Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities 2020055972, 2020055973, 9780367684235, 9781003137467, 9780367684266

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Igniting Justice and Progressive Power

A progressive resurgence is happening across the United States. This book shows how long-lasting coalitions have built progressive power from the regional level on up. Anchored by the “think and act” affiliate organizations of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF), these regional power-building projects are putting in place the vision, policy agenda, political savvy and grassroots mobilization needed for progressive governance. Through six parts, the book explores how Partnership for Working Families projects are a core part of the defeat of the right-wing in states such as California; the challenge to corporate neoliberalism in traditionally “liberal” areas; and contests for power in such formally solid red states as Arizona, Georgia and Colorado. This book considers how these PWF groups work on economic, racial and environmental justice challenges, equitable development and other critical issues. It addresses how, at their core, they bring together labor, community and environmental and faith-based organizations and the coalitions, and the campaigns that they developed have won and continue to win substantial victories for their communities. Igniting Justice and Progressive Power will be of interest to activists and concerned citizens looking to understand how lasting political change actually happens as well as all scholars and students of social work, urban geography, political sociology, community development, social movements and political science more broadly. David B. Reynolds has a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He works at the Center for Labor and Community Studies at the University of Michigan and teaches State and Local Government at Eastern Michigan University. For almost 20 years he has led a research network based in the United Association for Labor Education’s Central Labor Council Working Group that documents regional and state labor movement innovations that, among other things, have produced many of the PWF affiliates. Louise Simmons is Professor of Social Work at the University of Connecticut and author or editor of several books and articles on community-labor coalitions and other economic justice issues. She is coeditor with Scott Harding of Economic Justice, Labor and Community Practice (2010, Taylor and Francis). She has a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies from MIT and is a long-time activist in Hartford, Connecticut, including serving on the Hartford City Council in the early 1990s.

Routledge Advances in Health and Social Policy

Effective Interventions for Unemployed Young People in Europe Social Innovation or Paradigm Shift? Edited by Tomas Sirovatka and Henk Spies Social Research in Health and Illness Case-Based Approaches Constantinos N. Phellas and Costas S. Constantinou Ethnic Identity and US Immigration Policy Reform American Citizenship and Belonging amongst Hispanic Immigrants Maria del Mar Farina Research and Evaluation in Community, Health and Social Care Settings Experiences from Practice Edited by Suzanne Guerin, Nóirín Hayes and Sinead McNally Critical Discourses of Old Age and Telecare Technologies Gizdem Akdur Aging Veterans with Disabilities A Cross-National Study of Policies and Challenges Arie Rimmerman Creative Arts-Based Research in Aged Care Photovoice, Photography, and Poetry in Action Evonne Miller Igniting Justice and Progressive Power The Partnership for Working Families Cities Edited by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com /Routledge-Advances-in-Health-and-Social-Policy/book-series/RAHSP

Igniting Justice and Progressive Power The Partnership for Working Families Cities Edited by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, David Reynolds and Louise Simmons; individual chapters, the contributors The right of David Reynolds and Louise Simmons to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Reynolds, David B., 1963- editor. | Simmons, Louise B., 1949- editor. Title: Inciting justice and progressive power: the partnership for working families cities / edited by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge advances in health and social policy | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020055972 (print) | LCCN 2020055973 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367684235 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003137467 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Social justice–United States. | United States–Economic policy–Citizen participation. | Labor movement–United States. | Coalitions–United States. | Cooperation–United States. Classification: LCC HN65 .I63 2021 (print) | LCC HN65 (ebook) | DDC 303.3/72–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055972 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055973 ISBN: 978-0-367-68423-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-68426-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13746-7 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To Shirley Duprey, my beautiful friend, love and companion in arms. You are the great love of my life! Thanks for all your enthusiasm and support in pulling this book together. We will make the world a better place. Also thanks to her son Keith Vasquez for helping us make a family. –David B. Reynolds To Peter Chenette, Emily, Jason, Avelino and Amaya, and my sister Wendy – my closest family – who bring me joy, love and hope for the future. To my friends in the movement in Hartford, to those who struggle every day to keep our community going, and to my dearest colleagues at UConn, whose support is essential. And to my students who make me-believe that a better future is possible. –Louise Simmons

Contents

Acknowledgments About the Contributors PART 1

Setting the stage 1 Introducing the regional movement to transform America

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1 3

DAVID B. REYNOLDS AND LOUISE SIMMONS

2 From the Partnership for Working Families to PowerSwitch: Lessons and evolution from 20 years of anchoring affiliates

22

KYRA GREENE AND LAUREN JACOBS

3 Why cities matter: Governing for the common good and reclaiming democracy

31

NIKKI FORTUNATO BAS, DONALD COHEN AND ROXANA TYNAN

4 Regional power building today: A New New Deal revisited

51

AMY B. DEAN AND DAVID B. REYNOLDS

PART 2

The founders today 5 LAANE brain: Understanding the model and future of the Los Angeles alliance for a new economy

69 71

MANUEL PASTOR, ASHLEY K. THOMAS AND PETER DREIER

6 25 Years of Working Partnerships USA in San Jose BARBARA BYRD

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Contents

PART 3

From (neo)liberal to progressive cities 7 Community labor united: Building bridges in Greater Boston

121 123

PENN LOH AND MARK ERLICH

8 Aligning labor and community groups: The Alliance for a Greater New York

139

PENNY LEWIS

9 Building a bigger “We”: Reflections on more than a decade of building community power in Pittsburgh

154

DIANA POLSON

10 Racial justice is economic justice: Chicago’s Grassroots Collaborative expands economic fairness by prioritizing racial equity

179

MARC DOUSSARD

PART 4

Storming conservative bastions

193

11 Transforming a conservative county: The development of the Center on Policy Initiatives

195

JILL ESBENSHADE

12 OCCORD: Organizing in conservative territory: if you can’t win the game, change the rules

210

CLARA TURNER AND CAROLINA S. SARMIENTO

13 Georgia STAND-UP: Organizing for progressive power in the South

227

HAROLD M. BARNETTE AND DEBORAH MARSHALL SCOTT

14 Stand Up Nashville: Shaping a narrative of equity and inclusion in the “It City” boom

242

TERRIE SPETALNICK

15 Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy in Phoenix DAVID B. REYNOLDS

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Contents ix PART 5

Further Adaptions and Innovations

281

16 Adapting the model for a purple state: United for a New Economy in metro Denver

283

MARC DOUSSARD AND DAVID B. REYNOLDS

17 The Warehouse Workers Resource Center in Southern California

294

ELLEN REESE AND RUDOLPH BIELITZ

18 Organizing in rural towns and suburbs: Central Coast Alliance United for a sustainable economy

312

LUCAS ZUCKER

PART 6

Conclusion

335

19 Conclusion: The challenges and opportunities to change regions, states and the nation

337

DAVID B. REYNOLDS AND LOUISE SIMMONS

Index

347

Acknowledgments

It took a virtual village to put this volume together and we have many people to thank. First, we want to express our gratitude to Claire Jarvis at Routledge for shepherding the process through to launch this book. Everyone we dealt with at Routledge was helpful and supportive. We want to thank the leadership of the Partnership for Working Families, soon to be Ignite Alliance, for supporting this work and helping us contact all of the affiliates who are represented in this volume and in particular Heather Appel, who really helped to make this all possible. Each of the affiliates had supportive executive directors and we thank them for directing us to people in the academic world that they work with who authored each article. Of course, it is all the contributors are who really make this volume and we feel fortunate to have such wonderful contributors. Their commitment to tell the stories of the organizations allows us all to see that progressive struggles of labor and community can be successful and overcome obstacles to achieve important gains for working and low-income folks. Ultimately, we thank everyone who participated in any of the movements and struggles that the Partnership affiliates undertake. Finally, we thank friends, colleagues and family who supported us as editors and writers. For David B. Reynolds, he expresses his gratitude to his wife Shirley Duprey for all her support and enthusiasm. Thanks to affiliate leaders and activists who took time to talk about their great depth of experiences and insight. Also appreciation to all the labor educators and AFL-CIO staff who participated in the research of the UALE Central Labor Council working group over the past 20 years whose many case studies have raised up innovative laborcommunity work and who helped inspire this book. For Louise Simmons, she expresses her gratitude to her husband Peter Chenette and our extended family and friends, colleagues at UConn who kept wishing her well and the staff and activists who kept the Connecticut Center for a New Economy going for more than 15 years. David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

About the Contributors

Harold M. Barnette is a writer and consultant specializing in project development for housing, transit-oriented development, urban ecology and other sustainable strategies. He is the author of numerous articles appearing in Shelterforce: The journal of affordable housing and community building; case studies including Westside Wake-Up: The case for equitable transit-oriented development in Vine City; and the essay “Smart Growth and Demography: Implications of Urban Revitalization in Atlanta, Georgia,” in Beyond the Color Line: Race, Representation, and Community in the New Century, published by the Brennan Institute, New York University School of Law. He is cofounder of the Institute for Family Caregiving, Inc., and coauthor of The Caregiver’s Secrets, an account of the vital role family caregiving plays in the US health care system. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rudolph Bielitz is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Riverside. His research interests include race and class inequality, organizations and institutions. His M.A. thesis examined efforts by a coalition of labor and community organizations, which included the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, to mobilize public and political support for a community benefits agreement for a proposed air cargo logistics center in San Bernardino. His research emphasizes the importance of inclusive organizing strategies and grassroots leadership development for mobilizing and empowering local, and mostly working-class Latinx, residents, and for building broad coalitions across race, class, generation and movement sectors. As part of his fieldwork, he helped to canvass and inform local residents of the potential negative effects that the logistics center could have on their community in terms of air pollution, traffic and the local economy. Barbara Byrd has worked as a labor educator for almost 40 years and is an emeritus faculty member of the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon. She served for 14 years as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO, where she coordinated policy and educational activities in the arenas of workforce training and green jobs/climate change. Barbara has a master’s degree in Labor Studies and a Ph.D. in Adult Education. She

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About the Contributors is a member of United Academics of the University of Oregon/AFT-AAUP, Local #3209.

Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource and policy center on privatization and responsible contracting. Donald is a founding board member of the Partnership for Working Families. He is the former political director of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council and founder and executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based think tank and policy organization. He is currently on the board of the Ballot Initiatives Strategy Center. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times and other online and print outlets. Amy B. Dean served from 1993 to 2003 as the youngest elected leader of the AFL-CIO in Silicon Valley. She is founder of two national nonprofits: Working Partnerships USA and Building Partnerships. Dean served on the California Community College’s Board of Governors and the California Secretary of Commerce’s Economic Strategy Panel and has received awards from the American Leadership Forum, the Labor Education Research Association and the Ms. Foundation. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and the Economist, among other publications. Marc Doussard is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His research focuses broadly on distributive fairness and economic equity, as well as on issues of low-wage work and political movements for economic and social equity. Additionally, he has focused on economic development issues and privatization. He has published widely in academic journals. He has also partnered with the UC-Berkeley Labor Center in a student of fast-food work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and founding chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He writes widely on American politics and public policy, specializing in urban politics and policy, housing policy, community development and community organizing. He is coauthor or coeditor of several books about cities and urban policy. From 1984 to 1992, he served as a senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn and a housing director at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Mark Erlich is Wertheim Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He is the retired executive secretary-treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. He was a vice president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and Mass. Building Trades. He has written and lectured on labor issues and is the author of two books, as well as numerous articles and op-eds.

