I applaud the city council for passing ordinances on Wednesday that establish the Right To Counsel and fees on developers to fund affordable housing and free legal representation for tenants. This is a big step forward, and will contribute to a more humane city and economy. I hope that the city will demonstrate urgency in fully implementing this program as soon as possible, rather than considering it satisfactory to simply meet the 2026 deadline.

However, I want to express my concern that while all our city council members ultimately made the right decision in passing these ordinances, some were upset that real-estate investors weren’t adequately consulted, or were worried about the effect these reforms will have on the “market” and developers’ “right” to make a return on their investment.

I’m afraid this shows a certain level of confusion. Perhaps we have allowed a corporate-dominated political environment to warp our mindset. Nobody has a “right” to make a profit. That’s a risk you take when you make an investment. But people should have the right to a home.

Property rights are not sacrosanct; human lives are. Housing, food, clothing, a quality education, healthcare — these things are basic needs and should be considered human rights. Many countries with far less resources than ours provide these things. The United States has more than enough resources to make them available to everyone; we simply choose not to. That shows who is really in control.

If those who control immense resources can be compelled by city, state, and federal government to make these basic human needs accessible to the general public, that is well and fine and good. But when those who control basic resources like land and housing fail to make them available to people, and even stand in the way of government measures to improve people’s lives, they prove themselves to be bad stewards and deserve to lose those privileges. If a slumlord or big developer is suddenly unable to collect huge rent checks, they’re still in a much better position than the ordinary worker who just lost their job. Many of us have already been there at some point in our lives, with little to no help on the way; so, it’s hard for us to show much sympathy for those with great wealth who cry poor.

It’s important to make this point, because Right To Counsel is just the first step. Many more reforms are needed to ensure everyone has a safe, stable, and dignified home. At the council meeting, there were numerous calls from the public, for example, to strengthen rent control and close the existing loopholes. We also need to make rental assistance much more widely available, and it’s good the city is taking steps in that direction.

I understand those who pointed out the need to support minority-owned businesses. I agree that we need to make it easier for Black and Brown people and women and other under-represented groups to have an equal voice and stake in every aspect of the economy, and at all levels. This will also help working people unite across racial, national, and gender lines, which is what we need to move forward.

But this does not change the fact that we need to think about development in a way that prioritizes human needs, not profits. In order to solve the housing issue, we need government officials who understand that in any situation where there is a basic conflict between people’s housing needs and developers’ profits, people’s needs come first. That’s the bottom line.

Congratulations to all the tenant activists and supporters who put in the time to get these ordinances across the finish line, and special acknowledgement is due to Councilman James Solomon, Councilman Frank Gilmore, and Councilman Yousef Saleh who stood with tenants in this fight early on.

The council’s 9–0 vote proves that organizing works. As Frederick Douglass declared in 1857, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Let’s keep fighting forward. Housing is a human right!

Originally published at https://jcitytimes.com on June 16, 2023.

In the 1960s, policymakers in the historically Black town of Mount Laurel, N.J., began pricing out Black and Latino residents and demolishing their homes. In 1970, local civil rights activist Ethel Lawrence and other community leaders invited Mayor Bill Haines to Jacob’s Chapel, an African American church, to discuss their plan to build 36 affordable apartments. Haines told them, “If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.”

The Springville Community Action Committee (SCAC) that Lawrence, Rev. Stuart Wood, and other church members had formed teamed up with the local NAACP chapters of Camden and Southern Burlington Counties and sued.

The New Jersey Supreme Court (in the 1975 and 1983 Mount Laurel I and cases) ruled in SCAC’s favor, declaring every municipality has an obligation to provide its “fair share” of affordable housing and that the issue should be taken up by the legislature.

The New Jersey Senate and Assembly responded in 1985 by creating the New Jersey Fair Housing Act and establishing the governor-appointed Council on Affordable Housing (COAH). This agency was responsible for identifying how many affordable homes were needed and monitored municipalities’ participation in the program. Cities and towns with COAH-approved affordable housing plans were also protected from developers’ lawsuits.

Crippling COAH

However, from Mount Laurel I onward, a major problem persisted. Affordable housing was only a “regional” requirement, which meant suburban towns could have their affordable housing built in nearby urban centers, contributing to racial and economic segregation.

At the same time, COAH’s better goals were continually attacked by developers and government officials acting on their behalf. In the late 1980s, a number of municipalities decided to set fees on developers to fund their affordable housing programs. In response, developers sought to overturn local elected officials’ decisions with court action, accusing them of violating the state and U.S. constitutions.

Lower level courts ruled in favor of the developers, but the State Supreme Court affirmed municipalities’ right to set development fees in the 1990 Holmdel Builders Ass’n v. Township of Holmdel case.

In the early 2000s, COAH’s attempts to update its rules underwent a series of legal challenges. By the time Gov. Chris Christie took office in 2010, the council was already over ten years late in establishing new rules. The new Republican governor intervened on behalf of real estate interests and burned the receipts- perhaps literally.

Just a few weeks into his first term, Christie began an assault on COAH, using possibly criminal means to destroy it, while leaving half of the council’s seats empty. Even in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating housing emergency, he continued undermining the agency’s goals.

By the end of his first term, COAH’s role in monitoring local provision of affordable housing was eliminated, and the issue was put back into the hands of lower level courts and litigators.

Municipalities are still constitutionally required to provide their “fair share” of affordable housing, but there is no longer any elected or state-level body responsible for defining what that means, or for helping to ensure the standard is followed.

Since “affordable housing” is meant to serve the needs of people in households making up to 80% of the “area median income” (i.e. those earning the lowest 40% of incomes in each area)-it stands to reason that at least 40% of all housing should be “affordable.” But putting those standards into law, as well as stronger rent-control laws, would require a pro-tenant governor and a pro-tenant majority in the state legislature. Establishing an alternative to COAH, or creating a stronger version of it, would also require legislative action.

Many towns in New Jersey have continued to implement COAH-era policies allowing municipalities to charge developers a fee of up to 1.5% of a complicated “equalized assessed value” of each property. These fees are then put into a local affordable housing fund.

Jersey City opts out

Jersey City, however, never opted into a COAH-protected affordable housing plan, and it never collected fees on developers. While cities and towns across New Jersey had together collected well over half a billion dollars for their own affordable housing funds by June 2012, Jersey City’s contribution was still $0.

By not collecting those fees, Jersey City lost out on more than $115 million in revenue from 2018–2022 alone, as Right To Counsel activists Sarah Levine and Julia Tache pointed out recently in the Hudson County View.

Adding to the problem, contracts signed between real estate giant LeFrak and Mayor Gerald McCann in the early 1980s set the stage for future “PILOT” (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) agreements. These amounted, in the long term, to huge tax abatements (i.e. tax cuts) for big developers and left a giant hole in the city’s budget.

Around this time, a struggle emerged against McCann’s attempts to eliminate rent control. This multi-racial movement of tenants and homeowners elected the pro-tenant Mayor Anthony Cucci and a pro-tenant city council in the 1985 elections and greatly strengthened the rent control law.

The new administration was able to negotiate with developers to create affordable housing units, but real estate interests fought back; McCann defeated Cucci in the 1989 elections with backing from developers. McCann later went to jail for financial crimes, but the 1990 Holmdel ruling, which affirmed Jersey City’s right to collect fees from developers, was never taken used for residents’ advantage.

By not collecting those fees over three decades and providing tax abatements for real estate speculators instead, Jersey City brought large numbers of people into the city, while depriving itself of the means to build the needed infrastructure for a growing population.

One obvious result is the city’s woeful lack of public transportation, resulting in more cars on the road-adding negative health and environmental impacts, an impossible parking situation, as well as many pedestrians and cyclists being struck by vehicles, and bicycles or ebikes having to sometimes ride on the sidewalk.

Discounts for developers (tax abatements) also meant shifting the tax burden onto homeowners, many of whom decided to move out and put their homes up for sale. These were gladly gobbled up by real estate interests to continue the process anew. Meanwhile, Jersey City tenants have been driven out by soaring rents-and at times, even outright arson -just as Mount Laurel residents were driven from their homes in the 1960s.

Right To Counsel: Continuing N.J.’s struggle for affordable housing

Just as Mount Laurel residents fought back fifty years ago, tenants in Jersey City are also organizing against rising rents and evictions. The two Right to Counsel ordinances they are fighting for will give all tenants’ in Jersey City the right to free lawyers and an office in city hall. And just as importantly, they will introduce fees on developers to create an affordable housing fund. Part of that fund will be used to cover the costs of tenants’ legal services.

