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Every January, our state celebrates the work and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a hero who sacrificed his life in the fight to end discrimination and poverty in America. In this respect, it seems appropriate that January is also the month when our Governor releases his budget proposal. The State Budget is more than numbers; it reflects our collective priorities and funds what is most important. Sadly, this budget proposal fails to honor Dr. King and his fight for justice. Within the Governor’s proposal are further cuts to critical social service programs. There is no clearer or more tragic example of this disinvestment than our state’s willingness to cut access to state-sponsored child care for low income families. In the name of justice and equality, we ask the Governor to fully fund child care to ensure universal access to all and quality work conditions for providers.
Currently we have more than 300,000 children languishing on waiting lists,
Ted Mitchell, the former Occidental College president nominated by the White House to become Under Secretary of Education, is the founder and CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit whose goal, according to its tax records, is “to transform public education through powerful ideas and passionate entrepreneurs so that all children – especially those in underserved communities – have the opportunity to succeed.”
Judging by a look at the group’s website, another part of its agenda may be to gut the seniority rights and other job protections currently enjoyed by California’s public school teachers.
This week the site began prominently featuring news about the Vergara v. California trial now unfolding in Los Angeles Superior Court. When called for comment, a NewSchools spokesman said Mitchell’s group was taking no position on the case.
“We believe it’s an important case with broad implications for education,” the spokesman said.
» Read more about: Why Is Ted Mitchell’s Nonprofit Pushing Vergara v. California? »
There was something tantalizing about Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. When was the last time an American president talked about the simple human cruelty of our Dickensian sick leave and maternity policies? Or told CEOs to just do the right thing and raise wages for their workers?
What made Obama’s speech compelling is that he did more than just issue platitudes — he announced his decision to use executive authority to increase the pay of workers employed by companies that contract with the federal government. That will mean a nearly $3 an hour raise for hundreds of thousands of people. In an era of Tea Party-engineered partisan gridlock over pretty much everything, that’s nothing less than a seismic shift.
So why didn’t the State of the Union address leave me popping the champagne and toasting to an impending economic realignment that would reverse the nation’s slide back to the same levels of inequality we faced before the Depression?
» Read more about: Obama’s Speech: So Close and Yet So Far »
Lara Bergthold remembers the afternoon she and Norman Lear arrived at Pete Seeger’s rustic home overlooking the Hudson River, a house Seeger and his wife Toshi had built themselves years before. Bergthold, a prominent political and communications strategist and former executive director of the Lear Family Foundation, was the associate producer of Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, a 2007 documentary about the famed folksinger and social activist, and had recently brought Lear into the project. The two had been chauffeured from Manhattan in a Mercedes sedan and were eager to discuss ideas to improve the film that had so far been shot by director Jim Brown.
“When we pulled up to his house,” says Bergthold, “Norman and I get out of the back, and Pete walked around us and to the driver and shook his hand and invited him to come in for salad. He considered the driver to be the person he should greet first and it didn’t matter that the driver was a nameless person.
» Read more about: Pete Seeger Remembered: A Conversation With Lara Bergthold »
Common wisdom says that the subject of economic inequality, while temporarily in vogue, is still a rhetorical minefield. In the half-century since Lyndon Johnson announced the beginning of a war on poverty, presidents have avoided even using the word “poverty,” for fear of turning off voters. And just as perilous as talking about poverty, apparently, is admitting that a policy tries to attack it through “redistribution.” That term, according to the New York Times, is “explosive,” even “toxic,” in America. It’s a word, says William M. Daley, the former Obama chief of staff, that “you just don’t use.”
There’s evidence, however, that many Americans favor a distribution of wealth and income that’s much more egalitarian than the one we have now. But conservatives believe, and not without justification, that many people also dislike the idea of government taking from some people in order to give to others.
» Read more about: Wealth and the Natural Distribution Myth »
Last week, the U.K. publication The Guardian used an interesting anecdote to describe the key finding of an Oxfam report on global inequality: The world’s 85 richest people now own more wealth than the planet’s poorest 3.5 billion people. All of the world’s wealthiest individuals, Guardian writer Graeme Wearden noted, “could squeeze onto a single double-decker” bus.
The ironic image of the super-rich riding a humble public bus is an apt metaphor for the socioeconomic quandary facing America before President Obama makes his 2014 State of the Union address tonight. Underinvestment in job creation, training, education and public services like transportation put middle-class success out of reach for many Americans, while at the other end of the spectrum, wealth has been concentrated in very few hands.
President Obama’s speech ought to address the central problems of economic inequality and deficit of opportunities and services for many Americans.
Last month two of L.A.’s richest men decided they needed to defend their wealth in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece. The headline read: “It Isn’t a Sin to Be Rich.”
