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Dear John,
Tennessee has been in the news a lot over the past few weeks, with each new headline bringing a whirlwind of emotion. From grief and anger following the Nashville school shooting, to outrage and disbelief after Reps. Pearson and Jones were expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting gun violence. Although the two lawmakers have since been reinstated, the whole incident really highlights a troubling reality that has been taking shape in Tennessee and other states across the country.
I’m talking about harmful corporate influence into state law. What we’re seeing in Tennessee, Colorado, Michigan and other states is that when people try to organize and fight for things in their communities like affordable housing or better pay, they are often blocked by bans at the state level. These bans don’t materialize out of nowhere—they are introduced and pushed by lobbyists and big corporations that benefit directly from the things that harm and exploit our communities, like rent control bans, minimum wage restrictions, and more.
Corporate interference into state law is so powerful that it actually shapes how a legislature can operate. Take Rep. Justin Pearson, who is a fierce advocate for racial, economic, and climate justice and was instrumental in fighting the proposed Byhalia pipeline in Memphis, TN. Pushing to protect communities, whether from gun violence or environmental pollution, often means going up against powerful lobby groups. As infuriating as the representatives’ expulsions were, it was also unsurprising given the outsized power that corporations and big industry groups have in the Tennessee legislature.
This is not unique to Tennessee. State bans are increasing across the country, with corporations hiding behind industry groups and lobbyists who then pressure lawmakers to do their bidding. What we end up with are laws that are built to serve corporations, and not our communities. Our job is to expose the greedy corporations that are driving harmful state bans, take our fights directly to their doorstep, and then force our elected leaders to choose between corporate interests or the everyday people who they have sworn to represent and serve.
This fight will be a long one and there may be more incidents similar to what happened in Tennessee up ahead, but the more we hone in on greedy corporations and their overreach into our democracy, the better we can fight them and ensure our institutions serve our communities.
Lauren Jacobs [[link removed]] Onward,
Lauren Jacobs
Executive Director
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Behind the Scenes: Dot's Home Live [[link removed]]
Last month our Creative Lead, Alonso, traveled to Detroit, MI and went behind the scenes of Dot’s Home Live [[link removed]] , a brand new performance adapted from the award-winning video game "Dot’s Home." The interactive show transforms the original video game into a collective experience, where audience members are pulled into the world of Dorothea (Dot) Hawkins as she time travels to key moments in her family’s history and unravels the impact of racist housing policies that her family has endured for generations.
Read more about Dot's Home Live [[link removed]]
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Steal Estate: A new interactive storytelling project [[link removed]]
We’re excited to announce the launch of Steal Estate [[link removed]] , a new multimedia experience that we co-produced with the Rise-Home Stories Project. Through audio testimony, photos, illustrations, and additional evidence, listeners and viewers follow the stories of four protagonists as they unravel the intricate web of corporate interests, predatory policies, and unethical practices that have enabled the systematic theft of homes in Black and Brown communities for generations.
Explore Steal Estate [[link removed]]
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Building a strong, multiracial democracy and a caring economy in Minnesota
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From sharing testimonies to rallying at the State Capitol, ISAIAH members and community leaders have been mobilizing and winning this legislative session. They’ve been pushing for funding for paid leave, childcare, equitable transportation, affordable health insurance, and more. They won big with the passage of the Democracy for the People Act, which strengthens people’s freedom to vote, increases voting access for all, and levels the playing field when it comes to spending in elections. Just last week they celebrated a comprehensive transportation bill passing in the House and MinnesotaCare as a public option passing in the Senate, which expands access to affordable healthcare to all Minnesotans, including undocumented folks.
Ensuring LA tourism workers are healthy and housed
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Earlier this month, LAANE supported the launch of the Tourism Workers Rising campaign, with SEIU-USWW and UNITE HERE Local 11, where over 100 tourism workers and coalition partners joined a press conference with Los Angeles Councilmember Curren Price. Councilmember Price introduced a motion to the LA City Council proposing to raise the wage for airport and hotel workers to $25 an hour in 2023, increasing to $30 by 2028. As LA gears up to host global events like the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, the city is also grappling with an unprecedented housing crisis, low wages, and a rising cost of living. The Tourism Workers Rising campaign seeks to ensure that these tourism workers—the majority of whom are people of color and serve as the backbone of the city’s major economic engine—are healthy, housed, and thriving.
Fighting for health and safety standards at Amazon
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Missouri Workers Center (MWC) has been supporting the STL8 Organizing Committee as they campaign for better health and safety conditions at the Amazon warehouse. Last month, MWC leader Jennifer Crane spoke on a panel at the Council of Institutional Investors Spring Conference, calling on them to vote in support of a resolution at Amazon’s Shareholder Meeting requiring the company to submit to a full health and safety audit. Meanwhile, the STL8 Organizing Committee, with support from MWC organizers, has been circulating a petition, educating co-workers on OSHA’s recent citations [[link removed]] , and earlier this week presented a list of demands around water safety and potability at the warehouse [[link removed]] .