Together, the ordinances will help preserve and create affordable housing. While tenants’ access to legal services will not create affordable housing directly, it will be an important enforcement mechanism, giving renters the power to help preserve the affordable housing that still exists.

Tenants renting a new apartment in the U.S., on average, get slammed with a 12.2% rent increase over what their home’s previous occupants were paying, compared with a 3.5% increase for tenants who renew an existing lease. Landlords of non-rent-controlled buildings can avoid New Jersey’s law against (undefined) “unconscionable” rent increases, by using legal or illegal means to push current tenants out and bring in new tenants with deeper pockets. Tenants with lawyers, on the other hand, can fight unfair evictions and truly “unconscionable” rent increases, which need to be defined in law. Big landlords of rent-controlled buildings can also obtain bogus “hardship” or “capital improvement” increases more easily when tenants don’t have a lawyer.

When higher-income tenants are driven from their current apartments, it helps create demand for more high-cost rental housing. Meanwhile, their previous unit can become even more expensive. When low- and moderate-income tenants lose their homes, it can result in previously affordable apartments becoming no longer affordable.

Rising rents drive evictions, and evictions drive rising rents; it’s a vicious circle. Evictions are also a top driver of homelessness. Providing all tenants with the legal resources to stay in their homes will help keep Jersey City’s affordable units affordable and help fight real estate efforts to push up the overall cost of rent across the city.

Four out of the nine Jersey City councilmembers have shown support for a universal Right to Counsel program with an office in city hall and the collection of fees on big corporate developers to create an affordable housing fund. The other five councilmembers, however, have not yet made their positions clear.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who is now running for governor, has spoken in favor of Right to Counsel and affordable housing plans, but tenant organizers are wary of this support, as he is known to be a friend of developers.

Of the nearly $2.8 million in outside contributions that went to the Fulop-linked Coalition For Progress Super PAC in 2022, close to $1.17 million came from the real estate industry, and over $174,000 came from mainly big business law firms, including many real estate lawyers. More than $250,000 more came from private construction companies.

Given the powerful real estate interests operating within city, state, and federal government, tenants will need to become a powerful organized force and build alliances-with homeowners, racial justice organizations, organized labor, and others-to make political change and win their demands.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on May 25, 2023.

JERSEY CITY, N.J.-Two years ago, a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed that a full-time worker in the U.S. needs to earn at least $25.82 per hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment, and $21.25 per hour for a one-bedroom apartment. The federal minimum wage, however, has been frozen at $7.25 since 2009.

According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidelines, housing should not cost more than 30% of a person’s income, yet many are paying 50% or more.

In Jersey City-where HUD has calculated median rent at $1,995 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, or $2,288 per month for a two-bedroom apartment-a single person working a full-time job needs to earn at least $38.37 per hour to afford their one-bedroom apartment. Working 40 hours per week, a single parent would need to earn $44 per hour to rent a two-bedroom home. Yet, the state’s minimum wage is just $14.13.

As a result of these financial pressures, grassroots battles for the right to housing have been exploding everywhere. From New York City to Los Angeles, these include direct actions to stop evictions, fights for rent control, struggles for more and stronger protections for tenants, and demands for more affordable housing-including more investment into public housing.

Among these, a growing national movement for tenants’ right to a free lawyer, called “Right to Counsel,” is fighting against the unfair advantage wealthy building owners have in the legal system. On average, only 3% of tenants facing an eviction have a lawyer, compared to 81% of their landlords, according to the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC).

This struggle began in New York City in 2014, and the city’s renters won Right to Counsel (RTC) three years later. Since then, RTC has been won in at least three states and 14 other cities, including Newark, N.J., with good results. In those areas, landlords are suing tenants less, and when tenants do get eviction notices, they’re much more likely to win their cases and stay in their homes. In the seven cities that passed RTC laws by 2021, the eviction rate went down 77%.

As the movement builds, RTC demands are becoming stronger. Many, like those now organizing for a statewide RTC in New York, are working to pass RTC laws that would not have income restrictions, and that would provide a free lawyer in cases where tenants themselves need to bring cases against landlords who refuse to do needed repairs, or who otherwise abuse, neglect, or discriminate against them.

This includes the RTC coalition in Jersey City. Last summer, tenants began knocking on doors collecting petitions for a universal RTC that will protect all tenants, regardless of income or any other status, and that would allow tenants to bring cases against their landlords regarding needed repairs, discrimination, termination of subsidies, or enforcement of a restraining order.

Right To Counsel JC is fighting to have the program run by an office in city hall and funded by fees on big new development projects. Such a program would be a strong enforcement mechanism, empowering tenants to help the city make sure housing laws are followed and buildings are up to code.

RTC activists have knocked on thousands of doors, and over 1,000 Jersey City residents have signed the petition. Many have repeatedly shown up at city council meetings, sometimes late into the night, calling on their elected officials to support tenants’ right to have legal representation. They have been joined by tenants of the rent-controlled Portside Towers, where the landlord has been raising rents far above the legal amount.

Two ordinances associated with RTC in Jersey City have been introduced. One establishes the RTC program itself. The other would gradually introduce fees on corporate landlords and developers, who have simultaneously driven up rents throughout the city and-by obtaining tax abatements (i.e. tax cuts) from the city in exchange for a few affordable housing units-have shifted the tax burden onto small homeowners. The money from these fees would go into an affordable housing fund, a small part of which would provide legal services for tenants.

However, due to certain legal interpretations, the funds from this program will only be used to cover legal services for tenants in households that earn less than 80% (around $65,112 per year) of the “Area Median Income” ($81,390 annually). As of now, no source of funding has been proposed to cover the costs of legal services for tenants’ with incomes above that or for those who can’t prove their income.

The RTC ordinance’s deadline for a fully established program is Jan. 1, 2026.

However, the RTC ordinances are now being revised and will be re-introduced at the May 24th meeting of the city council. In the meantime, real estate interests are putting pressure on the city council to weaken or abandon RTC, and tenants are also fighting to make their voices heard.

A Koch brothers’ law firm sent a letter to city council claiming RTC is unconstitutional, and RTC organizers report that real estate giant LeFrak is lobbying against it as well. Pro-developer activist Ron Simoncini came to the April 26th city council meeting promising to put in his best efforts to kill RTC, just as he and developer Mark Villamar did to rent control measures in Bayonne and Hoboken.

At the same time, tenants are mobilizing, calling their elected officials, requesting meetings with them, and organizing turnout for the next city council meeting. The RTC coalition has also organized a Tenants’ Town Hall on May 18th to strengthen the fightback.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on May 16, 2023.

As far as tenants across the state of New York are concerned, “equality under the law” is only as good as the money it’s written on. The statewide Right to Counsel coalition is fighting for reforms to stem the tide of evictions and make the courts less unfair to tenants.

Right now, property owners are actively trying to evict nearly 270,000 renters across the state, yet only a small percentage of the tenants will go into court with a lawyer. For example, Danni Smith, a former housing services advocate with the city of Albany, has pointed out that in the third quarter of this year, only 1.3% of Albany tenants had a lawyer, compared with 92–94% of landlords.

While all people nominally have the right to a lawyer in court, in reality, legal representation is limited to those who can afford it. And when tenants are unable to access a lawyer, any and all laws regulating landlord behavior become meaningless. Tenants have come to describe the N.Y. court system as an eviction mill.

To address the issue, around 80 activists from the tenant movement in Albany, New York City, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rochester gathered at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Albany last Mon., Nov. 21. After a communal meal and informational session on the details of the tenant movement’s proposed legislation, and training on agitating fellow tenants, they marched to the Albany Civil Court for a rally and speakout.

Right to Counsel

“What do we want? Right to Counsel! When do we want it? NOW!” Citizen Action organizer Barb Rivera led the crowd in the opening chants.

If passed, the statewide legislation would guarantee the right to free legal representation for all tenants facing eviction. It would also provide lawyers for tenants who bring cases against their landlords regarding repairs or harassment, and for tenants fighting termination of their Section 8 subsidies.

As the gathering spoke in front of Albany’s Civil Court, a cold wind enveloped the gathering, highlighting the cruelty of winter evictions. “Many people will be watching the sunset tonight from outside,” said one. “And if it weren’t for me having legal representation, I might be watching the sunset behind the windshield of my car.”

