Notice: Trying to get property 'ID' of non-object in /code/wp-content/themes/thenation-2023/functions.php on line 3332 Ady Barkan Turned Dying Into an Act of Lovehttps://www.thenation.com/article/activism/ady-barkan-turned-dying-into-an-act-of-love/Sarah Johnson,Brad LanderNov 8, 2023

Even as his body gave out on him, Barkan invited his family, friends, and those lucky enough to cross his path to join him in fighting for a more just world.

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Activism / Obituary / November 8, 2023

Ady Barkan Turned Dying Into an Act of Love

Even as his body gave out on him, Barkan invited his family, friends, and those lucky enough to cross his path to join him in fighting for a more just world.

Sarah Johnson and Brad Lander

Ady Barkan (C) delivers remarks during a rally organized by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the US Capitol,December 19, 2017.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

We had the blessing to know Ady Barkan before his diagnosis with his ALS, back when he was “an energetic, but relatively anonymous footsoldier for progressive causes,” as the New York Times wrote in his obituary. So we had the chance to see early what others would only see later, once he confronted death so courageously that everyone took notice.

We met him on a long-shot political campaign for an insurgent State Assembly candidate, when he was just out of Yale Law School. Organizing with Ady was a blessing, but not always an easy one. He had the brilliant knack—some might call it an obsession bordering on irritating everyone around him—of believing it was possible to win underdog campaigns by identifying all potential levers, debating until you had identified the best strategy, and relentlessly pursuing outlandishly bold ideas with dogged tenacity.

Later, this knack would move presidential candidates. But in 2011, in a dusty campaign office in Brooklyn, it meant a three-hour debate about whether what he believed to be an illegal school backpack giveaway by our opponent, which he had found in campaign finance filings, would make headlines and upend the campaign.

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We lost that race. But thanks to Ady, we won lots of others.

Ady had a great dexterity with organizing tactics. He believed in grounding work for justice in the stories of people facing the problems themselves, but he didn’t think mass base-building would win on its own. He had technical genius, but he wasn’t a policy technocrat. He was media savvy, but not a comms guy. Through research to understand complex systems, through long debate and even longer memos, he was always focused on coming up with disciplined strategies—not only to advance concrete policy wins, but also to transform the playing field to change what’s winnable.

To overcome opposition to paid sick days for workers in New York City, he drafted a “petition to discharge” the bill, which meant pushing the bill onto the City Council floor without the speaker’s support. This was a risky and highly unusual move, nearly unprecedented in council history. His vision was not just a few sick days for the workers in one city but to empower workers to win more rights in all cities.

It was in this spirit that he worked with us to launch and build Local Progress, now a national network of nearly 1500 justice-minded local elected officials, who have helped win paid sick days, the Fight for $15, stronger tenant protections, public banking, municipally owned clean power, legal services for immigrants, and much more, all across the country.

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When he told us he was going to launch a campaign to involve working people to demand a more responsive Federal Reserve Bank, we thought it sounded crazy. But in the years since then, the “Fed Up” campaign helped persuade the Fed’s governors to focus not just on price stability but also on creating good jobs. The impact—Ady’s impact—has been felt in the lives of millions of people.

After his diagnosis, he recognized that his own story, his failing voice, his dying body had become powerful tools for change that he could add to his organizing toolkit. As he lost the ability to move, his organizing dexterity only grew.

From his viral video cornering Senator Jeff Flake on an airplane and asking him to “be a hero” by protecting the Affordable Care Act, to civil disobedience arrests in his wheelchair, to his cross-country bus tour bird-dogging candidates, to commandeering the microphone of Pod Save America, to persuading the Democratic presidential candidates to do interviews with him, to his testimony at the first-ever Medicare for All hearing in Congress, to launching the Be A Hero campaign, Ady turned dying into organizing.

While he was never one to shy away from righteous conflict, he did not seek to hold people—those in power, or those he organized with—accountable through shame or to hold the moral high ground over us. Instead, with a glint of possibility in his eyes and a smile on his face, he invited us into the role we could play in fighting for a better and more just world.

In his last year, he launched a new—and typically Ady—campaign. He discovered that, far below the radar, the form of healthcare privatization known as “Medicare Advantage” was eroding America’s most trusted public health care system. Earlier this year, we passed the point where half of Medicare enrollees have been shifted to private, for-profit HMOs.

Ady rigorously assessed the obscure details, raised money, brought people together, and raised his—by now computerized—voice to call attention to this privatizing corporate trend. Once again, he was able to toggle between the ideal of Medicare for All and the strategic choice to fight against Medicare for fewer and fewer.

While the focus of his final years was healthcare, Ady did not narrow his vision to one issue. An Israeli citizen and a Jew, Ady was a fierce critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. While he grieved the Hamas attacks of October 7, we know he’d be inspired by the creative tactics that IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace are deploying to demand a cease-fire in Gaza.

So much of what made Ady a tremendous activist also defined who he was as a father, a husband, and a friend. Where others might see an irresolvable paradox—whether to spend your remaining time focused on activism or with your family, how to make your life larger even as your time is getting shorter—Ady could see a way forward.

We were both flabbergasted and delighted when Ady told us, more than two years after his diagnosis, that Rachael was pregnant with their second child. Ady was devastated not to be the kind of husband and father he had imagined, but he poured love into Carl and Willow.

He wrote an amazing story to some of us last winter about playing a video of himself singing “This Land Is Your Land” (Willow called it “My Land Is Your Land”) that he had recorded before his illness, with Carl leaning on his arm, Willow holding his hand, and both kids singing along.

“And so there we were, singing in unison, my two children and me.

“When the song was over, Carl said ‘Willow, that’s Abba singing.’ Willow laughed, pointed at me, and said, ‘No, this is Abba!’ Carl explained that I sang the song when I could still walk, many years ago. Before he was born. Then I got to tell him that, actually, I recorded that song and the others in the set when he was a baby, so he would know what I sounded like, and know that I love him. I didn’t dare imagine, back in 2017, that I would someday get to listen to him sing along with me, let alone that his sister would make us a trio.

“I told them that I love them. Carl said he loved me. Willow gave me a big kiss. And they went to bed happy. I’m so grateful for them.

“It is a simple thing, a father reading stories and singing songs with his children. And of course, I wish that I could use my own silly voice to read the stories, and play the guitar as they sing. But, I have learned, and I relearn every day, that the antidote to being sad about everything I don’t have, is to be grateful for all that I do have.”

(And, of course, he pivoted from that to remind us that this was only possible because of his caregivers, and could we please contribute to Be A Hero for its campaign to push the Biden administration to expand Medicare’s home care program to cover many more people.)

Ady wrestled on a daily basis with the boundary between acceptance and hope. He accepted his ALS death sentence, but he was repelled by the kind of acceptance that substitutes complacency for work for change. He continued to live a life as large as possible and to take joy in an ever-expanding circle of community, friends, and family, even when so much of his ability to experience them fully had been taken away. So often, in ways large and small, he was the one to lift us up.

Back in 2018, with Donald Trump as president and Brett Kavanagh newly confirmed to the Supreme Court and times feeling dark, Ady took to the pages of The Nation to rewrite Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. How could we pray for “the wisdom to know the difference” between the things we can change and the ones we can’t when we haven’t tested the boundaries?

His answer was that we’d find it only in organizing: “Collective courage must come first,” he wrote, “wisdom second, and serenity at the very end.”

His was not a naïve hopefulness. He experienced tremendous joy in the people he loved and the campaigns he fought—but also so many moments of shattering loss.

“Yet it is in these moments of defeat,” he wrote, “that hopeful, collective struggle retains its greatest power. I can transcend my dying body by hitching my future to yours. We can transcend the darkness of this moment by joining the struggles of past and future freedom fighters.”

“That is how, when we reach the end of our lives and look back on these heady moments, we will find peace in the knowledge that we did our best.”

You did transcend your dying body by hitching your future to all of ours, Ady. We’ll keep working to summon the collective courage—and the joy it can bring—that you taught us best of all.



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Don’t Listen to Eric Adams. Immigrants Make New York City.https://www.thenation.com/article/society/eric-adams-immigration-nyc/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad LanderSep 13, 2023

New York City needs immigrants, writes the city’s comptroller. Look at the numbers: The city lost more than 400,000 residents between 2020 and 2022.

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Society / September 13, 2023

Don’t Listen to Eric Adams. Immigrants Make New York City.

New York City needs immigrants, writes the city’s comptroller. Look at the numbers: The city lost more than 400,000 residents between 2020 and 2022.

Brad Lander

Seven members of the Cumales/Suarez family (kids aged 13, 12, 8, and 3 years, and one a month old) from Venezuela arrive from Texas at New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal early Wednesday, September 6, 2023.

(Luiz C. Ribeiro / NY Daily News)

Mayor Eric Adams said the quiet part way too loud last week, when he declared that the arrival of migrants “will destroy New York City” and blamed the crisis for a new round of budget cuts that “will hurt” every New Yorker, fanning flames of xenophobia by slashing services and blaming the newcomers.