About the Contributors xiii Jill Esbenshade is Professor of Sociology at the San Diego State University. She is author of a book on sweatshops and numerous articles, book chapters and reports. Her areas of research include issues of sweatshop industries, wage theft, immigration, the informal economy, worker rights and related issues. She serves on the Board of CPI. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies. Nikki Fortunato Bas is the former executive director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. She is currently serving as a City Council member in the City of Oakland. She has a long history of organizing – starting in Chinatown organizing Chinese immigrant garment workers to win their wages back. She also worked in coalitions to raise Oakland’s minimum wage with paid sick leave, create living wage jobs on the old Oakland Army Base and reduce diesel truck pollution at the Port of Oakland. Dr. Kyra Greene is Executive Director of the Center for Policy Initiatives and Board Chair of Ignite Alliance. Dr. Greene’s past research has focused on social movement messaging/framing, legislative processes and public policies affecting the lives of people of color and people with disabilities. Dr. Greene earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University. She also holds a B.A. in social sciences from Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Lauren Jacobs is Executive Director of Ignite Alliance. She has been an organizer for more than 20 years. She began organizing factories with UNITE in the south and later joined SEIU. During her 17 years at SEIU, she served in a number of roles, from organizer to the first vice president. Over the course of those years, she organized thousands of previously nonunion janitors and security officers in three major metropolitan areas. Penny Lewis is Associate Professor of Labor Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. She worked previously as a union organizer and is active with labor and community organizations. She serves as vice president for Senior Colleges and the CUNY Professional Staff Congress. Penn Loh is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Public Policy Program and Community Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. From 1996 to 2009, he served in various roles, including executive director, at Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), a Roxbury-based environmental justice group that was a founding member of Community Labor United. He has written on environmental justice, community organizing and social justice issues for numerous publications. Manuel Pastor is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He directs the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. He is the author of 15 books and numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as an eagerly sought public speaker. He serves on many organizational boards and

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About the Contributors received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year award for social justice research partnerships in 2012. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts.

Diana Polson has served as a researcher and public policy analyst for universities, policy think tanks and applied research centers. She currently works as Senior Policy Analyst for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. Diana received her Ph.D. in political science from the CUNY Graduate Center, completing her dissertation on care work and the low-wage economy. She has more than 15 years of experience partnering on research initiatives and organizing campaigns on a range of economic justice issues, including wage theft, family leave policies, workforce development, low-wage worker organizing and state budget and policy campaigns. Ellen Reese is Professor of Sociology and Chair of Labor Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author, editor or coeditor of five books, including two solo-authored books. She is author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, including several on warehouse workers’ issues, as well as other labor and globalization themes. She serves on the Board of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. David B. Reynolds has a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He works at the Center for Labor and Community Studies at the University of Michigan and teaches state and local government at Eastern Michigan University. For almost 20 years he has led a research network that works with the national AFL-CIO to document the regional and state labor movement innovations that, among other things, have produced many of the PWF affiliates. Carolina S. Sarmiento is Board member of OCCORD, and Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies of the School of Human Ecology. Her research interests and publications include issues of equitable development, public participation, community-based planning, working condition of low-wage Latino workers and many aspects of immigration. She has worked or consulted with the Lincoln Land Institute, the Urban Institute and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Louise Simmons is Professor of Social Work at the University of Connecticut and author or editor of several books and articles on community-labor coalitions and other economic justice issues. She is coeditor with Scott Harding of Economic Justice, Labor and Community Practice (2010, Taylor and Francis). She has a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies from MIT and is a longtime activist in Hartford, Connecticut, including serving on the Hartford City Council in the early 1990s. Deborah Marshall Scott is Executive Director of STAND-UP, a “Think and Act Tank for Working Families” that supports community economic

About the Contributors xv development through advocacy for community benefits, project work agreements and other policies that increase equity and access to opportunity. She is the founder of Trade-Up, a prep-apprenticeship program that provides a pathway for residents of low-wealth, disadvantaged populations to 21 skilled trades through the AFL-CIO multi-craft training program. Deborah is the convener for Emerald Cities Atlanta, a regional affiliate of the national Emerald Cities Collaborative that supports economic growth and job creation by retrofitting buildings to conserve energy, water and other resources. Deborah is a leading advocate for employing sustainable principles in the effort to expand opportunity and transform disadvantaged communities. Terrie Spetalnick recently retired as Lecturer of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, where she taught courses on the family, hierarchical power structures in American society, social construction of environmental problems, environmental justice and qualitative and quantitative research methods; she is the author of Power to the People: Community Organizing in America, a sociological and interactive investigation of the processes by which people are brought together to act jointly in the interest of their communities. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University, an MBA from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a member of the organizing committee to unionize teaching faculty at Vanderbilt, which led to formation of the Vanderbilt Alliance of nontenure track faculty and graduate workers. Long-standing involvement in the wider community includes founding membership in NOAH (Nashville Organized for Action and Hope), a coalition of congregations, community organizations and labor unions that provide a unified voice in the public arena for Nashville’s faith and justice community. She is also active in Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative, a think tank for innovative scholar activism, collective witness and the work of eradicating racism and reciprocal forms of injustice and hatred. Ashley K. Thomas is Data Analyst at USC’s Equity Research Institute where she conducts research on building governing power in disinvested communities and creating inclusive and equitable economies. Ashley previously served as the communications director and legislative deputy for Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson and worked as a research and policy analyst at LAANE. She also provided demographic analysis for the Los Angeles County Court system, resulting in a new jury selection process to increase equity for defendants of color. Ashley received her bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her master’s degree in public policy from Claremont Graduate University with a specialization in Black feminist perspectives on public policy. Clara Turner is an ex-associate director of OCCORD and is a Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley in city and regional planning. Her research focuses on regional labor markets, cross-border economies, migration and labor policy and economic geography.

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About the Contributors

Roxana Tynan is a former union organizer with Hotel and Restaurant Employees and a graduate of Yale University. Her chapter will summarize a paper issued by LAANE and others that provides an analysis of the core urban strategies that inform PWF affiliates. Roxana joined LAANE in 2001 and served as deputy director for six years until assuming the position of executive director in February 2012. She played a leading role in developing LAANE’s community organizing department, mentoring dozens of young organizers and creating one of the region’s most effective organizing and advocacy programs. Prior to joining LAANE, Roxana served as economic development deputy to LA City Councilmember Jackie Goldberg. Lucas Zucker is Policy and Communications Director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political economy. Lucas joined the CAUSE staff in 2012 as a youth organizer and researcher. At CAUSE, he has worked on community organizing campaigns and policy advocacy around voting rights, healthy food access, public transit, environmental justice, education, immigrants’ rights, affordable housing, prison sentencing reform, tax/ budget reform and workers’ rights. Lucas serves on the board of the national Partnership for Working Families, the Planning Commission of the City of Ventura and the Community Advisory Committee for Clean Power Alliance.

Part 1

Setting the stage

1

Introducing the regional movement to transform America David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

Years ago, when the folk singer Odetta toured the United States, she would pause the tempo of her concert, gaze out carefully into the audience and explain that “these are fearful yet exciting times!” A truer statement could not be said today. The fearful signs are obvious. The political right seems triumphant across the country both nationally and in state after state. Donald Trump’s presidency presided over the wholesale demolition of the nation’s social programs and regulatory framework. Organized wealth appears stronger than organized people. Neoliberalism – a doctrine that centers public solutions around unrestrained private business action – dominates official policy debates. According to Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project, federal reserve data reveal that between “1989 and 2018 the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.”1 Our very democracy seems up for grabs as voter suppression becomes common, state legislatures strip powers from newly elected rival-party governors and laws rejected by voters are simply reenacted in ways that make them referendum proof.2 Yet, vigorous democracy seems the only way that humanity can possibly save itself from catastrophic global climate change through fundamental action in the next decade. However, as the climate emergency makes clear, change is coming whether we want it or not. There are signs for excitement. The ideas of a Green New Deal have raised the call for a fundamentally more just and sustainable America. Starting with Occupy Wall Street, the last decade has seen the wide-ranging rise of protest movements from Black Lives Matter to #Me Too. Led by teacher walkouts, worker strikes appear to have made a comeback. Meanwhile the news includes stories of worker activism at twenty-first-century companies such as Amazon, Uber and Lyft. In 2016, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders demonstrated that progressive candidates can raise enough money through small grassroots donations to be competitive with corporate-backed candidates. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary witnessed a clear battle between progressive and establishment candidates. And while a centrist secured the nomination and eventually the presidency, across the country progressives won seats stretching from Congress through state legislatures to City Councils to local prosecutors.

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David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

Then there is COVID-19. The pandemic revealed all the weakness of a neoliberal America. The nation’s stark inequality and racial disparities were reflected by the disproportionate way COVID-19 hit communities of color and poorer communities the hardest. Alongside President Trump’s utterly incompetent and dangerous response, years of neoliberal downsizing left government at all levels – federal, state and local – without sufficient capacity to either handle the health crisis adequately or provide an effective safety net to protect families from the ravages of the accompanying economic crisis. Yet, amidst this emergency the murder of George Floyd sparked the largest single protest wave in the nation’s history – with people taking to the streets not simply in large cities, but also in smaller communities across the country. While many factors fed into the upsurge, clearly years of patient organizing by the Black Lives Matter movement had born fruit. This deeper story of patient, often behind the scenes work, is the focus of this book. The last two decades have seen the emergence of systematic and sustained efforts to build a unified and power-winning progressive movement starting in the nation’s metropolitan areas. Major change in the United States has never begun in Washington, D.C. Many of the ideas which became the New Deal, for example, developed through grassroots activism and changes enacted first at city and state levels. Even in the face of courts striking down reforms like the minimum wage or the 40-hour work week, the sustained momentum to push such ideas into reality came from the bottom-up. The same is true today. If we want to understand the future possibilities for a more progressive nation, we have to look at the deep transformation going on today inside the country’s cities and regions. This book examines 14 of the 20 affiliate organizations of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF), to be known in 2021 as the PowerSwitch.3 Located across the United States, these “think and act” organizations operate at the forefront of regional change. These groups organize around economic, racial and environmental justice challenges, equitable development and other critical issues. At their core they bring together labor, community, environmental and faith-based organizations. They have developed coalitions and campaigns that have won and continue to win substantial victories for their communities. Thanks in part to the pioneering work of PWF affiliates Living Wage campaigns, Community Benefits Agreements, Construction Career Pathways, and urban climate justice initiatives have become common progressive organizing tools across the country. Regions with well-established PWF power building work have seen increasing union membership and growing grassroots community organizations. PWF affiliates focus not simply on core cities but also organize for regional transformation and state-level change. Most important, by combining coalitionbuilding, policy development and leadership cultivation with aggressive political action through allied C4 and other groups, these projects aim not simply to win reforms, but also to achieve actual governing power. Progressive governance combines legislative majorities and transformed executive branches with mobilized low- and middle-income communities that get candidates elected and then support and hold them accountable once in office. Furthermore, actual governance means translating progressive values into concrete policies that are