In describing a series of nightmare scenarios, including her kitchen ceiling collapsing right before Christmas, Albany tenant Nikkiea Philpot said she contacted disability rights advocates, legal aid, and even the mayor, only to find, “No one could help me. I was told, ‘There’s nothing we can do because you are not being evicted.’

“So you see Right to Counsel is not just for those who are being evicted. It’s pertinent for those of us who are living in homes with health hazards.”

Dio Kaufman, a resident of the Saratoga Lakeview Mobile Home Park, spoke about the tactics of her current landlord, Mike Giovanone-who bought the park with the clear intention of razing it to the ground to expand his neighboring boat storage business-to drive everyone out. These have ranged from the degradation of the park to surveillance to intimidation and harassment to illegal evictions. “As the only public facing activist in the park, I became an immediate target for retaliation.” The harassment has been collective and personal. “If my neighbors are seen talking to me in the community, they get phone calls,” Kaufman said. “My comrades in the labor movement, they recognize these tactics.”

Many tenants have already left. The organizer pointed out, “I’ve been told repeatedly by various people that if they had access to lawyers, they’d be making different choices.”

Albany County Federation of Labor President Rev. Ibrahím Pedriñán drew the comparison between union members’ Weingarten rights and the tenants’ proposed legislation. “We as union members know what it means to have the right of representation!” Rev. Pedriñán is also on the board of United Tenants of Albany. “We know what it means to have the right of dignity and democracy in our workplace, and dignity and democracy are what you deserve in your home life as well!” they declared.

The fight for representation is not the only thing tenants and labor unions have in common. Tenants across New York are also fighting for “Good Cause Eviction.” Just like employers cannot fire unionized workers without “just cause,” including due process with representation, landlords should not be able to evict tenants for any reason. In both cases, it’s owners vs non-owners. Non-owners need organization on the job site and the home site to fight back.

During the town hall in the church that afternoon, a Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) activist described the process of gentrification in terms of exploitation and disrespect. “We built this neighborhood, and they’re bringing in people with more money that have no connection to it, who look down on us. They want us out, but this is our home and we won’t go.”

Just as Black, brown, women and young workers are targeted for super-exploitation on the job, women, people of color, domestic violence survivors, and families with children are specially targeted for eviction. Black women account for one out of every five renters who are likely to face eviction.

Danni Smith noted that in Albany, 70% of evictions are taking place in the city’s historically red-lined communities.

“Across the state children are suffering,” Oscar emphasized, an activist from Rochester. “The majority of children in Rochester have to worry when they come home from school, ‘Does Mom and Dad still have a place for me to live?’ That’s not fair for any child to have to deal with.”

The Right to Counsel coalition was formed in 2014. In 2017, NYC became the first city in the U.S. to pass RTC legislation. Since then, similar legislation has been passed in 18 cities and three states. As of 2021, these cities have seen a 77% reduction in evictions.

However, NYC’s version remains limited. Income requirements have only added administrative cost to the program while limiting its availability to those who need it the most, and it does not protect tenants in all circumstances.

Lack of funding and lack of lawyers have also created problems, particularly when the judges sitting on the bench-often appointed, or “elected” under a cloak of total anonymity-are biased toward landlords.

In clear violation of NYC’s Right to Counsel law, the Office of Court Administration has been pushing forward with eviction cases when tenants are unable to get a lawyer. Earlier this month, NYC tenants gathered to protest Judge Anthony Cannataro, Acting Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, demanding a pause in evictions until tenants can get representation.

The statewide legislation currently on the table would address many of these problems in NYC while expanding access across the state. A key issue is funding, which tenants are demanding to be included in the next budget.

“We’re demanding that…Governor Hochul, Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Heastie pass and fully fund statewide Right to Counsel, because we know that a vote ain’t a vote if it doesn’t have some dollars behind it!” said Rev. Pedriñán.

Who will pay for it?

While some might ask, “But who will pay for it?” a sensible answer would be, “Tax The Rich!” In Boulder, Co., Right to Counsel was funded by raising the rental license excise tax to $75.

Some N.Y. legislators have balked at the cost, but experience has shown that it would save the state $3–6 per dollar invested. This is because after people have been thrown out on the street, even more resources are needed to provide shelter and other homelessness services, to cover emergency room bills and other costs. As reported by the Daily News:

“Getting an attorney to represent a tenant in housing court typically costs a couple thousand dollars, while single adult shelters run the city an average of $138 a night-that’s over $50,000 per year per person.”

It is both more humane and more efficient to protect people from harm than it is to try to heal a wound once inflicted.

With 92,000 people without homes, New York State has the highest homelessness rate in the country. Eviction is a leading cause of homelessness. Empowering tenants to stop their own evictions before they happen should be a no-brainer.

What stands in the way?

One activist person held a sign reading, “Housing is a right, not a business.” During the breakout groups, one grassroots activist pointed out that for some real estate investors, a big rental property is worth more to them empty than alive. They count on the value of the land going up as development takes place in the area, and without anyone living inside, it can be quickly sold without all the court fees and hassle involved in throwing people out into the street.

“People over profit!” was a recurring refrain on Eagle Street Nov. 21. In the long term, what is needed is exactly that-a system run by working people, not one controlled by the dictates of dog-eat-dog competition and maximum quarterly profits.

The old socialist-led German Democratic Republic provided one example of what this might look like. In that country, evictions were illegal. It was forbidden for a landlord to evict someone unless they found another place for that person to live.

Other socialist experiments have simply transferred ownership of the land into the hands of the general public, and individual houses directly into those of the tenants themselves. In present-day Germany, tenants celebrated a big victory in July of 2019, when the State of Berlin kicked out the private developers and took over 670 apartments, which were about to be taken over by real-estate giant Deutsche Wohnen.

Regardless of what the solution will look like in the U.S., working people will have to take control of the political system to make it happen. That starts with the mass movement organizing to get workers, tenants, and others in the mass democratic movement elected to government positions at all levels-including judgeships. Having done that, we can begin to remake a brand new system that really does put people and nature before profits.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on November 28, 2022.

While big business media in the U.S. would have us believe the main pillar of support for Trump and his fascist MAGA movement comes from the so-called “white working class,” the reality is something quite different. The 147 “coup caucus” Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election-many of whom also supported, planned, and orchestrated the attempted coup on January 6, 2021-received over $44 million in campaign contributions from some of the most powerful financial interests in the U.S.

Logistics giant Amazon and global investment firm KKR were among those targeted by an action in midtown Manhattan on Friday afternoon to expose and oppose the corporate backers of fascism in the U.S.

Learn more: Fortune 500 companies can’t hide their support for the Republican coup caucus. Follow the money — and cut it off! Oh, and VOTE!

“Martin Luther King recognized there were three evils in this society-poverty, militarism, and racism. And those evils are still present with us,” Poor People’s Campaign activist Arelis Figueroa pointed out as the group picketed Amazon’s headquarters at 442 W 33rd Street. Jeff Bezos’ union-busting corporation gave $565,000 to the election deniers, backing 89 of the 147.

“We add ecological devastation and the moral narrative of the religious right. We are here because everybody’s got the right to live,” Figueroa said before leading the gathering in song:

“I went down to the rich man’s house, and I took back what he stole from me …”

After picketing Amazon’s offices, the group marched to a building entrance in the general vicinity of KKR’s headquarters, secretly stashed away somewhere in the Hudson Yards complex. The finance conglomerate recently bought the Hudson Yards observation deck. One of its founders, Henry Kravis, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.

“A little story about KKR is that they actually recently bought a bottling factory, and that bottling factory has horrible working conditions,” Roni Zahavi-Brunner explained, a Sunrise movement activist. “The unions of that factory have all signed a petition against KKR so that they will actually start following labor [laws]. … Last week, that union came here to give KKR that petition. And what did KKR do? They sent their security to threaten the union that they will dox them!” Zahavi-Brunner exclaimed.

“You’re not going to get away with union busting, you’re not going to get away with climate destruction, and you’re not going to get away with artificially creating a housing crisis,” Zahavi-Brunner insisted.

“And most of all, you’re not going to get away with funding far-right corporate fascists,” added CPUSA and YCL activist Ben Bath. “Whether it’s the police who harass demonstrators, whether it’s the landlords who evict tenants, or whether it’s the people in Congress who try to end voting rights in America, they are backed by the same people.”

NY State Communist Party leader Chris Butters expounded on the issue of voter suppression. “Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise” (who together received almost $1.8 million from big business fascist backers) “and Elise Stefanik know that voter suppression is instrumental if they are going to overturn any popular vote they lose,” Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last four elections. If voter suppression and subversion don’t work, Trumpist Republicans look to a violent coup, of which January 6 was just a dress rehearsal.

