teachers and faculty, and not even just faculty but staff, working at non-profit hospitals, as long as they're C-3 then they count." The program would allow those workers doing public service jobs to have the remainder of their student debt forgiven after 10 years of on-time payments and is one that private loan servicers are not eager to notify their debtors about. Today, 33 million people qualify for this program, but only 135 thousand have signed up. She is currently organizing at UCF for the administration to sign a pledge to notify all teachers, faculty, and staff about the program and since it costs the University nothing, she is optimistic about her group's chances.

Ofelia humbly admitted her self- interest when asked about what she considers the most important issue addressed at the conference. "Allowing a different variety of students to get an education is important. Allowing people of color, people from low income communities, immigrants, and non-traditional students to get affordable and preferably free education," she said. The United States Student Association unabashedly believes that education is a right and should be free, as reflected in some of their chants on the morning of the action.

The action plan began with student protestors rallying on a green space on Capitol property. Some 100+ students chanted slogans to Senate leadership like "Mitch! Step off it! Put students over profit!" and "No cuts! No fees! Education should be free!"

During the rally, Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent and self-described socialist senator from Vermont, spoke on the issue of educational access. "Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education. You are leading that revolution. Keep up the good work," he said to a crowd who pushed forward to snap photos of the possible Presidential candidate.

But even the progressive Bernie Sanders needs agitation on issues from constituents. Students from Vermont were vocal about wanting to confront Sanders around their state's education problem as, currently, Vermont ranks 48^th in affordability with regard to public higher education. "We plan to lobby him on Monday," said a member of the Vermont delegation. Luckily, USSA provides lobby trainings as well. Students broke out by region for their training sessions and the regions further broke down by state or campus so as to put finer points on their action plans. The issues varied greatly, from campus sexual assault bills to fighting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Marckervin Janvier and Corinne Reilly-Ferretto are senior and junior level students respectively and are visiting from New Jersey City University. Their focus is on Sen. Corey Booker (D) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D). According to Reilly-Ferretto, New Jersey students will "mainly be focusing on the Fund the Future campaign and sexual assault on campuses." They themselves are no strangers to advocacy, having advocated successfully for their state's Educational Opportunity Fund which fully funded the educations of close to 300 New Jersey students.

Janvier was honest in his assessment of the dynamics they'll face on the Hill, saying, "Based on the role-play, I think they are going to try to de-rail things or make us think about other things instead of what we came there to do to trip our game up... I feel like they're ready to slap a hand before they reach out and shake it". Reilly-Ferretto is fighting for her education, quite literally. Without Pell grants, she would not be able to graduate and she does not want to see a future without Pell grants. "Congress thinks it's okay to slash money from our education in order to pay off debt that wasn't from our generation and for any society to flourish, we need an educated population."

Coming from her and the other students at USSA, that opinion is not simply a platitude, but an actionable value as demonstrated on the day of the action. After Sanders spoke and students shared the stories of their struggles with our education system, the students took the intersection at 1^st Street Northwest and Constitution Ave where 10 students dressed in graduation garb took arrests while receiving chants of encouragement from students and bystanders alike. Ideally, Monday's lobbying efforts will lead to total victory for student justice but the members of USSA are educated enough to know that this is a fight that will continue long after their diploma is finally earned.

Photo: United States Student Association Facebook. March 27.

Correction: In a previous version of this article the number of people who signed up for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was incorrectly stated. The correct number is 135,000 and not 108,000.

High school students protest gross inequalities in sports programs

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:12:00 +0000

NEW YORK - International Community High School students are demonstrating against the removal of two school staff who had been supporting the students protests of the de-funding of their school's basketball, baseball and soccer teams.

The high school, located in the South Bronx, is a specialized school whose students are all recent (within 4 years) immigrants.

Students held signs with startling numbers like "36,000 students of color go to high schools with almost no sports," pointing out the gross inequality in NYC schools' programs and facilities. Their main banner read: #civilrightsmatter.

One student, Maria Pascual, said that the United States is supposed to be about the "moral value of equality, especially in education." Jennifer Morales said that even though most of the students at the rally are seniors, they are "fighting for all of the students" who suffer from these and other budget cuts.

Students are part of NYCLetEmPlay. Their demands include "provide every high schools with six teams of their choice, fund and facilitate a community-based high school sports league for students who go to schools without the sport they want to play; equitably share all Department of Education-owned fields and courts; and equitably share all park permits issued to the NYC DoE."

The students are calling for daily demonstrations at the NYC Department of Education building in lower Manhattan.

Photo: Antonia Berrie/PW

Today in women's history: Remembering jazz singer Sarah Vaughan

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:54:00 +0000

Legendary jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was born on this date in Newark, N.J., in 1924. Vaughan was renowned for her melodic improvising, wide vocal range and extraordinary technique. She began her career by winning an amateur contest at New York's Apollo Theater in 1943. Hired by Earl "Fatha" Hines to accompany his band as his relief pianist as well as singer, she was given the name "The Divine One" by Chicago disk jockey Dave Garroway, a moniker that would stick for the rest of her life.

Vaughan started recording in 1944. Her early hits include "Tenderly," "It's Magic," and "Nature Boy." She recorded on Columbia, Mercury, Roulette and other smaller labels.

In immediate postwar years she began performing regularly at Café Society Downtown, an integrated club in New York's Sheridan Square.

Vaughan began achieving substantial critical acclaim, winning Esquire magazine's New Star Award for 1947 as well as awards from Down Beat and Metronome magazines. Her commercial success peaked in 1959 with "Broken Hearted Melody," which she considered "corny" but which became her first gold record and a regular part of her concert repertoire for years.

Appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Newport Jazz Festival, and in many European concert houses cemented her reputation as one of the great singers of her time. In 1964 she made her first appearance at the White House, for President Johnson.

In the 1970s the song "Send in the Clowns," from Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, would become her signature, replacing her early chestnut "Tenderly."

In 1974, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas asked Vaughan to participate in an all-Gershwin show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. They repeated the performance over the next few years with symphony orchestras around the country. Her symphonic Gershwin program with the New Jersey Symphony in 1980 was broadcast on PBS and won her an Emmy Award. The CBS Records release of "Gershwin Live!" won Vaughan the Grammy award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female.

In 1985, Vaughan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 1988 she was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz," the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.

We also mark the 25^th anniversary of her passing at age 66, on April 3, 1990, in Los Angeles. Vaughan's funeral was held at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Newark, the same congregation she grew up in. A horse-drawn carriage transported her body to its final resting place at Glendale Cemetery in Bloomfield, N.J.

Though usually considered a "jazz singer," Vaughan avoided classifying herself as one. She discussed the term in a 1982 interview for Down Beat:

"I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer.... I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues - just a right-out blues - but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music."

Adapted from Chase's Calendar of Events and Wikipedia.

Photo: Sarah Vaughan, possibly at Cafe Society, NYC, ca. August 1946. Photography by William P. Gottlieb. United States Library of Congress's Music Division under the digital ID gottlieb.08821. Public Domain.

Unforgiven: Weak laws offer debtors little protection

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:21:00 +0000

Like any American family living paycheck to paycheck, Conrad Goetzinger and Cassandra Rose hope that if they make the right choices, their $13-an-hour jobs will keep the lights on, put food in the fridge and gas in the car.

