The latest updates from CPD


CPD's People's Convention Brings 1,800 Community Leaders to Detroit


Photo by LaDon Love


If there is one event that encapsulates what the Center for Popular Democracy Network is, it’s the People’s Convention. Last week, 1,800 grassroots leaders, organizers, elected officials, movement artists and leading national progressive voices made the trip to Detroit, Michigan for two days of transformational learning, action, and collective power-building. CPD Network affiliates and their members boarded buses, planes, and trains to unify and animate our bold and imaginative commitment to a popular democracy— collective decision-making, conversations across differences, and fearless visioning of a future where we all have the freedom to thrive. Read about the event in [Michigan Advance]([link removed]), [Detroit Metro Times]([link removed]), [Fox 2 Detroit]([link removed]), and [The Detroit News]([link removed]). [Check out photos of the event here!]([link removed])


During the convention, CPD’s sister organization CPD Action worked with our network to unanimously ratify a network-wide federal platform that, for the first time, leverages the state and local power of the CPD Network into a combined issue-based platform for federal advocacy. It includes visionary policies and principles designed to stop the extraction of wealth from our communities and the corruption of our democracy, and calls for redress for historic policy decisions that maintain and reinforce structural inequality, and to guarantee fundamental human rights for all.


CPD organizers and affiliate leaders conducted intense workshops and skill-building sessions with top experts around campaign themes and communications practices, and we took to the streets in Detroit with a peaceful and powerful march and canvass operation. Together, we built community to create the fiercest organizing force this country has ever seen. we will need it to meet and beat the historic challenges we face.

 

CPD is grateful to all of our affiliates for joining us in Detroit. We especially want to thank Detroit Action for welcoming the CPD Network to their hometown. CPD would also like to thank our generous sponsors: JPB Foundation, Communications Workers of America, Resource Generation, Democrats.com, Working Families Party, ActBlue, United Automobile Workers, Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector, and People’s Action.

 

The People’s Convention demonstrated that popular democracy is beautiful. We’re making shared decisions about how we build a future of collective liberation and modeling the world that we want to create: one where all people can participate fully and freely in our economy, government, and society. Join us to support our network—53 affiliates across 131 cities in 34 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia—to center and activate the communities most impacted by injustice and inequity. [Please make a meaningful donation today!]([link removed])
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TOP PRESS HIGHLIGHTS


Local Housing Policy Goes National

NextCity, 07/11/2019

"But Dianne Enriquez, director of the Opportunity Campaign at the Center for Popular Democracy, thinks candidates could spend even more time talking about housing. The Center has met with several campaigns to push them to include more progressive policies in their housing platforms, Enriquez says. One thing that hasn’t gotten much focus is regulating private equity firms that have bought up mobile-home parks and foreclosed loans across the country, she says. Beyond that, she says campaigns should be focusing on supporting local policies like tenant protections and investing in public and subsidized housing at the national level.†[Read more.]([link removed])


French Bank Fifth to Pull Out of the Private Prison Industry

Forbes, 07/15/2019

“Yet, as revealed by this data brief by In the Public Interest, Public Accountability Initiative, and the Center for Popular Democracy, the Group's US subsidiary led a syndicate that granted two lines of credit to the American private prison company GEO Group for $1.7 billion in 2017, and held 853,000 shares of the company in the first quarter. Additionally, BNP has appeared in GEO Group annual reports as a credit institution dating back to 2010.†[Read more.]([link removed])


Private equity’s role in retail has decimated 1.3 million jobs, study says

The Washington Post, 07/24/2019

“More than 1.3 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past decade as a result of private equity ownership in retail, according to a report released Wednesday. That includes 600,000 retail workers, as well as 728,000 employees in related industries. Overall, the sector added more than 1 million jobs during that period.Women and people of color have been disproportionately affected by the layoffs as debt-ridden retailers closed thousands of stores, according to the report by six progressive nonprofit organizations and workers’ advocacy groups, including Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Popular Democracy.†[Read more.]([link removed])