And Democrats more broadly seem unsure of how to respond to people seeking refuge here, as polls suggest that many voters want them turned away rather than welcomed. A majority of New Yorkers say that migrants settling here over the past 20 years have been a burden rather than a benefit.

But as city comptroller, I look to the data. And the data says that’s just not true. New York City’s history, economy, and even our politics point in the other direction.

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During the first decade of the 20th century, Ellis Island processed 5,000 new immigrants each day, far more than the 10,000 a month that have arrived in the city this summer. Those newcomers, and the generations before them, built the Erie Canal, the railroads, the Empire State Building, the garment industry, and the city’s status as a global financial center.

Immigration helped save New York City after the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. When the federal government told NYC to “drop dead,” it was in large part the belief of new waves of immigrants in the future of our city that helped drive a new era of growth and creativity.

Now remember back to the depths of the pandemic when we wondered whether people would want to live, work, ride the subway, or go to a show in the city ever again? Just a few short years later, tens of thousands of people who carried their children through a jungle and walked across a continent to get here are eager to build their lives in NYC.

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These families fleeing violence, discrimination, and destitution today will be the next generation to build New York City—and we need them. Again, look at the numbers. We lost more than 400,000 residents from 2020 to 2022. Our schools have lost more than 100,000 students. The pandemic exacerbated a long-standing pattern of middle-class families seeking more space in the suburbs and slowed the international immigration that had balanced it.

New York City’s history shows that immigration doesn’t take jobs or housing away from people who are already here—even if it feels like that to people in anxious times. It drives economic growth that creates more opportunity for all. Newcomers will fill vacant jobs in the hospitality and restaurant industries. Many bring skills we desperately need more of, from electricians to nurses. Some will join the tens of thousands of immigrants already employed as home health aides or childcare workers. Others will open new businesses, helping our city to thrive.

Instead of finger-pointing, we need a recommitment to the vision of our city that our own past shows we can be—and the management to realize it.

To start, all levels of government must work together more effectively to ensure that new arrivals can quickly enter the workforce. While President Joe Biden is limited by a Republican-controlled House—and the GOP has long blocked comprehensive immigration reform because scapegoating is in its political interest—there is still plenty within the White House’s control. Expanding Temporary Protected Status, or even just making ministerial changes to ease the process of applying for asylum and work authorization, like fee waivers or digitizing the process, would make a big difference.

New York State must provide more funding to meet the obligations of the right to shelter and take a stronger hand in coordinating refugee resettlement across the state. Governor Kathy Hochul’s announced plan for the state’s Department of Labor to help connect people with employers once they get work authorization is a good first step.

And notwithstanding the mayor’s rhetoric last week, his administration is actually busy scaling up its work providing the asylum and work-authorization application assistance that my office has been calling for since the spring. The most significant thing the city can do to decrease the length of stay in shelter and save money is to expand that effort to make sure every asylum seeker here gets that assistance by the end of the year.

These steps must go hand in hand with efforts to address quality-of-life, safety, and especially housing affordability for all New Yorkers. Rising to these challenges together can put the lie to the idea that the arrival of newcomers mean working-class New Yorkers will “lose” something, the most dangerous part of the mayor’s rhetoric and policy.

Let’s be clear: Stirring up fears is also a losing effort for Democrats, politically. If voters are persuaded that they want xenophobia, they know which party will deliver it best. Our vision must be grounded in a faith in the future—and in the competent, compassionate government that can deliver it.



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Health Care Workers Are Being Fired for Speaking Out About a Lack of Supplieshttps://www.thenation.com/article/economy/workers-coronavirus-just-cause/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad LanderApr 15, 2020

The darkness of the Covid-19 crisis has inspired a profound outpouring of appreciation for workers. Each evening, hundreds of thousands of people bang on pots and pans to thank health care workers; they buy them meals, send them masks. The appreciation goes beyond just health care workers: across the country, people are cheering on striking Amazon and Instacart workers fighting for better labor protections and asking how they can help support grocery workers and others who are keeping the trains running and the streets clean.

At the same time, the crisis has cast in sharp relief America’s disastrously anemic systems for supporting and protecting those workers. So workers are rising up to demand change—change that could go far beyond responding to the ongoing emergency and dramatically reshape workplace relations.

One powerful example is the struggle of doctors, nurses, and health care workers who have been fired or disciplined for telling the truth about health and safety conditions. It might seem like an important but narrow fight, affecting a relatively small group of essential workers. But if we learn the right lessons, and if we organize, it could point the way to fundamental change in employer/employee relations for all American workers.

From the beginning of this crisis, health care workers have been sounding the alarm about inadequate preparation for the pandemic, a shameful lack of personal protective equipment, and heartbreaking conditions inside hospitals, nursing homes, and health centers. While the public has responded with an outpouring of support and gratitude, far too many employers have reacted with anger and censure.

A doctor in Washington state was fired for posting on social media about the shortage of N95 masks in his hospital. A nurse on the Jersey Shore was fired after taking the day off to do his duty as a union official; he was representing a coworker in a disciplinary hearing over social media posts about the crisis. And a nurse in New York City was fired after telling her boss she felt anxious treating patients with coronavirus without the proper equipment.

These and many other stories are just beginning to reach the public as brave workers continue to search out ways to spread the word about dangerous conditions. As the majority of us hunker down at home, desperately consuming the news, reading through the lines of President Trump’s dangerously out-of-touch press conferences, these health care workers have become a primary source of real, truthful information about what is happening on the front lines of this pandemic. They continue to provide this information—to the press, on social media—even as they work round-the-clock to save as many lives as they can while somehow staying healthy themselves.

So it is all the more unconscionable that they would be fired for ringing the alarm bell about health and safety issues.

Unconscionable—but not uncommon. The vast majority of workers in America are “at will” employees who can be fired at any time, without notice, and without a reason. As a result, workers often feel forced to choose between submitting to intolerable working conditions—late-night shifts and early hours, harassment from customers and superiors—and not having a job at all.

Unions have long been the source of job protections for workers who speak out about unsafe conditions, fighting for and winning just-cause protections in their contracts. But many health care workers, and the vast majority of workers across the country, do not have such protections.

They should.

Over the past two years, workers and elected officials have begun working together to win legislation that would require bosses to have a “just cause” to fire someone, regardless of whether or not they are in a union.

Here in New York City, we have been working with fast-food workers who have been organizing with 32BJ SEIU to pass legislation to protect people in the sector from unfair firings. Legislators in Philadelphia granted similar protections to parking-lot attendants last year. And at the national level, Senator Bernie Sanders made just-cause protections a centerpiece of his workers’ rights platform.

At a hearing held by the New York City Council on just cause legislation for fast-food workers in February (which feels like years ago now), we heard from Yeral Martinez, who was fired from his job at Chipotle in October 2019, the day after he called out sick due to back pain. He tried to contest his dismissal, explaining to managers that he was entitled to paid sick time (a right that fast-food workers helped us win in New York City in 2013). The manager shrugged and said she didn’t need any reason to fire him. Before he lost his job, Martinez was living in a shelter with his wife and son. They had been about to move to an apartment but were unable to meet the income requirements after Martinez was fired.

After hearing the stories of the doctors and nurses who are facing discipline or the loss of their jobs for sharing their stories, I announced “just cause” legislation to protect health care and hospital workers, modeled on our bill for fast-food workers. Our legislation would make clear that speaking honestly about health and safety conditions is not a just cause to fire someone.

But why stop with health care and fast-food workers?

Just recently, when Amazon workers on Staten Island walked out to protest inadequate safety equipment and policies to keep warehouse workers safe, the company turned around and fired Chris Smalls, one of the lead organizers. It didn’t matter that organizing a labor union is protected in the workplace; they fired him anyway. (Community organizations and unions are mobilizing to try to get Smalls his job back, but it shouldn’t have been this easy for Amazon to punish him for speaking out.)

No matter whether you are a doctor, a fast-food worker, or an Amazon worker, if you are an “at will” employee, you can quickly become expendable. If we act boldly in the wake of this crisis, we could change that by ending “at will” employment throughout the American economy. In most European countries, all employees are protected from unfair firing with “just cause” policy.

After the pots and pans and cheers have subsided, let’s pay an enduring tribute to the essential workers bravely facing this crisis by making sure that they can’t be fired based purely on the whim—or bruised egos—of their bosses.

And let’s make sure that no one else can be, either.



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These Cities Aren’t Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Whether or Not to Gut Unionshttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/these-cities-arent-waiting-for-the-supreme-court-to-decide-whether-or-not-to-gut-unions/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen GymFeb 26, 2018

Today the US Supreme Court will take up a case that may pose the biggest test to the labor movement that we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Janus v. AFSCME, which takes direct aim at the heart of public-sector unions, could make it much harder for working people to organize for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

That’s not just bad news for unions. It’s bad news for all of us. Labor unions are the best tool we have to combat income inequality, a rigged economy, and systemic mistreatment of women and people of color in the workplace. Labor unions created the American middle class. Turned dangerous jobs into safer ones. Gave workers a voice against abuses. And, yes, created the weekend.

