Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

Biggest March of Obama Term

jstuart — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:04:29 +0000

New Orleans Don’t take my word… how about a sample from Randy Shaw’s piece from Beyond Chron today entitled, “New Immigrant Rights Campaign to Launch Largest March of Obama Era:”

“Having written about how the immigrants rights movement was built, and then exploded onto the public stage in 2006, the reassembling of this movement in Washington DC next Sunday is significant. It means that many of the nation’s most strategic organizers from diverse fields — labor, immigrant rights, faith-based activism — are again working in concert to protect the over 10 million undocumented immigrants who face deportation and the break-up of their families due to the government’s failure to legalize their status.

And while the march sends a powerful message, [Gabe] Gonzalez and key organizers know that even more important is what happens afterward.

The New Immigrant Rights Campaign

Following the march, activists plan to turn out in large numbers to the Town Hall meetings that congress members will hold during the two week recess starting March 29. The traditional media gave massive coverage to Tea Party members attending town halls last August, and should be under pressure to provide something close to that coverage for the immigrant rights activism at these upcoming events.

On April 10, there will be an immigrant rights rally in Las Vegas with Senator Reid. Reid knows his re-election depends on massive Latino turnout in November, and immigrant rights advocates are sending a message that they will mobilize for him provided he provides leadership on legalization.

Other rallies are also planned, but the chief focus will be on pressuring legislators to support legislation that activists now expect to be introduced in April. The key issue that divided progressives in the past — the treatment of guest worker programs — is likely to be resolved through various potential compromises, including the possible appointment of an independent commission to regulate such programs.

Because the groups aligned with the CCC-spawned “Fair Immigration Reform Movement” have weaker ties to the Democratic Party than do some of the key health care advocacy groups, the upcoming campaign will not hesitate to publicly criticize wavering Democrats. Gonzalez has already made it clear that “we expect the Democratic leadership to act as leaders and hold their Party’s votes,” and said New York Senator Chuck Schumer — who would be the lead Democratic Senator on the immigration bill — has “got the ball and he’s got to get off the dime.”

The Politics of Reform

Both President Obama and activists recognize that immigration legislation requires some Republican support in the Senate. This is not as impossible as it seems: recall that John McCain once co-sponsored a legalization bill, and Maine’s two Republican Senators, along with Lindsey Graham (SC), Judd Gregg (NH), Scott Brown (MA) and George Voinovich (OH) are potential yes votes.

Facing a primary challenge from a right-wing former Congressmember whose anti-immigrant attacks cost him his seat in 2006, McCain no longer supports legalization. But a grassroots pressure campaign that includes religious groups could potentially sway enough Republican Senators to avoid a filibuster, and Reid can use his clout to prevent any Democrat from joining a filibuster, even if they eventually vote against the bill.

So comprehensive immigration reform that offers a feasible path to legalization remains winnable this year. And for President Obama and other Democrats looking to fulfill their 2008 campaign promises to Latino voters, moving the legislation as far as it can go is essential.

This means requiring Republicans to actually take to the floor and spend day and night on the filibuster, clearly exposing GOP obstructionism — rather than the Democrats’ betrayal — as the cause of legislative inaction. Republicans have paid a steep political price for opposing legalization, and with key Senate contests upcoming in Colorado, Nevada, and Florida, and other states where Latino voters could prove the difference, Republican Senators may want to avoid a high-profile opposition strategy that galvanizes Latinos to come out and vote against them.

In a recent speech on health care reform, President Obama countered calls for delay by stating, “If not now, when?” The same argument applies to comprehensive immigration reform, which is why activists are mounting this unprecedented grassroots campaign to win legalization for millions of families this year.

Look for Randy’s piece in the upcoming issue of Social Policy magazine.

Thanks, Randy!

Enough with The Talk on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:16:10 +0000

New Orleans Frankly, I don’t read editorials in the New York Times. Usually they just made me mad. Saturday though there was one that was mad enough already under the headline: “Republicans Wanted.” The editorial was about the meetings last Thursday between President Obama and advocates for immigration reform.

Telling it like it is, the Times laid it our clearly: “Enough with the talk.”

Amen to that!

The notion that the President would ask the advocates to go round up Republicans I hit on the other day, and the editorialist was reading over my shoulder the other day when he correctly says, “…that’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the plug and pull it.”