But every two weeks, the Omaha, Neb. couple is reminded of a choice they didn't make and can't change: A chunk of both of their paychecks disappears before they see it, seized to pay off old debts.

The seizures are the latest tactic of debt collectors who have tracked the couple for years, twice scooping every penny out of Goetzinger's bank account and even attempting to seize his personal property. For Goetzinger, 29, they're the bewildering consequences of a laptop loan he didn't pay off after high school; for Rose, 33, a painful reminder of more than $20,000 in medical bills racked up while uninsured. The garnishments, totaling about $760 each month, comprise the single largest expense in the budget.

"I honestly dread paydays," said Goetzinger. "Because I know it's gone by Saturday afternoon, by the time we go grocery shopping."

Across the country, millions of other workers face a similar struggle: how to live when a large fraction of their paycheck is diverted for a consumer debt, as ProPublica and NPR reported Monday. The highest rates of garnishment are among workers who, like Rose and Goetzinger, earn between $25,000 and $40,000, but the numbers are nearly as high for those who earn even less, according to a new study by ADP, the nation's largest payroll services provider.

Those who fall into this system find their futures determined by laws that consumer advocates say are outdated, overly punitive and out of touch with the financial reality faced by many Americans.

"Most low income people are struggling to keep up with basic fixed costs," said Michael Collins, faculty director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "That tends to absorb most of the budget. There isn't much left."

ADP's study, requested by ProPublica, offered the first large-scale look at how many employees had their wages garnished and why. In the Midwest, one in 16 workers earning between $25,000 and $40,000 had wages seized for a consumer debt in 2013. These numbers reveal a hidden population, advocates say, and should spur lawmakers to offer more protection.

The federal law regulating garnishment harkens back to 1968, when the financial life of Americans was much simpler. Time has eroded what even then were modest protections. The law barred creditors from taking any wages from the very poorest of workers, but used a calculation based on the minimum wage to identify them. Since the federal minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation, today, only workers earning about $11,000 annually or less- a wage below the poverty line- are protected. The law also allows collectors to garnish a quarter of a debtor's after-tax pay, an amount that government surveys show is plainly unaffordable for many families.

And the law is silent on perhaps the most punishing tactic of collectors: It doesn't prohibit them from cleaning out debtors' bank accounts. As a result, a collector can't take more than 25 percent of a debtor's paycheck, but if that paycheck is deposited in a bank, all of the money in the account can be grabbed to pay down the debt.

State laws, while often more comprehensive than the federal rules, vary widely. Only a handful, for instance, automatically protect a minimum amount of funds in a debtor's account.

When garnishment protections do exist, the burden is usually on debtors to figure out if and how the laws protect their assets.

"In an awful lot of states, the information that the employee gets is going to be very, very confusing," said William Henning, a law professor at the University of Alabama and chair of a committee drafting a model state law on wage garnishment.

An empty bank account

Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2008, as the country was in the throes of the Great Recession, Goetzinger faced an unexpected financial crisis of his own. Every penny in his bank account, $688.43, went missing.

In a panic, he called his bank for an explanation, and discovered that a company he'd never heard of had garnished the account. There was nothing he could do.

The company, Midland Funding LLC, struck again five months later. Just $179.14 was in the account, but Midland took it all anyway. This time the damage extended beyond the lost cash, Goetzinger said. Not knowing the account was now at zero, he overdrew it. That triggered an overdraft fee, he said, and then another. Soon, the fees had him in a several-hundred-dollar hole. That's when Goetzinger and Rose decided they'd had enough of banks. Goetzinger closed his account.

"What if they decided to, on payday, pull out every single bit of money we had in there?" said Rose. "That would completely devastate us. I don't know what we would do, where we would go, how we would eat."

Collins, who studies consumer decision-making, said this well-founded fear of banks is a common, and worrisome, consequence for low-income workers with outstanding debts. "We certainly hear that from consumers," he said.

Back in 1968, when lawmakers passed the landmark Consumer Credit Protection Act, it specifically limited how much of a debtor's pay could be seized. But it made no mention of bank account garnishments.

Carolyn Carter, director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center, said the lawmakers didn't address bank seizures because they simply weren't common at the time. As a result, she said, "the wages that are deposited in a bank account become suddenly much more vulnerable than anyone realized."

Since the late '60s, debt collection has changed in other ways that lawmakers couldn't have anticipated. Today, buying old debt is an industry in itself.

Goetzinger's bank account, for instance, was garnished by Midland Funding. Midland is a subsidiary of the publicly-traded Encore Capital Group, one of the country's largest debt buyers. Last year, the San Diego-based company collected more than $1 billion on old debts.

At the time, the name Midland Funding meant nothing to Goetzinger. Uninsured and epileptic, he assumed the raids on his bank account stemmed from unpaid medical bills. But that wasn't the source of the underlying debt-as Goetzinger learned this August when a reporter shared a copy of his court file with him. Even still, it was clear that the involvement of Midland, and its rights to pursue him, remained hazy.

About 10 years ago, shortly after graduating from high school, Goetzinger said, he bought a laptop. At some point, he fell behind on the payments to Dell, although he does not remember the circumstances. In 2008, court records show, Midland filed suit, saying it bought the debt from Dell's lending arm. At the time of the suit, Midland claimed Goetzinger's debt, including interest and fees, stood at $2,400.

The court file shows that a summons for the lawsuit was left at Goetzinger's current address in 2008. However, Goetzinger said the house, which is owned by his step-father's parents, was undergoing renovations and uninhabited at the time. Nebraska state law doesn't require that defendants be served personally with lawsuits.

Encore Capital spokeswoman Lisa Margolin-Feher said the company only files suit against consumers when other attempts to collect are unsuccessful. "Our preference, by far, is to work directly with a consumer to tailor a repayment plan, rather than having to resort to state garnishment laws."

Altogether, Midland has tried three different methods of collecting against Goetzinger. After multiple further attempts on his bank account proved unsuccessful, the court record shows, the company twice tried seizing his personal property in 2010 and 2012, but a sheriff deputy determined each time after visiting Goetzinger's home that he owned nothing eligible for seizure. Finally, early this year, almost six years after the lawsuit was filed, Midland served Goetzinger's employer with a garnishment order.

Congress compromises, debtors pay

For most workers, the unexpected loss of a quarter of their wages would make life difficult. For low income workers who live from paycheck to paycheck, it can be devastating.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey, produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reports that, for a worker with annual wages between $20,000 and $30,000, the average amount spent on basic costs such as housing, transportation, food, and health care is about $26,000. The average income for that population is also about $26,000.

A recent survey by the Federal Reserve asked thousands of consumers whether they could afford an emergency expense of $400. Less than half of respondents said they could without borrowing money or selling something. Nearly 20 percent said they could think of no way they might cover such a cost.

So how did the federal lawmakers in 1968 set 25 percent as the allowable limit for garnishments? Like many laws, it was the result of closed-door compromise.

At the time, House Democrats argued debtors could often afford to lose very little.

"For a poor man-and whoever heard of the wage of the affluent being attached?-to lose part of his salary often means his family will go without the essentials," argued Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas, in a speech on the House floor.