Regional movement to transform America 5 both doable, meaningful and which get implemented. Progressive governance changes the very nature of government and redefines the meaning of democratic participation. Certain PWF affiliates are well-known nationally, particularly the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA with histories of significant achievements in the Los Angeles and San Jose areas. Others are operating on much smaller scales in less dynamic local economies. All of their work holds great significance. For this book, we assembled a group of scholars to analyze how PWF affiliates create economic and political power, each in their very distinct local settings. As a national network, PWF encompasses a wide range of organizing environments. These include large, global cities with quite robust economies yet high levels of inequality; urban areas that are still trying to rebound from decades of deindustrialization and associated poverty; and cities and suburbs attempting to fit into the twenty-first-century economy. Within each chapter, authors will focus on the particular conditions within which the affiliate operates, their major strategies, significant achievements, allies and support bases and major challenges faced by the organizations. Working with staff from the PWF, affiliates most likely to have the capacity to participate were asked to be part of this project, and we ended up with 14 case studies of affiliates throughout the country. This book aims to contribute to the literature and practice around labor-community coalitions, social movement unionism, regional development and urban regime change. It explores the central challenges facing progressive organizing today. These include political questions, including how the partnership affiliates and allies negotiate relations with mainstream party politics (i.e., Democrats) and third-party politics (i.e., the Working Families Party, or Democratic Socialists). How do organizers sustainably raise civic participation and develop power for working-class and disenfranchised people? There are issues surrounding coalition building, including how to negotiate tensions among the varied partners – labor and community, neighborhood and city government, and more. Facilitating these relationships between divergent groups in and of themselves can be one the greatest challenges. Paramount for all the affiliates is their economic resource base – how do they maintain independence and stay true to their goals while at the same time maintaining accountability to funders, particularly foundations or other specific organizations. How can they raise funds outside of foundation networks? Then, from a geographic perspective, are there specific spatial strategies organizers need to employ and factor into their work? There can be turf issues among community organizations and there may be issues of geographical scale in tackling regional issues. To what extent does organizing focus on a core city versus fostering progressive activism in the transforming suburbs? Very important also are ideological challenges: how are campaigns framed such that they speak to the needs of their constituencies without selling out or selling short their vision for social justice? What is the level of compromise that can be undertaken when dealing with local and regional governments and other important economic actors? All of these considerations literally vary across the map – the country,

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David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

within a state and among localities. These are issues that our authors will explore in this volume. Together the experiences of the 20 PWF affiliates demonstrate that real change is possible. Strategic coalition building, long-range planning, careful research and policy creation, leadership development and electoral mobilization can combine into effective regional movements for real power. That change has already begun to flow from the regional to state level. These are the building blocks of a new America.

The rise and potential fall of the neoliberal city Before delving into the Partnership for Working Families and its affiliates, we will review two bodies of academic research that offers helpful contexts for understanding the work. The first, the literature on the neoliberal city identifies what affiliates are attempting to change. Second, research on labor-community coalitions explores the more general transformation of the last several decades that has produced the coalitions at the center of PWF work. The concept of neoliberalism lends itself to a variety of definitions, and an extensive literature on the topic exists that can help us better contextualize the work of PWF affiliates. For our purposes, we operationalize neoliberalism with the following characteristics: •

• •

• • • •

The primacy of the market, with minimal state intervention into the market, save to facilitate wealth accumulation, thus creating massive wealth for those in control of corporations and unparalleled inequality for the majority of the U.S. population and on a global level An assault on organized labor and a weakening of protections for workers in terms of wages, safety, working conditions and other aspects of worker power Relatedly, a strategy to rely on casualized and nonstandard work arrangements, including the use of temporary and part-time workers, contract workers, irregular scheduling of work, reliance on a low-wage immigrant workforce in many industries, wage theft and other forms of worker exploitation A weakened social welfare system and cutbacks in social programs, with what has been termed “workfarist” social policies replacing welfare programs4 Reliance on carceral and punitive policies, including private prisons and other related institutions, that both create and heighten inequality impacting urban communities of color and people of color elsewhere Privatization of many heretofore government functions, promulgation of anti-government ideology and well as the notion of utilization of government programs creating unnecessary dependency Heightened competition among urban areas for development projects, including corporate headquarters, big-box stores, sports facilities for major league teams, distribution centers and other types of development

Regional movement to transform America 7 •

The promulgation of ideological concepts of responsibility of individuals for their own problems – that they must lift themselves up by their own bootstraps and not become “dependent” on social welfare programs

The above is a partial list that is relevant for this volume, and the rich literature on neoliberalism demonstrates a wide body of theoretical arguments concerned with specific aspects of neoliberalism. There are two parts of the literature that are important in framing the reason for this collection. First is the centrality of cities and their wider metropolitan areas – that they are at the forefront of neoliberalization.5 Cities are the sites for work, living and neoliberal policy and project realization. They are also the sites of contestation of these policies. As Greenberg and Lewis observe: Cities provide us with crucial sites for mass mobilization, for encounters and coalitions across difference. Their political and economic centrality provide opportunities for tactical, place-based organizing and, when necessary, disruption of business as usual. Their cultural diversity and dynamism can help frame and elevate these struggles, fuel our imaginations, and raise the visibility of how much is as state for so many. Linking these efforts between cities and regions – urban, exurban and rural – will be vital to building power.6 Relatedly, it is the concept of “actual existing neoliberalism” which refers to the need to contextualize discussions of urban neoliberal projects.7 In this sense, it is important to understand local contexts in which contestation takes place – the array of powerful actors, the industries, the labor and community organizations, the relevant local history and a host of other factors that all impact how the social battles are waged and who is involved. Urban geographers emphasize the spatial dimensions of capitalist development in specific places and this is very important in our examples. For the audience of those involved in human service provision, several developments are involved in framing neoliberal social services. Mentioned above is the issue of attacking “dependency’ on government programs. Neoliberal social policies tend to resurrect distinctions between the “deserving poor” versus the “underserving poor” or the worthy versus unworthy poor. 8 These labels contribute to and are built on stereotypes, often racialized, about the social and personal characteristics of low-income people and then become the basis for instituting policies with “an emphasis on enforcing compliance to behavioral standards so that subordinate populations become less of a burden on society.”9 As this happens, social work and human services become part of this process and more psychologically focused, according to Schram, rather than involved in social reform. This all falls most heavily on those left behind in the neoliberal economy, particularly people of color, low-wage immigrant workers and low-wage workers more generally. The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that ushered in the program known as TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) is emblematic of a

8 David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons neoliberal social policy, with an emphasis on work and sanctions for those who can’t comply. Thus, low-income women were forced into the low-wage workforce as part of this process.10 For the audience of those who form the organizations highlighted in this volume or who work in comparable efforts, the evolution of labor-community coalitions (or in some cases referred to as community-labor coalitions, depending on which side of the hyphen one is from) is another important component of the conversation. One of the earliest considerations comes from the Brecher and Costello volume.11 In their work, they examined what can be described as the first generation of modern labor-community coalitions. Many of these coalitions of the earlier decades of neoliberalism were more transactional, that is, labor might reach out to community forces for support during strikes or intense organizing drives and there was little reciprocity that neither kept the coalitions together after the strike or organizing drive nor provided sufficient attention to the needs of the community forces in many instances. This reflected the divide the politics of work and the politics of community, so prevalent in the manner in labor-viewed coalitions and also analyzed by Katznelson as endemic to urban politics.12 It should be added that although the periods considered in this work were in the early decades of neoliberalism, the term was not widely used until later decades. With the election of John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, a new vision of the labor movement began to percolate. First came the recognition that in order to fight union decline, an emphasis on organizing had to take precedence. Not all unions went in this direction; however, this was not new to other unions that continued to lead the way in organizing campaigns. Formulations like “community unionism” in which workers’ needs in the community as well as the workplace were incorporated into organizing campaigns and recognized.13 There is also self-criticism within labor and among labor scholars as to the lack of vision and action prominent among many unions during previous decades in recognizing the crises they were facing and their inability to translate this into broad public awareness and action. Then recognition grew within labor of the need to embrace community issues into its agenda if it wants to grow and truly represent the full spectrum of working-class concerns.14 Newer forms of worker organizing are recognized as part of the broader labor movement and some unions engaged in organizing campaigns among low-wage workers, heretofore deemed too difficult to organize. Importantly, organizations such as worker centers, whose worker organizing does not necessarily lead to unionization per se, are also now accepted as part of the labor movement.15 In the case of worker centers, Fine noted that these organizations function as a hybrid form of labor and community organizing. Taken together and sometimes called alt-labor, if successful, these efforts could bring into labor’s fold new groups of workers who were previously thought to be impossible to organize.16 Ultimately, in the mid-2000s, the AFLCIO, the largest labor federation in the United States, embraced positions that emphasize the need to work with environmental organizations, worker centers, civil rights organizations and other progressive organizations.17

Regional movement to transform America 9 In different areas, electoral and political coalitions formed, which united labor and progressive groups in endorsing candidates and pushing for progressive legislation at local and state levels. Campaigns on raising state minimum wage levels, living wage struggles, community benefit agreements and other issues were waged by these various coalitions, including many in the PWF. Dean and Reynolds broaden the examples with the notion of building regional power, as discussed below.18 One important development, now known as Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG), is exemplified in some of the teacher strikes in the mid- to late2010s. Sneiderman and Fascione discuss the spread of these campaigns in various cities and the lessons BCG offers. “In essence, BCG campaigns are when union and community groups together leverage contract negotiations for broader, shared gains.”19 Learning from the weaknesses of the transactional nature of many earlier community-labor alliances, BCG attempts to build more lasting alliances and incorporate community demands into labor negotiations. Teachers’ strikes and negotiations have included getting ballot initiatives on funding arts, music and restorative practices, immigrant rights language in terms of lack of coordination with immigration enforcement, prevention of school closings and more.20 They list nine key elements of BCG, many of which are at the core of PWF affiliates’ work: 1. Expanding the scope of bargaining (e.g., demands for educational reforms not typically involved in teacher union demands) 2. Unifying identities: recognition of the multiple identities of workers as parents, homeowners, renters, tax payers and people with their own racial, gender and other identities, and incorporating these broader community issues into labor’s work 3. Bringing community to the table: having community members present as demands are being developed and at the negotiating table along with union negotiators 4. Strengthening internal organizing and member engagement 5. Confronting systemic/racial injustice: for example, when teacher demands include an end to practices that criminalize students and feed the school-toprison pipeline and instead create alternative strategies to serve students 6. Identifying and exposing those who are really calling the shots: particularly for public sector workers whose bargaining rights are under attack, making public which private actors are calling for cutbacks, but who benefit from tax incentives, privatization schemes and other forces who profit from public service cuts and de-unionization of public sector workers 7. Challenging wealth inequality: creating more progressive tax structures that can contribute to better schools and other public services 8. Putting capital to work for the common good: demand that public pension funds invest in projects that provide good returns and benefits for communities and using workers’ capital to benefit struggling communities 9. Build a positive view of organized labor: combatting negative perceptions of unions by bringing unions and communities together to work toward the success of all who struggle for a better life21

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We would also point out that several volumes have provided intellectual inspiration for this volume and other works by these editors. Turner and Cornfield provide examples and progressive directions for labor in Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds. In particular, they examine the “extent to which such coalitions [labor inclusive urban coalitions] contribute to the building of a social justice infrastructure, a concept that includes both movement and institution building.”22 These coalitions may produce “a transformed local politics in which labor’s influence as a progressive social actor expands” and contribute to civil society’s revitalization. Several of the cities examined in their volume include cities with PWF affiliates. Another volume by Turner, Katz and Hurd, Rekindling the movement: Labor’s quest for relevance in the 21st century, takes up similar questions in an earlier round of scholarship on the transformation of labor into a progressive force in labor-community efforts.23 One essay from this volume by Johnston presages the arguments in much of the later literature on the new role labor should assume. He situates the revival of the labor movement in the framework of an expansion of citizenship and in the variety of citizenship movements that “seek to develop public institutions that defend and rebuild local communities in an increasingly globalized public order”24 (not to be confused with issues of immigration status). These movements, evident domestically and across the globe, encompass rights expansion, democratic participation, claims-making upon authorities at all levels and demands for social and economic justice. Both editors of this volume have examined aspects of neoliberalism in their previous work and have also written about and participated in labor-community coalitions in their respective communities. We admittedly are committed to their success and the social change these coalitions attempt to forge.

