Author Archive
Super Solidarity over Super Bowl Weekend
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Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.
In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.
The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of workers and told the crowd:
I love people who stand together to fight for what’s right.
Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people—all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country. Read the rest of this entry »
Goal of True Equality Still Challenges Us All
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Forty-nine years ago, on June 23, 1963, tens of thousands of people gathered here in Detroit, only weeks before hundreds of thousands went to Washington to march for jobs and freedom.
In the Detroit speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sowed the seeds of his more widely known speech at our nation’s capital. He described his famous vision of a day when the white sons of former slave owners and the black sons of those who had been enslaved would live together as brothers, judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characters.
Yet we know King’s dream was not merely a dream about friendship, not some story about two unlikely friends communing across a great economic divide. His dream was about true equality—economic, political and social justice.
And he knew that a chief tool for freedom and progress for all people was collective action—whether in the voting booth, in the workplace organized as a labor union or in the shared spaces of this country as nonviolent civil disobedience. It could be at a lunch counter in Alabama or in a park near Wall Street.
Carolers of Justice Sing Out Against the Grinch of the 1%
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This is the season when many dream of a White Christmas. It is the season when the Nativity and the Menorah are both on display in the marketplace. It is the season when Feliz Navidad plays on many IPods and others gather to celebrate Kwanzaa with family and friends.
This is a season when we see excitement in the eyes of the children—as they make their lists and wait anxiously for Santa to make that magical trip from the North Pole and leave their presents under the tree.
For too many of our children, this season will not be magical or merry—for them or their parents. With 22 percent of children living in poverty; 1.5 million families in foreclosure and another 3.5 million behind in their mortgages, facing foreclosures and with 26 million Americans unemployed or underemployed and desperate to work—this is the season of the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Tell the Banks: This Home Is Occupied
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The Occupy Wall Street movement has given a voice to the 99 percent of us who have suffered at the hands of the Big Banks. In cities across the country, “Occupy” protesters have highlighted our nation’s growing economic inequality, high unemployment and the foreclosure crisis that continues to ravage our communities. We saw another inspiring example of the 99 percent standing together in recent days in Atlanta.
Last week, Occupy Atlanta mobilized to protest the foreclosure of the family home of a police officer in Gwinnett County, Ga. The family invited Occupy Atlanta to help publicize the fact that their bank had refused to modify their mortgage to prevent foreclosure. On the eve of the expected foreclosure, protesters set up tents in the front yard and a “This Home Is Occupied” sign on the porch.
Gwinnett County has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, according to data from the website RealtyTrac.com. Last month, more than 1,100 homes in Gwinnett County received a foreclosure filing and the county’s foreclosure rate is more than double the national average. This pain is compounded by the fact that homeowners in Georgia can lose their home in less than two months under the state’s bank-friendly foreclosure laws.
We stand in solidarity with Occupy Atlanta who is protesting our nation’s foreclosure crisis, as well as those state attorneys general like Eric Schneiderman of New York, Beau Biden of Delaware, Kamala Harris of California and others who are fighting to hold the banks accountable. We need a full investigation into law-breaking like “robo-signing” by the Wall Street banks who brought us the foreclosure crisis.
For a Healthy Denver, Vote ‘Yes’ on Initiative 300
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This is a cross-post from Working America.
Right now in Denver, Colo., there is both a jobs and a public health crisis.
Parents are sending their sick children to school. Working adults are unable to take time off and care for elderly parents. Small businesses and taxpayers are spending too much on emergency care. And in restaurants and coffee shops across the city, waitresses and cooks are preparing and serving food while sick.
This fall, the people of Denver have a chance to change all of this by voting ”Yes” on Initiative 300.
Bank of America’s Unconscionable Debit Card Fee Grab
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The Big Banks still don’t get it. Bank of America recently announced that it will start charging its customers $5 per month to use their debit cards. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are considering similar fees on their customers.