So there’s a lot at stake. That’s why, in cities throughout the country, we aren’t just waiting around. In the face of the Janus case, local elected officials across the country are renewing our efforts to help workers organize—in traditional ways, and in new ones.

Consider the case of airport workers. As these workers have organized for union recognition with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), pressing their case from Austin to Milwaukee to Washington, DC, local elected officials have stood with them. In cities where officials control airport ground leases, as in Philadelphia, they have used their leverage to push for recognition. In other cases, they have taken part in days of protest and civil disobedience, met with airport authority leadership, or called on airline executives to get involved. The result: Tens of thousands of subcontract workers have better jobs.

Meanwhile, as cable-TV giants have worked to undermine their employees’ bargaining position, we’ve held public hearings to examine whether those practices violated the companies’ franchise agreements. After a three-year struggle at Cablevision in New York City, workers organizing with the Communications Workers of America finally defeated union-busting CEO James Dolan in 2015 (Dolan also owns Madison Square Garden and the Knicks) and won a new contract. Similar hearings helped build pressure during the six-and-a-half-week Verizon strike of 2016. Now, New York City Council members are supporting the Charter/Spectrum workers organizing with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, on strike for nearly a year.

And in California and New York City, when legislators learned about pervasive wage theft and toxic working conditions facing overwhelmingly immigrant car-wash workers, we joined the fight. As workers organized with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (in New York City) and United Steelworkers (in Los Angeles), City Council members joined labor, faith, and community leaders to organize food drives for striking workers and took part in civil disobedience to help these carwasheros fight wage theft and win labor contracts. We also passed innovative new legislation requiring car-wash owners to maintain licenses to operate, as well as bonds against wage theft and environmental abuses to make sure the rules are followed.

Just as crucial, the support often goes the other way: In many states with Republican legislatures, unions have been a key source of strength to thwart state attempts to erode city power. In Philadelphia, public-school teachers led a 17-year fight against the state takeover of the Philadelphia school system, which included a years-long standoff over their contract. In 2017, not only did they win a new teachers’ contract; they also helped end the state takeover of the schools and restored them back to local control.

Our cities are also rising to help workers confront the growth of contingent, shift, and “gig” jobs that make it harder for workers to piece together a living.

We’ve helped retail and fast-food workers organize to win a fair workweek, so they aren’t stuck involuntarily in part-time jobs, forced to wait “on-call” (but without pay) for potential shifts, and subject to erratic schedule changes at the boss’s whim. San Francisco passed the first fair-workweek law in 2014. Seattle, San Jose, and Emeryville (California) followed their lead, as did New York City. As a result, workers get two weeks’ advance notice of their shifts, no longer are subject to abusive on-call scheduling, and have a pathway to full-time jobs. Just this month, advocates launched a campaign for a fair workweek in Philadelphia.

And back in New York, where some 70 percent of freelancers have been cheated out of payments they were owed, the City Council passed the “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” in 2016 to protect freelancers and independent workers from getting stiffed. The law was championed by the Freelancers Union, which encourages freelancers to work together on enforcement.

Finally, cities are legislating new ways to help workers organize when the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in 1935 and desperately in need of a strong overhaul to bring it up to date, does not meet the needs of their sector. Because Uber and Lyft drivers are considered independent contractors, the NLRA does not currently offer them a framework for collective bargaining. So in Seattle, the City Council passed a law in 2016 to give them a way to organize and bargain collectively. Uber and Lyft are challenging the law in federal court—but also facing a challenge of their own, via a New York Taxi Workers Alliance lawsuit that their drivers are actually employees.

Meanwhile, fast-food workers face a different challenge: Their employers are the franchise-owners, not the corporations themselves, so the NLRA has not provided a way for fast-food workers to bargain directly with McDonalds, Burger King, or Wendy’s. (The Obama administration tried to change this, but the Trump administration’s National Labor Relations Board has reversed it.) So, in New York City, workers who came together through the Fight for $15 lobbied the City Council to create the Fast Food Worker Empowerment Act. Passed last spring, the new law allows workers to voluntarily deduct contributions from their paychecks to a nonprofit that can advocate on their behalf. The law, championed by SEIU 32BJ, led to the formation of a groundbreaking new organization, Fast Food Justice, which is empowering fast-food workers to advocate collectively not just within their individual franchises but across the industry. And they aren’t stopping with fighting for better jobs; they are also organizing on issues like affordable housing and immigration reform that affect low-wage workers and their families.

The Roberts Court may well strike a blow for the corporate elite with the Janus case, with results that could be devastating for the labor movement.

But the answer can’t be less worker organizing. If we want a fairer economy, good jobs, and more equal opportunity, there must be more organizing. In our cities, we’ll do all we can to help.



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In the Age of Trump, Cities Will Lead the Way Toward Increased Economic Opportunityhttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/in-the-age-of-trump-cities-will-lead-the-way-toward-increased-economic-opportunity/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-SpringerJan 30, 2017

This fall’s election highlighted a deep undercurrent of anxiety that the American Dream is eroding.

People have real reason to be worried. New data from Stanford’s Raj Chetty illustrates that with every passing decade since the 1940s, Americans have become less and less likely to out-earn their parents.

Donald Trump tapped into that anxiety to great effect. But blaming immigrants, weakening labor unions, eliminating health-care coverage for millions of Americans, privatizing infrastructure, and rolling back financial-sector regulation won’t restore upward mobility. Trump’s voters will be sorely disappointed.

Still, it’s not enough for progressives to highlight the flaws in Trump’s economic policies. We must lead the way with policies that do better to create and share economic opportunity—with immigrants, people-of-color, and white working-class families alike. Chetty’s new data holds the key: It shows that downward economic mobility is due primarily to the rise of inequality, even more than slower growth. The way to restore upward mobility is through more equal growth.

In New York City, that’s exactly what we are working to do. Over the last four decades, New York City has faced similar challenges to other cities across the nation: stagnant wages, disinvestment, the loss of assembly-line manufacturing, rising health-care costs, and more. But our answer has not been to fear change, blame immigrants, or build walls. Instead, we are combining strategic investments and progressive regulation to forge the path to a thriving and more equal economy.

Here’s what that looks like on the ground, in New York City:

1) Investing in sectors for inclusive growth

As the economy has shifted, we have responded by investing in sectors that have real potential for growth—including applied sciences, technology, and modern manufacturing—and that create good jobs that are accessible to workers of all backgrounds and skill levels.

We are building a major new applied-sciences campus on Roosevelt Island, initiated during the Bloomberg administration and on track to open later this year with groundbreaking new programs in health technology and connective media. We will invest $500 million to spur thousands of new jobs in New York City’s emerging biotech and life-sciences industries.

We are transforming the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn Army Terminal (once part of America’s military infrastructure) into modern industrial parks by providing state-of-the-art, affordable work space for hundreds of companies employing tens of thousands of New Yorkers in manufacturing, technology, design, and film/TV production. And our just-announced $250 million hub for technology and innovation near Union Square will allow New Yorkers to develop digital skills, provide space for tech start-ups, and serve as the home for the burgeoning “civic tech” community.

Crucially, in all of this work, we are ensuring that people of all backgrounds have the skills and resources to access new opportunities—through comprehensive STEM education, robust workforce-development programs, and continued efforts to increase capacity of minority- and women-owned business enterprises.

2) Embracing diversity

Immigration has not harmed New York City’s economy; it has renewed it. In 2010, immigrant-founded small businesses produced more than $775 billion in sales and $100 billion in income—and paid over $126 billion in payroll taxes. It’s no wonder the crowd cheers every night on Broadway, when Hamilton and Lafayette declare: “Immigrants, we get the job done.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have made clear that we will continue to welcome and protect immigrants. Being a “sanctuary city” doesn’t just mean refusing to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) target New York City immigrants for deportation. It also means helping to make sure they have real access to economic opportunity.

That’s why we’re investing in programs like the Tech Talent Pipeline, which fosters the digital skills of New Yorkers of all backgrounds, and IN2NYC, which helps international entrepreneurs attain visas that allow them to bring innovative companies to New York City. New York City is ensuring that people of all backgrounds have the skills and opportunities to realize the American dream.

Through a comprehensive overhaul of our contracting process, we’re ensuring that Minority and Women-Owned Businesses (MWBEs) have a more equal chance at competing for city projects. And we’re also expanding manufacturing jobs that are accessible to thousands of New Yorkers of different skill levels and language proficiencies, creating pathways to and through the middle class.