What the experiences of the PWF affliates tells us about how to transform America Each case study will delve into how local PWF affiliates developed their particular strategies adapted to their regional economic and political environment. Chapters 2–4 and Conclusion will explore common strategic elements and challenges. At the outset, however, we would like to identify four key strategic insights that undergird PWF affiliate work. 1. Broad tent coalitions, strategic partnerships and a uniting strategic focus The rise of the right wing, the transformation of the U.S. economy and the shift of power away from the left has helped foster within a wide range of progressive groups a sense that they can “not go it alone.” For example, as mentioned above on the labor side, the national AFL-CIO has put increasing emphasis on partnerships with allied groups, reflecting that the most significant labor wins – be they teachers’ strikes or car wash organizing victories – have come through deep partnerships with the community. This call for coalitions has manifested at the local

Regional movement to transform America 11 level with metropolitan and regional AFL-CIO bodies often being core partners of PWF affiliates, and even core founders of the affiliates. The PWF affiliates build coalition campaigns around a wide range of issues from immigrant rights to school funding, from affordable housing to affordable healthcare, from job access in construction to living wages. This organizing brings them into partnership with a wide range of groups. However, the affiliates also foster deeper, more long-term and strategically oriented relationship among a core of partners. Typically, these core groups include those “on-the-ground” membership organizations, such as unions and low-income neighborhood groups, that bring everyday people together to engage in democratic action. The core partners share the goal of not simply making change on the immediate issue at hand but also of using specific campaigns to strategically build for real power over the long term. As such, their relationship moves beyond traditional transactional relationships (I will support your issues if you support mine) to transformational ones (we come together to change the rules of the game). While these core partners may focus on many particular issues, the glue bringing and keeping them together over the long term is the founding motivation of the PFW affiliates: reversing the 40 year decline in living standards in the United States. To put it in terms of a more forward-looking direction, the core partners share the determination to build an economy in their region that works for everyone, not just those at the top. All of the specific campaigns pursued by PWF affiliates relate either directly or indirectly to establishing this shared-prosperity economy with rising living standards and economic security, especially of those at the bottom. 2. The centrality of communities of color Neoliberalism in the United States intimately intertwines with institutional racism. This reality places communities of color at the forefront of both the suffering caused by neoliberalism and the organizing to fight back against it. The work of PWF affiliates is thus deeply embedded in communities of color and ultimately envisions powerful multiracial regional alliances with strong leadership from people of color. The spread of voter suppression tactics, which targets people of color, to many parts of the country is evidence of the right wing’s appreciation of the growing electoral importance of communities of color. Current population predictions have the United States becoming a “majority minority” nation by mid-century. For states such as Texas and California, this has already happened. As part of its core strategy, the right wing depends upon fostering white racial anxiety as a means of gaining support. Not surprisingly, it has also focused on suppressing the subsequently alienated “minority” voters in order to win elections in a growing number of districts and states as those “minorities” become the majority. While the stagnation and fall of living standards in the U.S. touches at least 80 percent of the population, communities of color have been particularly hard hit. The PWF experience suggests that these communities are particularly

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receptive to a progressive change agenda. Furthermore, understanding the realities of these communities captures the deep underlying economic and power issues that affect most of the U.S. population. Developing solutions addressed to people of color thus offers an agenda for improving the lives of the vast majority of Americans. A basic tenant of grassroots organizing is that the organizing/leadership team has to look like the people you are trying to organize. Having studied the PWF affiliates, in some cases for close to two decades, we have been impressed by the diversity that has emerged over time. PWF affiliates may have begun with diverse staff. However, even among those who began more white, and at times male, have clearly seen the active cultivation of staff and leaders of color so that today the collective core personnel who support and lead the PWF movement look like the diverse nation that America is and is more so becoming. Several of our contributors explicitly identify how leaders of color have transformed the practice and culture of regional power building. 3. Elections and legislative advocacy matter Together the research, campaign and agenda-developing work by PWF affiliates combines with their voter mobilization work and their allies to seek to decisively shift the political conversation from the currently dominant pessimistic narratives of austerity, limited government and at best maintaining the status quo to instead growing a bold and optimistic vision of shared prosperity, active government, organized citizens and effective problem-solving. Such a transformation involves new approaches to elections and to policy work. The PWF affiliates go beyond the single-issue policy campaign. Neoliberalism is a comprehensive approach that embeds specific policy prescriptions within a coherent world view, vision of the future and policy questions to be addressed. The PWF affiliates work to offer a counter world view and vision and to redefine the questions that local government should be addressing. Individual policy campaigns thus link to broader change in the expectations of what local and regional government is about. Implementing real change requires having champions in office and the leverage of mobilized people to back up demands. While some PWF coalition partners, such as unions, may have always been involved in electoral politics, others may have kept it as arm’s length – preferring to protest and agitate from the outside rather than get compromised and risk potential “sell outs” from the inside. While 501©3s PWF affiliates cannot participate in elections, they can promote nonpartisan voter participation. Many of their coalition partners have come to place a strong emphasis on not just electoral politics, but also a new kind of aggressive political action. Together these partners have formed new partisan C4 and other mobilization efforts. In part, this new electoral action emphasizes sustained work to raise voter turnout and political participation, especially among communities with traditionally lower turnout rates. In doing so, they often mobilize in the same types of

Regional movement to transform America 13 communities of color that the right wing has sought to suppress at the polls. This political work goes beyond traditional Get Out the Vote strategies to focus on a much deeper and more sustained mobilization. The Margeritte Casey Foundation describes the difference as follows: Integrated voter engagement (IVE) is a strategy that evolved out of traditional get-out-the-vote (GOTV) work. Whereas GOTV efforts are timelimited, focused on registration and mobilization and, typically, are driven by immediate election issues, IVE strives to engage communities to participate not only in the elections, but in organizing and advocacy work between elections as well. It emphasizes leadership development and increasingly includes the use of technology to reach and educate communities about issues that affect them and engage them in the solutions.25 Between elections organizers engage people in the issue campaigns that grow out of the research, issue development and coalition-building of PWF affiliates. This connects to another aspect of aggressive political action. The goals reach beyond traditional access to office holders to ultimately aim for governing majorities with real power backed up by a mobilized grassroots. The PWF affiliates’ policy work develops the powerful progressive reform agenda that is both doable using the powers of local and regional government while connecting to the deep core issues affecting people’s standard of living. Aggressive political action by allies develops activist candidates from within progressive ranks and educates existing politicians to build a core of committed champions prepared to govern effectively and to remain true to the grassroots that got them in power in the first place. 4. Cities, regions and states matter The resource support that today is increasingly going into aggressive regional and local political action reflects a growing appreciation that the building blocks of national change lie at this level. Beginning with the New Deal of the 1930s, the twentieth century saw a vast expansion of the authority, resources and reach of the federal government. From Medicare and Medicaid to Civil Rights laws to title 9 to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Agency to Roe V. Wade the social movements of much of this century focused on solutions that ultimately came out of federal action. The New Right, however, realized – much earlier than the left – that the key to national transformation lay outside Washington D.C. The loss by the Democrats of over 1,700 state legislative seats between 2010 and 2018 reflected the New Right’s appreciation of the power of state governments. State governments run our nation’s election system. They draw the U.S. House of Representatives districts. They can challenge national policy with their own laws. And through their attorneys general they can directly counter federal action. Witness, for example, the steady march of state laws to push the envelope on

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abortion rights or the collective suit of Republican Attorneys General against the Affordable Care Act. For progressives, the path to reshaping states begins at the local level. Cities offer the most readily available building blocks of new majority-seeking coalitions. Already by the 2000 census, 80 percent of Americans lived in either core cities or their surrounding suburbs.26 In many parts of the country, a state’s major metropolitan areas collectively held the voters for majorities in state governments and state Congressional delegations. As Chapter 3 will elaborate, cities have extensive powers that can make real changes in the lives of working people and the behavior of corporations and businesses. Therefore, they can demonstrate through reallife action the power of the broader progressive agenda for fundamental change. Furthermore, the progressive organizing and activist infrastructure is generally strongest in core cities. Communities of color are also central to most core cities – both in terms of population and actualized or potential political power. The twenty-first century is also seeing an investment and population return to inner-city downtowns and selected neighborhoods even in such hollowed-out communities as Detroit. Thus, core cities, even in very red states, offer the most promising starting point for building a sustained progressive movement for longterm change. Organizing in core cities alone, however, is not enough. While 30 percent of the U.S. population lives in core cities, half live in the surrounding suburbs.27 The deterioration that afflicted many core cities in the second half of the twentieth century has now spread to many inner-ring suburbs, even as energy returns to targeted areas of central cities. Furthermore, core city revitalization can mean gentrification that pushes poorer residents out into the suburbs. As we will see, while typically beginning in core cities, the work of PWF affiliates spans regions and specifically targets working-class, often heavily minority, suburbs for progressive activism. A regional focus also reflects the latest business and academic thinking about how economies actually work on the ground.28 In an age of “globalization,” regions provide the actual physical units of the global economy. Corporations do not move and invest randomly, but do so region by region. The rise of Silicon Valley offers a modern American “poster child” for how regions can compete successfully in the global economy. It is also clear that a region’s economic fate overall is intimately tied in with the fate of the region’s core city – ultimately they sink or swim together. In addition, it is also the regional voting base, not the core city alone, that provides the key to state power. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Partnership for Working Families’ affiliates provide some of the best examples of regional activism in the country. Indeed, this is why we refer to PWF work as “regional power building.”

Why did the model frst emerge in California? While our cases demonstrate the spread of regional power building around the country, the founding affiliates are in California. Indeed, the Partnership for Working Families began as the California Partnership as the work of the

Regional movement to transform America 15 pioneering Los Angles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA) led to the founding of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and the Center for Policy Initiatives in San Diego. As our chapters demonstrate, these four foundational efforts fostered efforts elsewhere in the state to include Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD), Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) and Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). Why did regional power building first emerge in California? At close to 40 million people, California is the nation’s largest state by population. These numbers plus the scale and overall vitality of its economy means that if the state was considered its own country, it would be among the most prosperous in the world. As Silicon Valley demonstrates, California has had experience with regional thinking among its business leadership – approaches that would inform pioneering labor and community leaders. The California labor movement was a central player in founding the regional power building model. While historically showing mid-range union density, California’s very scale meant that labor leaders were drawing upon raw membership numbers of around 2.5 million statewide. At the same time, their distance from the traditional centers of labor strength gave them additional room to innovate. When innovative labor leaders sought to transform their labor councils from the traditionally weak structures found within the U.S. labor movement, they could tap into an affiliate base that could provide significant direct and indirect resources. What would become PWF affiliates rely on foundation funding, however. California offered advantages in this regard. The state’s economic prosperity and its home to major U.S.-based corporations provided a community of state-based foundations which regional powerbuilding leaders tapped into to resource their experiments, drawing in turn national sources as well. The state’s political trajectory also contributed to innovation. While California has a “liberal” image, as Manuel Pastor has detailed, the state experienced successful right-wing political strategies well before they came to dominate the nation’s politics.29 Before Donald Trump used immigrant bashing and calls for a border wall to gain votes, in 1994 California Republican Pete Wilson championed the successful Proposition 187 which denied virtually all state social services to undocumented immigrants. The governor also embraced extensive deregulation and the path-breaking “three strikes and you are out” policies, which filled up the state’s prisons. Majority California voters also voted to throw undocumented children out of schools and ban affirmative action and bilingual education. Back in 1978, voters had already hamstrung public budgets by passing Proposition 13, which decreased the assessed value of properties and then restricted future increases. It also required a two-thirds majority (and thus typically Republican approval) in both bodies of the state legislature to raise taxes and placed similar restrictions on municipalities. In short, by the early 1990s labor and community leaders were trying to figure out how to beat back successful right wing momentum.