The March in March is a game changer, but only the starting innings, the first quarter, the early round, but in truth winning or losing is now all in the streets, all in the barrios, all in the bodegas, and all at the grassroots now. Let’s take the “governor” off of the accelerator and stop downplaying the pain, tragedy and anger of the immigrant experience.

In the meeting with the President, all reports indicate Angelica Salas from CRLA , the great immigrant rights organization in Los Angeles, hit hard and wouldn’t back up on her insistence that deportations had to stop and the President had to lead. We need this and more. The charm offensive has to end. The cajoling has to take second seat.

Enough with the talk!

Following the Young on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:10:32 +0000

New Orleans Maybe “following the leader” is going to be once again, as it is so often in movements, to allow the courage and immediacy of the young to finally dictate the tempo, and maybe even the targets, in the push to find a real path for comprehensive immigration reform?

Two things bring that to mind. The first has been the huge resolve – and wild media attention – to the four young undocumented young men and women from the Miami area who have been on the Trail of DREAMs to try and bring attention – and resolution – to the problem of higher education for immigrants. This is not a mass movement but it is shamefully inspiring. Last week I happened to be passing CNN and saw them show up in rural Georgia at some hard shell, moss backed sheriff’s office to ask him some hard questions about his enforcement of 287g deputized roundups for immigrants in his county. Lucky for him, he was out of pocket. What was he going to do? Arrest them as criminal offenders? Of course not! This is the courage of the bus rides, the lunch counters, and a thousand other points of civil rights pride. And, this is a demand about now.

The same thing can be said about the couple of hundred young people who marched – with all of our hope and support – a couple of days ago in Chicago – demanding a real solution to the immigration crisis with their banner unfurled: “Undocumented and Unafraid!” These are the kinds of actions that pop the bubbles of complacency around the go-slow, legislative stalemate and finger pointing on all sides in Washington.

And, why should we be surprised at any of this?

Talking to Ken Johnson yesterday for a piece in the coming issue of Social Policy magazine, I wanted to get all of the details straight on what he was doing as a 16-year old in small town Plaquemine, Louisiana when he helped spirit James Farmer, then head of CORE, into a hearse to get him out of a church during the dangers days of the fall 1963 there. They were fleeing a mob riding horses through the church because all white citizens had been deputized in order to keep the piece. What’s really different in 287g, but the uniform and the badge? Heck, Martin Luther King was only in his late 20’s in Montgomery? We might still be in Vietnam if young people, including many young men facing the draft, war, and exile had not shown the same fearlessness, moral resolve, and immediacy in calling the question on the war at huge risk over and over until it brought the Johnson government down.

The sweet sauce for immigration reform it seems finally clear is not going to come inside the Beltway and along the hallways of Congress and the corridors of power, but from the streets. And, it may be that the anger, passion, and immediacy of the young will once again have to force the hands of power to finally twist the levers of real reform.

Obama Feeling Heat on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:12:19 +0000

Washington There is finally hope for comprehensive immigration reform if only because the inside-the-beltway strategy is crumbling and the anger and hurt if finally forcing itself into the open and driving the debate. Many activists and advocates have been pleading for a rally, march or some show of strength and purpose since exactly such an event was squelched for Inauguration Day 2009. Now a year later with some small progress in tone, but mostly some severe disillusionment with the lack of progress on the local vigilantism sanctioned by 287g, the increased punitive enforcements and senseless family breakups from unnecessary deportations, and the thousands pushed out of jobs the base knows the score no matter what lipstick DC players might put on this pig.

Not surprisingly on the eve of the March 21^st Rally and March, the President and his people summoned a dozen advocates for a meeting Thursday at the White House to try to soften some of the blows. Parsing the statements after it was over from participants was no easy task, especially reading the snarky line in the Times claiming the advocates were mainly happy to have had the President there for an hour of the session. I’m sure there’s a way that could have been written more patronizingly, but I’ll have to think about it. An hour from the President is frankly no big deal when dealing with the problems of 12 million plus undocumented immigrants and what this means to a core part of the progressive – and Democratic – constituency among Latino voters in this country.

There seemed to be little in the way of concrete progress from the meeting though. The President asking advocates to deliver Republican votes for the bill is a wild piece of “blaming the victim.” We can’t get there from here. From all reports of people in the meeting the President was testy and sparky in the meeting. He reportedly is chafing at being the target of the Rally and March. He was supposedly uncomfortable hearing about how bad a problem DHS is under Secretary Napolitano who has cranked up the enforcement without any relief and justice for immigrants. One participant claimed that Obama said he would meet with her.