Of course it isn’t. No one has said it was a sin to be rich in a very long time. After all, rich is a state of being. It’s greed that makes the list of cardinal sins.
Naturally, social critics and political figures have spoken about the shrinking middle class. They’ve talked about the social instability caused by the exponential growth of wealth and the relatively shrinking resources of the working poor. Even film makers have produced documentaries describing a few people’s wealth growing so exorbitantly that it virtually pauperizes the rest of us. So apparently the two rich guys felt the sting and decided they needed to defend their class.
The national debate over the quality of public school education and its teachers shifts to a courtroom this morning as day one of Vergara v. California opens in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Filed on behalf of nine student plaintiffs (including Beatriz and Elizabeth Vergara), the suit seeks to wipe out the core of state teacher employment rights by overturning five California statutes that it claims make it too difficult to dismiss ineffective teachers.
The lawsuit was originally filed in the spring of 2012 by Students Matter, a Bay Area nonprofit created by the wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch and financed partly by L.A. billionaire Eli Broad.
That’s when Students Matter revealed the names of an advisory committee that reads like a Who’s Who of privatized education interests. Heading the list is Students First,
» Read more about: Vergara Trial Targeting Teachers’ Rights Opens »
Last week’s announcements about 2013 earnings by California’s largest public pension funds suggest the agencies may be making significant progress in shaking off the lingering after-effects of the 2008 stock market crash.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) said it rode a 25 percent run-up in stock prices to post a 16.2 percent gain for its 2013 portfolio — its best showing in a decade. For its part, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) reported an impressive 19.1 percent return on its 2013 investments, led by a 28 percent return on its stock holdings.
The announcements undoubtedly came as welcome news to the roughly 1.6 million California government workers and 860,000 public school teachers represented by the systems. Ever since the 2008 global financial meltdown, their pensions have been in the crosshairs of fiscal conservatives and anti-public pension activists who wish to see the employees’
Last year, as we remembered the life and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we focused much of our attention on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. We reflected on the historical words that followed, “I have a dream” and reaffirmed our commitment to keeping the dream alive.
We measured our progress through victories such as the end of Jim Crow segregation, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the election of our first African American President. We also talked about where we need to devote our efforts for the dream to become a reality.
With that, one year later we are reminded of the inequalities that still exist and the call to action we must all answer:
“I’m not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
We all know the political shorthand: “red” states vote conservative while “blue” states vote progressive. But these days the deep red hue of Idaho, Arizona and Texas isn’t just a reflection of their political leanings; it’s all the red flags voters are raising about private prisons in those states.
In 1997, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) took over the Idaho Correctional Center. Predictably, the facility was soon plagued with rampant violence, understaffing, gang activity and contract fraud committed by CCA. One former inmate said the facility was so violent that it was commonly referred to as “gladiator school.” What’s more, in 2012 the Associated Press showed that taxpayers didn’t even get the savings they were promised.
This month, tired of the bad headlines, Idaho Governor Butch Otter – a strong proponent of outsourcing – announced that the state is taking back control of the privately run prison.
» Read more about: States Are Regretting Prisons for Profit »
There was a time when we listened to science, leaned forward when its experts spoke about smoking, clean air and water, or the need for something called a seatbelt. But that was long ago, before corporate interests convinced us that the best policy for just about any social crisis was to do nothing. Today research surveys that statistically demonstrate the benefits of raising the minimum wage have about the same chance of being heard above the denial din as climate change papers.
Nevertheless, the authors of Effects of a Fifteen Dollar an Hour Minimum Wage in the City of Los Angeles, a new study conducted by the Economic Roundtable and funded by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, hope to open some very closed minds about these economic benefits. Tuesday the two groups released the study at a media event held on a corner of Lafayette Park.
» Read more about: 7.6 Billion Reasons to Raise L.A.’s Minimum Wage »
Today’s Los Angeles Times features front-page coverage of the Raise LA campaign, a new effort to improve the standard of living for workers employed by L.A.’s larger hotels. James Rainey’s piece, which appeared online late yesterday (as did a story on Raise LA by Nancy Cohen in The New Republic), noted that while a relatively small number of L.A. hotel workers enjoy the protections and benefits of union membership, most of the city’s hotel housekeepers, busboys and maintenance workers are mired in jobs that pay little more than California’s minimum wage of $8 per hour. Raise LA aims to create an hourly minimum wage of $15.37 for employees who work at hotels with of 100 rooms or more.
In 2012 Long Beach voters passed a similar law for its hotel workers, increasing their minimum wage to $13 an hour.