“We’re not taking time out from our other struggles and electoral activity to be here. Being here is continuing those struggles because we can only do that with democracy. These corporations are very much about ending all the vehicles we use to fight back,” Butters pointed out.

“The same gang of politicians that voted against the certification of the presidential election are scheming to destroy the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB),” Building Trades for Workers’ Democracy (BTWD) activist Percy pointed out. “Not only do they want to take democracy away from other people, but they want to take away the democratic rights that you have as workers on your job site. … They want to come for your pay, for your pension, for your rights to collectively bargain.”

Singled out Stephen Ross

BTWD members also singled out Stephen Ross and his Related Companies, which gave $20,800 to members of the coup caucus. Construction workers’ unions protested the $50 billion real-estate firm for a year and a half in 2017 and 2018 for using non-union labor to build Hudson Yards.

Just as Ford Motors, General Motors, IBM, Dupont, Alcoa, Goodyear, and Standard Oil all profited from and supported the Nazi regime in Germany, big business contributions continued to flow in for the 21st century fascists in Congress, even after the Trump-backed putsch on Capitol Hill.

“This is a slow coup we’ve been seeing that’s been prepared for 40 years,” Butters remarked at the action.

Some of the biggest banks and investment firms (Chase, Wells Fargo, Black Rock, Ernst &Young), weapons producers (Boeing, Honeywell), fossil fuel and agricultural conglomerates (Chevron, Koch Industries) are in on the plot, together with real-estate speculators (the National Board of Realtors), pharmaceutical and insurance industry heads (Pfizer, US Healthcare Inc, MetLife, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly), alcohol and construction business associations, and several major logistics (Amazon, UPS, FedEx), telecommunications (AT&T, Spectrum), manufacturing (General Motors) and retail companies (Home Depot, Walgreens). Leading the way was the world’s largest business organization, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Democracy means majority rule. We don’t have that. Not with the electoral college, filibustering, gerrymandering, [or] with the U.S. Senate,” George Albro of New York Progressive Action Network (NYPAN) protested. He went on to talk about how “Citizens United is now hitting us at full scale.”

“In that case, they said corporations are people … they have freedom of speech,” and since then “they put trillions of dollars into elections and buy in,” he said, warning, “They’re also doing dark money PACs in primaries. They’re beating progressives.”

“So how do we fight back? Well, first thing is everyone’s gotta vote. … We have to beat the fascists,” Albro insisted, emphasizing the danger with a touch of grim humor: “You can’t tweet and you can’t have Zoom meetings in prison.

“But there’s other things we can do,” he said. “We gotta get a bill passed in Albany, a disclosure bill.” You can “spend all your money making lies on TV”-here Albro addressed the 1%-”but we have the right … to know who you are. And if we know who you are, we can boycott your company, we can demonstrate in front of your house on Sunday, and make you pay a price.

“And the final thing we have to do,” Albro concluded, “We’ve got to get involved in a mass, pro-democracy movement.”

The action was sponsored by the Poor People’s Campaign in New York, NYC’s Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, New York Progressive Action Network, the New York State Communist Party, the New York Young Communist League, and Building Trades for Workers’ Democracy.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on November 10, 2022.

Co-chaired by Rev. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis, the Poor People’s Campaign began in May 2018 with 40 days of coordinated action at statehouses across the U.S. to confront systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and the war economy.

Now mobilizing for a massive June 18th “Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers’ Assembly,” today’s Poor People’s Campaign is reviving the work of the original Poor People’s Campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.

Billed as a “moral march on Washington and to the polls” for the November elections, the event next weekend will target lawmakers and push them to address what the Poor People’s Campaign calls the “moral, economic, and political crisis” facing the nation.

From the west coast to the east and at all points in between, people are signing up for spots on buses and joining in the organizing. And they’re bringing co-workers, family, friends, and neighbors with them to the nation’s capital. The massive march will occur, appropriately, on Juneteenth weekend, which celebrates the democratic revolution that ended slavery and established Black Reconstruction in the South.

The original Poor People’s Campaign was the last big effort led by King before his assassination, the capstone to all his work on behalf of the racially and economically oppressed. King was instrumental in bringing together the labor and civil rights coalition that defeated key planks of the Jim Crow counterrevolution after Reconstruction. Then, as now, the forces of democracy and the extreme right were in sharp confrontation.

When King declared, “I have a dream!” to more than a quarter-million people in D.C. in August 1963, KKK and police terror in Alabama was still a fresh wound. As many as 1,000 children in Birmingham had walked out of school the previous May to protest segregation, only to be greeted with fire hoses, police dogs, batons, and arrests. But that action forced the Birmingham Truce Agreement, a set of anti-segregationist measures, followed by white supremacist bombings, civil unrest, and heavy repression.

“We have…come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” King declared then. “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

The current Poor People’s Campaign says it’s that time again. Today’s demands have echoes of the past.

By the time of King’s 1963 speech, President John F. Kennedy had already been pushed to propose the Civil Rights Act. But it was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. By November-three months after the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), NAACP, United Auto Workers (UAW), Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and other civil rights and labor organizations had gathered along the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pools-Kennedy had been assassinated.

Nonetheless, one year later, the movement behind King won the Civil Rights Act and anti-poverty “Great Society” legislation. In August 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. But ten days before pen was put to paper launching the War on Poverty, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, escalating the U.S.’ war on Vietnam. That’s when King increasingly began to highlight the connection between racism, poverty, and militarism.

“It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both Black and white, through the poverty program,” he said in 1967. “Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated.”

In November 1967, King announced the Poor People’s Campaign, with a plan to descend on Washington the following May. The campaign demanded $30 billion for a program of full employment, guaranteed income, and more low-income housing.

Four weeks before the scheduled mobilization, King was assassinated in Memphis. He was there for a march with mainly Black sanitation workers, striking against unequal wages and working conditions after a horrific incident in which two sanitation workers were crushed to death.

The movement mourned, but it pushed forward. The Poor People’s Campaign carried on under the leadership of King’s successor at the SCLC, Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

Corretta Scott King led a Mother’s Day protest in D.C., beginning two weeks of demonstrations for an Economic Bill of Rights. A six-week tent encampment named “Resurrection City” was built on the national mall. The UAW brought 80 busloads out for the 50,000-strong protests on “Solidarity Day,” held on June 19th-Juneteenth.

On June 4th, as thousands occupied the national mall, Robert Kennedy, the candidate most aligned with the civil rights movement, won the California Democratic Party primary. Later that night, he was shot and killed. Twenty days later, over one thousand police came to the national mall to evict Resurrection City, arresting hundreds of people. Six months later, the ultra-right forces behind Nixon, who railed in his campaign against “rioters” and promised more policing and to protect segregated schooling, would come to power following the November elections.

Four decades later, organized labor and civil rights organizations across the country united to elect the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama. What followed was both the racist Tea Party reaction that gridlocked Congress in 2010 and brought Trump to power six years later.

But a broad labor and left-wing struggle also arose to push a democratic agenda forward-from Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and the #Fightfor15 and a Union to Black Lives Matter, the 2017 Women’s March, and more recent fights to defend abortion rights. LGBTQ equality struggles have escalated, especially in defense of trans people, and a new rising militancy in the labor movement, increasingly led by young workers, is pushing forward union drives across the ountry. The small-d democratic and socialist-oriented electoral struggles that supported Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Stacey Abrams are a part of that mass democratic movement, too.

That’s the context for today’s Poor People’s Campaign.

Its leaders come by their activism naturally. Barber was born two days after the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His parents moved to North Carolina when he was in kindergarten to participate with the school desegregation movement, and he’s been a fighter ever since. The church he pastors, Greenleaf Christian Church Disciples of Christ, is a “123-year-old congregation founded by former slaves.”

“If you follow the James River from this city down to the sea, you will find the place where my African American ancestors first set foot on these shores,” Barber told marchers in Richmond, Va., in 2016 for the Fight for $15 convention. They were in “the capital of the former Confederacy,” he reminded the crowd.

Behind him loomed a statue of Robert E. Lee statue, since removed and cut up in pieces after the enormous 2021 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. “My African American ancestors were brought here to work the land, to build this nation, but they were paid nothing for their labor.”

He spoke of the reversal of the democratic gains of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War: “When African Americans served in the Southern legislatures for the first time, they built a movement with poor whites. … They rewrote the constitutions of every southern state,” and “banned work without pay, demanded equal protection under the law … This wasn’t in the 1960s, this was in the 1860s!” Barber noted that they wrote into those constitutions the right “to the enjoyment of the fruit of your labor.”