In the end, the House version of the consumer protection bill limited garnishment to 10 percent of income. But the Senate's version didn't limit garnishments at all. When a compromise bill finally emerged from a committee of lawmakers from both houses, the limit was 25 percent. Forty-six years later, that's still the law in more than half of states.

The National Consumer Law Center, in a model reform law, argues that the cap needs to be lowered to 10 percent to preserve a living wage for debtors.

The 1968 law did seek to protect the poorest workers, but did so by setting a standard tied to the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage in 1968 was $1.60; adjusted for inflation, that's $10.95 in current dollars. With $7.25 the current minimum wage, federal law only protects workers from garnishment if they earn under $217.50 a week.

For Goetzinger, the 25 percent began eating into his pay in July. The loss ranges from $200 and $250 each paycheck, depending on whether he can get overtime work at his customer service job. Altogether, Goetzinger has paid about $2,000 towards his debt over the years, and still owes about $700.

To make do, he and Rose, who have been together for eight years, say they cut corners where they can. Recently, they learned Rose's two girls, ages 11 and 12, have cavities and need caps. "But when you have to choose between keeping the power on for the rest of the week or getting teeth done, unfortunately, teeth falls to a lower priority," said Goetzinger.

Debtors left to navigate the laws

The blow from Goetzinger's garnishment should be lessened by having a second income in the house: Rose also works full-time as a payroll clerk. But Rose's check is also being garnished for old debts-in her case, past medical bills.

"I suffer from horrible migraines, and that's what the big one against me is for," said Rose, who until recently was uninsured. In 2013, the migraines didn't let up for months, so Rose visited the emergency room. "When you've had a headache that long, it's natural to think something's not right," she said. A doctor told Rose she should get an MRI, she said. Fortunately, the MRI didn't show a tumor, but Rose was stuck with the bill, which exceeded $18,000.

A second debt-from a 2012 emergency room visit to treat kidney stones-totaled more than $4,000.

"It's going to take me years to pay this off," said Rose. Collectors, she said, would not accept payments at a level she could afford.

In both cases, debt collection agencies successfully sued Rose, and filed garnishments against her wages. So when one ends, the other will begin. Goetzinger and Rose say they've looked into hiring a lawyer to fight the lawsuits against them, but concluded they couldn't afford it.

Nebraska has a law that is supposed to ease the burden of wage-earners with dependents. Rose, who is divorced and is engaged to Goetzinger, qualifies because of her two daughters. The "head of a family" distinction limits garnishments to 15 percent of after-tax income.

But because creditors often don't know-and aren't required to find out- whether a debtor has dependents or not, they typically assume they don't, said Judge Craig McDermott, the presiding judge for Nebraska's 4^th District, which includes Omaha, and a former general counsel for a debt collection agency.

"So what you do is you err on the side of caution on your side of the fence and say, 'Hey, you know what? They're not head of household as far as we know,'" he said. After the garnishment is filed, debtors can come forward to claim their rate should be lower, McDermott said.

The notice mailed to debtors allows them to request a hearing if they are incorrectly identified as "not head of a family," among other objections. But it does not say doing so would drop the amount garnished by almost half.

Rose said she found out she could have her garnishment reduced only after it was in place at 25 percent. She called the debt collection agency that had sued her and asked if there was any way they would accept a lower payment. It was only then, she said, that a collection employee told her about the "head of a family" law.

The attorney for the collector filed a motion in court, amending its earlier garnishment filing. Rose's take-home pay jumped by almost $100, according to her pay stubs.

The onus on debtors to navigate the system is similar in other states with laws that, on paper at least, seek to lessen the burden of garnishment on families.

In Oklahoma, for example, the legal aid office in Tulsa receives applications every week from debtors "who are being garnished and who just can't make ends meet as a result," said Laura Frossard, an attorney with Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma law has a "hardship" provision to help such people. But the debtor not only has to know the law exists, but how to properly make a claim. "The chances of somebody knowing about this without legal aid telling them about it are kind of rare," Frossard said.

In Nebraska, there can be only one head of household. So while Rose's garnishment has been reduced to 15 percent, Goetzinger's is still at 25 percent. In reality, the family's income has been reduced by over 20 percent. They take each day as it comes.

"It makes you feel hopeless, that you're working for no reason and that you're never going to be able to succeed," said Rose. "How am I ever going to think about buying a house or putting my kids through college?"

This story was co-published by ProPublica and NPR.

Photo: At Seattle Up From Debt Summit, March 14. Tim Wheeler/PW.

Young unionist at Next Up Summit takes aim at student debt

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 16:03:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Saying that America's current $1.3 trillion in student debt is a sword of Damocles hanging over the entire economy, many of the young workers gathered at the 2015 AFL-CIO Next Up summit here last week called for radical steps to solve the problem - steps that include cancellation of all student debt.

Outspoken among those young workers is Sarah Ann Lewis, 32, the Senior Lead Researcher in the AFL-CIO's Policy Department.

"We have a student debt amount that is more than what the government spends in a year on all its programs put together and debt at that level threatens the very existence of the American dream, the middle class and the future of the U.S. economy," she said, in an interview during a break in proceedings at the summit.

"Some 40 million people have put off getting married, put off having children and put off making any and all major purchases including the buying of any kind of home," Lewis added.

Making matters worse, people fighting for major student debt reform say, is the fact that an entire generation of debtors is entering an economy where good jobs are scarce and wages are either flat or falling.

Lewis and others involved in the fight to reduce or eliminate student debt say that there is much more involved here than just dealing with individuals who took on more than they could handle when they first borrowed to go to school.

"Unless you think education is a right reserved only for the rich you have to see that it is impossible for the majority to get an education these days without borrowing. In response to this situation an entire profit-making debt industry has sprung up that depends for its existence on its ability to lure millions and millions into the trap of lifetime indebtedness."

In many ways student debt is worse than other forms of debt. Unlike most other forms of debt student loans cannot be refinanced. The borrower is locked into an interest rate from the day he or she signs a promissory note - usually as a teenager - until the debt is paid in full. Unlike most forms of debt borrowers have been unable to take advantage of lower interest rates to reduce their monthly payments and total amount of interest owed.

"The question we need an answer to is who benefits from trapping millions into debt and keeping them unable to buy homes and cars?," Lewis asked. "Here's only one answer: The government itself is profiting from the federal student loan program. It's raking in more than a billion dollars a year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2015, $127 billion in profit will be made off the backs of working families just from the interest they are paying on student loans. A year ago you even had some Republicans saying these profits could be used to pay off the deficit."

Lawmakers who vote to defend corporate and bank profits and allow overseas tax shelters are frequently the same ones who want to keep student loan rates high, tying them to the so-called market rates, activists here said.

"A total cancellation of student debt across America is not too radical a step, really," said Lewis. "The boost to the economy from freeing millions of debtors so that the skills they have accumulated from their educations can benefit everyone would far outweigh any losses in revenue."

Lewis and the others gathered here at the summit are realists, however, and they know there won't be total cancellation of student debt any time soon. In the meantime, they are supporting Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren's bill to allow refinancing of student debt.

