Earlier this week, I made my first visits to Capitol Hill on behalf of Jewish Funds for Justice. Along with Jeremy Burton, we met with staff from NY Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.
The issue: Increasing funding for the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund. This fund, administered by the Treasury Department, was created to "expand the capacity of financial institutions to provide credit, capital, and financial services to underserved populations and communities in the United States".
At a time when banks are closing their doors to a growing number of Americans, CDFIs, which come in the form of community banks, credit unions and other local financing projects, are continuing to serve populations in need. These institutions fund vital projects like low-income housing, urban renewal, small business, and more. Since 1996, New York organizations have been awarded over $150 million from CDFIs since 1996 to work on valuable projects across the state.
For that reason, we are asking Congress to allocate $300 million to the Fund in 2011. This is $50 million more than the Treasury requested, a drop in the bucket compared to the bank bailout, but a political challenge nonetheless. We are following the lead of the Coalition of CDFIs on this issue.
Staff from Senator Schumer and Gillibrand's staff were very receptive. Both appreciated the valuable role that CDFIs have played in New York. However, we are still waiting to confirm their support on this request, and we'll be following up in the next few weeks urging them to send a letter of support to their colleagues.
A strong advocate for Twitter, I find myself regularly defending the tool against the who-cares-what-i'm-eating-for-breakfast critique. Are there people who simply use Twitter to record the mundane aspects of their lives? Probably - but I don't follow any of them.
It's when Twitter records what its users find fascinating that it excels as a utility. Watching topics of interest bubble to the surface in real-time on tools like Ellerdale or Twitscoop is like watching the world think.
Or, at least those parts of the world using Twitter. These days, it's easier to know which parts of the world those are, since Twitter implemented a geolocation system. If you post to Twitter from a device that can recognize your location, Twitter captures that information. So not only can we see what the world is thinking, we can look inside the brains of particular cities.
Check out this great report from the Center for American Progress on the "Toolbest Recession". The report looks at how the recession has affected construction workers and manufacturing jobs, and outlines a plan for revitalizing this sector. Can you guess what they recommend? Cash for Caulkers, announced by President Obama earlier this week.
What if our government decided to look beyond the minimum wage and labor boards to help address unfair wages and labor practices? Lift families out of poverty? Change the nature of workaday life for millions of Americans? Could it shift the national attitude? What if the government led by example, awarding contracts only to businesses that pay fairly and have records unmarred by labor or environmental violations?
My posts on JSpot are often more about growing up in Pontiac, Michigan and my love for the Great Lakes State than about anything Jewish. For the most part, my interest in organizing comes from growing up around the labor movement, hanging out on UAW picket lines with my Uncle, and having a Dad who was a Teamster. It wasn't until I began organizing with congregations that I connected Judaism to organizing.
I knew it was more than just a coincidence that so many Jews were part of the labor movement and other social movements in the US, but it wasn't until I heard how explicitly connected religion and social change were for leaders in the churches I was organizing that I began to ask myself what Judaism had to say. So I did what any good Jew might do, I bought some books. I dove into learning about Judaism, which baffeled my parents, and started attending synagogue, which they thought they'd saved me from in my childhood. Eventually I decided I wanted to bring together these two pieces of myself: organizing and being Jewish. I moved to New York to work with Jewish Funds for Justice over a year ago and am now part of launching the Community Organizing Residency, COR. COR is a six-month, paid residency for people from different faith backgrounds who want to make community organizing their profession. More information about COR is below and on the website: rootedinfaith.org
Kanye-inspired hyperbole aside... found this great easy-to-use website (povertyscorecard.org) created by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. Has the voting records of every member of Congress on 18 House and 14 Senate bills/amendments. Each member is given an overall grade based on their votes.
I looked at it briefly. Interesting to note a few things:
1. Dems usually score much higher than Republicans. But not always....
2. A decent number of Republicans score higher than 50%. A few are higher than 60%. Only one is higher than 70% - Chris Smith of New Jersey.
3. Some billls/amendments draw overwhelming bi-partisan support, others bi-partisan opposition. Interesting to see where the cleavages are, and what that says about the poverty policy consensus.
JFSJ does service learning trips with Nat Turner, at the School at Blair Grocery in New Orleans. Nat is featured in this new film, Soul Food Junkies. This trailer raises important questions about food justice, while whetting my appetite.
Yesterday, President Obama renewed his committment to the "Cash For Caulkers" program, more formally known as Homestar. This exciting program will offer American's rebates to retrofit their homes with energy efficient technology. If passed into law, it will create over 100,000 jobs, help Americans save millions of dollars on energy bills and decrease our impact on the environment.
However, with partisanship raging and an election looming, there might be a fight ahead for this program, and many like it. Jewish Funds for Justice believes these types of programs are critical to ensuring that our economicic recovery is green and equitable, creating good green jobs for everyday Americans, and we'll be tracking this policy and looking for ways to help.
Here are more details on the program from the White House below, we'll keep you posted.
The Gulf Coast can't catch a break, NFL aside. When what the region needs most is investment and opportunity, the economic crisis continues to stunt available options.
And now, a new hurdle. Because of a stipulation in one of the first laws designed to help the area rebuild, affordable housing projects must be completed by the end of 2010 in order to receive a tax credit. In other words, a developer seeking tax relief for a project building affordable homes needs to go from design to occupancy in ten months - a process that normally takes a year-and-a-half.
In an editorial today, the New York Times advocates a solution: move the occupancy date out until 2012, allowing investors more time to see the projects to completion. From the editorial:
Unless Congress moves quickly to pass it, the Gulf states could potentially lose financing for more than 70 housing projects and 6,000 units of affordable housing. The loss would be especially devastating for New Orleans, which is desperately short of housing for the low-income workers who are essential to the city’s service economy.
Reasonable people can disagree on other efforts to reduce the impact of the faltering economy, but it's hard to see where opposition could arise in this effort. In the end, the primary stumbling block may come from an arena outside the realm of political machination: time.