“They knew that labor without living wages was nothing but a pseudo form of slavery.”

Theoharis began her activism in college fighting homelessness in Philadelphia after moving there from her hometown of Milwaukee. As a student she became involved in a group called Empty the Shelters, a local affiliate of the National Union of the Homeless. After leading the establishment of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, together with Barber she became a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign in 2017.

“We cannot return to normal,” Theoharis wrote in a statement to President Trump and Congress amid the early days of the COVID-19 emergency. “This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. There are concrete solutions to this immediate crisis and the longer term illnesses we have been battling for months, years, and decades before,” she said.

“We will continue to organize and build power until you meet these demands. Many millions of us have been hurting for far too long. We will not be silent anymore.”

The massive mobilization in Washington, D.C., on June 18th will be proof of that refusal to remain silent.

Join the CPUSA’s “500-Strong” Delegation in D.C. on June 18th. Sign up here.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on June 13, 2022.

Across the country, spots on buses are filling up as thousands of people prepare to head to Washington, D.C., for the June 18th “Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers’ Assembly” organized by the Poor People’s Campaign. Billed as a “moral march on Washington and to the polls” for the November elections, the event will target lawmakers and push them to address what the Poor People’s Campaign calls the “moral, economic, and political crisis” facing the nation.

As the organization points out in its call to the march, even before the coronavirus pandemic, 140 million people in the U.S. were just one emergency away from economic ruin. Since March 2020, hundreds of thousands have died and millions more were pushed to the edge of hunger and eviction. Too many still lack health care and are not paid a living wage, even as billionaire wealth soared by over $2 million during the COVID crisis.

From the west coast to the east and at all points in between, issues like those are pushing people to sign up and join in the organizing. And they’re bringing co-workers, family, friends, and neighbors with them to the nation’s capital. The massive march will occur, appropriately, on Juneteenth weekend, which celebrates the democratic revolution that ended slavery and established Black Reconstruction in the South.

“Over 1,000 people from Los Angeles joined the Poor People’s Campaign for a launch event we had downtown on May 16,” Rossana Cambron, a national co-chair of the Communist Party, told People’s World. “I belong to the Policy and Education Collective, which provides study sessions for the campaign’s Jubilee Platform.”

Co-chaired by Rev. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis, the Poor People’s Campaign began in May 2018 with 40 days of coordinated action at statehouses across the U.S. to confront systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and the war economy.

“After the L.A. action, we had a fundraiser, and raised over $9,000 to send people from Southern California that wanted to go to D.C. but were impacted by poverty,” Cambron said. She described readings of MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech at universities and other community actions up and down the state. “There’s been actions for tenant rights and immigrant rights. Unions have been involved, including UFCW, SEIU and the #Fightfor15, the car wash workers, and clergy from different denominations.”

Steve Noffke, a member of the Michigan campaign’s Coordinating Committee, said there are 120 people signed up in his area for the 15-hour bus ride to D.C. The Michigan campaign has connections with the People’s Water Board and the General Baker Institute, “named after a very pro-left-wing auto worker,” Noffke adds.

“The Poor People’s Campaign is active on issues, especially around clean water for Flint, and we’re starting to see some of the housing groups are organizing.” For the People’s Water Board, the drinking water crisis in Flint was a big catalyst. “The former governor opened up the floodgates for lead to be going into people’s homes. Rather than buying clean water for the people to drink, they went with the cheaper, dirtier water from the Flint River.”

For more than a century, the major capitalist industries in Flint used the river as a toxic dumping site-leaving the mostly Black working families in the area with nothing to drink. “General Motors won’t even use their water,” Noffke said.

“From my point of view, another big issue is voter suppression,” he argued. The Michigan campaign conducted a letter-writing effort against 39 voter suppression bills put forward by the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature.

The bus from Michigan is just one of at least 250 planned across the U.S., and hundreds of union, faith, peace, and environmental justice groups are partners in the D.C. effort, including the AFL-CIO.

The Communist Party USA and Young Communist League Organizing Collectives around the nation are also building what they hope to be a big contingent for the national mobilization. Party members from North Carolina to Texas, California to Maine, and from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit have all committed to being in the nation’s capital.

“Through this time of so much catastrophe, it’s been very hopeful to be able to bring people together to say, ‘Here’s this positive thing that we can do,’” Ohio CPUSA activist Molly Nagin says. “Whether around racism or housing, low-wage workers, healthcare, or the shootings and the way they want to arm teachers, what the Republicans and extreme right are doing right now to this country and have been doing is at a boiling point.”

Nagin has been helping mobilize for the action with local church congregations, a re-entry organization working with people coming out of prison, and a disability rights organization called Breaking Silences.

“I’ve seen it a few times now, that as soon as I mention the march on Washington, the whole collective can get back to work, and there’s less of that depression, overwhelmed, exhaustion mode. It becomes more of ‘Okay, we’ve got something to do.’”

The Poor People’s Campaign is working to continue and build on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was instrumental in bringing together the labor and civil rights coalition that defeated key planks of the Jim Crow counterrevolution. Then, as now, the forces of democracy and of the extreme right were in sharp confrontation.

“We have … come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” King declared at the 1963 March on Washington. “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

The Poor People’s Campaign says it’s that time again.

To that end, two buses from New Haven, Conn., are booked to leave for D.C. The New Haven People’s Center is partnering with Unite Here Local 34 and SEIU 1199NE to represent the struggles unfolding there, issuing an invitation to young people and everyone to participate. During the COVID crisis, many unions and community and faith groups have organized for pandemic pay, better work schedules, measures to improve conditions for low-wage workers, to legally restrict anti-union “captive audience” meetings, and to tax the rich and move funds from military to human needs.

The battle between militarism and people’s needs also characterized the demands of King’s original Poor People’s Campaign. Even though gains like the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and anti-poverty “Great Society” legislation were won, almost immediately the U.S. war against Vietnam was escalated, sucking up public money. That’s when King increasingly began to highlight the connection between racism, poverty, and militarism.

“It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both Black and white, through the poverty program,” he said in 1967. “Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated.”

“That’s what will happen to Build Back Better as a result of the billions being spent sending weapons to Ukraine,” warns Matthew Weinstein of Brooklyn for Peace (BFP). His organization has dedicated two Saturday mornings this month to leaflet in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza for June 18.

“We’ve been working hand in glove with the Poor People’s Campaign. It appealed to us because they don’t skirt around the issue of militarism and war.” As part of the Move The Money coalition, BFP is pushing for a city council resolution that would put New York on record opposing the bloated military budget.

In April, the anti-war coalition participated alongside SEIU 1199, Citizen Action, the United University Professions, the Islamic Center of North America, Physicians for a National Health Program, and others in a march through Wall Street culminating in a community meeting at Trinity Church. There, NYCHA resident Brenda Temple, an activist with the Committee for Independent Community Action, spoke about the need to invest in public housing.

However, “actions are one piece of what we do,” Kelly Smith told People’s World. Smith is one of three New York State campaign chairs and organizes in the NYC region with a big focus on faith communities. The other chairs organize in different parts of the state, including Buffalo, where Poor People’s Campaign activists supported vigils held in the wake of the racist massacre there. “A lot of our work is organizing and working with other groups, learning, doing political education, and canvassing.”

The New York Poor People’s Campaign supports the housing movement and efforts to pass the N.Y. Health Act, a bill for statewide universal healthcare. “At the same time, we’re looking at mass incarceration issues, cash bails, and ecological devastation,” Smith adds. “When we say militarism, we mean that from a national and war framework, and also [the militarization] of our communities, especially Black and brown communities.”

Legislation to help working-class and poor people has faced formidable enemies over the past several years. The racist Tea Party reaction gridlocked Congress during most of Barack Obama’s presidency, and then helped bring Trump to power.

But there’s also been a broad democratic and left-wing struggle that has formed to push a democratic agenda forward-from Occupy Wall Street in 2011, to the #Fightfor15 and a Union, to Black Lives Matter, the 2017 Women’s March, and more recent fights to defend abortion rights, LGBTQ equality struggles, and a new rising militancy in the labor movement, increasingly led by young workers.

The small-d democratic and socialist-oriented electoral struggles that supported Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Stacey Abrams are a part of that mass democratic movement, too.

The Poor People’s Campaign is working to bring many of these strands together in the nation’s capital on June 18, while pointing toward the November elections.