For many workers, debit cards have replaced credit cards as a more affordable way to make purchases with their money. Unlike credit cards that carry high interest rates on their balances, debit card transactions transfer money directly from customers’ bank accounts like writing a check.
The Big Banks claim that these new fees are necessary because the Federal Reserve cut the amount that banks can charge merchants each time their customers swipe a debit card. These so-called “swipe fees” are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. Read the rest of this entry »
Obama Administration Requires Banks to Extend Foreclosure Forbearance for Unemployed Workers
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The June jobs numbers, which came out on Friday, show just how dire and desperate the situation is for unemployed workers. As I travel the country, I hear the heart-wrenching stories over and over—including many of those who have been out of work for months and are on the verge of losing their homes. So this week’s White House announcement on helping homeowners with foreclosures is welcome news. Amidst the worsening foreclosure crisis, millions of unemployed homeowners facing imminent foreclosure will finally get some relief through adjustments made by the Obama administration.
Announced on Thursday, the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA’s) Special Forbearance Program will now require mortgage loan servicers to extend the forbearance period from three months to 12 months and remove obstacles making it easier for unemployed borrowers to qualify for the adjustment.
Make the Banks Pay Their Fair Share!
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The foreclosure crisis just keeps getting worse. More than 12 percent of residential mortgage loans are in foreclosure or at least one payment past due. Millions of homes have been needlessly foreclosed on because banks have not modified homeowners’ mortgages to affordable levels. On top of this misery, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) funding for counseling to prevent foreclosures has been cut to zero.
Government efforts to hold banks accountable for the “robo-signing” scandal continue. Last month, federal regulators ordered banks to clean up their mortgage-servicing processes to prevent wrongful foreclosures. Federal and state officials also have proposed that the banks pay $20 billion in penalties. The banks have offered $5 billion, but they object to using the money to reduce mortgage principal amounts.
There may be more news to come on improper foreclosure practices by the banks. A new report shows the HUD Inspector General has found more evidence of wrongdoing:
The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.
Unconscionable Executive Pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
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The top six executives of the two mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, received a combined total of $35.4 million during 2009 and 2010. According to a newly issued report by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the CEOs of both companies alone were paid a shocking $17 million over the past two years.
This level of executive compensation is simply unconscionable at a time of economic recession, financial bailouts and housing price declines. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been bailed out by taxpayers for more than $153 billion to date. The total cost of the federal bailout could rise to as high as $363 billion through 2013.
More disturbingly, these payouts come when millions of working families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac simply have not done enough to modify homeowners’ mortgages to affordable amounts. And some of the mortgage servicers used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac improperly robo-signed foreclosure documents.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were established by our government to help make homeownership more affordable. The top executives of these companies should be paid on the same scale as government regulators, not like Wall Street executives. These payouts show exactly what is wrong with our financial system where corporate greed trumps the public interest.
Jobs Crisis Hits People of Color Hard
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While it is good news that the national unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January, it is important that we look deeper into the statistics to find the real story of this recession.
There is a depression in communities of color. The unemployment rate for African Americans overall is 15.7 percent, double the rate for whites. One in six African American men over age 20 (16.5 percent) is jobless as are 12.9 percent of African American women. The unemployment rate for Hispanics, at 11.9 percent, is nearly three points above the national average.
The job situation for our African American teenagers is dire. Nearly half—45.4 percent—are without jobs. That’s higher than the jobless rate at the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
It is past time for Congress to put job creation at the top of its agenda. America’s communities of color cannot wait for jobs. The strides made by African American workers in the 1990s are being wiped out in this current job crisis, and millions of people of color are no longer making middle-class incomes. As unemployment has grown, local tax bases have shrunk, eroding education and destroying public jobs, public services and public safety—and the communities they serve.
Saving and creating jobs alone won’t solve the ingrained economic problems of African Americans and Hispanics in devastated communities. But it’s the start we need—right now—as we continue rebuilding an economy that works for our streets, not just Wall Street.