Thousands to march for 'progressive federal agenda' in downtown Detroit's streets

Detroit Metro Times, 07/26/2019

“What does a progressive future look like? Tracey Corder, director of federal action and racial justice for the Center for Popular Democracy, says organizers are "leaning into the idea of abundance" and redirecting resources from the rich to the people. "We have all that we need to live abundant lives — we can have a Green New Deal, we can have Medicare for All, a just immigration system, if we are able to reprioritize where we're putting our money," Corder says...†[Read more.]([link removed])


[ READ MORE NEWS FROM JULY](#News)


WORKERS' RIGHTS: CPD Releases Landmark Report on Private Equity


This month, CPD released [Pirate Equity: How Wall Street Firms are Pillaging American Retail]([link removed]), a report that details how Wall Street firms have been driving economic inequality in our country for decades. As we’ve seen time and time again, Wall Street private equity and hedge fund managers load companies with debt, sell the best assets for personal gain, and leave hundreds of thousands of working people behind.

 

Huge swaths of the retail sector, media companies, grocery stores, nursing homes and hundreds of thousands of our homes and apartments have all come under the control of Wall Street predators, bringing disaster to communities across the country. Millions more people who depend on fair and functioning markets, including investors, pensioners, and small businesses lose out. Women and people of color make up many of the victims of these practices. It’s a massive extraction of wealth from millions of Americans, all to make Wall Street billionaires even richer.

 

Released in conjunction with the Stop Wall Street Looting Act that was introduced to the House and Senate this month, the publication was created in partnership with United for Respect, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Hedgeclippers, and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. The report made headlines in by [NPR Weekend Edition Saturday]([link removed]), [Bloomberg]([link removed]) (and [Bloomberg Radio]([link removed])), [Vox]([link removed]), [The Washington Post]([link removed]), [Forbes]([link removed]), and more. [Read more on our blog.]([link removed])

 


VICTORY: Make the Road NV Wins Big on Multiple Issues


Launched less than two years ago, Make the Road Nevada (MRNV) has already made a big impact. MRNV has worked hard to develop a strong membership base, cultivate community leaders, and build its collective power. In Nevada’s 2019 legislative session, this grassroots movement translated into a stunning series of progressive policy wins in the areas of economic and housing justice, and youth and immigrant rights.

 

For workers, MRNV anchored Time to Care Nevada, a statewide economic justice coalition which led the campaign to [successfully pass the state’s first paid sick days legislation]([link removed]). This legislation grants employees at businesses with 50 or more employees five days of earned paid sick time a year. Over 400,000 workers across the state are expected to benefit from this legislation. MRNV also helped spearhead the successful effort to increase the minimum wage, bringing it up to $12 an hour over five years, beginning in January 2020. This is the first increase to the state’s minimum wage in over a decade.

 

On immigrant justice, MRNV partnered with the Nevada Immigrant Coalition to pass statewide legislation that will [allow workers to become certified in more than 50 professions, regardless of their legal status]([link removed]). This will provide immigrant families with a pathway to stable jobs and professions. MRNV also worked to pass statewide legislation that [will allow former residents of Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories to use their ID card to obtain a Nevada driver’s license]([link removed]). [Read more on blog.]([link removed])


CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY: CPD Network Leads Charge Against Amazon for Ties to ICE, Workers' Rights Violations, and Monopoly Power


July shaped up to be a pivotal moment for the anti-Amazon campaign, demonstrating the intersectional issues and diverse power at the center of the CPD Network. Last month brought together several threads of the work, particularly, the campaign against corporate backers of hate who empower ICE deportations and surveillance with federal oversight on antitrust laws.

 

CPD affiliates Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, and Make the Road New Jersey organized a series of actions to coincide with key Amazon-related events. The protests come as ICE continues to raid and terrorize communities across the country, trap migrant children in inhumane environments at the border, and rip families apart—a humanitarian crisis that Amazon has [directly helped fuel]([link removed]), and one it threatens to exacerbate with continued marketing of its [facial recognition software]([link removed]) to ICE officials.