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Also by the 1990s, the state’s economy, including its famous high-tech industry, had revealed all the contradictions of neoliberal “success” with exploding inequality and clear racial discrimination. The combination of poverty and economic insecurity amidst seeming prosperity meant clear constituencies for efforts at change. At the same time, population dynamics were making California a “majority minority” state – opening up a clear path for power building by organizing the “New Majority” rather than trying to win back moderate “swing” voters. Finally, as regional power building demonstrated its strength, California progressive leaders sought to spread the model deliberately throughout the state. Indeed, in the early 2000s, the California labor movement undertook an extensive internal discussion and planning process that led to a shared commitment to foster power-building labor councils throughout the state, which fostered the development of other PWF affiliates.30 While state-specific factors contributed to the rise of the regional power building model first in California, as our many case studies show the underlying dynamics of building a sustained movement to counter neoliberalism and to build a progressive shared prosperity alternative apply throughout the country. Indeed, a central characteristic of PWF affiliates has been their ability to adapt the general model to the particular political, economic and demographic characteristics of their regions.

Overview of the book Since its creation in 2006, the Partnership for Working Families has evolved considerably in terms of its own work and the type of campaigns shared among affiliates. In Chapter 2, PWF staff explore the Partnerships’ evolution and stateof-the-art thinking on regional power building work today. Chapter 3 provides an updated and edited version of a foundational document for the movement called Why Cities Matter. This piece, written by key movement leaders, distills the thinking which has guided PWF affiliate work. It lays out the case for why movements that reshape metropolitan policy and governance can both make real impacts on the lives of everyday residents while also laying the foundations of state and national change. The first book-length treatment of regional power building strategies was A New New Deal by Amy Dean and David B. Reynolds published in 2009. Much has changed over the past decade. In Chapter 4, Dean and Reynolds examine the evolution of the movement, both the core strategies that remain central to the movement and the new thinking that has emerged. Part 2 focuses on the two founding PWF affiliates: the Los Angles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA). Both are relatively large and well-established institutions within their regional movements. The case studies of Chapters 5 and 6 provide a window into how regional power building has evolved over two decades of deep practice. While sharing the general regional power building approach and individual elements, LAANE and WPUSA have had distinctly different evolutions. LAANE, for example, has grown its work around pioneering industry-specific focal points. WPUSA has

Regional movement to transform America 17 developed and spread elsewhere model leadership development programs that have built enduring coalition relationships and a growing cadre of progressive activists prepared for effective elected and appointed governance. Part of the power of the California experience was that it demonstrated the possibilities for progressive change not simply in traditional “liberal” regions like Los Angeles and the Bay Area, but also the strength of the model to movementbuild in conservative bastions such as San Diego and Orange counties. For the former, Part 3 will examine PWF affiliates that are moving traditional liberal urban regions dominated by Democratic but all too often neoliberal regimes in new progressive directions. Part 4 shows the further strength of the regional power-building model by exploring successful PWF affiliate organizing in conservative political terrain. Chapter 7 focuses on the Alliance for a Greater New York. This affiliate’s acronym – ALIGN – points to its central role in aligning the region’s rich array of labor and community groups. Relative to other PWF affiliates, the main challenge is not fostering greater grassroots activism, but helping partners across the various progressive “silos” to pursue shared agendas that span many different group’s core concerns and which build capacity for a more unified, proactive and power-gaining progressive movement. In contrast, metropolitan Boston has a traditionally strong labor movement, but weaker community-based organizations. In Chapter 8, the authors highlight how innovative labor leaders helped form Community Labor United as a community-driven coalition that has helped foster community organizations to establish a shared table at which labor and community can sit with equal voice. Pittsburgh has been touted for its seemingly enlightened transition from a declining rust-belt city to a prosperous post-industrial metropolis. Yet, the city’s transition has not benefited everyone equally. Chapter 9 details how Pittsburgh United has brought together labor and community groups in community benefits, large infrastructure and community-supported union organizing campaigns that all aim to benefit those left out. Pittsburgh United is also part of a broader regional effort to politically recapture Western Pennsylvania by building permanent grassroots organizing in the region’s towns and small cities. A swing state, Pennsylvania’s western rural area has gone from blue to red. Before delivering the state for Donald Trump, this swing allowed for a conservative majority in the state’s legislature to work against progressive reforms in urban areas such as Pittsburgh. Chapter 10 explores the transformation of the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago. It began as a labor-community alliance focused on more traditional class issues of unequal pay, working poverty and worker dignity. However, learning from early failures, the Grassroots Collaborative has strategically redirected its resources, organizing actions and goals to emphasize racial equality in addition to economic inequalities. It has used its critique of systemic racism to build strong coalitions around public finance, education, police brutality, privatization, mass incarceration and the activities of private financiers. Is regional power building simply a strategy for progressive momentum in traditionally liberal contexts? The short answer is no. The case studies in Part 4 demonstrate

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how PWF affiliates have adapted model to build power in conservative bastions. Indeed, today’s stark decline in California’s Republican Party comes in no small measure to the progressive power-building success in core conservative regions of the state. Chapter 11 focuses on the coalition building of the Center for Policy Initiatives in the “military town” of San Diego and the surrounding suburban areas. As this work has achieved important policy and electoral success, it has evolved to embrace very deliberate “insider/outsider” strategies that aim at not just winning policies and electing champions, but actual full-blown progressive governance that transforms the relationship between government and citizens. With its history of reactionary and anti-immigrant activism, fragmented municipalities and entrenched institutions representing business interests and conservative politics, Orange County posed a serious challenge to labor-community activism. Chapter 12 details the opportunities and challenges experienced by Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development as it has turned this conservative bastion into contested terrain through campaigns challenging the region’s inequality, building a grassroots base and winning district-based city election reform. The next three chapters explore PWF affiliates that operate in decidedly conservative states. These affiliates have to build power amid low union density and hostile state governments willing to use preemption authority against local progressive progress. Yet, even in the “reddest” states, the cities are often “blue,” with these regions becoming potentially even more so as their demographics change. Chapter 13 tells the story of Georgia Stand-Up – founded in 2005 to reverse declining union density and strengthen community participation in worker-centered campaigns. The PWF affiliate very quickly got drawn into the central battles, such as over the expanding regional transit system, which will shape the future of Atlanta as powerful gentrification forces push poverty out of the city and into the suburbs. Georgia Stand-Up has deliberately fostered a shared table at which labor and community leaders and activists can craft an alternative future for the city and region. It has been a core player in the long-term voter mobilization work that delivered the dramatic wins of November 2020 and January 2021. Stand Up Nashville formed to challenge the dominant narrative of Nashville as an unambiguous southern success story, by raising up and tackling the region’s rampant inequality. Chapter 14 details SUN’s campaigns to win subsidy transparency, community benefits agreements, economic development reforms and to challenge Amazon. This chapter also provides a unique evaluation of how a PWF affiliate has altered the framing of “economic success” in the region by the authors’ detailed examination of the media coverage of SUN campaigns. To really govern, progressives need to shift the public discourse so that the realities of working-class people, and especially communities of color, define the success and failure of a region’s economy and policy. Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) began with the classic PWF model focused on bringing labor and community groups together around economic developmentrelated campaigns. However, regional conditions led CASE in a new direction. The political balance of forces in Phoenix had proven particularly difficult, while in 2010, conservatives “threw down the gauntlet” over immigration by passing

Regional movement to transform America 19 the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant legislation at the state level while the infamous Sheriff Arpaio terrorized immigrant communities throughout the metro area. Chapter 15 explores CASE’s transformation to become a core part of the political transformation of Arizona through the sustained grassroots voter mobilization of Latino and other traditionally disengaged communities. Along the way CASE has changed the possibilities within Phoenix, including the recent election of two grassroots activists to the City Council. All PWF affiliates have evolved over time to fit their strategies to their regional conditions. In Part 5, we further explore affiliates that, like CASE, have made a considerable journey from their starting roots. The Denver area affiliate even changed its founding name to become United for a New Economy. This decision signified more than simple semantics. As Chapter 16 explains, having started with work in Denver, the affiliate today focuses its strategies on building grassroots community-based organizations in the working class, heavy minority suburbs to which many poorer families are being pushed by a gentrifying Denver. At the same time, UNE is experimenting with a state-of-the-art social media strategy to support campaigns to change state policy around the issues prioritized by the members of its grassroots chapters. Chapter 17 examines an industry-focused, worker-centered affiliate. The Warehouse Workers Resource Center builds leadership and activism among the largely Latinx warehouse workforce of southern California. Through coalitionbuilding, legal advocacy and state policy campaigns, the WWRC has taken on some of the nation’s largest firms, including Walmart and Amazon, putting it at the center of the struggle for a fairer economy in the twenty-first century. Unlike most PWF affiliates which began in an urban region with a core city, Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) formed in a more suburban and rural part of California. Chapter 18 details the distinctly femaleled evolution of CAUSE and PUEBLO as separate allied organizations and then as a combined CAUSE following a merger in 2013. It concludes with how the now mature organization has responded to the unique conditions of organizing and advocacy for social, economic and environmental justice in a rural/suburban region and developed unique strengths to overcome the challenges of the lack of resources that exist in such areas. Chapter 19 takes up the PFW affiliate experience as whole to examine the challenges, opportunities, and lessons of over two decades of organizing. We draw out the common elements that have evolved amid the diversity of affiliate adaptations and highlight the most commonly shared challenges. We end with the potential for this work to transform states and the nation. As we raised earlier, over the course of several decades corporate conservatives mounted a very successful effort to change the nation’s political balance of power by transforming many state governments. It is not a coincidence that today PWF affiliates are often a core part of the progressive counteroffensive in many states. In particular, we will review briefly how they have been at the center of beating back the right wing’s success and momentum in what we now consider “liberal” California. The lesson is clear. By building regional power, PWF affiliates across the country are

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at the forefront of efforts to put states and our nation on a different, more lifesustaining path.