From what I heard the biggest crack opening for relief on the way to reform was a tense exchange around the issue of whether or not the Administration is deporting immigrants without criminal records. The advocates placed the issue squarely on the table demanding that this be stopped. Reportedly the President claimed that they were not engaging in such deportations. This is not opinion but fact. These deportations are happening. If the President says they are not, this is something he can fix today by stopping such deportations and family breakups.

Realistically a bill seems unlikely for 2010 and pretty sketchy for next year as well, especially if it depends on reformers mustering bipartisan support, as I mentioned.

The odds improve if the movement is finally unleashed and allowed to put the pressure on not only the President but the other institutions and individuals standing in the way of reform. With DREAM marchers getting great traction and publicity by showing courage on their march up the East Coast and hundreds of young people and their supporters standing up in Chicago in an action yesterday where they declared they were “undocumented and unafraid,” the pressure is finally on the “by-and-by” folks caught in the DC lobbying strategies.

If we stop advocating and start organizing and leading the movement that is once again emerging, then real reform is possible. Maybe the events of these coming weeks are finally going to unleash the real forces of change?

Judge Orders Permanent Injunction to Block ACORN Defunding

jstuart — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:09:18 +0000

Baltimore You can’t find this piece in the Journal, Times, or Post. Soon it will show up in more conservative blogs with appropriate conspiratorial references and asides. Count on the misquotes and false attributions being numerous, but reading the decision by U.S. Federal Judge Nina Gershon, one cannot miss the decision’s clarity or thinly veiled anger. Gershon permanently enjoined the federal government from banning ACORN from funding and expressly directed a list of officials from Secretary of HUD Donovan to Secretary of the Treasury Geithner to OMB head Orzag to stop blocking the path and in Orzag’s case to step up and make this injustice right. Well, I guess “righter” since this is a textbook case of the damage to ACORN being irreparable as the organization seems on its last legs and fighting to survive in any form or fashion.

I would think our conservative friends who often try to claim they are big defenders of the U.S. Constitution, would be twisting in front of their computer screens a bit on this situation. The bar on “bills of attainder” in the Constitution is clear that any single entity or organization could not be politically singled out and punished without rhyme or reason without investigation or trial or particulars, but just in the herd reaction of a crowd in a theater hearing the shout, “fire!” This is an obvious and critical protection of the rights of speech and association in the Constitution where the bright line tests and protections against political whim and vengeance are as fundamental as one can imagine. Yet, to their shame we saw scores of Democrats and Republicans lined up to tar and feather ACORN without trial or charge or usually a clue. It is hard to forget that in pure political expediency the President, a former constitutional law teacher for crying out loud, joined the lynching mob in giving cover to these scurrilous attacks, which continue even as the Justice Department tries – unsuccessfully – to overturn Judge Gerson’s ruling.

The AP summary might be easier to handle than the actual decision:

The judge…wrote that it was “unmistakable that Congress determined ACORN’s guilt before defunding it.” She said Congress is entitled to investigate ACORN but cannot “rely on the negative results of a congressional or executive report as a rationale to impose a broad, punitive funding ban on a specific, named organization.”

She said the Code of Federal Regulations establishes a formal process for deciding when federal contractors can be suspended or debarred. She added that “the existence of these regulations militates against the need for draconian, emergency action by Congress.”

What a tragedy! But I doubt that members of Congress or the Administration will lose too much sleep over any of this. They need to worry about saving earmarks and a couple of perks for businesses in their district, right? Who really cares about the fate of an organization of lower income people and the impact of its eradication on the ongoing struggle for equity and justice?

The poor will always be with us right? And, we will always have people in power who will guarantee just that Biblical promise and do so, as it turns out, without a second thought.

Payday Lending Loopholes

jstuart — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:04:10 +0000

Takoma Park Financial reform for consumers has been in deep water and drowning ever since Rep. Barney Frank nixed the White House inserted CRA protection from the bill, but in the “something is better than nothing” world we’re forced to live in these days, at the least we have to draw the line at giving a “bye” to predatory payday lenders. Seems though that lame duck, Wall Street bound Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) is bending over for Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) to pray at the false god of bipartisanship while Corker plays footsie with his many friends in the payday rip-off world to create a loophole in the proposed legislation to let them escape regulation. Stop this now!