“I’ve been really excited about how many people are cross-pollinating,” Zillah Wesley told People’s World. Wesley is co-chair of the local Poor Peoples’ Campaign in D.C. “One lady came canvassing, coming through WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions) and was surprised by the outpouring of support. You can tell people are really feeling this.”

“[The campaign] really highlights D.C. statehood, that’s why I really vibe with it. We can’t afford to live here, you have to make $31 an hour to survive. The mayor keeps closing off the parks, and the unhoused are getting kicked out.”

Wesley listed off some of the grassroots support. “Homeworkers, healthcare workers, some of the people who work in local restaurants.” Servers and barbacks involved with One Fair Wage are part of the D.C. campaign. Various churches and synagogues are in the mix, as is the Brooklyn Manor Tenants’ Association. “It’s really warming my heart,” Wesley says.

To build support, the D.C. Poor People’s Campaign has been utilizing everything from canvassing and flyering to putting up yard signs to happy hours, even having a float in the Pride parade. A memorial service was held at the Lincoln Memorial “for all the people we lost during COVID because of this jacked-up healthcare system,” Wesley said. “I lost about 40 people, either close friends or family.”

The D.C. campaign is also playing a big role as hosts for the thousands descending on the city, serving dinners and breakfasts, and helping to arrange for accommodations. “All roads lead to here, so we’re trying to give an extravagant welcome.”

“We’re all impacted by the decisions that are made legislatively,” CPUSA co-chair Rossana Cambron explained, regarding the importance of taking these fights to Washington.

“The struggle to end poverty, cut the military budget, end institutionalized racism, the struggle for the environment, and resisting the moral narrative of the evangelicals-all of those things affect people. That’s why it’s key to join forces from the different areas around the country to bring the necessary change that we’re looking for.”

Join the CPUSA’s “500-Strong” Delegation in D.C. on June 18th. Sign up here.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on June 8, 2022.

NEW YORK-Some candidates in the race for New York mayor have embraced important sections of the progressive movements’ demands, but no particular candidate has a clear path to victory. While a few candidates have referenced working-class upbringings, most are entering the political field from upper management positions in the business and non-profit worlds, or as top government administrators. Only two have served as elected officials with records that can be evaluated. None have emerged as leaders from labor or community struggles on the ground.

Working people are confronted in this election with real estate power, a police force controlled by the right wing, and the big business media currently working to smother popular demands for major police and criminal justice reform under a suffocating pile of front-page reports about a supposed epidemic of rising crime.

No incoming mayor, however, will be able to ignore the labor and democratic peoples’ movements. In the event of a Wall Street-supported mayor, they will have to reckon not only with grassroots forces demanding social progress but a likely increase in the number of progressive and socialist-minded city council members. Brad Lander, a consistent voice for labor and community in the city council who is now running for NYC comptroller, also stands a good chance to become the next person to manage the city’s budget.

The mayoral race is a crowded field, and it will also be the first time city voters encounter a brand new ranked-choice voting system in the Democratic primary.

How ranked-choice voting works

The new ranked-choice voting system will allow voters to vote for five of their top favorite candidates, in order of preference. Least favored candidates will be eliminated from the race and voters’ second, third, fourth, and fifth choices will then be automatically applied to the next round if their top choice is eliminated.

The run-offs will be automatic, to prevent the low turnout typical of run-off elections. But this also means that individual voters and organizations will not be able to make a second choice based on a concrete outcome of the first round. Instead, they have to make tactical choices based on projections suggested by available polling data.

The ranked-choice voting system gives working people greater potential to simultaneously lend strength to the most progressive figures in the race while isolating Wall Street-backed figures.

However, lacking broad popular education around the new system, many working-class voters are likely to arrive at the ballot box feeling surprised and confused about their strange looking ballots. At the same time, the extremely large number of candidates in the race undermines the advantages of this new system.

A recent NY1/Ipsos poll shows 16% of New Yorkers are undecided about their number one choice.

Top contenders among 13

Thirteen candidates have thrown their hats into the race, besides others who already dropped out or didn’t qualify. Venture capitalist Andrew Yang and former police officer and current Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams are the top contenders in the race. Both candidates’ campaigns have received major support from Wall Street and are celebrated in the corporate press. Kathryn Garcia also quickly became a top contender after she was endorsed by the New York Times.

Yang has engaged in open attacks on the United Federation of Teachers and advocated strongly for charter schools. Yang became a millionaire during his stint as CEO of GMAT and Kaplan, Inc., for-profit education services corporations that have made their billions through test prep development. Test prep lies at the core of corporate attacks on public education and teachers’ unions. The Alliance for Quality Education warns against a Yang administration, which would represent a major setback for students, teachers, and parents who recently secured major funds in the NYS budget for education after two decades of struggle.

Besides his role as a profiteer in the push to privatize education, Yang began his career as a corporate lawyer and then as Vice President of a healthcare startup. His much celebrated proposals for a “universal basic income” during his Presidential run, which were used as a “silver bullet” solution for every problem, evading popular demands around other issues and serving as the progressive veneer for a corporate program, have been reduced for New York City to a paltry $2000 per year (breaking down to $44 per week) for those living in extreme poverty.

While Adams has support from Wall Street, his is also one of two campaigns receiving a large degree of support from organized labor, including SEIU 32BJ, which is leading the fight to unionize the fast food industry in the city. A poll from early May showed 47% of Black voters supporting Adams as their number one choice. Adams, who is Black and has a working-class background, with experiences of racist police violence himself, entered the force as a transit police officer before it was merged with the New York Police Department, with the intention of advocating for changes to the department. He frequently spoke out as an officer against racist profiling and police brutality. Since that time, he was elected as a New York State Senator, and then as Brooklyn Borough President.

Over the course of the mayoral campaign, however, Adams has launched equal criticisms against the Black Lives Matter movement and the racist police violence it is struggling against. He has also dismissed demands from the movement that significant funds be diverted away from the bloated $6 Billion NYPD budget and toward anti-poverty, mental health, educational, housing, and other community services. An Adams administration may be friendly toward labor but is unlikely to implement community-led demands around housing and police violence.

Kathryn Garcia is a former New York City Sanitation Commissioner for the de Blasio administration and was Chief Operating Officer in the New York City Department of Environmental Protection during the Bloomberg administration. As for labor support, Garcia has only been endorsed by sanitation workers’ unions. García has expressed support for the privatization of the New York City Housing Authority, which many public housing residents have strenuously organized against. She opposes a rent roll-back and advocates for both police reform, and increased police presence in local communities and public transit, claiming that these two goals are not at odds. A García administration might implement some positive measures on environmental issues but would likely prove an obstacle to struggles for the right to housing and an end to racist police violence. García also lacks accountability to organized labor.

Labor and community candidates

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, former non-profit CEO Dianne Morales, and civil rights attorney Maya Wiley, to varying degrees, have committed themselves to implement policies demanded from activists in the labor and Black Lives Matter movements. Stringer and Morales have responded best to housing movement demands. Morales has been the most unapologetic in giving full support to these community demands, despite an imperfect record in some aspects of her professional career, but has not emphasized labor issues in her program.

Initially, Stringer and Morales were two of the strongest progressives in the race. Stringer began his race with a major base of labor support. Morales was backed mainly by grassroots community organizations.

Morales and Stringer each oppose privatization of public housing, preferring to fight to fund it with money from the state and federal government, and each has refused campaign donations from landlords and real-estate developers. Morales supports a rent rollback, and Stringer has said he would consider it.

Scott Stringer, who began a career in politics immediately after college, has served as an elected official on the New York City Council, in New York State Assembly, as Manhattan Borough President, and as New York City Comptroller. He has a fairly consistent record of aligning himself with labor and community organizations and implementing pro-working class and democratic policies and is a household name in city politics. This is most likely the reason why a large chunk of prominent progressive organizations within the labor and democratic movements initially threw their weight behind his campaign.

In addition to Stringers’ large base of union support, Morales and Stringer each initially earned support from labor and community organizations like the Professional Staff Congress, United Auto Workers Region 9A, the Working Families Party (who also endorsed Wiley), New York Communities for Change, Citizen Action, and Sunrise Movement NYC.

Wiley is endorsed by 1199SEIU representing mainly health and home care workers, and more recently by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). She is also endorsed by Democracy for America, New York Progressive Action Network, and Progressive Women of New York (the latter two groups also endorsed Morales, initially.)