The bill, which allows borrowers to refinance their student loans puts them "a step closer," Lewis said, toward achieving the American Dream, enabling many to make a down payment on a home, buy or lease a car or start a small retirement fund.

"Another great feature of the bill," she said, "is that in increases funding for public college, allowing them to lower some of their costs."

"We have a long way to go to solving the problem of student debt but we will get there," Lewis said. "I'm unwilling to accept a future reality that includes this is how it has to be. I don't accept that. We are going to change things. And we are taking the first important step - getting the word out about how student debt is everyone's problem."

Image: AFL-CIO Now Blog

Anti-LGBT bills introduced in 28 states

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:30:00 +0000

The wave of anti-LGBT bills filed across the country continues to swell. As of today, lawmakers have introduced more than 85 anti-LGBT bills in 28 state legislatures.

Some state legislative sessions have already drawn to a close, but other state legislatures will be in session for several more weeks or even months. So far this year 34 anti-LGBT bills in nine states have been defeated or failed to meet key legislative deadlines, but two have passed-one in Arkansas and one in Indiana.

Among the recently introduced anti-LGBT legislation is a pair of bills in Nevada that would allow individuals and businesses to use religion to challenge or opt out of laws, including laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. Similar legislation was also recently introduced in Montana and is still pending in Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Texas and elsewhere.

Bills that would allow adoption agencies to use religion to discriminate against eligible parents and guardians have been newly introduced in Alabama and Florida. These new bills are similar to a series of bills moving through the Michigan legislature.

Even in states with long traditions of support for equality, anti-equality lawmakers are introducing anti-LGBT bills. Massachusetts, for example, is the latest state with a bill that would criminalize transgender people for using appropriate restrooms. Anti-transgender "bathroom surveillance" bills have are now pending in Florida, Texas and a handful of other states.

Collectively, this rising storm of anti-LGBT legislation underlines an increased effort to deprive LGBT Americans and other minority groups of basic protections. Across the country, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is joining state-based LGBT equality organizations and other allies to stanch the tide.

Learn more about the current landscape of anti-LGBT legislation here.

Reposted from HRC Blog

Today in women's history: Sandra Day O'Connor is FWOTSC

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:08:00 +0000

Today marks the 85^th birthday of Sandra Day O'Connor or, as she likes to call herself, the FWOTSC, First Woman On The Supreme Court. She was born on March 26, 1930. O'Connor served from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan until her retirement in 2006. Prior to her appointment to the Court, she was an elected official and judge in Arizona. She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

Considered a federalist and a moderate conservative, O'Connor tended to approach each case narrowly without arguing for sweeping precedents. Early in her tenure O'Connor voted with Chief Justice William Rehnquist more than with any other justice. Later on, as the Court's make-up became more conservative (Anthony Kennedy replacing Lewis Powell, and Clarence Thomas replacing Thurgood Marshall), O'Connor often became the swing vote on the Court. However, she usually disappointed the Court's more liberal bloc in contentious 5-4 decisions: In her last decade she joined the traditional conservative bloc of Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas three times more than she joined the liberal bloc of John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

O'Connor's relatively modest shift away from conservatives on the Court seems to have been due at least in part to Thomas's views. When Thomas and O'Connor were voting on the same side, she would typically write a separate opinion of her own, refusing to join his.

O'Connor came to the Court with a quiet history of opposing restrictions on abortion, one of the main "hot-button" issues for the right wing. Although not an absolutist on principle, she never voted specifically to outlaw abortion. In Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, O'Connor contended that state laws that prohibited homosexual sodomy, but not heterosexual sodomy, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Another 2003 case in which O'Connor cast the deciding vote was McConnell v. FEC, which upheld the constitutionality of most of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill regulating "soft money" contributions.

On December 12, 2000, O'Connor joined with four other justices on the Bush v. Gore case that ceased challenges to the results of the November presidential election, thereby stopping the ongoing Florida election recount and effectively ending Al Gore's hopes to become president. Ralph Nader has called this decision "a judicial coup d'état." Others have quipped that Bush won that election fairly by a solid majority - 5 to 4 on the Supreme Court! O'Connor has since publicly doubted the wisdom of the Supreme Court taking the case.

In 2003 O'Connor authored a majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, saying racial affirmative action wouldn't be constitutional permanently, but long enough - approximately 25 years - to correct past discrimination. After retiring she said she believed racial affirmative action should continue to help heal the inequalities created by discrimination, not as a cure-all, but rather a bandage. She added that society has to do much more to correct our racial imbalance.

President George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor; he was sworn in on January 31, 2006.

On January 26, 2010, O'Connor issued her own polite public dissent to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision on corporate political spending, telling law students that the court has created an unwelcome new path for wealthy interests to exert influence on judicial elections.

Although reviled at the time by most liberals and progressives as a conservative - the only kind of woman Ronald Reagan would have appointed to the Court - in retrospect she was far more balanced than the subsequent crop of justices appointed by Reagan and fellow Republicans G. H. W. Bush and G. W. Bush. The three women presently serving on the Supreme Court were all appointed by Democrats - Ginsburg by Clinton, and Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan by Obama.

On August 12, 2009, President Obama awarded Justice O'Connor the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Photo: The four women who have served on the Supreme Court of the United States. From left to right: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (Ret.), Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Elena Kagan in the Justices' Conference Room, prior to Justice Kagan's Investiture Ceremony on October 1, 2010. Steve Petteway, photographer for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Report refutes Emanuel's austerity agenda for Chicago

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 14:40:00 +0000

CHICAGO - On March 24, parents, early childhood workers, elected officials, and community leaders held a press conference outside of Loop Capital Markets on LaSalle Street, to react to a new report by the ReFund America Project at the Roosevelt Institute, "Our Kind of Town: A Financial Plan that Puts Chicago's Communities First."

The report pushes back against the austerity agenda being pursued by Mayor Emanuel and the credit rating agencies on Wall Street, which recently downgraded the credit rating of the city and Chicago Public Schools, triggering hundreds of millions in possible taxpayer handouts to banks. It lays out specific immediately actionable and long-term policy proposals for getting Chicago's finances back on track without unconstitutional grabs at retiree pensions, cuts to vital services, and toxic bank fees and payouts.

Director of the ReFund America Project and Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute Saqib Bhatti explained, "The recent decisions by Moody Investor Services and Fitch Ratings to downgrade the credit ratings of our city and school system are political ploys, designed to push an austerity agenda in Chicago. These downgrades will benefit Wall Street firms, because the City of Chicago and CPS will be forced to take out more expensive finance deals. However, this will come at the expense of community services like education, mental health, and parks programs. The problem with the city budget isn't that we're spending too much on workers or public services- it's that we are hemorrhaging money on predatory financial deals and not bringing in enough revenue from the city's wealthiest corporations and residents."

"This is a conversation that we have been trying to have with the mayor for a longtime. Now, so close to a critical election, these bad deals with Wall Street cannot be ignored. We need to ensure that the mayor isn't making any backroom deals right now that would sign away the city's right to sue the banks to get our money back from these bad deals under future administrations." said Alderman Scott Waguespack.