3) Revitalizing neighborhoods through public investment

Though New York City has grown dramatically over the past decades, too many neighborhoods have been left behind. Some of our communities face systemic challenges that stem from decades of disinvestment. Inwood, Jamaica, the South Bronx, and Far Rockaway are geographically close to affluent hubs, but chronic unemployment, decaying infrastructure, and lack of transit have deprived local residents of the opportunities they deserve.

To turn this around, the City of New York is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in traditionally underserved neighborhoods. We are creating affordable housing units and new parks, improving infrastructure and connections to transit, and bringing new health-care access to New Yorkers who need it most.

These neighborhood investments also include incentives for local small businesses which hire more New Yorkers in quality careers. And we are requiring businesses that receive those incentives—and, increasingly, anyone who does business with the City—to use our targeted hiring program to provide jobs for local residents.

If the president wants to make a real commitment to infrastructure, he should help us target investments to underserved communities yearning to share in our nation’s prosperity and productivity.

4) Insisting on good jobs

Investments in inclusive growth are good launching pads—but on their own, they won’t do enough to narrow the income gaps that Chetty’s team identified. So New York City is also adopting progressive regulation to insist that corporations improve traditionally low-wage jobs.

When fast-food workers launched their first “Fight for $15” strike four years ago, few took them seriously. But we were proud to support them—and the path they blazed has already helped more than 22 million workers across the country get a raise through minimum-wage increases, with 10 million (including those in New York City) on a path to $15 per hour.

Our next step in New York is to put an end to unfair scheduling practices in low-wage sectors, and to make sure fast-food and other retail workers have a “fair work week.” With $15 an hour, two weeks advance notice of their schedules, paid sick days, the ability to seek flexibility for caregiving and emergencies, and a path to full-time hours, fast-food and other low-wage workers have a real chance to make ends meet.

We’ve worked with New York City’s labor unions to develop policies to protect car-wash and industrial laundry workers from dangerous chemicals and from wage theft, and to make sure that building-service, grocery-store, and hotel workers are not unceremoniously fired when a new operator takes over.

Better jobs aren’t just good for workers and their families. Economist Zeynep Ton has shown that this “good jobs strategy”—paying a living wage, providing benefits, and investing in workers—works for businesses too, even in traditionally low-wage retail and service sectors. And workers with higher wages and more job stability are better for the neighborhoods where they live, and for our city as a whole.

5) Fighting discrimination that blocks opportunity

Since we can’t rely on the Trump administration to protect the civil, labor, and employment rights of New Yorkers, we’re ramping up New York City’s ability to do so.

We’ve strengthened New York City’s Human Rights Law to prohibit employment discrimination against New Yorkers with criminal records, to ban employment credit checks that lock out people with poor credit histories (often through no fault of their own), and to better protect immigrant, LGBTQ, transgender, and pregnant New Yorkers from workplace discrimination.

We’re making sure employers don’t ask salary histories before a job offer—a practice that discriminates against women. We’re putting in place new policies to support the growing ranks of gig-economy workers who lack critical protections, rights, benefits, and the ability to organize. New York City’s “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” is the first bill of its kind to protect freelance workers from being stiffed.

And we’ve created a new Office of Labor Standards and Policy to enforce rights granted by New York City law (like paid sick leave) and to make sure workers know their workplace rights under state and federal law, and have access to groups to help enforce it.

Strategic investments and smart regulation go hand in hand to guide more equal growth. We’re already seeing the results. More than 65,000 New Yorkers climbed out of poverty in 2014 and 2015. Median incomes rose to their highest levels since the 2008 recession. New York City employers have created 276,000 new jobs since 2014 in both traditional and emerging sectors. And we’re just getting started.

By creating pathways to and through the middle class for working families, by opening up our economy to the city’s full and vibrant diversity, by investing in neighborhoods, by insisting on good jobs, by preventing discrimination—this is how we equip New Yorkers with the opportunities not only to weather change but to thrive in and benefit from the growth of our city.

In the long run, of course, the challenges of building a more equal economy demand national solutions. But for now, cities will have to lead the way.



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Why I’m Getting Arrested During Today’s National Day of Disruptionhttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-im-getting-arrested-during-todays-national-day-of-disruption/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad LanderNov 29, 2016

Where will we find inspiration for the challenging days ahead? Where can we look, as we struggle to resist a President-elect who stirs up division, and whose policies will erode access to opportunity, even for his own working-class voters?

One place I will look: to courageous fast-food workers who have led the Fight for $15. Their courage, bold vision, solidarity across race and gender, and vision for economic fairness have transformed what is possible for low-wage workers. That’s why I’m getting arrested today, as part of their National Day of Action.

Four years ago, just after our last presidential election, a small group of fast-food workers in Brooklyn walked off their jobs, demanding $15 an hour and a union. I was honored to join them in their very first action. But I’ll be honest: I thought their demands were a pipe dream. And I was skeptical that they would risk their jobs.

But they knew that the vision of a living wage—and a sharp critique of the economic inequality in the fast-food industry—would inspire other workers to action. They were right, and they had the courage to back it up.

We’re going to need that courage in the days ahead, in the face of hate crimes and bullying, the loss of health care, the threats to immigrants, to Muslims, to women—such a long list that the erosion of workers’ rights barely gets a mention. Getting arrested today is part of a long tradition of civil disobedience, and it takes a little courage. But it is nothing compared to risking your job.

Two of the workers that I met in those early strikes, Eddie Guzman and Gregory Reynoso, did lose their jobs. Together with other workers and elected officials, we sat down with their managers. Guzman got his job back. Reynoso did not, but was hired as an organizer on the Fight for $15 campaign. That solidarity, and the protection it provided, helped other workers find courage. Together, they sparked a movement that has swept across the country. Four years later, more than 22 million Americans have gotten raises, and 10 million are on a path to earning $15 an hour.

That solidarity has extended across many of the lines that divide our country. Unions have stepped up to push for higher wages for non-union workers. Fast-food workers are mostly people-of-color, and mostly women, but over the past four years, they have stood together with mostly male airport and car-wash workers; with largely white communications and construction workers; even with freelancers and independent contractors, in their push to win legislation to keep them from getting stiffed.

The policies fast-food workers are winning also hold the potential to unite Americans across those lines, behind a common vision of economic fairness and opportunity. In New York City, fast-food workers—and now all workers—have won a path to $15 an hour by 2019. But they are still pushing for common-sense economic policies that make sense for all workers.

Next week, we will introduce legislation in the New York City Council—following San Francisco and Seattle—that would require fast-food employers to give their workers a stable schedule, two-weeks advance notice of their hours, and a path to a full-time job for part-time workers who want one.

These policies can extend beyond fast food. In her book, The Good Jobs Strategy, economist Zeynep Ton shows how some retail and service businesses, like Costco and QuikTrip, thrive by paying their workers decently, offering stable schedules, and providing good jobs, while improving operational efficiency and customer service. Those firms are beating out competitors who take the road.

The lesson of Ton’s book is clear: we can build an economy on good, stable jobs, even in traditionally low-wage sectors. It is good for the workers, good for their companies, and good for their communities.

Fast-food, retail, and service jobs don’t exist just in Brooklyn and San Francisco. Millions of white, working-class employees, in the upper Midwest and far beyond, would also love to have stable schedules and a path to full-time jobs at $15 per hour. You don’t get rich at $30,000 per year, but you can start to arrange and afford childcare, pay the rent, and take care of a family.

With funding for public pre-K programs, the kids of these workers can get a head start in school. And with investments in public universities, their kids can go to college, get even better jobs, and help support the innovation and economic growth that will help our country thrive.

Of course, none of those things—increasing the minimum wage, requiring employers to provide stable schedules, public pre-K, or affordable college—will be priorities of the Trump administration. But the workers leading today’s actions know we must keep pushing forward.

So when Donald Trump fails to bring back manufacturing jobs and restore a version of the 1950s to his voters, the Fight for $15 has something else to offer. Their courage, bold vision, solidarity, and policies of basic economic fairness help advance an America that offers genuine opportunity for workers who feel stuck amid a widening economic gap.

For today, that’s enough inspiration for me to get arrested. In the days ahead, I believe it can inspire the courage we need, not only to resist the harms of the Trump administration, but to build the more equal, more inclusive country we so urgently need.



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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-im-getting-arrested-during-todays-national-day-of-disruption/
How to Build the Movement for Progressive Power, the Urban Wayhttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-to-build-the-movement-for-progressive-power-the-urban-way/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad Lander,John Avalos,Brad Lander,Antonio Reynoso,Scott WaguespackOct 27, 2015

As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban centers. From Atlanta to Seattle and points in between, cities have begun seizing the initiative, transforming themselves into laboratories for progressive change. Cities Rising is The Nation’s chronicle of those urban experiments.