Making corporations pay what they owe Pittsburgh communities
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Pittsburgh United has been campaigning for the Mayor’s office to investigate the tax-exempt status of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center [[link removed]] (UPMC), the city’s largest landowner and property owner that avoids paying millions in taxes each year. While UPMC rakes in profits and saddles patients with medical debt, Pittsburgh United members and allies are fighting for UPMC to pay their fair share of taxes, respect workers' rights to form a union, and provide free healthcare to their patients. They’ve gathered more than 1,000 petition signatures [[link removed]] and over 200 testimonials showing how UPMC fails to behave like a “purely public charity,” and instead needs to pay what they truly owe to communities.
Informing Philly voters for the upcoming mayoral election
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Earlier this month, POWER Interfaith hosted a nonpartisan Faith & Safety Mayoral Candidate Forum in West Philadelphia where community members were able to question candidates directly about a broad range of issues like gun violence, housing, education, climate initiatives, and more.
Resisting community displacement and winning equitable transit in Seattle
[link removed] [[link removed]] After a long and difficult fight over Seattle’s new light rail expansion plan, Puget Sound Sage and coalition partners celebrated a major victory [[link removed]] with the Sound Transit board’s decision to move forward with the north and south station option. This alternative, which reduces the risk of displacing the Chinatown International District (CID) community, also secures the future growth and development of the CID neighborhood as an equitable, affordable, and sustainable place for immigrants and working-class communities of color to live and thrive for generations to come.
Fighting against greedy corporations in Nashville
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Stand Up Nashville has been mobilizing to make sure that a new stadium deal for the Tennessee Titans does not come at the expense of community needs. They have organized petition drives calling on the Nashville Metro Council to slow down the stadium deal and analyze public costs, hosted community meetings where residents learned about the details of the deal, and just last week rallied at Metro Council to demand a public hearing on the stadium vote. Stand Up Nashville is demanding real investments in quality schools, affordable housing, good jobs, transit, and other important priorities that create safe, thriving communities.
Rallying with laid off Meta cafeteria workers
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Working Partnerships USA, Silicon Valley Rising, and labor groups marched with cafeteria workers who were laid off at Meta’s cafeteria in Menlo Park, CA. While other full-time employees receive fair severance packages and temporary health coverage, the 100 cafeteria and kitchen workers who were laid off overnight received little to no safety net. Workers shared their stories and marched to Meta HQ in Menlo Park where they demanded that the corporation do right by their workers [[link removed]] and provide a proper safety net including severance pay, extended healthcare coverage, and recall rights.
Pushing for displaced worker protections in California
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Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) supported the launch of the Displaced Worker Transfer Rights Act (SB 627), which protects workers when large chain corporations close the location where they work. The bill requires corporations to notify employees in advance of a closure, and offer workers transfer opportunities at nearby locations when jobs become available. At the launch event, workers who lost their jobs due to store closures shared how displacement protection could have helped them.
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"Driving Danger: How Uber and Lyft Create a Safety Crisis for Their Drivers." The Strategic Organizing Center just released a new report detailing how app-based drivers, particularly drivers of color, face harassment and violence on the job. Read the full report [[link removed]] .
“Fossil fuels have no place in California’s pollution-free truck standard.” Odette Moran Lopez, Oxnard Organizer for Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), shares how warehousing, industrial projects, and polluting diesel trucks are harming low-income and communities of color across the state, and how we can fight back. Read their story in the Ventura County Sta r [[link removed]] .
“Opinion: Building the Movement to Expand Voting Rights.” Brian Fullman, lead organizer with ISAIAH, co-authors this piece on how restoring the right to vote for incarcerated people is as much a voting rights issue as it is a racial justice one, in that it re-empower people and communities who have been harmed by racist policy-making. Read the full op-ed in Newsweek [[link removed]] .
“Amazon’s worker safety hazards come under fire from regulators and the DOJ.” Missouri Workers Center leader Jennifer Crane shares how she works through physical pain at an Amazon warehouse in St. Peters, a story backed up by data in a new report on Amazon’s injury crisis released by the Strategic Organizing Center. Read more via CNBC [[link removed]] .
“Amazon warehouse work is getting safer but still more dangerous than 2020.” Daniel Rivera, an Amazon employee and member of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, has been injured on the job and was given a final warning after advocating for better air circulation inside the warehouse. Read more in The Seattle Times [[link removed]] .
“Stop-and-frisk is a failed public policy.” As stop-and-frisk becomes a campaign issue in the upcoming 2023 elections in Philadelphia, POWER's Director of Political Strategy Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler joins the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s Speaking Freely podcast to talk about the harms and failures of this police tactic. Listen to the full episode [[link removed]] .
“The US Warehouse Capital Boomed During the Pandemic. Now It’s Facing a Slowdown.” Melissa Ojeda and Sheheryar Kaoosji with Warehouse Worker Resource Center reflect on the impact that the warehousing industry is having on the people, communities, and environment in the Inland Empire. Learn more via Bloomberg [[link removed]] .
“Op-ed: San Jose mayor’s impossible budget plan abdicates leadership.” Bob Brownstein, strategic advisor at Working Partnerships USA, advocates for a city budget that centers the needs of working people, families, children, and the most vulnerable communities such as unhoused residents. Read more in the San Jose Spotlight [[link removed]] .
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We do not have any open positions on our national team at the moment, but our affiliates are hiring! Check out open positions across our network [[link removed]] .
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