We know from the many successful provincial level fights led by ACORN Canada over the last several years in Ontario and British Columbia that in fact the whole premise of the industry is wrong. In the USA they are arguing that they would go under with a 36% cap on loans, yet Dollar Financial (which is owned by USA interests) and others operate under the new laws in Canada just fine, in fact, we believe too fine, which is why we are still hammering away every chance we get. Their cry for loopholes to Corker and Dodd is masked in a twofold strategy: (1) blame the banks for the financial meltdown and (2) claim they would be forced out of business by regulation.

On the second the Canadian experience is telling. They can live and do fine under regulation, because unfortunately working stiffs too often find there is “too much month and too little money.” The real problem we found through our research with experts in Canada is recidivism. Once someone got a payday loan, they were pushed into a cycle of one such loan after another for 18 months or more. The business model is predatory and depends on repeat customers because banks don’t make small loans to tide a family over. The wild interest rates are just more slopping gravey.

As for blaming the banks, what a laugh. This industry wouldn’t exist without the big banks that provide the money for them to loan. What did you think? It was growing on trees? I can still remember when we were negotiating with Wachovia (now a part of Wells Fargo) and surprised them by pulling out research that showed how much they were financing the payday lending world along with the other big boys. This was after they danced around their involvement. The report in the Times that National Peoples’ Action (NPA) has been pushing the Federal Reserve and Ben Barnacke to push banks away from the trough as factors and financiers of this industry is good news, whatever the outcome.

Bottom line: don’t believe this bull. If the industry can live with the restrictions around military bases, then they can live the same way when stopped from sucking the life out of low and moderate income neighborhoods.

Regulate them hard and with whatever is handy until they either get right or close their doors!

Garnishing Social Security to Impoverish Elderly

jstuart — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:55:43 +0000

Silver Spring I couldn’t believe this when I read it, but somehow Congress and the Bush Administration managed to figure out a way to garnishee social security and disability payments for seniors by eliminating the 10 year statute of limitations on collecting certain debts owed to the federal government. Did you know this? Amazing that while we should be committed to building citizen wealth, instead we are trying to play gotcha with the elderly to attach their small social security checks for federal government debt claims in many cases for an indefinite period. Thanks to Ellen Shultz in an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Seniors Lose Shield on Debts.”

Here’s the horror:

◦ Before you count on social security payments for your senior years, realize that the government can demand payback on veterans payments for health care, defaulted farm and small business loans, student loans (!), income taxes, and almost any other debt, though I’m not sure about housing loans. I would bet it could include hurricane recovery loans.

◦ 3.1 million Social Security recipients are already having their checks dunned.

◦ The student loan people got the 10 year statute of limitations lifted in the 90’s, so this is now when every federales finally caught up.

◦ They snuck this through in the 2008 Farm Bill. Hello? Who was looking there?!?

◦ They can include the debt, interest, and penalties.

The “good” news:

◦ The feds can only take 15% of your check and can’t move you less than $750 per month or about $10000 per year (though good luck living on that!).

◦ There is still a 10 year limit on income tax. You figure?

◦ They have not allowed credit card companies and banks to attach your Social Security payments. Yet! I bet their lobbyists were drooling when they read this.

We talked recently about the problem with student loans, particularly their ability to assign huge, predatory, and unconscionable collection and similar fees onto the total debts for citizen scholars. To think that these folks had already snookered Congress into making these kinds of obligations eternal into the 65 and older set that might have incurred the debts 40 years before is simply wild!

This all seems to be the modern equivalent of a permanent “work release” debts prison. We need some kind of a debt holiday or jubilee for citizens on some of these obligations once they have this much age on them.

At the least we need to call it square when the principal is paid off, rather than strapping these burdens on people until they escape to the grave.

What kind of country are we becoming?

Shooting Straight as Pressure Increases

jstuart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:57:26 +0000

Washington It’s not spring here, but finally there is a briskness in peoples’ step. Tomorrow there is a major rally for heath care reform called by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), and on Sunday, March 21^st, the forces in favor of comprehensive immigration reform are rallying, praying, and marching on the Mall, hopefully with significant numbers. There are front page stories wondering how the Obama administration got so off message, and there’s a real race in Arkansas with Senator Blanche Lincoln dying in the middle of the road. Something good is bound to come of the reemergence of progressives from the lassitude of mindless hope and passivity. Hooray!

But…increasingly there seems to be blood in the water as the Administration becomes the gang that can’t shot straight. Evidence is piling up:

◦ Weatherization strategy for creating jobs and helping working families seems to be nowhere after more than a year. Energy Secretary frustrated, but how hard could this have been?