Community members expressed outrage at the city's pursuit of unconstitutional raids of retiree pension funds, and urged the city to go after toxic swap deals and a litany of progressive revenue solutions that the Emanuel administration has left off the table. Participants argued that instead of forcing Chicago Public Schools to pay $263 million to banks because of toxic swap deals, triggered by Fitch Rating's recent credit downgrade, Mayor Emanuel should sue the banks over the dubious legality of these deals, and demand hundreds of millions in past swap losses returned to schools and communities.

"While Mayor Emanuel decided to close my neighborhood school, Lafayette Elementary, and 49 other public schools across the city because of a 'budget crisis,' rich bankers like Jim Reynolds, CEO of Loop Capital, were publicly supporting the Mayor's decision, and making millions off the school system through toxic swap deals. It's ironic that Mayor Emanuel is eager to slash my child's teacher's pension- a move that state courts have ruled unconstitutional- yet is unwilling to make a decision with sound legal precedent, and sue banks like Loop Capital and Bank of America to get money back for the schools. We're tired of the double standard- it's time for Mayor Emanuel to get tough on bankers, not students and teachers," said Rousemary Vega, a Humboldt Park resident whose children attended Lafayette before it's closure in 2013.

Participants laid out how massive campaign contributions have unduly impacted Chicago's democratic process, resulting in pay-to-play city policies and allowing billionaires like Ken Griffin, CEO of high-speed trading firm Citadel, to buy their way out of paying their fair share of taxes. Griffin, the richest man in Illinois, gave millions in campaign contributions to Emanuel and Republican Governor Bruce Rauner. In 2013, Mayor Emanuel awarded Marriott Hotels a $55 million downtown TIF (Tax Increment Financing program) subsidy shortly after Ken Griffin's firm invested heavily in Marriott stock. All in all, hedge fund managers and high-speed traders that benefit most from Mayor Emanuel's refusal to consider a financial transactions tax have donated over $4.5 million to his campaign fund and his super-PAC, Chicago Forward.

Community leaders also spoke out against public-private partnerships that reap profit for big banks, and leave taxpayers footing the bill. In 2014, Mayor Emanuel pushed forward a plan to pay for preschool expansion through borrowing nearly $17 million in 'social impact bonds' from Goldman Sachs, Northern Trust, the Pritzker Family Foundation and other investors. Depending on its outcome, the deal could force CPS to ultimately pay up to $30 million back to the banks.

"It didn't come as a big surprise to me that the mayor is letting Goldman Sachs place a bet on our children. What did surprise me, though, was finding out that Goldman Sachs wasn't just going to profit from the money THEY invested, they're also going to profit from taxpayer money-the money I pay in as a working Chicagoan. If someone took a dollar from me to buy a $2 lottery ticket, I'd expect half the payoff if it won. Apparently, Goldman Sachs and the Mayor have a different set of values," said Celeste Cunine, a childcare provider and member of SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana.

Participants also called for a financial transactions tax, or LaSalle Street tax, to make downtown traders pay their share. "Two of the largest financial markets in the world call Chicago home: the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. The reckless speculative trading that goes on there drives prices up on items like food that we all need to survive and contributed to the collapse of the economy and scarcity of resources for our communities. Now the CME and CBOT should be part of the solution. The LaSalle Street Tax, a very small tax on the trading of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies and derivatives could raise between $10 and S12 billion per year for Illinois, and up to $2 billion for Chicago. The influx of revenue would completely change the ability of the state and of Chicago to meet the needs of its citizens," stated Jan Rodolfo RN, National Nurses United Midwest director.

The corporation that would pay the bulk of a financial transactions tax, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, consistently posts some of the highest profit margins of any U.S. corporation. Hundreds of trillions of dollars in trades- in 2012, equivalent to 12 times the world's Gross Domestic Product- pass through the CME every year. A tiny tax on these financial transactions could raise anywhere from $100 million to $2 billion a year for the city to invest in critical infrastructure, education, and public services. After securing office in 2011, Mayor Emanuel helped CME- his second-largest donor- secure over $80 million in tax breaks from the state legislature.

"The mayor has blood on his hands from the people who have died after he closed the clinics. As a result of his actions we have tax-paying Chicagoans who are left homeless and suicidal, people who are tortured everyday because they have nowhere to go. Mayor Emanuel made a cowardly decision when he closed the mental health clinics instead of going after Wall Street. He stepped over the people who needed him to do the right thing," said N'Dana Carter leader with the Chicago Mental Health Movement.

"We're here at LaSalle Street because we're tired of being told we have a 'budget crisis.' What we have is a priorities crisis. Because of Fitch Rating's credit downgrade last week, Chicago Public Schools faces $263 million in penalties from interest rate swap deals with big banks like Loop Capital. But instead of suing the banks to win back $1.2 billion in vital revenue, Mayor Emanuel is forcing us to pay up, and making our school system choose between funding students' textbooks or retirees' pensions. Instead of raising revenue by clawing back TIF subsidies to wealthy downtown developers or fighting for a tax on hedge funds and high-speed traders, Mayor Emanuel has laid off city workers and closed mental health clinics. These are a continuation of the same policies working families have faced for decades in our city. The real tough decisions would be to go after his banker buddies, not the city's most vulnerable," ended Amisha Patel, executive director of Grassroots Collaborative.

The Our Kind of Town: A Financial Plan that Puts Chicago's Communities First Report is available online at http://www.refundproject.org/#chicago

Jobs Not Jails campaign wins victory in Oakland

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:12:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - Advocates of more community-based services for formerly incarcerated people are celebrating the Alameda County Board of Supervisors decision March 24 to greatly increase fiscal 2015-2016 funding for community-based programs helping people when they return home.

Calling the board's approval of the measure introduced by Supervisor Keith Carson "a major victory," Zachary Norris, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, said the supervisors took "an important step forward in tearing down the web of criminalization and incarceration that entraps too many Alameda County residents, especially low income people and people of color."

For years the Ella Baker Center has led a series of campaigns against mass incarceration. In recent months the Center's Jobs Not Jails campaign has rallied a coalition of organizations for greater support to community-based groups helping former inmates

The funds involved come from a "realignment" program begun by the State of California in 2011. Inmates convicted of "non-serious" felonies were shifted from state prisons to county jails, and in turn the state started providing realignment funds to the counties.

So far, most of the money has gone to the sheriff's department. Starting July 1, half will now go to community based programs helping former inmates with housing, job training, health care, education and other services vital for their successful reintegration into the community.

Supporters waited patiently through several hours of deliberations on other agenda items before lining up to address the supervisors on the new proposal.

"I know what it takes to get back into society," Darris Young, an Ella Baker Center organizer and former state prison inmate told the supervisors. He cited a report by the Public Policy Institute that found California counties investing more realignment funds in community-based reentry programs are experiencing lower recidivism rates than counties emphasizing enforcement-focused plans.

West Oakland resident William Chorneau said his neighborhood "would really benefit from more help for people as they come out of jail. It's not just an issue of helping the person coming out of jail, it will help the whole community. A lot of people coming out of jail have children, and these children need help for their families."

