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Tegucigalpa     We were fortunate to get an extraordinary meeting with Hector Hernandez, sub-director of the Honduran Institute of Social Security.  His willingness to meet with us on a Saturday morning in a hotel lobby spoke volumes for both the government and ACORN [...]]]>

Our friends from COMISAJUL sorting coffee samples for us to take home for roasting

Tegucigalpa     We were fortunate to get an extraordinary meeting with Hector Hernandez, sub-director of the Honduran Institute of Social Security.  His willingness to meet with us on a Saturday morning in a hotel lobby spoke volumes for both the government and ACORN International about our excitement around a brand spanking new initiative now being rolled out to give Honduran informal workers access to Social Security.  The program is so new there are no brochures and little to no publicity about its very existence even in Honduras!   Hernandez is responsible for the program and was familiar with our experience with informal workers in the United States, India, and other countries as well as Citizen Wealth, so we both thought we had much to gain from the meeting.

The broad outlines of the program are that informal workers in Honduras would mandatorily pay into a fund and by so doing after the requisite number of quarters worked would be able to qualify for social security and some level of health care on retirement.  Abroad both documented and undocumented (legal and illegal, if I need to be clearer) workers would be eligible to voluntarily pay into the fund a fixed amount per month to a correspondent bank to Banco FICHOSA where the government would receive the payments.  Importantly, quarters worked in foreign countries could be counted towards the qualifications for later benefits and coupled with quarters worked in Honduras accumulated together for full benefits.  The government’s interest was multiple here, but clear was a sophisticated effort to also repatriate Honduras back in-country at retirement by accepting responsibility for social security payments for them.

Hernandez and the Institute of Social Security recognized that they needed deep and extensive organizational partnerships in Honduras to assist in enrolling people to achieve maximum eligible participation, as I have called it repeatedly.  They also recognize that if anything they may need even more help in the United States and other countries where there are extensive numbers of Hondurans working.  There was clear recognition that no success was possible without organizational assistance.  When I asked how many, Hernandez was clear that they really had no hard numbers, but were working backwards from their tracking of remittances into the country to guess that the number was around 1,000,000 workers.

We then talked about ACORN International’s Remittance Justice Campaign and the steps necessary to get cooperation from the Honduran government in moving forward along the same lines we are discussing in Canada with proposals and legislation that would put a ceiling on the cost of remittances.  He understood our position completely.

Finding a real opportunity for income security and citizen wealth for Hondurans could establish a model program with wide applications.  We have work to do in Hondurans and when we return to the United States to figure out what it would take to make it work.  That’s exciting!

Tegucigalpa in the pre-dawn

Philadelphia     What used to be a dead zone not far from Center City in Philadelphia was hopping on a Friday night with people all over the streets as I was dropped off in a mad rush from the airport as Jasmine Rivera, the regional organizer for [...]]]>

Talking Citizen Wealth & more at Moonstone in Philly

Philadelphia     What used to be a dead zone not far from Center City in Philadelphia was hopping on a Friday night with people all over the streets as I was dropped off in a mad rush from the airport as Jasmine Rivera, the regional organizer for ACTION United, drove off to find a place for the car.  We had a good crowd at Robin’s Books and Moonstone Arts Center thanks to Craig Robbins of ACTION United and his team, old and new leaders, old and new organizers, and friends and bystanders.

Once again it didn’t take long after describing the books for the ACORN post-mortem to begin, and these topics were covered in depth, but some of the more interesting questions involved the potential for community-labor coalitions, where I heartily agreed though answered that I thought the jury was out on whether or not these were real partnerships or simply transactional alliances where the community components were very much junior partners.  In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia one gets the feeling with both One Pittsburgh and Fight for a Fair Philadelphia that these are the labor equivalent of grass-tips organizations, which is ironic since the capacity for real partnerships seems remarkable in both places.  Something worth more investigation, I think.  Visiting with some of the organizers afterwards they regaled me with tales of the Fight for a Fair Economy street theater in front of Wells Fargo, which produced good humor, but I had trouble following the point or where it was producing any pressure or building much, so I need to find out more.