 

On July 11, as Amazon Web Services held its annual summit, immigrant rights groups, tech workers, and Amazon warehouse workers rallied in the streets outside of the Javits Center to demand that [Amazon end its relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency]([link removed]). The demonstrators, led by a growing coalition of organizations (including Make the Road NY, New York Communities for Change, Mijente, ALIGN, Tech Workers Coalition and others) demanded that [Amazon Web Services—which serves as the Department of Homeland Security’s’s database for immigration case management systems]([link removed])—stop providing its cloud computing software to DHS that allows the agency to store biometric data on 230 million people, including fingerprints, face, and iris records. [Read more on our blog.]([link removed])


IMMIGRANT RIGHTS: CPD Network Organizes Actions Against Backers of Hate and Moves Banks to Stop Financing Detention Centers


Over the months of June and July, CPD and our affiliates have responded to the Trump administration’s deportation threats against immigrant communities. The CPD Network continues to work to educate and mobilize our members to fight back and hold the corporations enabling this hateful agenda accountable for their actions. To prepare for the incoming wave of ICE raids and activity, our affiliates from Make the Road Nevada, Action NC, Sunflower Community Action, Make the Road New York, and UNÉ, along with others brought members together for know-your-rights workshops. During the first week of July, the CPD Network also joined [#ClosetheCamps]([link removed]) actions all over the nation and Make the Road New Jersey [occupied Congressional offices]([link removed]) across that state.

 

Shortly after, CPA affiliate CASA took to the streets on July 5 to protest the proposed raids by the Trump administration. Over the next two weeks, CPD worked with Make the Road NJ to bring Yazmin Suarez the mother of Mariee, a toddler who died in a private detention center, to a congressional hearing on Kids in Cages. Yazmin offered [powerful testimony]([link removed]) and helped bring awareness to the abuses occurring in detention centers. That same week, the powerful testimony was followed by eight CPD affiliates joining more than 800 other activists to lead [20 Lights for Liberty]([link removed]) vigils all over the world in protest against the conditions on the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

At the same time, CPD and the Corporate Backers of Hate Campaign continued to fight against immigrant detention on a different front, holding the banks that profit from the Trump administration hateful agenda through private detention centers accountable for their investments. [Read more on our blog.]([link removed])


VICTORY: Make the Road NJ Helps Pass Landmark Anti-Wage Theft Legislation


After years of Make the Road NJ’s organizing, the New Jersey State legislature passed landmark anti-wage theft legislation (A-2903/S-1790) on June 27. Once signed into law, New Jersey’s wage and hour protections will be among the strongest in the country and will protect thousands of workers against theft of their minimum and overtime wages. This victory comes on the heels of New Jersey’s phased-in $15 minimum wage hike that kicked in on July 1. Anti-wage theft legislation will help ensure that all workers are paid for their work.

 

Highlights of the legislation include:

 
• Increased damages and six-year statute of limitations: Workers who experience wage theft will now be able to collect up to 200% in liquidated damages. Workers can now collect unpaid wages for up to six years (up from two years). Employers that fail to pay up on wage violations will be at risk of losing their business licenses in the state. • Joint liability: Employers who subcontract out to firms that steal from their workers will be held jointly liable, making it harder for companies to evade liability. • Strong anti-retaliation provisions: The legislation significantly strengthens anti-retaliation provisions, protecting workers from being fired for speaking out about unpaid wages. [Click here to learn about MRNJ member Felix L., who complained about being paid below the minimum wage and was left at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center by his employer in retaliation.]([link removed]) This legislation will put a stop to such practices.
 