The Rev. Jacqueline Duhart, of Oakland's First Unitarian Church, told the board, "No amount of money would have comforted my family when my young, gifted and black brother wasted away his youth and talent in the bowels of a Texas prison." But, she said, the anguish the family experienced when her brother was released was even greater: "The emotional, spiritual and economic trauma that resulted from trying to secure housing, a job, mental health services, drug and alcohol services, helping my brother and his children, was cruel and unusual punishment and totally wrong."

In his remarks to the supervisors, Norris thanked supporters including the Alameda County Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform, the First Unitarian Church, Asian Law Caucus, Alameda Labor Council, Forward Together, and others for their support during the months-long effort.

In the end, the proposal passed with three supervisors in favor, one opposed, and one absent.

In the months ahead, the Ella Baker Center and the organizations that have come together in the Jobs Not Jails campaign say they will continue to work with Alameda County officials to implement the new measure.

Photo: Ella Baker Center

Today in women’s history: Happy birthday Dorothy Height

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 20:36:00 +0000

Dorothy Irene Height, civil rights and women's rights activist, was born March 24, 1912. The main issues she concentrated on were unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) for 40 years and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, but moved with her family to Idaho, Pa., a steel town suburb of Pittsburgh, where she graduated from Rankin High School in 1929. She was admitted to Barnard College, but upon arrival was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students per year. She enrolled instead at New York University, earning an undergraduate degree in 1932 and a master's degree in educational psychology the following year. She pursued further postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work (predecessor of the Columbia University School of Social Work).

At the age of 25 she began a career as a civil rights activist, joining the NCNW. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women. In 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA. In 1957, Height was named president of the NCNW, a position she held until 1997. During the 1960s she organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi," which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding. Height was also a founding member of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. In his autobiography, civil rights leader James Farmer described Height as one of the "Big Six" of the civil rights movement, but noted that her role was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism.

Height encouraged President Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Johnson to appoint African American women to positions in government. Beginning in 1965, she wrote a column called "A Woman's Word" for the weekly African American newspaper the New York Amsterdam News.

In 1990, Height, along with 15 other African Americans, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. Barnard recognized Height for her achievements as an honorary alumna during the college's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 2004.

The musical stage play If This Hat Could Talk, based on her memoirs "Open Wide the Freedom Gates," debuted in 2005. The work showcases her unique perspective on the civil rights movement and details many of the behind-the-scenes figures and mentors who shaped her life, including Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Height was the chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the largest civil rights organization in the U.S. She was an honored guest at the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, and was seated on the stage. After her death at the age of 98 (April 20, 2010), Obama ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in her honor.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Photo: Wikepedia

So-called "balanced budget" shows the GOP has money to kill

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 12:52:00 +0000

Shock and awe describes the budgets issued last week by Republicans in the House and Senate. The shock is that the GOP never stops trying to destroy beloved programs like Medicare. Awe-inspiring is their audacity in describing their killing plans as moral.

When the House released its budget last Tuesday, Georgia Republican Rep. Rob Woodall said, "A budget is a moral document; it talks about where your values are." His chamber's spending plan shows that Republicans highly value war and place no value on health care for America's elderly, working poor and young adults.

The opposite of win-win, the GOP budgets are kill-kill. Despite the GOP's successful demand in 2011 for spending caps, Republicans now want more money for the military. War kills, as too many families of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan know.

By contrast, Republicans gouge domestic spending, condemning Americans to die unnecessarily from untreated disease. The GOP intends to revoke the health insurance of tens of millions by repealing the Affordable Care Act, voucherizing Medicare and slashing Medicaid. The Republican plans mandate overtime for the Grim Reaper.

"Shock and awe" was the euphemism the military used as it launched war in Iraq. The focus on fireworks obscured death and dismemberment on the ground. Republicans try the same gimmick with their 10-year budgets. They employ perky language to conceal the casualties they would cause.

The House GOP called its document "A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America." Republicans see strength only in a fat military, not in healthy Americans. The House and Senate Republicans evade the sequester spending caps by giving an additional $38 billion to the military through a war account not subject to limits.

The euphemism House Republicans use to distract attention from the $150 billion they cut from Medicare is "premium care." It's a scheme to give less to seniors newly qualifying for Medicare. They'd voucherize Medicare for new qualifiers and call it "premium," even though Americans have loudly protested and Congress has soundly rejected the scam every time Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin proposed it in the past.

What "premium care" really means is underfunded vouchers. Republicans cut money from Medicare, then give seniors "vouchers" to buy their own health insurance on the open market. Americans know those cheap vouchers won't cover the full cost, forcing seniors to pay thousands they don't have each year for their doctors' visits, arthritis medications and flu shots. It's really "premium uncare," and Senate Republicans know that, so they didn't propose it. They simply cut $430 billion from Medicare.

Enacted into law, the "premium uncare" scam would cost lives. As seniors delayed seeing doctors and scrimped on their diabetes and high blood pressure medication to save money, some would die. Sending grandma to an early grave is a price House Republicans are willing to pay.

Both the House and Senate Republican budgets would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). That would cancel the health insurance of millions who got coverage through the ACA Medicaid expansion adopted by 29 states and the District of Columbia.

It would cancel the health insurance of more than 16.4 million Americans who got covered through the exchanges and other ACA measures. Altogether, the Obama administration estimates the ACA repeal and broader Medicaid cuts proposed in the Republican budgets will deny health insurance to 37 million.

The ACA decreased the percentage of Americans without health insurance to 13.2. Republicans, who offer no plan at all to replace the insurance they intend to seize, would increase the percentage of Americans without coverage back up to 20, where it was before the ACA.

Everyone would be affected. Without the ACA, insurers would once again be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions like asthma and diabetes. They'd once again be able to cap benefits so that sickly newborns and victims of recurring cancers would lose coverage. Insurers would dump the young adults that the ACA now covers under their parents' plans to age 26.

More than 9,800 Americans would die unnecessarily each year if they could not get insurance through the ACA. That's the estimate that multiple public health scholars and the American Public Health Association provided to the U.S. Supreme Court as it considers overturning part of the law. Other estimates of needless deaths are much higher.

The House and Senate GOP budgets also brutalize Medicaid funding, then turn the program over to the states to administer. After slashing $913 billion, the House GOP describes dumping the program on the states like this: "Our budget realigns the relationship the federal government has with states and local communities by respecting and restoring the principle of federalism."

House Republicans "respect" the right of impoverished old and disabled people to try to survive without Medicaid insurance by eliminating funding for it. The Senate GOP was less "respectful," slashing funding for Medicaid by only $400 billion and retaining coverage for low-income elderly and disabled people.

While asserting their budgeting morality, Republicans fail to mention their "balanced" spending plans are propped up by $2 trillion in revenue from ACA taxes the GOP intends to repeal along with the ACA. The GOP would use the money that it will magically receive from repealed health care taxes to pay for an additional $38 billion in military weapons in their magically balanced budgets.

The Republican budgets embody their values: They want tax dollars to kill, not heal.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard heads one of the nation's largest and most politically active industrial unions.

Photo: Obamacare is amongst the many benefits that the GOP seeks to repeal or kill. | SEIU

Jesus “Chuy” Garcia campaigns in Los Angeles for support

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 13:26:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Latino progressive candidate and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia came to Los Angeles to raise money for his run-off election for Mayor of Chicago. Chuy's grassroots and working-class vision, along with a broad based people's campaign, has forced the current corporate and Wall Street candidate, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, into an important and historic run-off election.