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Cities are where the action is these days. Progressive action, political action. From paid sick days to universal pre-K, fossil-fuel divestment to anti-fracking ordinances, police reform to immigrant rights, the country’s urban centers are leading the way, far outpacing the federal government in vision and action. Just look at the growing movement for a $15 minimum wage. While Bernie Sanders has been raising minimum-wage consciousness on the campaign trail—introducing a bill in July to raise the federal minimum to $15 and calling for the same during the first Democratic presidential debate—it was local politicians, with names barely known beyond their districts, who first heeded the call of struggling workers and made $15 a reality. Before Bernie, in other words, there was Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant, Ruth Atkins, and the Emeryville City Council.

In recognition of this moment, progressive politicians from cities around the country—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, and beyond—have joined forces to begin sharing their strategies for creative progressive change. Calling themselves Local Progress, they swap policy solutions to urgent, ongoing injustices like income inequality and police brutality, share model legislation and provide strategic support for legislative campaigns. Kind of like an urban anti-ALEC. Today, just three years after it was formed, more than 400 elected officials from 40 states are part of the effort. And the victories are beginning to add up—from paid parental leave in Boston to paid sick leave in New York City, socially responsible investing in Seattle to the use of eminent domain in Richmond, California, to slash homeowner debt.

This week, Local Progress members from all over the country are meeting in Los Angeles for the group’s fourth national gathering. From October 26 through 28, they are trading their best ideas and strategies for building progressive local power—and combatting police violence, spreading the Fight for $15, expanding affordable housing, boosting civic engagement, and pushing the fight for LGBTQ rights beyond marriage equality.

Chuy Garcia, who gave Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel a run for his millions in this year’s election, will be on the scene, as will Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, and dozens of council members, alderman, and supervisors from around the country. If cities are the incubators of promising progressive ideas, this gathering is a bit like the annual science expo.

The Nation has asked four Local Progress stalwarts to share some of the policy solutions they’ll be discussing at the gathering. New York City Council members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos, and Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack all weighed in, offering thoughts on everything from humanizing the sharing economy to organizing for police reform, protecting sanctuary cities, and pushing back against privatization and regressive tax policy. Here’s what they said.

Lizzy Ratner

Protecting Workers in the On-Demand Economy

By Brad Lander

Rides from Uber. Home cleaning from Handy. Meals from Seamless. Web design from Upwork. Even doctors from Medicast.

There’s no doubt the on-demand economy is convenient. Consumers can arrange for services at the tap of a touchscreen. Workers can choose their hours and earn a little extra cash.

But there’s a very dark side to the “sharing” economy: The benefits aren’t usually shared with the workers.

Working “by-the-gig” rarely provides job security, health insurance, paid sick days or family leave, on-the-job training, or retirement contributions. Workers lack the right to organize a union. And eight in 10 freelance workers report having been cheated out of wages they were owed.

President Obama and Democratic presidential candidates are finally talking about the issue. But the Republican Congress will likely block any progress. Marco Rubio recently called for even further deregulation, leaving workers at the mercy of multibillion-dollar corporations.

So cities are taking the lead in writing new rules, working with Local Progress, the National Employment Law Project, forward-thinking unions, and worker organizations to level the on-demand playing field.

In Seattle, City Council member Mike O’Brien is fighting for a bill that would allow drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other “ridesharing” companies to organize and bargain collectively so that workers have some voice in the terms and conditions of their work.

In New York City, we are working with the Freelancers Union to combat wage theft and late payment. When conventional employees are cheated out of wages, the state labor department can enforce and win double damages. The #FreelanceIsntFree campaign (which recently brought its message to the White House) would provide freelancers with similar protection.

Council Member Corey Johnson and I are working with the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance to mandate a “driver benefits fund” (funded by a small fare surcharge) to provide for-hire drivers with healthcare benefits—a first step toward the “Shared Security Account” that Nick Hanauer and David Rolf called for in a Democracy Journal article this summer. And we’re amending New York City’s human-rights laws to make clear they apply to independent workers. There is no reason Uber should be able to discriminate against drivers based on race or religion.

Meanwhile, from San Francisco to Burlington, cities are establishing offices of labor standards and adopting other innovative approaches (like partnering with community-based organizations) to enforce the laws that protect workers. One task: making sure conventional employees aren’t illegally misclassified as independent workers by employers trying to cheat them out of benefits and protections (a big problem for day laborers and domestic workers). These offices can also make sure that companies who need licenses from the city get and keep them only if they respect local, state, and federal laws.

Ultimately, we’ll need national regulation to match the growing on-demand economy. But for now, progressive cities are bringing worker protections into the 21st century—and some real sharing into the sharing economy.

The Municipal Battle for Equal Justice Under Law

By Antonio Reynoso

Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Sandra Bland. For more than a year, the senseless deaths of young black men and women by police officers or in police custody have dominated headlines and helped fuel a movement. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, this movement has been gaining ground in cities, towns, and counties across the country, spreading the call to end racist policing and begin enacting serious police reform. Its powerful message has reached all the way to the presidential campaign trail and beyond. But as the public waits for progress at the national level, change is already happening at the local level, thanks to powerful alliances between community activists and hundreds of local politicians.

In New York City, where I am a City Council member representing neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, there is a desperate need for sensible reforms of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). For all to many New Yorkers, the excessive use of police force is a daily reality. The excessive surveillance of the Muslim community and a racialized stop-and-frisk policy also take their toll.

In response, organizations and progressive politicians have been fighting to improve accountability and transparency after years of racial profiling by the NYPD. The work has been supported by a broad coalition called Communities United for Police Reform, which has driven a strategic, multi-year campaign to knock on doors, organize the public, influence the public discourse, and pass legislation to implement smart reforms.

Communities want change, and they want to participate in the process of reforming the NYPD. So, working together, we’ve introduced the Right To Know Act as a way to meet their demands. These bills would require NYPD officers not only to identify themselves when stopping civilians but also to explain that the searches are voluntary and may be declined.

This is not the first time we have stood up for the people of our community. In 2013 and 2014, in partnership with Communities United for Police Reform, the City Council passed a series of bills known as the Community Safety Act, which together banned racial profiling by police and made it easier for New Yorkers who have experienced profiling to sue NYPD officers. The act also installed an independent inspector general to oversee the actions of the NYPD.

Of course, New York City is not the only city in our nation where racial profiling, unjust searches, and incidences of police brutality are common occurrences. Nor is it the only city where coalitions of community leaders and elected officials are working to improve the system. In the last year alone, communities have joined together with progressive local legislators to correct the imbalance of justice.

In Los Angeles County, the grassroots organization Dignity and Power Now won a transformative campaign, led by formerly incarcerated people and their families, to establish a strong civilian oversight commission for the sheriff’s department, which has an ugly history of violence against civilians on the streets and in county jails.

In Newark, community leaders partnered with Mayor Ras Baraka to create one of strongest civilian complaint review boards in the country, which has both a voice in disciplining police officers and a policy advisory role.

And in Minneapolis, a coalition led by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change succeeded in pressing the City Council to repeal spitting and loitering ordinances that were being disproportionately used to harass and harm black and Latino residents. They also won passage of a data-collection law that will begin to collect and publicize important evidence about the police department’s stop-and-frisk and use-of-force practices.

Members of Local Progress, partnering with community-based allies, have been central to these fights and many more, and we will continue combating such injustices across the United States, fighting for everyone to be treated equally under the law.

Cities Must Lead the Nation on Immigrant Justice

By John Avalos

In the last few years, hundreds of cities across America have disentangled their police departments and jails from the federal immigrant-deportation machine, refusing to honor the Feds’ requests that cities detain immigrants past their release date so they could be picked up and deported. These policies protect immigrant families from the devastation of deportation and from crime, because they foster better relationships between the police and immigrant communities. The movement has been a bright spot for our country’s immigrant-rights movement.

But during the last few months, the policies, and in some cases the very idea, of sanctuary cities has come under attack. The catalyst for these changes was an undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez who allegedly shot and killed a young white woman named Kate Steinle. He claims that the shooting was an accident, but her case has become a cause célèbre among opponents of immigrants because Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times previously, and had recently been released from jail in San Francisco without being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

San Francisco’s Due Process for All Ordinance, the latest update to its Sanctuary City policy, bars the sheriff from detaining people past their release date on behalf of ICE’s Secure Communities, or S-Comm, program. The goal of Due Process for All is to protect immigrants and their families from S-Comm, which created an immigration dragnet, deporting tens of thousands of immigrants and tearing their families apart. Due Process for All also enables immigrants to be integrated into San Francisco’s local law-enforcement efforts by promoting relationships between immigrant communities and the police. San Francisco has been at the leading edge of a national movement: across the nation, over 350 other local governments have recently adopted policies limiting collaboration with federal immigration officials.

But as a result of the widespread effort of local governments to limit coordination with the S-Comm, the federal government has tweaked and renamed its deportation effort the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which calls on local law enforcement to notify Homeland Security of a detainee’s release rather than detaining the individual past his or her release date. Like S-Comm, PEP has the same effect of weakening trust between immigrants and local law enforcement because local law enforcement is seen as an arm of federal immigration efforts.