Challenges for labor and community

The hopes that Stringer, Morales, and Wiley can collectively isolate the moderating, Wall Street-backed campaigns of Yang, Adams, and Garcia have been greatly damaged by the possibility that Stringer sexually assaulted Jean Kim in 2001 while she was working for his NYC public advocate campaign, and made sexual favors the condition for supporting her future political career. UFCW Local 1500 and all the above mentioned community organizations that originally endorsed Stringer have since withdrawn their support.

Another woman, Teresa Logan, has also come forward in the past week to say that Stringer made unwanted sexual advances toward her while she was working at a bar he co-owned in 1992.

The lawyer involved in both of these cases, Patricia Pastor, has worked for many years for anti-union real-estate construction companies, bringing conflict of interest into the equation. Stringer is the only candidate who has included wage and benefit standards for construction and maintenance workers in his affordable housing program.

The timing of the accusations has closed the door on the possibility of a full investigation, but any potential opportunism on the part of Ms. Pastor does not automatically show that the allegations are untrue. However, it does highlight how lack of representative leadership creates the potential for serious harm to working-class and democratic movements.

If allegations of Stringers’ sexual assault and exploitation are true, he has greatly damaged working people’s prospects in this election, and in either case, Wall Street is celebrating. Unless it becomes clear that Stringer did not engage in sexually exploitive and abusive behavior, he cannot be recommended by progressive organizations for a vote.

Shortly after the Stringer allegations, controversy began to swirl around Morales’ campaign, with vague allegations of abuse against her staff. Details were lacking, the campaign director who made the accusations resigned in protest and encouraged the remaining staff to unionize mid-campaign. Morales initially suppressed this unionization effort, but later said she would negotiate. Some organizations then withdrew their support for Morales, including the Working Families Party, which is now supporting Maya Wiley.

The problems surrounding the Stringer and Morales campaigns have demoralized the city’s progressive community organizations. Organized labor has been less affected by these controversies.

In the wake of these problems, civil rights attorney Maya Wiley is beginning to receive support from organizations that had previously supported Stringer and Morales. Wiley has become a definite contender in the race.

Like Morales’ and Stringers’ programs, Wiley’s program includes re-allocating $1 Billion from the NYPD toward community needs, removing police from schools, mental health, homelessness, and substance abuse issues, decriminalizing sex work, and refusing donations from police unions, and giving greater power to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. She has also uniquely promised to appoint a civilian police commissioner and to “end city funding for legal defense of ‘egregious’ police behavior.”

Wiley opposes privatization of public housing, but also opposes a rent rollback, and will not refuse campaign donations from landlords and real estate developers. Wiley is likely to take positive positions on healthcare and policing, and perhaps on labor, but seems unprepared to fully tackle the housing issue.

The New York State Nurses Association endorsed Wiley as their number one choice, and Adams as their number two.

Other candidates in the race

Other better known contenders include former Citigroup Vice President Ray McGuire and former HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. Donovan served under the Obama administration. He supports the housing privatization plan but has voiced stronger support for police reform measures than Adams, McGuire, and Yang in a Mayoral forum with Communities United for Police Reform.

Lesser known figures in the race include defense attorney Isaac Wright Jr., former JPMorgan Chase managing director Art Chang, attorney Aaron Foldenauer, artist Paperboy Love Prince, and CEO of a small general contracting firm Joycelyn Taylor, who champions her origins growing up as an NYCHA resident with working-class parents. Paperboy Love Prince and Joycelyn Taylor have each put forward a progressive vision for NYC’s future. These, however, have little chance of surviving the first round.

Summary

Given the overall situation, labor and community organizations, and other democratic forces have not been able to establish definite unity in their approach to the Mayoral race.

With Yang and Adams ahead in the polls early in the race, sections of the labor movement likely calculated that an Adams administration would be preferable to Yang, and made a defeat of Yang their main priority. Placing Adams as a 4th or 5th choice and leaving Yang off the ballot would accomplish the same feat.

With Stringer and Morales weakened, Adams remains a top contender with some accountability to labor, despite his pro-cop rhetoric and support from Wall Street. Yang and Garcia do not have the same level of obligation toward labor, and also offer little to no concessions toward police reform, housing, or education justice movements.

Wiley’s support from healthcare workers is also notable, in addition to her support for stronger measures against racist police violence.

A more unified and proactive approach to the elections could help to strengthen labor and community organizations in future election battles. Rather than each union local and community organization separately reacting to those individuals who step forward to run for office on their own initiative, joint effort by the labor movement as a whole, together with community organizations active on the ground around key issues, will be important to collectively identify candidates from their own ranks that will best represent the interests of working-class and poor people. Unified action on the part of labor and democratic movements and organizations can generate the power necessary to install government officials capable of implementing a people’s agenda.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on June 11, 2021.

NEW YORK-In celebration of African-American culture and struggle, People’s World will be supporting an online event broadcast from New York by the We’re Not Going Back Host Committee this Sunday, Feb. 28th at 6:30pm.

This years’ installment of the annual event will feature historian Gerald Horne as its keynote speaker. Dr. Horne, a prolific author who holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, will expand on themes explored in his article “ “ that appeared this week in A Poisonous Legacy , The Nation. “The story of how a slave ship wound up in New York waters also sheds light on how a would-be Manhattan Mussolini received 74 million votes in the presidential election of 2020,” Horne wrote.

“The financing of the slave trade’s illegitimate commerce was sited heavily in Manhattan,” and “the wealth produced by slave labor built not only a region but a nation…. Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street firm whose 2008 bankruptcy was said to have triggered a financial crisis…began by capitalizing lucratively on the production of cotton picked by enslaved labor in Alabama.” Horne argues that “a divided working class, fractured along the lines of those involved in class struggle and those in class collaboration, can hardly prosper.”

Horne will be joined by a panel including Rossana Cambron, the Hon. Robert Jackson, Tamika Mallory, and Rev. West McNeill.

Cambron is the first Mexican-American co-chair of the Communist Party USA and has been active in the peace and immigrant rights movements for many decades.

“Our country is at a , but it has to be fought for and won,” Cambron told turning point moment People’s World in advance of Sunday’s event. “We are at this moment because of the large-scale resistance, organizing, strikes, and uprisings over the last four years. We need to keep up the fight and bring relief to millions who are suffering.”

Tamika Mallory is a longtime activist in the movements for racial and gender equality. Co-founder of Until Freedom, she was also the youngest ever executive director of the National Action Network and co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, the largest single day demonstration in U.S. history.

Speaking to the world from Minneapolis in the wake of the murder of George Floyd this past summer, Mallory exposed white supremacist propaganda undermining the movement for Black lives.

“Young people…are enraged, and there’s an easy way to stop it,” she demanded. “Arrest the cops, charge the cops…. Charge them in every city across America where our people are being murdered…. Do what you say this country is supposed to be about: the land of the free for all. It has not been free for Black people, and we are tired…. America has looted Black people. America looted the Native Americans when they first came here.”

Rev. West McNeill studied at Union Theological Seminary and is a leader of the New York State Poor People’s Campaign, part of the national movement led by Rev. William Barber, which has championed the Fight for $15 and a Union movement, connecting the scourge of poverty wages to structural racism and the war economy. McNeill is also co-chair of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition.

Bronx-born and -raised freedom fighter and author of the books Joy in the Struggle: My Life and Love and Always Bring a Crowd!: The Story of Frank Lumpkin, Steelworker , Beatrice Lumpkin is among the members of the We’re Not Going Back Host Committee. The 102-years-young labor and community activist will be giving the fund appeal at the event, calling on everyone to help build an anti-racist financial war chest to sustain the people’s movements and advance class consciousness in the U.S.

“Some of my most precious political memories are from the East Bronx, East 165th Street, Southern Boulevard and Hunts Point,” she wrote to People’s World. She remembers “a multiracial march in Harlem protesting Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia” in 1935.

“The Communist Party organized Unemployment Councils that saved the unemployed from dying of hunger. I was too young to be in the March 6, 1930, Hunger March that won ‘Home Relief.’ But I was old enough by 1933 to join Unemployment Council protests outside the Relief Office, and we refused to leave until the hungry family we were supporting got food.”

Her husband Frank Lumpkin’s family were originally sharecroppers in Georgia who moved in the Great Migration North to Buffalo, N.Y., and this year’s event will be co-emceed by Christian Parra, a community organizer in Buffalo with Citizen Action.

Susan DiRaimo, outgoing vice president of the Professional Staff Congress, and a member of its executive board, will also serve as a co-emcee.

Cultural contributions will be provided by Emi Augustine, of GAME Rebellion, who will be performing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Independent artist Len Xiang will also appear, performing “A New Day.”