Mayor Emanuel assumed he'd be easily re-elected given his corporate support, enormous advantage in cash, and having the established city Democratic Party structure behind him. The 58-year-old Garcia, a popular grassroots Latino candidate, ran a forward-looking campaign that rallied middle and low-income voters to the polls with his anti-corporate agenda.

This campaign is significant. Chuy's campaign put the blame on Wall Street for the city's budget mess, targeting Emanuel's corporate giveaways, which created massive cutbacks and job losses. Chuy took Emanuel by surprise. Emanuel's campaign had outspent Garcia's campaign 12 to one.

Garcia's strong working-class background had a profound impact on Chicago voters. His family came to the United States when he was only 10 years old. His father worked in the fields picking fruit in Texas and California. Later the family moved to Chicago, where his father worked in a cold-storage facility. The Garcia family would move into the Chicano Latino neighborhood of Pilsen. Later Garcia would be elected as the current County Commissioner with long ties to Chicago's working-class communities.

In Los Angeles Chuy stressed the need to end the corporate welfare approach to fixing Chicago's problems, which have been stepped up recently by the Rahm Emanuel administration. The large Latino audience in L.A. strongly supported Chuy's support for comprehensive immigration reform.

Chuy asked the audience to join him in making history with this groundbreaking campaign. If elected, Chuy Garcia would be the first Latino mayor of Chicago. A special appeal was made for sustained financial backing for his campaign, and the candidate stressed the need for a strong voter turnout. The Garcia campaign raised over $200,000 in L.A., with commitments still coming in. The runoff election is set for Apr. 7.

Photo: Garcia for Chicago Facebook page

Today in history: First openly gay candidate runs for Congress

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 11:38:00 +0000

Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 - Oct. 11, 2011) ran for U.S. Congress on this date in 1971, albeit for a non-voting seat representing the District of Columbia. Following his defeat by Democrat Walter E. Fauntroy, Kameny and his campaign organization created the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Washington, D.C., an organization which continues to lobby government and press the case for equal rights.

Kameny went to Queens College to learn physics and at age 17 declared himself an atheist. Drafted into the Army, he served throughout World War II in Europe, then returned to Queens College, earning a physics degree in 1948. He then enrolled at Harvard University; while a teaching fellow there, he refused to sign a loyalty oath without attaching qualifiers. He received a master's degree (1949) and doctorate (1956) in astronomy, with a thesis entitled "A Photoelectric Study of Some RV Tauri and Yellow Semiregular Variables."

In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the U.S. Army Map Service in Washington, D.C., because of his homosexuality, and subsequently barred from future employment by the federal government, leading him to begin a lifelong campaign against the American establishment for homosexual rights. He protested his firing and argued his case to the Supreme Court in 1961. Although the court denied his petition, it is notable as the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation. Kameny was an early significant figure in the emerging American LGBTQ movement.

Radicalized by now, Kameny co-founded the Washington, D.C., branch of the Mattachine Society, the organization launched by Communist Harry Hay. Kameny's group sponsored some of the earliest public protests by gays and lesbians with a picket line at the White House on April 17, 1965, the same day, coincidentally, as the first major march in the nation's capital against the war in Vietnam.

In his later years, Kameny never worked a steady job again, but devoted his entire life to LGBTQ activism, becoming a revered elder of the movement. To date, 19 men and women openly identifying with the LGBTQ community have served in Congress - and no doubt many more in the closet.

Photo and source: Wikipedia (CC) | Frank Kameny in June 2009, in front of signs used during protests.

Calls grow for investigation into Chicago's Homan Sq. 'Gestapo tactics'

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 15:56:00 +0000

Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin and U.S. Representative Danny Davis on Wednesday stepped up their demand for the federal Department of Justice to investigate the secret detention and torture of American citizens that took place for years in Chicago's Homan Square compound.

The duo traveled to Washington, D.C. to hand-deliver a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an "immediate investigation" by the Justice Department into Homan Square, the site, which Chicago police routinely used for off-the-books interrogations and abuse of majority-black suspects, as revealed by a Guardian investigation last month.

"We fully expect to get a reply," Boykin told the Guardian after the delivery. He and Davis handed the letter to the Justice Department's civil rights division, headed by former ACLU deputy legal director Vanita Gupta, which conducted the bombshell probe into the racist and unconstitutional tactics practiced by Ferguson, Missouri's police department, an investigation that has since led to the firings and resignations of at least six city officials.

Davis, a Democrat who represents the district where Homan Square stands, told the Guardian, "I had hoped we were making more progress than maybe is being made... but I think the verdict is still out."

Davis and Boykin join a chorus of voices demanding justice over the "CIA or Gestapo tactics" discovered at Homan Square.

Despite the efforts of human rights activists and politicians, city leaders have done little to acknowledge the charges, as noted by incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel's runoff challenger Jesús "Chuy" García in an interview with In These Times last week.

On Wednesday, Amnesty USA also called for a DOJ investigation into the facility and into whether the abuses employed there are systemic throughout the Chicago Police Department.

"International law...obligates governments to investigate allegations of human rights violations; disclose the truth about violations; prosecute those responsible; and ensure remedy for victims, including reparations, truth and justice," Amnesty USA Executive Director Steven W. Hawkins wrote in his letter (pdf) to Gupta.

"In the light of the national conversation around policing, it is clear that the United States government can and must do much more to ensure policing practices both in Chicago and nationwide are brought into line with international human rights standards," he continued.

This article originally was posted at Common Dreams.

Photo: Congressman Danny Davis, who represents the Chicago district, which includes Homan Square, called on the Justice Department to investigate the alleged police brutality site. (Photo: Pat Quinn/flickr/cc)

This day in history: The Great American Meatout

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 13:16:00 +0000

This year marks the 30^th observance of the Great American Meatout, celebrated on the first day of Spring. Since 1985 Meatout has become the world's largest annual grassroots diet education campaign. The day promotes a meat-free diet to improve health, protect the environment, and save animals. Thousands of events throughout the U.S. and in dozens of other countries mark this day.

Millions of vegans who follow a meat-free diet prove every day that their regimen can provide the essential nutrients and protein that humans need to thrive. They cite studies showing that vegans decrease their risk of developing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other chronic diseases.

Every year, Meatout is supported by a broad coalition of environmental and animal issue-focused nonprofits, plant-based food companies, elected officials across the country, and countless individuals.

Whether it is Beyoncé launching a vegan food delivery service, or richest man in the world Bill Gates funding the startup plant-based company Hampton Creek, one thing is clear: Vegan eating is becoming mainstream. A casual glance through the aisles of most urban supermarkets today reveals an astonishing variety of foods available for vegan eaters.

Although the website encourages full veganism, sensitive vegans counseling "newbies" or "wannabe" vegans sometimes say, "Our diet has been so meat-centered for so long that a sudden switch is going to be difficult, and we don't want to see you fail at it. Think of this: If, starting out, you ate meat only every other day, that would cut your consumption in half!"