The politics of race, citizen entitlement, and immigration reform have put San Francisco and other cities’ sanctuary-city policies squarely in the cross hairs of conservative extremists and political opportunists. From the highly polarizing presidential campaign of Donald Trump to the calculated posturing of Hillary Clinton (who supports PEP) to the election-year pandering of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, eager to blame the policy for Steinle’s death, politicians are scapegoating immigrants and undermining the sanctuary city policies that immigrants rely on for their security. Just last week, the US Senate narrowly failed to pass a Republican-backed bill that threatened to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities and increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who reenter the United States after deportation.

Some cities are already working to resist this pressure. On the same day that Senate Republicans sought to punish sanctuary cities, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming our commitment to the Due Process for All Ordinance and urging our sheriff not to comply with the new PEP program.

Cities around the country should follow suit and adopt a wide array of programs and policies to protect and empower immigrant communities. Like New Haven, they can establish Municipal ID cards to help immigrants navigate daily life; like Chicago, they can ensure that city services are available in multiple languages; like New York, they can provide quality free legal counsel to residents facing deportation; and like Los Angeles, they can conduct outreach programs and offer affordable citizenship preparation courses to help residents naturalize and gain the benefits of citizenship.

This moment is a pivotal one for our nation and the many cities that have sought to protect immigrants against deportation. We either succumb to the rightward push of the politics of race and citizen entitlement or we strengthen our efforts to protect and integrate immigrants and their families in recognition and honor of the contributions they make to our society. Local governments must lead our nation forward.

Fight for a Progressive Source of Revenue in Chicago

By Scott Waguespack

The fiscal crisis that’s squeezing cities and towns across this country is perhaps at its most dramatic in Chicago.

Our municipal pension systems are woefully underfunded, the result of decades of failure by city and state governments to pay their share. Our schools are facing an enormous fiscal shortfall that could result in the firing of 5,000 teachers in the middle of the year. And we’re witnessing heartbreaking violence in our communities, the result of an overwhelmed police force and neighborhoods mired in economic hardship.

Simply put, our city has a cash problem.

To his credit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged this problem in his recent budget address, railing against the budgeting tricks of previous years and vowing to end the city’s structural deficit. Unfortunately, Mayor Emanuel reached into the same tired bag of tricks in order to solve the problem: regressive tax increases on working families and privatization of public services.

These are tricks we’re all too familiar with here in Chicago. We’ve already been through some of the worst privatization deals in the country, and we know full well from our experiences with parking meters and school janitors that it’s been a fiscal boondoggle resulting in higher costs and worse services for taxpayers. And the mayor’s regressive property-tax proposal is just another way to balance budgets by raising taxes on working families who are already struggling to get by.

Here’s the good news, though: Chicago is one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. There’s an enormous amount of capital flowing through this city every day. Chicago’s City Council Progressive Caucus, which I chair, has been advocating for common-sense tax ideas to direct some of these dollars toward crucial programs and services, easing the burden on working families without selling off public assets.

We’ve advocated for creating a special property-taxing district that covers the skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Too often, owners of these buildings hire politically connected firms to get enormous discounts on their assessments; a more fair valuation would generate substantial new revenue.

We support reforming the billion-dollar mayoral slush fund called “tax-increment financing.” We support fixing the problems in the infamous parking-meter privatization deal. We introduced an amendment that would tax big-box stores for the undue stress they put on our stormwater system, and have called for expanding the sales tax to include luxury services like pet grooming or portfolio management.

In short, the Progressive Caucus has progressive revenue ideas that will work for all of Chicago.  We’ve convened a series of town hall meetings across the city, drawing crowds of hundreds of concerned neighbors, and have introduced a series of amendments to move this budget in the right direction.

As progressive leaders who love this city, our caucus knows we need new revenue to educate our children, care for those in need, and provide growth and opportunity in every community. For our city to prosper, those dollars must come from those who can most afford to pay, not from the pockets of working families.



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How Cities’ Funding Woes Are Driving Racial and Economic Injustice—And What We Can Do About Ithttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-cities-funding-woes-are-driving-racial-and-economic-injustice-and-what-we-can-do/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad Lander,John Avalos,Brad Lander,Antonio Reynoso,Scott Waguespack,Brad Lander,Karl KumodziApr 28, 2015

In August 2014, the municipality of Ferguson, Missouri, erupted onto the national scene. In the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, we learned much about economic and political life in Ferguson and greater St. Louis County.

To many, it was no surprise to learn that, for years, African-American residents of municipalities throughout St. Louis County have been disproportionately and illegally stopped for minor offenses. Blacks are far more likely to be stopped, searched, ticketed, fined, and arrested. Many wind up jailed, leading to a cycle of lost jobs, drivers’ licenses, homes, or child custody. Some are beaten, terrorized, or—like Michael Brown—even killed.

It was more surprising to learn that in Ferguson, “Driving While Black” isn’t only about racial profiling: it’s also about municipal revenue. Fines and court fees have become the city’s second-largest revenue source, and the over-criminalization of black people has become a strategy for collecting taxes.

It is important to understand and address the revenue crisis facing US municipalities. As cities have become unable to pay their bills, they often turn to regressive strategies that disproportionately harm people of color and low-income residents.

Ithaca, New York, is like Ferguson. Up until January 2014, residents had to pay for installations and repairs of public sidewalks adjoining their properties—with one notable case in which 28 homeowners were forced to pay a combined $100,000 out of their personal pockets to the city for repairs. Detroit, Michigan, is like Ferguson. After the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, the city’s water department responded to pressures to lower its $90 million portion of the overall $20 billion debt by shutting off crucial water services to mostly black low-income residents who owed over a mere $150 on their water bills. This April, Baltimore followed Detroit’s lead.

These cities are like Ferguson because of a common underlying problem: All across America, cities and towns are struggling to maintain enough revenue to provide crucial services to residents. The collateral damage of this revenue crisis—over-criminalization, utility shut-offs, the withdrawal of public services, and slashed budgets for schools—is dire.

Local Progress, a national network of progressive municipal elected officials, is working to address inequality from an often overlooked source: municipal budgets. In our new report, Progressive Policies for Raising Municipal Revenue, Local Progress lays out forward-thinking strategies and policy options that cities can pursue to restructure their revenue streams in a way that doesn’t fall disproportionately on the backs of their most vulnerable residents.

The roots of the municipal revenue crisis were decades in the making. Following the post-war desegregation of housing and education, and other civil rights victories of the ’50s and ’60s, racial animosity and the conservative backlash against taxation—referred to by historians as the tax revolt—helped to fuel the exodus of higher-income families from urban centers to suburban enclaves.

This “white flight” dramatically eroded the tax base of urban centers like Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis—and later of first-ring suburban municipalities like Ferguson.

The tax revolt also led directly to policies that dramatically reduced the ability of cities to collect enough revenue through property and other taxes. Most dramatic was the 1976 passage of Prop 13 in California, which contributed heavily to the erosion of California’s public education system and other public services.

In 2008, the Great Recession caused the municipal revenue crisis that had been brewing for decades to explode, spurring significant and rapid declines in general fund revenues for municipalities. In order to deal with the impacts of this dramatic shortfall, cities were forced to cut personnel, cancel capital projects (and their much-needed jobs), and slash funding for education, parks, libraries, sanitation, and more. These cuts hit low-income families the hardest. And they are especially harmful to black families because African-Americans are 30 percent more likely to be employed by the public sector than other workers.

The strategies that many municipalities adopted to address the crisis hit low-income people of color the hardest. When property tax revenue declined in St. Louis County, fines-and-fees revenue increased in order to maintain revenue. Tickets are issued for everything from failure to cut one’s lawn to sleeping over at someone’s house without being on the occupancy certificate. In nearby Edmundson, the city averages $600 per person per year in court fines, and forecasts increasing revenue from these fines in their future budget proposals—essentially creating a hidden tax on the most vulnerable residents. Black residents throughout the region report feeling “as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue.

Many towns have resorted to privatizing formerly public responsibilities such as trash collection, sewage, roads and parks, and introducing new fees to force residents to foot the bill directly. These fees and taxes are often extremely regressive, because as everyone is forced to pay a flat rate, poor people end up paying a higher percentage of their income. A recent study conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the nationwide average effective state and local tax rates are 10.9 percent for the poorest fifth of taxpayers and 5.4 percent for the wealthiest 1 percent. In fact, in the ten states with the most regressive tax structures, the poorest fifth pay as much as seven times the percentage of their income in taxes and fees as the wealthiest residents do.

Addressing the municipal revenue crisis is, therefore, a central barrier to achieving racial and economic justice in our urban centers, and to rebuilding a more democratic, just, and livable America with genuinely shared prosperity.

Luckily, there are creative and progressive strategies that municipalities can adopt to generate more revenue in a progressive way, such as:

● Expanding the progressivity of existing local income taxes by creating more tax brackets with greater differences between brackets, and doing the same for property taxes in order to generate more revenue from commercial and high-end development.