◦ Teachers all fired in Rhode Island to take the blame for god knows what, probably just to take the blame and the President of the United States weighs in with a gut punch. Why in the world is Obama in this picture?

◦ Big talk about increasing school hours to better education the kids, but school districts strapped for money are cutting down to 4 days per week. Mr. President?

◦ A year after a new administration, don’t ask me about post-Katrina recovery.

Why pile on? The list could go on and on. Maybe if people get their legs moving and voices louder it won’t breakthrough the Congressional logjam, but at least people will start remembering that we only win, when we fight.

Fake Job Searches

jstuart — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:55:51 +0000

New Orleans Two weeks ago we talked about the fact that guest workers might start to get some justice. New DOL regulations are requiring that companies actually look for workers locally before being able to pull migrants in from foreign lands, and they are going to have to pay them more. I saluted the effort, but was skeptical.

It did not take long to find some proof of my skepticism. There was an ad placed under “employment” in the Arkansas Times, a weekly in Little Rock that is largely entertainment ads and a couple of news and current events pieces. The ad was a classic:

“FIELD WORKERS-8 temporary positions; approx 10 months; Duties: to operate tractors during the preparation of the sugar cane crop before, during, and after the harvesting season. $9.09 per hour; Job to begin on 4/1/10 through 2/1/11. 3 months experience required in job offered. Must pass drug test. All work tools provided. Housing and transportation provided to workers who can not reasonably return to their permanent residence at the end of the work day; guaranteed of contract. Employment offered by A&M Farms, Inc. located in New Iberia, LA. Qualified applicants send resume to Guy Viator at (225) 766-0994.”

Hmmm…the number of field hands and tractor drivers that would be reading this ad and looking for a shot at going to New Iberia, just below Lafayette in the Cajun cane country of the Louisiana grand prairie, I bet is less than 2 fingers, just to be liberal, and the number of them that have “resume” just at hand and ready to fire off, for the chance to make $9 bucks for a temporary job for 10 months doesn’t fit on any hand I know.

It doesn’t take much to imagine that this ad is already clipped and copied as proof to be ready just in case someone from the DOL shows up and asks some day.

Why make a farce of farm work recruitment unless A&M Farms is pretty sure they, and outfits just like them, can get away with this pretty easily?

Small Shareholders Unite! Moxy Vote?

jstuart — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:20:57 +0000

New Orleans There is no better example of the “theory” of democracy versus the practice that what you find in looking at non-existent voice of shareholders in modern corporations. The biscuit-cookers, as an Arkansas mogul famously called them, who own 30% of the shares of public companies are lucky in most cases to be afterthoughts. All of which is not to say that those of us who often need to leverage big corporations to do the right thing have not done shareholder resolutions dozens of times, sometimes even successfully.

All of which made a piece in the Times catch my eye, particularly when it included a quote from a guy with the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale (this name is too long, I give up!) who said: “Up until now, it’s been sort of a Soviet system. We have been operating in the United States under the myth that boards have been accountable to shareholders.” Right on there!

Basically, the rally cry was for the small fry to unite some kind of a way and make their votes (they have no real voice) heard.

They touted a new-ish effort called Moxy Vote (www.moxyvote.com). I checked it out, and it’s interesting enough. I’m sure it attracted the reporter’s attention because of its cartoonish (and effective) graphics. The upshot is that they would like to have small shareholders vote together from their website which is connected to a list of recommendations from advocates.

All good, but…

Although I signed up for Moxy Vote, it is hard to feel totally comfortable about it. They are about as transparent and clear about governance as some of the company’s whose feet we are trying to hold to the fire. There’s no “contact us” address so that one can ask what they are doing? There is no “about us” that in fact even tells you who and what is behind Moxy Vote. This is not a corporate sock puppet, but I only say that based on trust that and hope since there is nothing that reveals the names of the staff, board or funders of this operation. If you want to become what they call an “advocate,” in other words someone who gets to put their issues out to the members, there are a number of “buttons” that say “become an advocate” but when you hit them it turns out that first you have to register (ok), and then you cannot become an advocate because it’s by “invitation only,” and there’s no way to find out how to apply or get an invitation.

So, good news that there may be some organizing going on among small shareholders to finally help curb corporate abuses, but the jury is still out on whether or not the ways and means to do so are in place yet.

Here’s hoping that Moxy Vote is one of the good ones.