Notes 1 https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-trillion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/ 2 Following the voter repeal of Michigan’s controversial Emergency Manager law, the legislatures passed a new version and added a minor spending to label it a “budget” measure immune to citizen referendum. This Emergency Manager law played a key role in the subsequent Flint Water crisis. Starting with North Carolina in 2016 and continuing in Michigan and Wisconsin after the 2018 elections, Republican legislatures have attempted to limit executive powers for offices captured by Democrats. See Tara Golsham, “How Republicans are trying to strip power from Democratic governors-elect,” Vox, December 14, 2018. 3 At the time of this writing, the network goes by its founding name, the Partnership for Working Families. It will change to the new name in 2021. Since PWF is the term used by all our authors and is the name that people know the network by during the period covered by this book we keep to its current name. 4 Helga Leitner, Eric S. Sheppard, Kristin Sziarto and Ananthakrishna Maringanti, 2007. “Contesting Urban Futures: Decentering Neoliberalsim”, in Contesting Neoliberalsim: Urban Frontiers, edited by Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard, pp. 1–25. New York: Guilford Press. 5 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, 2002. “Neoliberalizing Space”, in Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North American and Eastern Europe, edited by Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, pp. 33–57. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 6 Mirian Greenberg and Penny Lewis, ed., 2017. “Preface”, in The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Strategies in an Urban Age. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press/ILR Press.(xi). 7 Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, 2002. “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’”, Antipode, 2002-07, 34(3), pp. 349–379. 8 See William Ryan, 1971. Blaming the victim. New York: Pantheon Books, and Michael Katz, 2013. 1989. The Underserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York: Pantheon. 9 Schram, 2018. 10 Louise Simmons, 2004. “Labor-Welfare Linkages and the Imperative of Organizing Low Wage Women Workers”, in Welfare, the Working Poor and Labor, edited by Louise Simmons. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. 11 Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, ed. 1990. Building Bridges: Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community. New York: Monthly Review Press. 12 Ira Katznelson. 1981. Urban Trenches: City Politics and the Paterning of Class in the United States. New York: Pantheon Books. 13 See Janice Fine, 2000. “Community Unionism in Baltimore and Stamford. Beyond the Politics of Particularism”, Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, 4(3), pp. 59–85. 14 AFL-CIO, 2013b. Resolution 16: Building enduring labor-community partnerships. Retrieved from http://www.aflcio.org/content/download/96131 /2631981/Res16.pdf. Richard Freeman, 2014. “What Can Labor Organizations Do for U.S. Workers When Unions Can’t Do What Unions Used to Do?”, in Works for Workers? Public Policies and Innovative Strategies for Low-Wage Workers, edited by S. Luce, J. Luff, J. McCartin, and R. Milkman, pp. 50–78. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Regional movement to transform America 21 15 AFL-CIO, 2013a; Resolution 5: A broad, inclusive and effective labor movement. Retrieved from http://www.aflcio.org/content/download/101901/2704531/ Res05.pdf See Fine, 2006; for a thorough analysis of their functioning: Janice Fine, 2006. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press/Cornell University Press. 16 L. Windham, 2014, “Why Alt-Labor Groups Are Making Employers Mighty Nervous”, The American Prospect, January 30. Retrieved from http://prospect .org/article/why-alt-laborgroups-are-making-employers-mighty-nervous 17 AFL-CIO, 2013b. 18 Amy Dean and David Reynolds, 2009. A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 19 Marilyn Sneiderman and Secky Fascione, 2018. “Going on Offense during Challenging Times”, New Labor Forum, 27(1), pp. 55–70, 55. 20 see Sneiderman and Frascione, 2018, pp. 59–61 for an extensive list. 21 Ibid. 22 Lowell Turner, 2007. “Introduction”, in Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy, edited by Lowell Turner and Daniel Cornfield. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 3. 23 Lowell Turner, H. Katz and Richard Hurd, ed., 2001. Rekindling the Movement: Labor’s Quest for Relevance in the 21st Century (pp. 9–26). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. 24 Paul Johnston, 2001. Organize for What? The Resurgence of Labor as a Citizenship Movement, p. 35. in Turner, Katz and Hurd, 2001. 25 https://caseygrants.org/who-we-are/inside-mcf/integrated-voter-engagement -democratizing-democracy/ 26 U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census Atlas Chapter 2, Population Distribution. 27 Ibid. 28 For a more detailed summary of the importance of regions economically and to progressive power building, see Amy Dean and David Reynolds, 2009. A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, chapter one. 29 Manuel Pastor, 2018. State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future. New York: The New Press. 30 Jeff Grabelsky, 2009. “Building Labor’s Power in California: Raising Standards and Expanding Capacity among Central Labor Councils, the State Labor Federation, and Union Affiliates”, Working USA, 12(1).

2

From the Partnership for Working Families to PowerSwitch Lessons and evolution from 20 years of anchoring affiliates Kyra Greene and Lauren Jacobs

The Partnership for Working Families (PWF) was founded in 2002 as the California Partnership. We very quickly grew to a national network as the powerbuilding model first developed in California spread to other parts of the country. From the beginning the Partnership aimed to support regional power building by diving deeply into the shared issues faced by our affiliates in cities across the country, developing a shared power analysis, crafting timely and relevant strategies from that analysis, and building the capacity of our affiliates through leadership development and direct resourcing of their campaigns.

Our vision amidst the global pandemic At the moment we write this, we are nine months into a global pandemic that has radically changed how we work, eat, relate to each other and live. In the United States, but also across the globe, we see massive global uprisings demanding an end to the racial caste system, driven by hundreds of years of economic exploitation that finds its origins in the interplay between colonialism and religious persecution. COVID-19 has magnified the relationship between land, economy, racism and power, taking the standing crisis of housing and displacement for Black, Indigenous and people of color communities over a cliff, and laying bare the racialized nature of who is permitted to have power when disaster strikes. Displaced communities are in a weaker position to organize for power in their neighborhoods. Municipalities staring down budget gaps are contemplating selling off, rather than expanding, the scarce supply of publicly controlled land and housing. Even sympathetic media coverage adopts opposition frames, clinging to private market solutions and oversimplified “econ 101” analysis and lionizing “mom and pop” landlords while private equity firms acquire whole neighborhoods. While winning housing justice in cities is hard enough under these circumstances, corporate interests have made it more challenging by winning retrenchment in federal and state aid for housing and making local wins legally impossible through state preemption laws (The Partnership for Working Families, 2019). Crisis can be a clarifying phenomenon. In the midst of a rupture in the previous order of relationship, we can gain clarity about what was wrong in the past

From the PWF to PowerSwitch 23 and have the opportunity to put forward new ideas. The promises and ideology delivered by neoliberal economics and white supremacy – brought our country to a position in which – as of November 2020, as President Donald Trump’s term nears its end, roughly 250,000 and rising disproportionately Black and brown people have died from COVID-19 (John’s Hopkins University, 2020). It is under this context that our network, rich in the leadership of Black, brown and Asian feminists who understand the interconnectedness of neoliberalism, patriarchy and white supremacy, sets out to follow in the footsteps of other third world feminists. We will imagine what a world – or perhaps just a town or city – would look like in which we are truly free. And from that vision we aim to set pathways toward it. We are proud of the work, the wins and the leaders we have developed over the last two decades. In the regions in which we work we have seen thousands of new workers win the right to organize, we have raised wages, we have instituted paid sick leave, and we have ensured that billions in local infrastructure investments benefit the most marginalized residents in our regions. For an example of scale, one of our Oakland-based affiliates, EBASE, has shaped over $2.5 billion in public and private investment to create pathways to high-quality and high-paying construction jobs (East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, 2016). We have improved the lives of millions, yet more and more people dangle on the edge of financial ruin and homelessness and we have a large-scale embrace of white supremacist proto-authoritarianism. The leaders of our network and national staff embarked on a long-term agenda process to understand the conditions in which we are operating, imagine what a people- and planet-centered economy looks like, and assess our strategies to close the gap between where we are now and where we wish to be. We take seriously the urgency to “up our game” to address the crises that our communities collectively face at this moment. When we came together to envision what freedom means for our communities, we saw a world where housing and land are not commodities, where housing is a right and land is commonly owned, stewarded and protected. In the future we’re forging as a network, the economy, its mechanisms and the rules for how goods are produced, services delivered and wealth produced are governed democratically. We are reimagining public safety and demanding that budgets devoted to policing and incarceration be directed instead to housing, mental health clinics, education, recreation and all the things that truly keep us safe. The intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 elections and the global rise in authoritarian and proto-authoritarian leaders has put into stark relief the need to not just protect liberal democracy but to fundamentally transform it. This means we work to expand, strengthen and amplify the voices of everyday people in shaping and transforming the economy, government and public goods in local communities. We plant and grow the seeds of a vibrant multiracial feminist democracy and economy rooted in the values of abundance, common good, freedom and joy.

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Together with our affiliates, we endeavor to reshape the economy so that people hold power to stop the extractive, racist, exploitative practices of corporations. We are building on our past work in equitable development and community benefits to move campaigns that will ultimately reclaim and municipalize privatized industries, restrict the power of corporations in public governance and change the common sense about who deserves to accumulate wealth and what a healthy economy means. If we are successful, we will ensure that the economy is designed to provide for Black, Indigenous, people of color and gender-oppressed people. Your city, my town, our municipalities are all a site of struggle. They are one of the first political arenas in which people begin to notice and name the battle between two opposing visions of community and the commons. There are those forces that embrace and love the multiracial pluralistic nature of the hub, and who believe there must be a path to shared prosperity and who hold feminist values that social reproduction is also critical to the well-being of the city, of the town, and in opposition there are those forces that hold that the richest are the smartest and entitled to lead, that gross wealth and horrific poverty are acceptable fixtures that personal initiative can fix, and that great men with great ideas build towns and make the jobs. If we are to tilt toward the former vision and away from the latter, engaging locally must happen. Our network is accepting responsibility to build innovative strategies at the local level which will ignite transformation at the state and national levels. Building power through people, through the demos, through democracy is messy. It is an art. It is intuition. It is listening and responding. It is not bluster; it is not a single snappy phrase. It is sweat, patience and love. The Partnership and our affiliates have been weaving coalitions among likely and unlikely partners in our cities, towns and regions for almost two decades. Building pluralistic, multiracial and feminist bases of people power through which we can transform our towns, cities, communities has been central to our work. We leap forward to tackle transforming how democracy is experienced, practiced and lived in our communities armed with a wealth of experience. We embrace the challenge of bringing the economy under the control of people and have been building our muscles to take on this challenge through our decades of tackling development, labor organizing and public investments in infrastructure. We are excited to scale and expand our network’s dedication to building new organizations; our affiliates have supported new youth organizing initiatives, new tenant organizations and new worker organizations. We enter this next era of our organization unified in a vision to transform dramatically and deeply the structure and practice of the economy and governance. We have built a deep understanding of the levers and mechanics of local governance and public investment. We also understand deeply the power that corporations wield in our cities and towns, intervening to reshape the physical landscape and throwing their weight to shape public budgets. Our network embraces learning; we have developed a practice of sharing our wins and losses and our analysis of how those events unfolded. We teach each

From the PWF to PowerSwitch 25 other new tactics and strategies. We will rely heavily on the independence of our 20 affiliates to both develop innovations and then use the network to scale and share those breakthroughs.