It was great to hear the progress being made on the campaign in Philadelphia to win sick days for workers in the city.  Last year ACTION United had led efforts to win sick days through the Council to be vetoed by Mayor Nutter.  This year they are gearing up to win a larger majority that could resist the veto.  The basic proposal seems to be 5 sick days for establishments with 5 or more workers.

Critically on the “citizen wealth” and “self-sufficiency” agenda, it was delirious to hear that ACTION United has now taken the first steps to move its tax preparation service to a fee-for-service basis.  Even at the introductory level of $30 per return, they have already brought in over $10,000 demonstrating the potential in this area is significant.

More disappointingly, I ran into Bruce Dorpalen, who had been with ACORN for many years and a key player in our housing programs and chief architect of the amazing housing counseling program we had run which allowed hundreds of thousands of families to obtain housing.  He confirmed rumors that they had shut their doors, unable to right-size the operation to the funding resources available.

Nonetheless, exciting things are in store in Philadelphia.  Seeing old and new leaders still wrapping their arms around the organization and trying to chart the path to the future, gives great hope.

More of the Moonstone Crowd

Pittsburgh     Hit the United Association of Labor Educators conference running in Pittsburgh and then connected with Maryellen Hayden Deckard, former ACORN office director in Pittsburgh now doing the same for ACTION United.  In no time we were visiting with CWA and other [...]]]>

Some of our group in Pittsburgh, oldest leader still in the fight at 102

Pittsburgh     Hit the United Association of Labor Educators conference running in Pittsburgh and then connected with Maryellen Hayden Deckard, former ACORN office director in Pittsburgh now doing the same for ACTION United.  In no time we were visiting with CWA and other union workers rallying at Verizon to support their contract fight, and then sitting down for lunch at Mexico City with a bunch of labor cartoonists.  It was going to be that kind of wild ride in Pittsburgh!

In the afternoon I stumbled into two very interesting developments.  Both are undoubtedly worth further discussion in more detail later, but give a sense of the excitement and potential in important directions these days.

When you first hear the term Clean River Campaign, it runs right by you.  Must be another environmental thing, so good luck to them, next please!  A long conversation with Barney Oursler, the executive director of Pittsburgh United, who is the driving force behind this campaign reveals something much, much different in my reckoning.  For years I have said that any organization that comes up with comprehensive solutions to “loose dogs, bad drainage, and crummy trash pickup” might just have the formula for creating power everywhere.  Well, the real deal on the Clean Rivers Campaign is coming to grip with the issues that lie at the heart of sewer, drainage, and wastewater systems.  Pittsburgh, like literally hundreds of other cities around the USA, is confronting EPA compliance agreements which require billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investment to appropriately assure clean water and upgrade deteriorating infrastructure suffering from age, lack of maintenance, and design problems.  In Pittsburgh, not unlike many other cities, the problems are magnified because of the three rivers but also the 526 different municipalities and other governmental structures that are in the watershed and have water in this race as well.  Barney and his partners, including ACTION United, are contending over coming years with pushing aside bad plans but also getting a good program which is “green,” provides community benefits, and is affordable, all of which are high barriers.  From experience fighting water privatization triggered by EPA compliance agreements, including in New Orleans where we are still in the throes of this mess, I think this is worth real study and investigation.

Discussion at Big Idea

I also ran into a team of organizers and canvassers with the Working Families Party who are now expanding into Pennsylvania.  This is fantastic news!  The Working Families Party in New York, Connecticut and elsewhere has emerged as an important ballot-line effort giving real tools to progressive issues and low-and-moderate income families.  This would be a wonderful development in Pennsylvania.  Need to find out more about this and see if you can get this Party building in a neighborhood near you!

The fun part of my day in Pittsburgh was two back to back discussions about politics, organizing, and the state of movements for change in these days and times first in the late afternoon at the Big Idea Bookstore & Café, which is a workers cooperative operating over the last 10 years and expanding, and then a more informal discussion with leaders, activists, and organizers with ACTION United in their offices over pizza.  The excuse for both of these great events were talking about my books, Citizen Wealth, Global Grassroots, and Battle for the Ninth Ward, but the conversations were fascinating on a variety of topics.