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on February 26, 2021.

HUNTS POINT, Bronx — Members of the Teamsters Local 202 in the Bronx secured a major victory January 23rd after a week-long strike for higher wages and better healthcare provisions.

Workers at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx went on strike Saturday, January 17th, after the employers refused to budge on a stingy offer. One week later, they were celebrating “ the largest raises in the history of their bargaining unit.” It was Local 202’s first strike since 1986.

Even as temperatures dropped into the “code blue” 20s this week, Local 202 kept the 24/7 picket line going. Some members gathered in clusters around makeshift bonfires directly on the pavement and in garbage cans, some danced to the music pumping out of their cars parked along the side, and from a large battery-powered PA. Others stood around in conversation.

“These bosses are filthy rich, and they can’t give us a dollar,” one worker protested. “We’re out here working through bad weather, hot, cold. … They claim that there’s no business,” he added, but said at the supermarket “they were gouging the prices. … There wasn’t that much [on the shelf]; everybody was buying at whatever price,” but “they don’t wanna give us a dollar now, not even a thank you.”

The workers were demanding a $1 an hour raise and better healthcare. “They deserve $4 an hour,” Teamsters 202 Rep. Charles Machadio said. When the companies responded by offering 32 cents, the union voted to walk out. “32 cents is a smack in the face, said another worker. “I’ve been working [here] for 26 years.”

The parked cars with “Stop the War on Workers” signs ended where a line of outhouses began. Along the back of the barricaded area, a table set up with food and supplies was kept replenished by visitors in solidarity.

Essential Workers, Low Wages

The 1400 truck drivers and warehouse workers at the Hunts Point Terminal Market supply NYC with 60% of its produce. It is the largest wholesale produce market in the world, and the workers there provide for 22 million people in 49 states.

As frontline workers, “they can’t telecommute, they can’t phone it in,” Local 202 President Daniel Kane Jr. said. “These folks didn’t become essential during the pandemic. They have been essential forever.”

Hunts Point Produce Market is made up of more than 30 companies represented on a “cooperative” board, led by co-presidents Stephen Katzman and Joel Fierman, with an annual revenue of more than $2 billion. The companies have collected more than $15 million from the government in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans, but those working through the pandemic so that NYC can eat have not been paid what they deserve.

Before the strike, most workers at Hunts Point were making $18 to $21 an hour.

Low wages were not the only problem. “When the pandemic started … they were not giving us anything to protect us. We had to bring our own things, our mask and everything,” Vimel Almonte told People’s World.

Three to four hundred workers have been infected and six workers have died.

Adding insult to injury, Hunts Point Market attempted to increase workers’ contributions to their healthcare.

Solidarity with 202

Local 202 received support from the broader Labor movement, and more will be needed in the battles ahead. All frontline workers deserve wage increases and safe working conditions. Continued support on future picket lines from transportation, teachers, warehouse, health care, and food processing workers will strengthen the union movement as a whole.

“I’m here fighting for my brothers and my sisters,” a construction worker named Jennifer told People’s World on the strike line. “I’m Local 79. This is for 202. They deserve what they’re asking for, even more!”

Christina Gavin, a public school teacher in NYC said, “I’m part of the United Federation of Teachers, and this summer we were threatening to go on a strike. The Central Labor Council said that all of the other unions would stand with us if we do, so I thought it was important to stand [with Local 202] today.”

A locomotive engineer driving a freight train with 21 cars full of merchandise turned around Wednesday night after he saw the strike, saying, “We’re Teamsters, too.”

Ben Rosenfield, a tenant organizer with the Metropolitan Council on Housing, also sent People’s World a statement in solidarity with the workers on behalf of NYC’s oldest citywide tenant association.

“All workers deserve a living wage, especially during a pandemic. We stand in solidarity with the striking Hunts Point Produce Market workers — fair wages and housing justice are part of the same fight. As thousands of New York tenants are currently on rent strike, we recognize the importance and power of labor strikes in the midst of this crisis.”

NYC Councilmembers Brad Lander and Ben Kallos joined Local 202 at their press conference on the first day of the strike. New York Assemblymember Carmen De La Rosa from Washington Heights came out the night of Wednesday, January 20th to support the striking workers, as did NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, US House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others.

Referencing MLK’s legacy at the picket line rally, Ocasio-Cortez said, “On that last day, in that last speech, he was standing up . . . with sanitation workers and [their union], demanding better working conditions, demanding an end to poverty, demanding an end to war, demanding better material and just outcomes for all people in the United States.”

Cops and strikebreakers

One half of the market’s main entrance was claimed by Local 202 during the strike. Often, when strikebreakers drove through the other half, Local 202 members flowed out from behind their barricades, chanting “TWO-OH-TWO” and “Who’s city? Our city!”, blocking the scabs’ cars and trucks and turning them away before returning to their central command.

Police on the scene would counter the workers’ moves, telling the workers they “can’t block,” and making way for the strikebreakers, explaining they were just “doing their jobs.” The produce companies had stated openly that they were coordinating directly with the NYPD and another private security firm to maintain a steady flow of scabs.

Responding to police counter attacks, union leaders would corral the crowd back behind the barricades.

Union meeting on the picket line

“Fighting with those guys out there is nice, but it doesn’t get us anywhere,” Local 202 VP Servedio explained. “That’s not our fight. Our fight is with these rich bastards that are in here,” he exclaimed, pointing toward the market.

“Let’s keep it positive, … we’ll talk, we’ll sing, we’ll dance, we’ll give each other information” about “the new, the 21st Century Labor movement. ’Cause God knows we all need to be educated about it; they don’t teach it in colleges anymore.”

“We can take over that street and I love the militancy of it,” Local 202 President Kane said, “[but] I don’t want something to happen where we got to give up our central command. … Many strikes … are stuck behind barricades somewhere two blocks away. … When we stop the road for 10 minutes and then come back here, that gives us the ability to do it again, but if we don’t do it right, we’ll [lose that] ability.”

Some of the strikebreakers were union members betraying their fellow workers and had been spotted driving through the picket line with their union hat on the dashboard.

“Everyone wants to know what we’re going to do with the scabs,” Kane continued. “Day in and day out when you’re working next to someone who disrespected you like that … they have to feel from you the disconnect, they have to feel like ‘Shame on you.’ “

On Monday night, when five union members were arrested while protesting the strikebreakers, Kane said union discipline helped negotiate their return. “I want you to return my hostages,” he had told the NYPD officers. “I don’t want no one in the system getting locked up for assault, because they didn’t assault anybody.” The workers minimized their confrontations with the police, and the hostages were back on the picket line in a couple of hours.

Kane expressed his anger at the arrests. “It is outrageous that after being called essential heroes … our members were arrested while peacefully protesting for a raise. … The fact that they were arrested on Martin Luther King Day reminds us what side of history we are on.”

The union: a school of class struggle

For some of the workers at the site, this was their first union battle.

“I didn’t know what this union stuff was about, but I’m seeing it first hand right now,” one rank and file worker declared. “[For] everybody that’s here — you’re me, and I’m you. I’m scared. I got a family. … I got bills just like everybody else. I don’t know how long this is gonna last, but I’m here till the end and y’all better be here!

“I want to be able to stand proud when I’m sitting there, picking up a box next to this man or next to this man and say, ‘Yo, how you doing brother, how you feeling today,’ and feel proud.”

A historic victory for Labor

On Saturday morning, January 23rd, news broke out of a tentative agreement, and Local 202 members marched into the Hunts Point Market to vote on a 3-year contract. More than 97% of the workers voted in favor.

By exercising its power to stop production, Local 202 compelled the market to raise workers’ wages by 70 cents in the first year, an additional 50 cents the second year, and another 65 cents in the third, reaching a total $1.85 hourly raise. The increases push most of the workforce past $20 an hour.

Local 202 also defeated the companies’ attempts to increase workers’ out-of-pocket health costs. Instead, the employers themselves will be increasing health fund contributions, and Local 202 also won two additional sick days per year.

“We won because we fought,” Teamsters Joint Council 16 tweeted.

The workers at Hunts Point, striking at a critical point of distribution in NYC, have added another heroic story to the history of the Labor movement, laying the basis for greater confidence on the part of US Labor nationally to claim the right to a better way of life. Combined with the electoral defeat of the extreme right nationally, it sends a positive signal for the Labor and democratic movements in 2021 and beyond.

Originally published at https://www.peoplesworld.org on February 1, 2021.