» Read more about: Minimum Wage Battle Checking in to L.A. Hotels »
“Happy New Year!” is the salutation we use to greet each other around the turn of every year. We talk as if what is past has disappeared in the rear view mirror and that what’s ahead will be brand new, novel and something completely different. In newspapers, blogs, magazines and cartoons, we survey the events of the year past and make predictions about the year ahead.
In reality not much ends on December 31st except the calendar hanging in our kitchen. Instead, the issues of one year carry over into the next. The behaviors of one year become the practices of the next. In the real world, matters of conflict and tension continue over years, even over decades.
This is the baggage that we’ll continue to carry with us in the new year:
Late Monday afternoon California Attorney General Kamala Harris released the state’s official title and summary for the ballot initiative promoted by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and others to reduce the retirement benefits of state and municipal workers. Harris’ wording had been anxiously awaited by Reed and his colleagues. In 2012 a different group of pension-cutters abandoned their measure, according to the Sacramento Bee, after they tested Harris’ summary and found it would make their measure radioactive at the polls.
Reed had called his proposal the Pension Reform Act of 2014 and, no doubt, had his fingers crossed that it would appear that way on a future ballot. If so, he was in for a disappointment, as the attorney general rebranded the measure as the less lyrical Public Employees Pension and Retiree Healthcare Benefits Initiative Constitutional Amendment. To the pension-cutters’ further chagrin, Harris’ description placed teachers,
» Read more about: Can Chuck Reed’s Pension-Cutting Campaign Get Off the Ground? »
The holiday interlude brought a mixed blessing from Seattle —that’s the positive spin, frankly—in the form of King County Superior Court Judge Andrea Darvas’ ruling in the SeaTac minimum wage case. The complaint, officially named BF Foods v. City of SeaTac, concerns Proposition 1, a ballot initiative adopted by the voters of the City of SeaTac last November, that raised wages to $15 an hour for airport and hotel workers.
Opposition to the measure was rather heated, as opponents sued to keep the matter off the ballot. Having failed in that endeavor, they spent big money to defeat it. Having lost, a recount, which did not change the results. After which, this suit.
The main litigant, according to press reports, is Alaska Airlines; they cleverly brought in the Port of Seattle, which runs the airport. The legal approach here was something of a kitchen sink strategy,
» Read more about: SeaTac Minimum Wage Law Faces Catch-22 Hurdles »
At a time when public sector workers and their unions are under constant attack, the heroic work of women and men who serve other people as a mission in life is often overlooked. The labor movement and Los Angeles lost a giant among these heroes with the recent passing of Eddie Reed. “Mr. Reed,” as I would always call him, lived the very definition of a public servant. For 34 years he helped the children and families of Los Angeles as a bus driver with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
“Bus driver,” however, is too narrow a description of the man and his mission. Mr. Reed was a leader who fought on behalf of a group of workers who were historically forgotten or marginalized whenever major decisions were made in the school district. He was a mentor to students, parents and employees, constantly reminding all of us that we have an obligation to serve those who have less or who struggle to find justice.
» Read more about: Eddie Reed: The Passing of a Labor Hero »
The battle to keep City College of San Francisco open and accredited took a dramatic turn late Thursday afternoon. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow temporarily barred the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) from revoking accreditation for the 79-year-old school that serves about 80,000 students at 11 San Francisco campuses. The ACCJC, the agency charged with evaluating California’s 112 community colleges, had sought to revoke CCSF’s accreditation by July 31; it was challenged by several lawsuits filed by San Francisco’s City Attorney and a pair of teachers unions.
Judge Karnow, while dismissing the unions’ suits, ruled in favor of the city attorney’s request for a temporary injunction against the accreditation revocation, declaring that CCSF’s shutdown would be too extreme a response to the ACCJC’s findings of administrative deficiencies at CCSF. “Those consequences would be catastrophic,” Karnow said of a shutdown.
Lawyers for the ACCJC unsuccessfully argued for a dismissal of all challenges to its institutional authority and expertise in determining accreditation standards.
» Read more about: Fight to Save City College of San Francisco Will Go to Trial »
When future taxpayers look back to the moment they started taking back control of their schools, roads and services, they will look to 2013. From coast to coast, taxpayers rejected reckless outsourcing schemes. They held for-profit corporations accountable. And they said “no deal!” to CEOs who would put profits ahead of public health and safety.
These victories don’t always appear in the national media. But taken together they represent a real shift. Working together, I’m sure we will have many more in 2014.
Connecticut: Opponents of education privatization defeated three Bridgeport school board members who supported pro-charter schools superintendent Paul Vallas.
Idaho: Corrections Corporation of America left the state “after more than a decade marked by scandal and lawsuits surrounding its operation of the state’s largest prison.” Upon hearing the news, Spokesman Review columnist Shawn Vestal wrote,
» Read more about: Outsourcing Wars: What the New Year Can Learn from 2013 »