Just to share some of the pleasure at the Big Idea several folks around the circle had been active in the Occupy movement in Pittsburgh, and we had a provocative discussion about the emerging role for anarchism emerging in progressive work.  There was still a lot of mourning for the death of ACORN as well in these times when change is increasingly high on the “demand” list.  I was optimistic that a new formation might be possible, but not that we would ever be able to get the genie back in the bottle.  Similarly at ACTION United, there was deep interest in “citizen wealth” campaigns around credit card debt and collections and student debt.  People could palpably feel the future slipping away and see lives of running from debt collectors and harassment as central parts of their future.  They were groping for organizational response.

No such meeting is complete without a discussion of Fox News of course, and the first reaction when they heard I had agreed to be interviewed for a voting special they were doing on the issue of voter suppression, was that I was “crazy.”  Once I had conceded that point as factual, I made the case that we still had no choice but to try and communicate whenever we could and advance the right and just positions on issues as important as full citizen participation and the prospects for democracy.  How could we ever refuse to take the side of democracy in the debate when so many were so arrogantly now arguing for repression?

I left with lots to think about from my discussions with my new and old friends in Pittsburgh, but I left them thinking about some “big ideas” as well.

What [...]]]> Youngstown    I was in town to deliver a lecture in the Working Class Studies Series at Youngstown State University, but a lot of what interested me was to really get a sense of Youngstown after not having been here for several decades.  Youngstown has become iconic as a picture of the impact of deindustrialization.

What was a hulking steel mecca with fuming plants spewing smoke clouds through the Mahoning Valley and the jobs and union wages that people traded in exchange is smaller and cleaner, and according to Dr. John Russo, one of my hosts and along with Sherry Linkon, a co-director of the Center, but also perhaps the poorest community in the USA now.  Bruce Springsteen had memorialized Youngstown in a famous song, and Sherry and John showed me what they called the “Springsteen Grotto” in John’s office.  He had played in 1996 and on a Sunday morning had called John at home and asked if he would mind giving him a tour.  Pictures showed both men covered with snow looking at the abandoned mills.

Dr. John Russo, Co-Director of Working Class Studies Center introducing my lecture

Talking to an urban planner with the Center after my lecture, he told me about Youngstown 2010, which seemed to be held in higher regard than the usual boosterism and Babbitry associated with such enterprises.  One of the major goals, predictably in this mass media age, in fact had been to reshape the national view of Youngstown:  to de-Springsteen it perhaps.  He checked that off as having been done, but of course he means the image more likely of corruption and defeat than as a reflection of the past into the future.  That can’t be done.  The scars are everywhere.  John Russo drove me down the big houses along Fifth Avenue in Youngstown and pointed out that there was no 4^th or 3^rd Avenue, just this one street as a reminder of the big whoops from the mill days.  John and Sherry are also clear in their book done a decade ago and appropriately called, Steeltown USA, that there is a key role for “…memory in forming the collective identity of a place, yet we do not advocate imagining an idealized version of the past.  The idea of community can provide a powerful unifying force for shared struggle and community development.”  One thing still undone on the 2010 list for Youngstown had been dealing with “quality of life” issues, so that struggle for community development seems high on the task list.

I point to the Loews Hotel we won which used to be the Lykes building. Lykes bought and closed a mill in Youngstown and is still held in contempt.

In the questions several community leaders asked me last night about some points raised in my book, Citizen Wealth:  Winning the Campaign for Working Families, they didn’t quite get how there could be more than $2 billion in entitled benefits left on the table that Ohio residents had not been able to access despite their eligibility.  One woman asked me again to explain why people were not getting the benefits.  The question was refreshing in some ways, because it spoke to their gameness to confront the challenge in Youngstown, but it was depressing in others because it indicates that citizens can be standing in the middle of a resistance governmental bureaucracy, and unable to see the pea shuffled quickly between the shells.

Having addressed a mixed crowd of labor leaders, church officials, students, community organizers, and others, I hoped I had succeeded in making the case for thinking big and working strong.  Given its history and the commitment of so many now to its future, this small, broken city of Youngstown seems the perfect place for taking a chance and betting the whole pile.

New Orleans    I’m going to keep this short and sweet, and the message will be clear.  The economy in the USA is showing some signs of improvement.  More jobs are coming into the statistics.  The President is getting a bounce in his step.  This is all good news.

