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.

WORKERS' RIGHTS: CPD Releases Landmark Report on Private Equity

This month, CPD released Pirate Equity: How Wall Street Firms are Pillaging American Retail, 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, Bloomberg (and Bloomberg Radio), Vox, The Washington Post, Forbes, and more. Read more on our blog.

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. 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. 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. Read more on blog.

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, and one it threatens to exacerbate with continued marketing of its facial recognition software 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. 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—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.

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 actions all over the nation and Make the Road New Jersey occupied Congressional offices 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 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 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.

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:

New Jersey has long lagged behind in wage and hour protections for workers. A report released 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.

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.”

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.”

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.