New Jersey has long lagged behind in wage and hour protections for workers. A [report released]([link removed]) just days prior by the National Employment Law Project placed New Jersey in the lowest or “third tier†in terms of enforcement protections against wage theft. This legislation will now place the state at the top of the list. [Read more on our blog.]([link removed])
[]([link removed])

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: Emerging Leaders Convene in New York City


In June 2018 at CPD CAMP, the Center for Popular Democracy launched a year-long cohort of emerging organizational leaders, new executive directors, and senior staff whose mission was to envision and ensure the strong implementation of robust organizing programs. Hailing from 16 organizations across our network, these bold new leaders dug into their leadership practices, learning how to cultivate strong and supportive workplace cultures, deepening supervision and management commitments, and setting ambitious goals for themselves, as well as for their organizations and communities.

 

This coordinated effort helped them to articulate shared theories and practices for a stronger movement ecosystem. This intermovement work and visioning is central to the goals of the CPD Network as we try to generate progressive futures that span diverse social justice causes. The group convened again in New York City this month.

 

Leo Murrietta, Executive Director of Make the Road Nevada wrote, “I'm so thankful to be able to participate in this group of beautiful people who are trying to steer their ships while they're building them just like I am.â€

 

Angela Lang, Executive Director of BLOC said, “Through emerging leaders, I leaned in to my role as a new executive director and figured out how to be most effective and intentional in my leadership style to take my organization to the next level.â€

 

This group created a generative and rich learning environment fueled by their appreciation for and curiosity about each other and their work. Through informal accountability, relational ties, and peer coaching, these leaders tightened the texture of our network and forged deep bonds amongst themselves across their disciplines. [Read more on our blog.]([link removed])


[]IN THE NEWS

Continued From Above


[“It’s a slap in the face": Liberal organizers are not happy with Pelosi dissing AOC]([link removed])

Mother Jones, 07/11/2019


[Elizabeth Warren unveils sweeping immigration plan to reverse Trump’s ‘policy of cruelty and division’]([link removed])

The Boston Globe, 07/11/2019


[Lights For Liberty Vigils Across The U.S. Call For An End To Migrant Detention Centers]([link removed])

Refinery29, 07/13/2019


[Here are all the ways people are protesting Amazon on Prime Day]([link removed])

Fast Company, 07/15/2019


[Anti-ICE Activists Target PNC Bank for Funding Private Detention Centers]([link removed])

Pacific Standard Magazine, 07/16/2019


[Trump’s packed Supreme Court backs ‘forced arbitration’ that bars workers from taking abusive bosses to court]([link removed])

Raw Story, 07/17/2019


[Does Defunding Work? $1.9 Billion Later... Private Prisons Seem to Think So]([link removed])

Forbes, 07/19/2019


[Ignoring Donald Trump's Racism Will Not Make It Go Away]([link removed])

HuffPost, 07/19/2019


[Trump Sets the Terms on Racial Division. Do Democrats Know What to Do?]([link removed])

The New York Times, 07/21/2019


[Hundreds of Thousands of Protesters Expected in Puerto Rico as Gov. Ricardo Rosselló Says He Won't Resign. Here's What to Know]([link removed])

Time Magazine, 07/22/2019


[Corruption, Mismanagement, and Disrespect Fuel Puerto Rico Protests]([link removed]) []([link removed])

The Real News Network, 07/22/2019


[National liberal activists holding Detroit convention this week]([link removed])

Michigan Advance, 07/24/2019


[Private equity firms kill 600,000 retail jobs, study says]([link removed])

Bloomberg, 07/24/2019


[As Puerto Rico Erupts in Protests, “La Junta†Eyes More Power]([link removed])

The Intercept, 07/24/2019


[Piden a jueza Swain paralización de procesos de quiebra]([link removed])

El Vocero, 07/24/2019


[The workers bearing the brunt of retail’s struggles? Primarily women and people of color.]([link removed])

Vox, 07/26/2019


['Activist' Rep. Tlaib tells grassroots leaders change starts with them]([link removed])

Detroit News, 07/27/2019


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