Obama will have trouble [...]]]>

Mortgage & Housing Crisis

New Orleans    I’m going to keep this short and sweet, and the message will be clear.  The economy in the USA is showing some signs of improvement.  More jobs are coming into the statistics.  The President is getting a bounce in his step.  This is all good news.

Obama will have trouble winning without these trends continuing to improve.  And, that is nowhere near as important as the fact that working families are still in terrible shape throughout the country!

I don’t believe that we can get out of the recession or that Obama can salvage this mess without finally booting Treasury Secretary Geithner and bending Wall Street and the banks to the rack and at last getting them to right size the mortgages to the appropriate water level since millions now owe more than their houses are worth.  Doing so will allow there to finally be a real loan modification program rather than all of the promises and fakery – run by the banks! – that we have seen for the last three years plus.

Standing next to a fellow from my high school class that I hadn’t seen for decades the other night, he mentioned he ran a fairly good sized bunch of mutual funds out of Omaha, Nebraska.  I kidded him about Warren Buffet.  He said the dude was amazing.  We talked about the fact that his daughter was working for Buffet’s daughter and actually helping her get something right about the philanthropy she was doing, and we even both agreed that it was too bad that Buffet had moved his money over to Gates rather than putting his own stamp on the funds, since he would have spent them better.  I asked what his reading on the economy was, and he quietly shook his head and said, “housing, it can’t get settled until housing gets settled.”  I said I couldn’t agree more.

Later I looked him up on Google to see what the story was on the funds he managed.  It turned out that my friend and classmate Wally Weitz manages $4 billion worth in these funds and has for almost 30 years.   One link claimed Fortune magazine called Wally, “the other Sage of Omaha.”

Damn!  I knew I was right, now I think it’s unanimous, if folks are seeing this from the top, the same way it feels at the bottom, then somehow the White House needs to finally get the message and get it done.

The Times reported the following:

The company’s collectors also failed to inform consumers that paying [...]]]> New Orleans    The Federal Trade Commission stepped up to the play in behalf of citizens/consumers yesterday and finally put a boot on the butt of scumbag, lying debt collection operations with a $2.5 million fine levied on Asset Acceptance of Warren, Michigan.

The Times reported the following:

The company’s collectors also failed to inform consumers that paying even a small portion of the amount owed would revive the debt — in other words, making a payment would extend the amount of time the collector could legally sue.

Among other things, the complaint also contended that the company reported inaccurate information about the consumers to the credit reporting agencies.  It also said that Asset Acceptance failed to conduct a reasonable investigation when it was notified by one of the credit agencies that a debt was being disputed. Moreover, the complaint says that the company used illegal collection practices and that it continued to try to collect debts that consumers disputed even though the company failed to verify that the debt was valid.

The proposed settlement with Asset Acceptance requires the company to tell consumers whose debt may be too old to be collected that it will not sue.  It also requires the company to investigate disputed debts and to ensure it has a reasonable basis for its claims before going after the consumer.  It is also barred from placing debt on credit reports without notifying the consumer.

We’ve discussed this before.  These are citizen wealth issues.

Debt expires and becomes uncollectable in some states as early as 2 years and in others after 15 years.  If you live in a state which has a long timeline for debt (like I do – Louisiana can run 10 years!), then it’s worth thinking about moving!  According to the CreditInfoCenter.com:

The Midwest is some rough country but there’s definitely not much love for someone with more mouth than money in Kentucky, South Carolina, or Louisiana!

The point is when the needle goes past the limitations, collection companies cannot come after you or threaten to sue.  Hear, hear!  I mean it!

Now did you realize that if you even cough up a partial payment, you then extend the time for them to come after you?   Talk about no good deed going unpunished!  Seems the only sure fired protection if you are in a jam is:  HANG UP!

There are two ways to approach looking at these numbers around the country, and both perspectives can offer some insight to US political views.

On the one hand it lends some vague sense of [...]]]> New Orleans  The Times ran a story that tried to put a face on the 1% and encourage us to embrace our inner percentage.

There are two ways to approach looking at these numbers around the country, and both perspectives can offer some insight to US political views.