● Eliminating corporate tax breaks at the city level, particularly Tax Increment Financing and business improvement districts that come with tax breaks

● Restructuring fines so that residents pay different rates based on income. A $200 traffic ticket has no deterrent effect for a millionaire, but can be devastating for a low wage worker; a more rational fine system, like the one adopted in Finland, would be more fair and generate more revenue.

● Mandating that major tax-exempt institutions like hospitals and universities make genuine and fair payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) to help cover the costs of crucial city services that they use.

● Converting city services into municipality-owned utilities when possible, charging utility fees to all users, and applying conservation pricing so lower-income households pay a lower rate while bulk users—such as commercial and industry—pay higher rates

● Forming statewide coalitions of municipal elected officials, grassroots organizations, school boards, and other affected parties to change preemption and revenue policies at the state level.

These policy innovations and many more are detailed in our report.

Cities are America’s bedrock and its future: both for our country and for the progressive movement. Cities are home to 67 percent of the population, account for 75 percent of our GDP, and house our best public institutions and infrastructure.

The policy recommendations laid out by Local Progress in our new report can help municipalities develop progressive revenue solutions—so they can pay for public education, health, and housing programs that help families thrive, invest in the infrastructure of public transportation, climate resilience, parks that sustainable cities need, and stimulate inclusive economic growth that creates good jobs.

Through progressive revenue strategies, cities can turn the Ferguson-like cycle of disinvestment and inequality into a cycle of reinvestment and opportunity—and help make sure that our cities can become the models for our vision of a more progressive and prosperous America.



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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-cities-funding-woes-are-driving-racial-and-economic-injustice-and-what-we-can-do/
A Bold Progressive Vision for the New York City Council (Really!)https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/bold-progressive-vision-new-york-city-council-really/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad Lander,John Avalos,Brad Lander,Antonio Reynoso,Scott Waguespack,Brad Lander,Karl Kumodzi,Brad LanderApr 18, 2013Council members are working on an agenda that includes labor organizing, public transportation and giving legal immigrants the right to vote in municipal elections.

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Donovan Richards is the latest progressive voice to join the New York City Council. (Courtesy of DonovanRichards2013.com.)

New York City’s newest elected official, Donovan Richards, did two things immediately upon joining the City Council this March: demand faster action by the City to remediate the mold festering in the homes of his low-income constituents in the Rockaways; and sign onto the bill requiring that workers in New York City get paid sick days, adding momentum that helped move the bill closer to passage.

Richards’s commitment to a more just New York City started from his own experience. At age 19, one of his childhood friends was killed in a gun homicide. Vowing to do something about it, he got active in local politics. Ten years later, when Hurricane Sandy hit, he spent days in the shelter with his neighbors whose homes had been ravaged. He saw that many—especially those with low-wage jobs and no sick leave—had to go back to work immediately, despite being ill from exposure and exhausted from trauma.

Richards didn’t get to the City Council alone. He won a close special election this February with the support of a coalition of progressive allies—labor unions like 1199SEIU, community groups like New York Communities for Change, the Working Families Party, and the new Progressive Caucus Alliance, the political arm of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus (which I co-chair).

The Progressive Caucus was formed in 2010 to create a more just and equal New York City. We’re inspired by our city’s history of visionary public investments like the subway and free public higher education, and leadership on issues like workers’ rights and affordable housing. But we are deeply troubled by record-high homelessness, gaping inequality, and persistent segregation in our schools and neighborhoods. Contrary to the bromides offered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we know that New York City can be economically vibrant, safe, and livable—goals the mayor has rightly emphasized—while doing far better to share the benefits of the city’s prosperity across lines of race, class, and neighborhood.

The “modern” New York City Council was created in 1989, after the United States Supreme Court declared the city’s old Board of Estimate unconstitutional. (The Board of Estimate was a powerful, eight-member governing body that embraced a decidedly smoke-filled-room style of politics.) The Council was given more power over budget and land-use matters, and expanded from 35 to 51 members, in the hopes that it would become more diverse and representative.

Since then, however the Council has rarely led the way toward progressive goals. Despite representing a huge Democratic majority of New Yorkers (47 of the 51 members are Democrats), the Council has played second-fiddle to powerful Republican mayors, and frequently yielded to real-estate and big business interests.  

The goal of the Progressive Caucus is to change that. We aim to build power on behalf of the 75 percent of New Yorkers who—according to a recent poll by the Community Service Society—favor policies that help low-wage workers advance (like paid sick days and living wage requirements for public subsidies) and are willing to pay a bit more in taxes for better public education and investments in public infrastructure.

We’ve made some progress this year, as our members were in the forefront of two big campaigns. The city’s paid sick days bill, which is expected to pass the City Council soon, means that nearly one million workers in New York City won’t have to choose between their health and their jobs. As Working Families Party New York State Director Bill Lipton said, it is a “step forward in building a society built on solidarity.” Caucus members are also pushing to establish an Inspector General for the New York City Police Department and to address ongoing civil liberties violations, like the discriminatory policies of stop-and-frisk, and the surveillance of Muslim mosques and student associations. Together with labor unions, community organizations, civil rights groups, clergy members, and progressive activists, the Progressive Caucus has been campaigning actively for both these changes. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn agreed to support both in March.

These were important victories, but there is far more to do if we truly want to live in a more just and inclusive New York. After 20 years of Mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani, it is time to re-imagine the city. That’s why the Progressive Caucus recently launched a new policy agenda, 13 Bold Progressive Ideas for NYC in 2013, developed together with community and labor allies. Our platform includes:

  • Investing in the city’s infrastructure for the sake of climate protection and resilience, and as a platform for sustainable growth, in a way that creates good jobs and expands neighborhood amenities in all communities.

  • Supporting the organizing efforts of low-wage workers in fast-food restaurants, car washes, bodegas, and other service businesses as a means of confronting growing inequality.

  • Dramatically expanding the city’s bus rapid transit network, a cost-effective way to create a new element of our mass transit system and give hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers better access to jobs and resources.

  • Revitalizing the moribund Commission on Human Rights as a way to set and monitor real goals for diversity in the City’s schools, housing, municipal jobs and agency leadership.

  • Enfranchising legal immigrants with the right to vote in municipal elections. As it was a century ago, New York is an immigrant city; immigrants contribute more when they help govern.

We’re working with a group of policy experts and academics brought together by Professor John Mollenkopf, of the City University of New York, to flesh out some of these ideas and present a progressive governing vision for the next mayoral administration. These ideas include proposals to offer community-based preventive care for municipal employees (to improve health outcomes and share the savings between the City and its unionized workforce), and to speed the slow-grinding wheels of justice in our courts, which leave low-income New Yorkers languishing in jail awaiting trial for months longer than they should (and waste almost $150 million per year).

The Progressive Caucus is also pressing efforts to reform the city’s government, including the Council itself. We aim to take the politics and corruption out of “member items” and to reform Council rules so it doesn’t take more than three years for a bill like paid sick days to get to the floor. And our members have piloted the biggest democratic experiment in the U.S. with “participatory budgeting,” which offers residents of our neighborhoods more direct opportunities to decide how to invest public resources and engages people more forcefully as stewards of our shared public realm.

For any of the changes we seek, we’ll need a Progressive Caucus that is bigger than its current 11 members. While all eyes have been focused on the race for mayor, nearly half of the seats in the City Council will turn over as well this November. So we have launched an aggressive electoral effort to expand our ranks. Working closely with the Working Families Party, progressive labor unions, Democratic donors, community groups involved in the electoral process, grassroots and netroots activists, we are aiming for big successes at the ballot box. We were encouraged by our first big electoral win, when Donovan Richards won his special election in February.

We have endorsed six more candidates for office, and will likely endorse several more for the city elections this fall. Our candidates include the founder of a community-development credit union in Upper Manhattan, a progressive minister from Bedford-Stuyvesant, and a lifelong public housing resident who would also be the first openly gay elected official from the Bronx. Working together with volunteers, donors and allies, we will help our candidates raise funds, recruit volunteers, and petition to get on the ballot.

With more smart, effective, progressive candidates in the Council, we can make sure that the next Speaker and Council leadership reflect the aspirations of most New Yorkers for a city that lives up to our values—and then advance public policies that help make New York a more equal, inclusive, democratic city in the coming years.

In the weeks after Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers came together in extraordinary ways, to save lives, provide meals and shelter, and help repair homes and communities. From Red Hook to the Rockaways, residents organized themselves to act collectively, take care of each other, and build powerful communities of relief. As author and activist Rebecca Solnit writes, these efforts offer “a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.” And she continues, “The recovery of this purpose and closeness without crisis or pressure is the great contemporary task of being human.”

The poet Adrienne Rich, who died last year, captured that challenge another way: “What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into hope?”

