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Moving Forward!
Across the
country, Partnership organizations are waging campaigns around economic
development with the goal of building power for workers, low-income
families and diverse communities in our cities. The form these campaigns take varies
tremendously, but they share a crucial commonality - the commitment to
organizing and building capacity for labor and community partners.
Every victory is
important, but no one victory can rebuild the broken economic systems
that trap so many of the people involved in our coalitions.
Transforming urban economic development and harnessing it as a tool for
rebuilding and sustaining the urban middle class takes long-term,
ongoing systemic change. The
only way to get there is to develop strong organizing programs that
enhance the capacity of our allies, recruit and develop new leaders,
and regenerate institutions whose power has waned. Partner organizations have developed
creative ways of tackling these challenges and in this month's
newsletter we highlight the organizing and base-building components of
this work.
Our work is
local. Partner organizations incorporate organizing and base-building into
their campaigns differently depending on the local landscape. In Denver, the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC)
united community partners around community benefits for the Gates
Rubber Factory, strengthening Save Our Section 8 (affordable housing
residents) in the process. LAANE
continues to demonstrate how comprehensive campaigns not only create
thousands of quality jobs and other community benefits for working
families, but change political landscapes of entire metropolitan
regions. In just over a decade,
the work of LAANE and UNITE-HERE has transformed one of the largest
cities in this country into a model on how labor, community, and local
government can work together to expand the middle-class. Meanwhile, Community Labor United
consciously seeks to build a model that increases the power of Boston's community organizations for long-term systemic
change.
These are only a
few examples of how our movement moves beyond low-road business
practices, profit over accountability, and disregard to the plight of
workers in this country. Our
work thrives because it is founded on a vision and principles that
address injustices in holistic and comprehensive ways. Our work thrives because its very
nature depends on broad-based coalitions of labor, community,
environmental, and interfaith leaders coming together to speak with one
voice, united, and determined to strengthen each other's
organizations. By building a
lasting base for change and accountability in regions across the
country, the Partnership is setting the stage for campaign
opportunities that progressive organizations can tap, strengthen, and
own.
With so much
work to be done in our communities to address working poverty, lack of
affordable health care and housing, and deteriorating neighborhood
services, we have no choice but to align strategically our energies,
resources, and membership bases for a real shot at holding our local
governments and business leaders accountable. Only by organizing can we make the
change we want to see in our communities possible.
Solidarity!
Partnership Executive Director
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CLU: Building Power Through Base-Building Organizing
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By Lisa Clauson
From its inception in late 2004, Community Labor
United (CLU) has been equally constructed and shaped by base-building
community organizations and labor unions. Months of one-on-one meetings with
community and labor organizations in the Greater Boston area led to the
founding of CLU as a coalition of organizations from both the labor and
community sectors who share an organizing constituency of low and
moderate income people and who share a vision of building power for
this constituency through expanding base building organizing.
CLU
is fundamentally focused on growing new organizing in our region and
winning improvements and power for low and moderate-income people. We believe in building power through
strengthening base-building organizations of low and moderate-income
people. In addition to creating
concrete benefits for our constituency, our campaigns increase
organizing opportunities for unions and community organizations. We aim to build power regionally
through increasing our bases in both the labor and community
sectors. More
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Building Power for Hospitality Workers: LAANE's
Partnership with UNITE HERE
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In the early
1990s, Los Angeles'
hotel workers' union was making a come back. New, dynamic leaders had taken
control of two struggling locals and were engaging in aggressive
organizing campaigns and a plan to transform the culture of the locals.
But in spite of
these efforts, the union could do little when then-Mayor Richard
Riordan pushed forward a plan to contract out retail and food service
jobs at the airport, eliminating over 1,000 unionized airport
jobs.
Twelve years later, UNITE HERE Local 11 faces a very
different political landscape due, in no small part, to the help of the
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). From the City of Los Angeles' passage
of the 1997 Living Wage Ordinance to today's fight to improve the
conditions for 3,500 workers employed in hotels near the LAX airport,
LAANE has played a leading role in building political support for hotel
workers and making the argument that improving tourism jobs is a
crucial component in the strategy to rebuild L.A.'s middle class. More
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EBASE: Key Partner in Fight to Fix Broken Port
System
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The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy
(EBASE) as a key partner in the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, is
helping to lead an important fight to fix the broken port trucking
system in Oakland to create good local jobs for truck drivers, end pollution,
and make our communities safe and healthy.
The campaign continues to gain momentum and has captured media
attention. Recently, we released
an important study focusing on how the port truck drivers' status as
"independent contractors" results in an inability to operate
clean emission trucks and is preventing the Port from growing
economically. The study, titled,
"Taking
the Low Road: How Independent Contracting at the Port of Oakland
Endangers Public Health, Truck Drivers, and Economic Growth,"
demonstrates the direct relationship between port truck drivers'
employment status and truck pollution, draws a comparative analysis of
various proposals to fix the industry, and presents the Coalition's
recommendations for a "Clean Trucks Program." More
Click here to view the Full Report
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CAUSE Builds Power in the Central Coast Region
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In early 2007,
the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
embarked on a new path to expand its capacity to affect positive change
in the Central Coast Region of California - that of building a
sustainable grassroots regional power base capable of mobilizing
thousands of people around the social, economic and environmental
issues affecting their lives.