Some science points to factory animal farming as the primary cause of global warming, considering the billions of commercially raised animals worldwide that are destined to become fast food meals or a significant part of every breakfast, lunch and dinner. Millions of square miles of land are devoted to raising animals, or feed for them, when such land might be put to more productive use cultivating grains and vegetables directly for humans.

Factory farm owners have shown themselves to be particularly nervous about journalists and videographers visiting their pens and slaughterhouses. They simply do not want the general public to know what suffering they create for the animals they raise, nor the resources, such as water, feed, and energy, that it takes to produce a pound of meat. And they certainly do not want consumers informed about the massive amounts of hormones and antibiotics administered to the animals to keep them disease-free (and that enter the human body), nor the methane gases and animal waste that are introduced into the environment. Makers of processed and preserved meats use a veritable pharmacopeia of chemicals to package products that will sit on shelves for weeks or months after leaving the factory.

There are many interpretations of what "meat-free" means. Some vegetarians will consume eggs, dairy products and honey, for example, arguing that while these are animal products, they do not kill the animals. Others will avoid meat, but eat seafood, although most of the seafood sold in the U.S. is also farm-raised and subject to additives and genetic tampering.

In some parts of the world, a diet that totally excludes meat or seafood is almost unimaginable. In far northern areas, for example, the growing season is short. In traditional cultures there may be no well-stocked market anywhere within reach. And island countries are surrounded by oceans abundant with protein sources. Even in the U.S. at present, in densely settled poor urban neighborhoods known as "food deserts," fresh vegetables are rarely seen or are of substandard quality.

As for the labor force involved in the meat and seafood industries, a transition away from animal consumption is obviously not going to happen overnight: As new dietary habits evolve, workers are already being retrained for new jobs. That is also part of the social equation as societies move toward renewable energy over fossil fuels. With the political will to do so, these challenges can be met.

While a universal, totally animal-free diet is hard to imagine any time in the near future and perhaps never, still, for many people around the world, the Great American Meatout provides an opportunity to explore healthier dietary alternatives that will also significantly reduce global warming and animal suffering.

Photo: Interior of a gestational sow barn, Wikipedia.

Today in women’s history: Edith Nourse Rogers born, sponsored G.I. Bill

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:25:00 +0000

Once upon a time there existed moderate, even in certain ways progressive Republicans. Edith Nourse Rogers (March 19, 1881 - Sept. 10, 1960) was the sixth woman elected to Congress, the first from Massachusetts, and until 2012, the longest serving Congresswoman.

In her 35 years in the House she was a powerful voice for veterans, sponsoring more than 1,200 bills, over half on veteran or military issues. These included the 1942 bill that created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the 1943 bill that created the Women's Army Corps (WAC), and the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the G.I. Bill), providing educational and financial benefits for soldiers returning home from WWII. These were democratic advances that gave tangible recognition to both men and women who served in the nation's armed forces.

In her volunteer work late in World War I, and in its aftermath, both in Europe and with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Rogers witnessed the conditions faced by women working with the armed forces. Excepting a few nurses, they were civilians who received no benefits - no housing, food, insurance, medical care, legal protection, pensions, nor compensation for their families in case of death. In Congress she twice chaired the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and was the first woman to preside as House Speaker pro tempore.

As a Republican Rogers opposed expanded business regulations under the New Deal, but also opposed child labor, and fought for equal pay for equal work and a 48-hour work week for women. In 1939 she tried, though unsuccessfully, to pass a Jewish refugee settlement bill.

After World War II, during the Red Scare, Rogers supported the House Committee on Un-American Activities and wanted to move the UN headquarters out of the U.S. In 1954, as the French colonialists were being defeated on the ground, she opposed sending U.S. soldiers to Vietnam.

The career of Edith Rogers as a New England Republican could hardly be replicated today. In her day politicians could sometimes work productively across the aisle for the greater interest of the American people.

Photo and source: Wikipedia. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts presides over the House Chamber in this image from 1926 of the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Chuy, mayoral candidate in Chicago, ‘educates’ Rahm

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 10:50:00 +0000

In a bluntly worded statement, Chicago mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's new campaign ad challenges the school policies of incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The ad links Emanuel's education policies to a privatization drive that benefits some of his biggest campaign contributors.

"This used to be a school until the mayor shut it down and 49 schools just like it," says Garcia, a "For Sale" sign appearing over his shoulder. The signs hangs from the brick front of the now-closed Marconi Elementary Community Academy on Chicago's West Side.

Emanuel "took money from these schools and gave it to elite private schools founded by his big campaign contributors," Garcia charges.

Thirty-one charter schools have opened in Chicago since the mayor's appointed school board closed the 50 schools in 2011. It was the nation's largest ever one-time school closing. Marconi also had a pre-K program and served an elementary school population almost 100 percent African American. It is in the city's predominantly African American and Latino west and south side neighborhoods that nearly all of the now-abandoned schools are located.

Along with the ad, the Garcia campaign issued a list of Emanuel campaign donors who stand to profit from the on-going privatization campaign. The list documents the fact that charter school supporters, companies that fund charter schools, and those companies' employees have poured over $718,700 in contributions into Emanuel's campaign. (Story contnues after video.)

In the ad, Garcia vows to stop privatizing public schools and questions the democracy of the decision to close the schools.

"I'll let you elect the school board," he pledges. Chicago voters have spoken strongly on that issue. In a non-binding referendum in February, Chicagoans voted by a 90 percent margin for restoration of their right to elect the Board governing their children's education. This is a right lost 20 years ago. In 1995, a Republican-controlled Illinois state legislature, at the behest of then-Mayor Richard Daley Jr. and the business community, singled out Chicago to be the only municipality in the state to give power to the mayor, rather than the voters, to appoint the school board.

Emanuel's appointed board is heavy on bankers and corporate executives, but light on teachers and public school parents. Critics point to conflicts of interest, such as that of Deborah Quazzo, an Emanuel appointee who runs an investment fund for companies that privatize school functions. Chicago Public Schools contracts for more than $25,000 require central office approval, but companies in which Quazzo has part ownership have avoided that oversight, scoring many $24,999 contracts since her appointment, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Chicago Teachers Union website points out that while the Chicago Board of Education is composed primarily of corporate executives, "The Chicago school district is 92 percent students of color and 86 percent low-income students whose communities have no role in school district decisions."

While Marconi Community Academy sits empty, its page on the "Great Schools" website survives, a reminder of young lives disrupted. A 2010 comment from an enthusiastic 6^th grader there seems eerie, like a note on the school's gravestone, and leaves one wondering about the fate of its author, one of 12,000 Chicago Public School students displaced in 2011. He or she would be 17 now, almost old enough to vote.

Posted November 03, 2010:

Marconi is not all that but there you can learn while having fun. I go to Marconi we have success not failure. Marconi has lots of afterschool Programs and alot of good teachers. Marconi is a very ok school you learn & have fun at the same time. I am in 6th grade I have a nice Reading Math & science teacher. We learn alot in one day. We have a good volleyball team too. You can only be on all sports teams if you have good grades. I love Marconi even tho they have a few flaws. We have encellent students and teachers and we have alot of parent involving activities and leaders at our school. We have excellent teachers too. I love you Marconi XOXO, one of your student. "

Photo: Screenshot