Donovan Richards and the New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus are working to find out.

Brad Lander is a New York City Council Member from Brooklyn, founding co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, and chairs of its political arm, the Progressive Caucus Alliance.

Members of the Council’s Progressive Caucus are: Margaret Chin, Daniel Dromm, Julissa Ferreras, Letitia James, Brad Lander, Steve Levin, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Donovan Richards, Debbie Rose, Jimmy Van Bramer, and Jumaane Williams

The Progressive Caucus Alliance endorsed candidates are: Costa Constantinides (CC22, Queens), Mark Levine (CC7, Manhattan), Kirsten John Foy (CC36, Brooklyn), Mercedes Narcisse (CC46, Brooklyn), Ritchie Torres (CC 15, Bronx), Antonio Reynoso (CC34, Brooklyn)

Learn more: http://www.progressivenyc.com

Follow us on Twitter at @ProgressiveNYC

Read all of the articles in The Nation’s special issue on New York City.



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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/bold-progressive-vision-new-york-city-council-really/
Saving Our Cities with Fair Taxeshttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/saving-our-cities-fair-taxes/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad Lander,John Avalos,Brad Lander,Antonio Reynoso,Scott Waguespack,Brad Lander,Karl Kumodzi,Brad Lander,Brad LanderDec 20, 2010With no tax justice coming from Washington, municipalities across the country will have to take matters into their own hands to save the jobs and social lifelines on which their communities depend.

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It’s been a busy few days in Washington. While I’m thrilled about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the extension of unemployment benefits, I remain extremely disappointed about the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts to the very wealthiest households. It will cause us to borrow billions, do little to stimulate the economy, and increase the deficit in order to put more money in the pockets of millionaires.

At the same time, cities and states across the country are reeling. Federal stimulus spending is about to expire, and no new help is on the horizon. In Arizona, 1 million low-income residents lost access to Medicaid services, and the state stopped paying for organ transplants. Washington State cut benefits to 41,000 physically and mentally incapacitated individuals, leaving them just $258 per month. Hawaii shortened the school year by 17 days. Newark laid off 13% of its police officers. And states are still facing staggering deficits—California $18 billion, Illinois $13 billion, Florida $5 billion—that threaten deeper cuts, and perhaps even bankruptcy.

Here in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed laying off over 4,000 public school teachers, closing 20 fire companies at night, closing dozens of child care centers, eliminating over 2,000 summer youth jobs and leaving more runaway homeless youth to sleep on the streets.

So it is time for cities and states to step up. That’s why the New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus, which I co-chair, has introduced a plan to place a temporary city/state income tax surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers—precisely the amount of the tax windfall they are getting from incoming Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

We are encouraging other legislators around the U.S. to do the same. We will repeal the surcharge the minute that Congress and the President end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest and restore some tax fairness to the federal tax system.

Our proposal would raise over $8 billion annually. For that amount, we can keep the child care center open. We can avoid laying off thousands of school teachers. We can keep the fire companies open at night. We can keep shelter beds in place for homeless teens who are sleeping on the street. We can keep our libraries open 6 days a week (the Mayor’s proposal would likely reduce some branches to just 2 or 3 days next year). And we could still reduce the City’s budget deficit.

What will it mean for the average family? The 97% of New Yorkers earning under $250,000 will still receive the full tax relief offered under all the plans. A married couple with two kids earning $50,000 will continue to receive about $2,000 in tax relief.

For the wealthiest New Yorkers? A married couple with no kids, earning $500,000, would no longer receive the $3,000 extra that the Bush plan gave them (they’ll still get over $7,000, much more than the average family).

Republicans say it’s a bad time to have anyone’s taxes go up. But look at it this way. The top 1% of households in New York have an average income of $2.3 million, and will receive an $80,000 tax windfall under the federal deal. They will likely save most of it, so it won’t help our struggling economy.

Meanwhile, in my community, the mayor is preparing to close a 30-year-old child care center that serves 50 low-income kids, many of whose parents work nearby in downtown Brooklyn. Without child care, it will be hard for their parents to keep their jobs. Which choice is better for the economy and the future of our city?

We will still have very hard choices to make. The City’s projected budget deficit for coming years is growing, so we’ll still need to come up with more cuts. That is no simple task when we have already cancelled police recruitment classes, raised school class size and eliminated thousands of back-to-work and summer youth jobs.

But we will face fewer disastrous consequences—rising crime, night-time fires or kids who miss out on early childhood education that is essential to healthy brain development. We will prevent massive layoffs and reduce the risk of a double-dip recession. And we’ll get a very modestly fairer tax system to boot.

National Democrats lost on tax policy. But common-sense progressives in cities and states across the country don’t have to.



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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/saving-our-cities-fair-taxes/
Why We Are Launching the New York City Council Progressive Caucushttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-we-are-launching-new-york-city-council-progressive-caucus/Sarah Johnson,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Helen Gym,Brad Lander,Maria Torres-Springer,Brad Lander,John Avalos,Brad Lander,Antonio Reynoso,Scott Waguespack,Brad Lander,Karl Kumodzi,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Brad Lander,Melissa Mark-ViveritoMar 24, 2010As New York City struggles with continued foreclosures, an anemic economy and large deficits, we hear constant calls to balance the budget on the backs of those most in need. But we believe that the city can plan a recovery that narrows the growing economic divide.

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On Wall Street, bonuses are back. Bolstered by a government bailout in the hundreds of billions, New York City’s financial sector is once again riding high. But just off of Wall Street, neighborhoods across New York City are struggling to pull out of an economic crisis that has left too many New Yorkers without jobs or homes–a crisis largely rooted in speculative real-estate investments that saw our neighborhoods as commodities to be packaged by investment banks.

The divide between Wall Street and the rest of New York predates the economic downturn. While the economy was booming, New York City largely failed to share the benefits of growth across lines of race, class and neighborhood. The Bloomberg administration’s economic development policy focused on real estate development, subsidizing mega-deals to create luxury housing for the wealthiest and retail malls with mostly low-wage jobs. We passed up too many opportunities to invest in more diverse sectors, or to improve job quality for the millions of New Yorkers facing poverty even while working.

Today, as we struggle with continued foreclosures, an anemic economy and the large deficits facing the city and state, we hear constant calls for fiscal austerity–to balance the budget on the backs of those most in need, slashing child care and senior centers, laying off teachers and pushing families into homelessness by eliminating subsidies.

We disagree. We believe that New Yorkers want a more just, more equal city. We believe that as we work our way out of this crisis, New York City can and must plan a recovery that looks to narrow the growing economic divide.

Last fall New Yorkers spoke loud and clear at the polls, sweeping progressive Democrats into office in City Council and citywide elections. Today a dozen of us are forming the New York City Council Progressive Caucus–to work as an organized group of policy-makers committed to the idea that now is the time to renew New York City’s historic commitment to policies that expand opportunity. At so many points in our history, New York has chosen to invest in public infrastructure, job creation, better working conditions and stronger neighborhoods. We created the nation’s first and best public transportation system, established the first building and zoning codes, and launched public works programs that built everything from public swimming pools to airports to health clinics to affordable housing. We partnered with unions to insure not only a more equal share of the fruits of our labor but a city where working-class families could find neighborhoods that offered decent public services and a good place to raise a family.

In recent years, however, other cities have done more to blaze a progressive trail. In Los Angeles, the primary goals of the economic development agency are to create living-wage jobs for residents of low-income neighborhoods, and to nurture sustainable communities. Boston and Denver and London and Barcelona require that all new housing developments include affordable units. San Francisco requires that all workers have at least five paid sick days, so they don’t have to go to work when they’re sick, putting themselves, their families, and the public at risk.

Mayor Bloomberg has taken some good steps in recent years–promoting environmental sustainability, combating illegal guns, advancing public health–and we are proud of those places where the New York City Council has partnered with him in these efforts.

But in key respects, he has fallen short. The Bloomberg administration has done little to confront inequality, preferring instead a trickle-down economic approach. And the Mayor has frequently undermined grassroots democracy, by extending term limits and mayoral power, instead of seeking to partner with New Yorkers in developing solutions.

We are forming the New York City Council Progressive Caucus to confront both of those gaps. We will combat inequality head-on, building on what other cities have done, to help create a new economy that offers good jobs, thriving communities and a healthy environment for all. And we’ll do it by involving New Yorkers across lines of race, class and neighborhood in conversation and action about the direction of our city.

Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) and Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan/Bronx) are the co-chairs of the New York City Council’s new Progressive Caucus. Other members of the Progressive Caucus are Annabel Palma, from the Bronx; Letitia James and Jumaane D. Williams, from Brooklyn; Margaret Chin, Rosie Mendez and Ydanis Rodriguez, from Manhattan; Daniel Dromm, Julissa Ferreras and Jimmy Van Bramer, from Queens; and Deborah Rose, from Staten Island.



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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-we-are-launching-new-york-city-council-progressive-caucus/