With this new direction comes the commitment to build regional
power, to build upon our existing relationships, seek out new relationships,
train and inspire a diverse group of leaders of different races,
genders, ages, classes, and communities, and to take action utilizing
the collective power to bring about much needed policy reform and
meaningful long-term social change.
Why build a sustainable grassroots power base? Organizing is a strategy for
re-building communities, revitalizing congregations and organizations,
and developing individuals into effective leaders and agents of change. The goal of the CAUSE Organizing
Project is to develop regional power to address issues of social
justice and to effect systemic change in the Central
Coast
region. The kind of organizing
methodology that we use can be defined as: The intentional and disciplined putting of
the diverse peoples of a community in relationship across racial,
economic, denominational and neighborhood community lines for the
purpose of making that region "work better" for the good of
all. More
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FRESC Helps Build Capacity of Low-Income Housing
Organization
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Redevelopment
builds greater economic opportunity and stronger local communities when
it creates jobs that support families through good wages and health
care, builds more affordable housing, and promotes neighborhood and
environmental investments. In
this way, responsible development is not only economically and
environmentally sustainable, but also equitable. Besides, revitalization of our
communities doesn't just happen.
We all help pay for the billions in taxpayer investments made in
our communities and should reap tangible benefits as a result.
As the Front Range
Economic Strategy Center's (FRESC) successful three-year community
benefits agreement campaign at the former Gates Rubber Factory
illustrates, elected leaders, the developer, and a broad community
coalition can work together to provide sustainable and equitable
solutions to the pressing issues facing workers and their
communities. However, the
benefits derived from a signed CBA don't stop at the project site. Through the painstaking effort of
building enough collective power to voice and follow through on our
demands, we build broad-based coalitions ready and willing to pursue a
greater vision of economic development that ensures the prosperity of
working families for decades to come. More
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Georgia Stand-Up Alliance: Building Solidarity,
Effectuating Change
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By Cliff
Albright
In September, Georgia
Stand-Up released an academic study which documents rising home prices
in communities neighboring the BeltLine development areas. The study
findings show the relevance of our efforts to ensure that development
of the BeltLine does not push out existing homeowners. Already, even
though not one penny has been invested yet, property values are rising
substantially. Long-term community residents face the risk of losing
their property as a result of speculation in the real estate market in
communities neighboring the BeltLine.
The mere existence of this study is a testament to our
efforts to build bridges and engage community members as participants
in discussions about their own futures. Academic studies written about communities are often not
distributed and discussed in the very communities that are the subjects
of research. We used the input of our Alliance to make sure that this study reflected community
needs and concerns, and to bring community residents into the media
coverage of the report.
More
Click Here to View the Beltline
Report
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Syracuse Alliance for a New Economy: Starting
Anew in a Winter Wonderland
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By Mark Spadafore
As in the other
communities with Partnership organizations, we here in Syracuse
face some serious challenges. Not only have we seen a loss of high
quality jobs and rise in poverty, but we are not on the radar screen of
national funders and unions. People are not looking to Syracuse
to fuel the rebirth of manufacturing, or to incubate the newest
strategies for rebuilding urban cores. To the people who live here,
though, there is no more important place to do this work.
Sometimes I
think if we can make the strategies and goals of the Partnership work
in Syracuse,
we can make it anywhere and become a model for how to reverse economic
downturn in communities across the country. So with that hopeful
thought, let me discuss what it's been like to start a new organization
in an area that has seen better days.
More
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Northside CBA
Campaign: Changing the Rules of the Game for Casino Development
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By Tom Hoffman
Pittsburgh-UNITED
started in July of 2007, and immediately embarked on two comprehensive
campaigns for social and economic justice. Through these campaigns, we
have tapped into existing community concerns about the lack of economic
opportunity for many Pittsburgh
residents. Because of our commitment to building power for the
community, we have put a high priority on engaging community residents
in the organizing work, and on building capacity for ACORN, one of our
community partners. The goal is not just to win the campaign, but to
create new ways for community residents to participate in the process,
and to build power for the community in the long-term.
The first campaign is centered in the Hill district
around the Mellon arena; the second is centered in the Northside
community around a proposed casino development project. On the Northside campaign, community
members decided to form a smaller entity within Pittsburgh-UNITED,
naming themselves Northside-UNITED.
More
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Religious Leaders Stand with Contracted Service
Workers
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By Andy
Schwiebert
In early
October, hundreds of community members and religious leaders gathered
in downtown San Jose
to demand that Adobe Systems and other high-tech companies treat
contracted service workers with dignity and ensure that their voice on
the job is respected. These
religious leaders are partnering with the Service
Workers Rising campaign, which seeks to organize thousands
of workers in the food service, security, and janitorial industries
across the country.
In Santa Clara
County,
these workers service the corporate campuses of many of the most
successful high-tech and biotech companies in the area, including
Adobe, Applied Materials, Genentech, Electronic Arts, Sun, and
Broadcom. The
Peninsula
and the South
Bay
are major centers of technological innovation. More
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Partnership In Action: Recent
Victories, Future Directions
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Partnership In Action: Recent Victories, Future
Directions provides a snapshot of our Partner organizations'
multifaceted, deeply rooted efforts to organize for better jobs, a
healthy environment, more affordable housing and healthcare, and
accessible public services. Please read Partnership In Action for more
information on how the Partnership for Working Families supports these
efforts.
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The Movement in the News
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Center on Policy
Initiatives
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainble Economy
Front Range Economic Strategy Center
Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development
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