On the one hand it lends some vague sense of understanding of why such whacky percentages of Americans sometimes respond that they are richer than anyone factually might believe them to be or in other words why so many modest income American families still identify with the rich.  There are some people who might look at the household income figures in their communities where $200000 or $300000 or even $400000 might indicate the upper elite of the 1%, and say to themselves and to others like pollsters and Republican politicians, “hey, I can get there too with some luck or a break or two.”

On the other hand people like me are amazed that that the real meaning of such numbers proves how widespread relative poverty is in these same communities.  If you can be a one-percenter in Laredo at hardly $200,000, since it is a percentage that means people on the whole are desperately poor in Laredo and something should be done about it!  In my New Orleans $362,000 puts you there, and that’s a lot of money, and I’m not sure how folks would be making that here.  Little Rock is only a bit over $300,000, similar to Billings, Montana or Albuquerque or Boise or Panama City, all of which speaks a bit to the slightly more populist nature of some (much?) of the South and West.

The real story is not in the shading of the percentages but in the gap as the Times story indicates, as well as advantages that come from both chance (birth) and structural rigidity (access to job networks):

The top 1 percent of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country’s pretax income, about double their share 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they accounted for about 30 percent of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data. They received 22 percent of their income from capital gains, compared with 2 percent for everybody else.   Most 1 percenters were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 percent is more likely than other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99 percent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are more likely to be self-employed. Married 1 percenters are just as likely as other couples to have two incomes, but men are the big breadwinners, earning 75 percent of the money, compared with 64 percent of the income in other households.

As interesting to me was playing with the formula that allowed a family to find their “place in the percentage.”   For example $100,000 family income puts a family in the top 21%, and if that family were fortunate enough to be living in New Mexico, where I have long thought about living such a family could be in the top 12% or in Montana, where we like to camp and wet a line, you would be in the top 14%.  Of course you still have to figure out how to bring $100,000 into your family, but I’m just saying…

When I left ACORN in 2008, starting wages were about $26,500 for a field organizer, which even today in 2012 would put an organizer ahead of the bottom 25%.  If they were living with another organizer or bunking in and sharing household costs, boom, they would have been in the top 50%!  We always would hear about how low our wages were, but mostly we were hearing from funders who lived in places like New York, where more than a half-million puts you in the 1%, or San Francisco where that starting wage would have put you in the bottom 17%, or Boston in the bottom 20%.

I can remember starting ACORN in Arkansas and finding that 70% of the people made less than $7500 in 1970.   Now to get to that 70% for household income, you would be knocking on the doors of families making about $100,000 around the USA.  A lot has changed in 40 years, and it’s not just inflation.

As I say, embracing your “percentage,” really depends on where you stand and how far up or down you gap is huge and growing, and the distribution is way out of plumb.

Ps.  Want to figure your place in the percentage?  Here’s the link to the calculator.

Ottawa ACORN opens another year of our Remittance Justice Campaign picketing Western Union for predatory pricing of transfers from working, immigrant families back to their [...]]]> New Orleans   This report almost writes itself, especially since the pictures virtually tell the story as various organizations in the ACORN International global federation step up to turn on the heat.

Ottawa ACORN opens another year of our Remittance Justice Campaign picketing Western Union for predatory pricing of transfers from working, immigrant families back to their relatives back home.  As we posted our demands on the front door of the Western Union office, a spokesperson for Western Union in a Denver suburb was talking to the Ottawa Citizen and conceding that they are not necessarily “the lowest priced service provider.”  Sorry, Daniel, that just isn’t good enough for ACORN International and ACORN Canada!

This weekend the report from ACORN India’s Bangalore organizer, Suresh showed the same spirits when he included the pictures of the hawkers we organized who were protesting the attempt to modify foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail which could threaten millions and millions of informal jobs in that sector currently employing 20 million workers.  The hawkers hit the streets wearing gunny sacks as part of the protest march.  ACORN International and our affiliates ACORN India and the India FDI Watch Campaign are pretty clear that unilateral action by the government had to be stopped and a mere suspension isn’t enough to make us happy until there are real protections for workers and communities.

2012 is off to a fast start!