Power building is a team sport As this book will reveal, our organization has been one driving regional power strategies to benefit working-class communities of color for nearly 20 years. We have helped to pass and implement community benefit agreements, labor standards (like minimum wages and paid sick leave), equitable development initiatives, environmental justice priorities and opportunities for authentic civic participation in towns, cities, counties and states that benefit millions of people across the United States – all the while building coalitions, leadership capacity and strategic infrastructure for the next wave of leaders to build upon and grow. Core to our strategy is our belief that power building is a team sport. We bring together unionized workers, unorganized workers, renters, residents who struggle for toxin-free neighborhoods, immigrants, people of color and the faith community in strategic long-term coalitions. Our coalition tables are invaluable and unique spaces where the environmental, labor, housing, racial justice and faith communities convene to advance a common agenda and find points of intersection in their work. Partnership affiliates do deep power analyses of their regions. With this understanding of regional dynamics, our organizations craft long-term agendas to win justice across a variety of issue areas, all of which are critical to the lives of working-class residents. We have a proven model of power building through: • • •

Sustaining permanent, multi-sector, multiracial coalitions Organizing residents, workers, tenants and developing civic leaders Leveraging the powers of cities to win policies that concretely improve people’s lives

At the PWF we support the work of affiliates through both technical assistance and strategic partnership for our affiliates. The Partnership’s national staff has deep expertise in coordination and co-development of campaigns across affiliates to boost impact in and beyond regions, including at the statewide level; policy and campaign development; research, including expertise in key industries, in land use and economic development, and in the analysis of private-sector policy initiatives such as state preemption of local government authority; legal, including expertise in community benefits, inclusionary housing, construction, local hire, waste, 501 c3/c4 organizations; communications; leadership development; organizational development; fundraising and resource sharing; and peer networking.

Regions of power building As a ground-up national network, we believe that cities, towns and regions have the power to shape the national landscape. As a network, we were founded by

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our affiliates, who played a hand in shaping California as a leader in seeking cobenefits for working-class communities of color in how our cities are planned and built. We evolved over the years, expanding our network across the nation. Between 2017 and 2020 we nurtured deep collaboration among our affiliates within a region or a state by offering sustained wrap-around capacity-building support for our affiliate organizations and their campaigns. California continues to be a site of innovative campaigning and experimentation for our network. With seven affiliates in the state, we have an important part to play in the movement ecosystem and the fight against corporate dominance of our cities. It will be important to develop programs and strategies that simultaneously lean into our local power and advance our local interests and build statewide power. Organizing together around standards for Amazon warehouse workers, introducing packages of worker protection measures in cities around the state and combining our efforts for housing justice are areas where we’re exploring what networked campaigning looks like for our network. We also continue to grapple in California with the power and scale of technology companies and the built environment (Dwoskin, 2019). As tech corporations like Google and Uber seek to deregulate their industries and extract benefits and cheap labor from our communities, what we do in the next period to contest for power will set the direction for who owns our cities and states (Fuentes et al., 2020). Other regional power-building projects are underway in Pennsylvania and the South. In both parts of the country, our affiliates drive civic engagement yearround, increasing voter registration and participation, and building an organized base in the community. POWER and Pittsburgh United have built a statewide campaign to raise the Pennsylvania minimum wage and free cities to raise wages and pass economic justice policies without interference from corporate-backed state legislators (The Partnership for Working Families, 2019). The Partnership’s goals for the Southern program center around dismantling and transforming institutions that thrive on the legacy of slavery in the South to build real power and victories for working people of color and immigrants. This economic and political system has replicated and reinvented itself in different ways, yet the results still yield a structure that has corporations and institutions reaping the benefits of white supremacy at the expense of the poor, incarcerated, undocumented and disenfranchised. Southern cities are growing; however, that growth is stifled by the regressive policies imposed on its citizens, the systematic disinvestment in low-income and communities of color, and an unhinged approach to economic development (i.e., “Any job is a good job”). Georgia Stand-Up is our affiliate based in Atlanta, Georgia. Stand-Up has paved the way for organizing and educating communities about voting rights, transit equity, affordable housing and economic development. Their decades of power building and nonpartisan voter engagement prepared them to play a pivotal role in the 2020 elections; they made over 400,000 calls, sent over 680,000 texts and reached over 60,000 people through canvassing.

From the PWF to PowerSwitch 27 During the last three years, we have been supporting the newly formed Stand Up Nashville (SUN) in building a strong coalition and organizational infrastructure. SUN had many campaign wins early in its formation and became the Partnership’s second Southern affiliate in 2019. Similar to regional strategies in California and Pennsylvania, our goal in the South is twofold: to deepen our policy and economic analysis to prescribe the most innovative solutions to tackle economic and racial inequality in the region, grounded in Indigenous knowledge and leadership, and to transform local power into state and regional power.

Our learning: New models we’re exploring Shifting power requires not just one or two solo actors in positions of authority or excellence, but an entire network of people who have the skills, relationships and experience to leverage the positions of authority they gain. As such, we have deeply invested in each other’s learning as a network; in the last two years, we began expanding our understanding of regional power building and blending it with developing communities and economies of care. In September 2019, we led a delegation of the network to Barcelona to meet with Barcelona en Comu. BComu, for short, is part of the municipalist movement: a movement of city and town dwellers committed to not waiting on some later imagined date of revolution or transformation on which change will occur. Rather, the movement believes in building and transforming the world toward our vision of equity, environmental harmony, racial justice and a socially reproductively centered world in the present. BComu recently won a second term, occupying the mayor’s office in the city. The origins of the platform are rooted in the confluence of a variety of social movements coming together and developing a popular vision of the city. In Barcelona, we met with housing activists, members of the tenants’ union, cooperative enterprise members and active members of the BComu’s base. We were moved by the commitment to finding solutions among the residents of the city and their use of old and new technologies: an open source online platform that allows residents to make policy proposals and debate other proposals and the use of the old-fashioned public meeting in the neighborhood. Our week-anda-half trip provided inspiration in how we might think about a similar project of resident-led transformation in US cities. We have also been learning about projects in Jackson, MS, and Richmond, CA, to develop a solidarity economy anchored by a network of cooperatives and other types of worker-owned and democratically self-managed enterprises. As our network embarked on gaining a common analysis, we began to see solidified themes and linkages between our work and the long-standing collective vision of a solidarity economy. As a learning network, we support each other in sharing lessons, strategies, tactics and resources to shift how our cities are governed and build opportunities for a multiracial authentic democracy.

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Our latest strategies in action We believe that budgets can be sites of radical democratic co-creation, and when we succeed, local budgets will prioritize care, health, true safety and a rich cultural and social life in the city or town. This was a key part of the vision underlying our We Make This City campaign, which, beginning in 2018, brought together affiliates across the country with a common narrative and strategies for winning control of our land and our resources. In response to the rise in austerity, we are building on the We Make This City frame to center community-driven budgeting and progressive revenue. A major part of our work will involve demanding just budgets that recover and reimagine our cities, funded by cheap borrowing (taking on big banks and Federal Reserve for unfair lending practices to municipalities) and new revenue from the richest. Municipal budgets are one of the most critical components of building antiracist regions and cities that allow Black and brown low-income communities permanence in place. As the national cry to defund the police sweeps across the country, part of our work includes expanding nonregressive revenue to provide economic relief to cities that are bearing the cost of decades of disinvestment. This includes supporting campaigns for community-driven budgets that prioritize affordable housing supply. Center for Policy Initiatives in San Diego has been a pioneer in utilizing budget education and community-driven budgets to not only win meaningful budget changes but also build community and coalition power via leadership development and in-depth community budget training. In Seattle, Puget Sound Sage’s long-standing coalition, South Communities Organizing for Racial and Regional Equity, played a major role in establishing a permanent fund for community-driven equitable development paired with a progressive revenue source on short-term rentals. In Philadelphia, POWER leads their membership through advocating for a moral budget at the regional and municipal levels. We understand that for an authentic democracy, the rules that guide the market must also be democratically controlled. As such, our programs focus on building models of organizing rooted in class and race that make specific demands which hold corporations accountable to the common and public good. Climate change lays bare the need to hold corporate actors accountable to the common good. The climate crisis did not just happen – it was created by an economic system dependent on the extraction of resources, exploitation of workers and politics of exclusion. People of color and low-income communities pay for these practices with their health and lives, while the fossil fuel and utility corporations that created the climate crisis turn record profits (Bookchin et al., 2019, 13).1 Our affiliates organize for grassroots power by demonstrating and highlighting the linkages between corporate actors, the COVID-19 crisis, climate change and racial disparities (The Partnership for Working Families et al., 2020). “We have about 11 years to dramatically change our whole economy – that is a massive undertaking,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action Wisconsin, in a Wisconsin Public Radio interview.

From the PWF to PowerSwitch 29 After several years of shaping infrastructure policy via community benefits, our network shifted toward seeking co-benefits in both policy and practice not only for workers but also for local environments. One model for a local Green New Deal is in Milwaukee, WI, where our affiliate Citizen Action Wisconsin has shown that reducing greenhouse gases gives Milwaukee another opportunity to put people to work. The solution to climate change is not only a bold vision on how to restructure our economy but many hands doing the work of building a sustainable, racially just, solidarity economy. We know that for our survival, we need intersectional practices and policies rooted in multiracial feminist democracy.

Actualizing the long-term agenda As our network has matured and coalesced around a vision of multiracial feminist democracy, we will continue to develop bold campaigns for large, structural change. The following interwoven strategies are necessary for us to succeed in co-creating an economy that is more sustainable and just have become the core pillars that guide our network’s strategies moving forward: • • •

•

Build Authentic Inclusive Democracy: We need to create a body of campaigns and programs that develop ways in which to open government to resident voices. A People’s Economy, for the Many not the Few: The racial wealth gap, the gender gap, the rampant racism and human exploitation are in the design of the machine. We need a new apparatus that is accountable to people, to the many. Civic Organizations – Labor, Tenants, Borrowers, Ethnic: An organized citizenry is best able to take on questionable or corrupt practices. We need to dramatically increase the number of people organized in order to effectively contest capital, stave off authoritarianism and bring out the democracies that we envision. Take the Fight to Corporations: If our ultimate goal is to develop the capacity of people to govern and manage democracy and the economy, then they must have experience of their power to bring corporations to heel. We can prove to the American people that it’s possible to reclaim public goods from corporate capture, reject extreme exploitation of workers and beat back corporate overreach – all the while fighting for our collective liberation.

Running throughout these strategic pillars is the importance of narrative strategy, base-building, race-centered interventions and moving from a shared ideology. We can’t create the conditions to ignite change unless we take on the battle of ideas, drive wedges in the right alliance and build the progressive bloc. Together, our affiliates formed these pillars as guiding principles for our strategies moving forward. This book captures the groundwork, strategies and power building that led to our current approach as a network. As ideas, innovations and collective power ignite and spread through our network, the Partnership will continue to grow, adapt and change.

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From the Partnership to PowerSwitch We have evolved and grown a lot since we formed the Partnership as a national network 18 years ago. We have been able to build on our strong foundation and successful track record, and we are now a network led primarily by women of color, at both the staff and board levels. We explicitly center race and gender in how we structure our network and our campaigns. We continue to demand community benefits, and we also pursue large structural changes and contest for power in our cities, going up against some of the most powerful corporations that are seeking to deregulate their industries and dictate the rules of the economy. We made the decision to rebrand and adopt a new name so that our external identity would match who we are today and our vision for mutlitracial feminist democracy. We landed on “PowerSwitch” to describe an organization that sparks change, action and greater aspiration. At this moment it’s not enough to just demand; we must ignite the fire in people to protect our democracy, switch power, and make the change we desperately deserve.

Note 1 Fueling the Fire report.

Bibliography Bookchin, D., Colau, A., Shea Baird, K., & Junque, M. (2019). Fearless Cities. Barcelona en Comu. Dwoskin, E. (2019). Google Reaped Millions in Tax Breads as it Secretly Expanded its Real Estate Foorprint Across the U.S. Washington Post. 15 February. Fuentes, R., Smith, R., & Chen, B. (2020). Rigging the Gig: How Uber, Lyft

and DoorDash’s Ballot Initiative Would Put Corporations Above the Law and Steal Wages, Benefits, and Protections for California Workers. Report. National Eamployment Law Center and the Partnership for Working Families. “https://s27147.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/Rigging-the-Gig_Final07.07.2020.pdf” Rigging-the-Gig_Final-07.07.2020.pdf (pcdn.co).

East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. (2016). Good Jobs & Healthy Communities in the East Bay Innovating Regionally for National c. Five Year Strategic Direction, 2016–2021. http://workingeastbay .org /wp -content /uploads /2016 /07 /EBASE -Strategic Plan-for-WEB.pdf ​ ​ ​ John’s Hopkins University. (2020). Racial Data Transparency. Coronavirus Resource Center. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map ​ ​ ​ ​ The Partnership for Working Families. (2019, May). For All of Us, By All of Us: Challenging State Interference to Advance Gender and Racial Justice. https:// www.forworkingfamilies.org/sites/default/files/publications/PWF%20Gender %20Preemption_0.pdf ​ ​ The Partnership for Working Families, Barry, D., Public Accountability Initiative/ Little Sis, Galbraith, R., Seidman, D., The Action Center on Race & the Economy, & Thi Patterson, E. (2020, October 15). Fueling the Fire: Why Any Fossil Fuel Industry Bailout Will Be Disastrous for Communities of Color. https://www .forworkingfamilies.org/resources/publications/fueling-fire-why-any-fossil-fuel -industry-bailout-will-be-disastrous ​ ​ ​ ​

3

Why cities matter Governing for the common good and reclaiming democracy Nikki Fortunato Bas, Donald Cohen and Roxana Tynan

We are in an unprecedented moment in US history. It is a time of resurgent racism and inequality, but also of newly energized and ambitious organizing in communities throughout the country. We have enormous opportunity to advance a progressive policy agenda, but only if we rise to the challenge of creating a broad and diverse movement for the common good that vies for the soul and governing institutions of the country. Governing power can be achieved when policymakers understand and capably advance a progressive policy agenda that makes robust use of the extensive, untapped authorities of cities to create people-centered and environment-friendly economies. Governing power requires people, especially those who have been historically excluded or underrepresented, to actively participate year-round in public decision-making as advocates, voters, elected and appointed officials and civic leaders. Taking meaningful advantage of the activist engagement that has erupted across the country requires two fundamental steps. First, in order to counter the huge, multi-decade intellectual and capital support of the right-wing infrastructure, we need an equally strategic and focused investment in the progressive movement, starting with our organizing capacity in cities and moving outward to counties and states. Second, we must arm policymakers, new and experienced in their roles as leaders, with a sophisticated understanding of how to use the myriad tools of governance at their disposal to create a better nation. America faces profound economic, social and environmental challenges. Since the late 1970s, structural economic changes have worsened inequality, widening the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. While the ranks of the working poor in both metropolitan and rural communities have increased, middle-class families in cities, suburbs and exurbs are experiencing unprecedented economic anxiety. Gentrification and soaring land values in urban centers are displacing low-income families, particularly in communities of color, further increasing inequality. The right wing has exploited those fears and tensions to create deep societal divisions, with the explicit goal of using race, religion and nationality as wedges to undermine a broad, cohesive demand for policy solutions aimed at the common good. Extreme forces have unleashed a kind of unabashed, virulent racism

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that not only exposes how deeply cultural and institutional biases are embedded in American law and society but also serves to further destabilize and polarize the nation. Weaponized with racist overtones, the right wing’s 40-year frontal attack on the value and necessity of the public. Sitting at the crossroads of entrenched socioeconomic threats, climate change exacts a terrible human and economic toll, threatening public health and economic and natural resources in the United States and throughout the world. Privatization, the extraction of public wealth, increasing financialization of the economy, deregulation and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy translate to sweeping private control over vital public goods (i.e., education, infrastructure, clean air and water) and weaken the pillars of American democracy.

The power of cities to rebuild a new America Focused attention on local governments (from cities and counties, to school districts and transit boards, to water authorities and air quality districts) provides the opportunity to fundamentally and lastingly change the landscape and reach of the movement to reclaim democracy. To that end, building the nation’s progressive organizing infrastructure must be a multifaceted project. We assert that a modest and focused investment – far less than is spent on a state ballot measure – in the top 50 cities and metro regions throughout the country can become the seed of American renewal. That investment should be focused on supporting multiracial, deeply embedded, regional community-labor coalitions grounded in grassroots leadership and that operate with an analysis of how race, gender and immigration status, inform the challenges they confront and the solutions they develop. We must also support progressive leaders inside government, arming them with a deep understanding of the powers at their disposal to build a human-centered economy and a healthy environment.

Summary of fndings and analysis1 1. Cumulatively, cities2 hold the levers of power that can build an equitable economy and sustainable environment, thereby driving national policy advancements. Cities have a set of governing powers and authority that, if used to their fullest, could have a significant national-scale impact on economic inequality, racial and social justice and climate change. Understanding the interplay between systems in a city creates the opportunity to organize and join disparate groups working on a multitude of issues. Cities can serve and inspire as models of equitable policy and power, and local leaders should develop a set of principles that enshrine what it means to govern for the common good.

Why cities matter 33 2. Cities are incubating and demonstrating the popularity and effectiveness of progressive policies. In cities throughout the country, multiracial community labor alliances and other organizing and advocacy groups have successfully passed a range of progressive social, economic and environmental policies that benefit the many rather than the privileged few. Those successes at the city level have undercut the right wing’s shopworn tactic of making alarmist predictions of dire economic harm. Instead, they demonstrate that progressive policies actually initiate positive impacts on the economy, environment and community. 3. Cities are where we can begin rebuilding trust in government. Cities have the potential to create increased familiarity and empathy between diverse populations – essential elements to rebuilding faith in government and in public solutions. Because cities are where people connect directly with groundlevel government services, policy decisions affecting matters important to people’s daily lives have greater visibility and relevance. 4. Cities are where policymakers learn the nuts and bolts of leadership and governance. There are scores of state and federal legislators who began their careers on City Councils, county boards of supervisors and school boards. Serving in local government gives ambitious future leaders the opportunity to learn the complexities of public finance and policy, and how to work effectively with diverse constituencies and decision-makers. 5. Strength and capacity at the city level is the foundation for powerful regional capacity. Although critically important, organizing, advocacy and elected representation in cities can’t shift state power without deep, multiracial organizing and action in suburbs and exurbs. Demographics and politics point to the urgency of building multiracial coalitions that engage increasingly diverse suburbs in common purpose. We must start with – and build out from – our strength if we are to advance a state and national progressive agenda. 6. Strength and capacity at the local level are key to pushing back on state and federal preemption. Recognizing that some states, bowing to corporate and right-wing interests, have that strip local government power to enact policies that benefit residents. In those states, strengthened regional organizing and leadership infrastructure with a strategic view and concerted, expanding action over a sustained period is paramount to tilting power toward the people.

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Any effective strategy to push back on state preemption must, by definition, begin at the local level. Strong anchor organizations that have a record of winning city-level campaigns are best situated to expand their organizing efforts to the wider community, drawing in nontraditional allies and residents of the suburbs and beyond in strategic initiatives and campaigns. 7. Signifcant, sustained investment in organizing and leadership capacity in cities and regions is critical to movement success. Cities are where progressive capacity is concentrated, with the strongest collections of community, labor, environmental and faith organizations working together and in concert with elected officials. They are where union density is highest, and where community organizing has had the most traction. Coalitions aiming to govern in cities across the country demonstrate the capacities, relationships and strategies needed to lead from both the “inside” and the “outside.”

Why cities matter Cities provide great opportunities for action, but they are also concentrated sources of some of the nation’s greatest challenges. Cities have the density, population and authority that can drive and implement a new forward-looking vision for the country as a whole. A few statistics illustrate the scale of potential power and impact of action in cities and metro regions: • •

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Nearly half of the US population – over 152 million people – lives in the metro areas associated with the nation’s top 50 cities. Those same metro areas are centers of diversity, containing over 60 percent of the nation’s total population of color. Every city among the ten largest – and 64 percent of the top 50 cities – has a population that is majority people of color. The metro areas of those top 50 cities generate $9.2 trillion, or nearly 60 percent of the total US gross domestic product (GDP). The country’s 100 largest metro areas account for 75 percent of all economic activity in the United States. Although staggering, those figures fail to capture the depth and breadth of the economic assets concentrated in cities and metro areas. With latest US Census estimates at about $1.8 trillion per year, local government spending represents roughly 10 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.3 According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 60 percent of transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from “light duty” vehicles (passenger cars, SUVs and light pickups), and urban areas generate nearly two-thirds of those emissions.4 Similarly, urban areas are responsible for three-quarters of residential energy use.5 Local governments are important sources of largely middle-class jobs. They employ 14 million people, with a total payroll of $50.8 billion per year.

Why cities matter 35 •

City-based organizations are winning a range of progressive policies that impact wages, housing, climate resiliency, immigrant rights and criminal justice reform, among other critical issues.

While cities and their metros have unparalleled assets and advantages, they also struggle with some of the most troubling economic challenges in the United States: poverty and inequality. Working poverty, in particular, is a disproportionately urban problem. In the ten largest cities, the problem is stark, with a rate of working poverty over 40 percent higher than the national average. Economic inequality is also higher in the 50 largest cities than in the nation overall. It’s important to note that we are in the midst of a significant shift in regional population patterns. Poverty is now moving to the suburbs – both in inner-ring suburbs of major cities and in smaller exurban towns that encircle those larger cities.

The seven powers of cities Progressive advocates working with local public officials are already using the seven powers of local government in creative ways to more broadly and equitably reshape our policies and national economy. Local governments can use these powers to regulate industries, leverage investments, take steps to address climate change and support the integration of new immigrant communities. It is generally at the local level that federal legislation is actually implemented and enforced. 1. Direct spending Based on 2012 data, the US Census Bureau’s last quinquennial report on state and local finance found that local governments – cities, counties and education and other special districts – had spent nearly $1.7 trillion in that fiscal year.6 Roughly 36 percent of total local government spending came from the federal and state governments, a percentage that has been shrinking under Washington’s austerity measures and devolution of program and funding responsibilities to local governments.7 Granular decisions about how to spend pass-through funds happen locally, but can be limited by preemption. What does that spending buy in cities?

Good jobs Local governments are themselves important sources of largely middle-class jobs. According to the 2012 Census of Governments, local governments throughout the US employ 14 million people, with a total payroll of $50.8 billion per year.8 More than three-quarters are full-time employees. Schools account for just over half of all local government public employees. When unionized, jobs created in and by local governments enable millions of families to enjoy economic stability. In addition, they provide important

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career ladders for workers of color coming from socioeconomically marginalized backgrounds.

Public services Police and fire services generally constitute half of municipal general fund spending. Building democratic engagement in budgeting is critical to changing that balance. Police have been pressed into playing a social worker role that they are in no way equipped to do. Those resources should be shifted to public health and community outreach, where they can do the most good. It is also clear that without significant cuts in police budgets, we will not be able to address the challenges of racist police violence and criminalization of communities of color. In addition to police and fire, cities also pick up trash, pave streets, fix streetlights, trim trees and offer library and recreational services. A city’s ability to deliver basic services is often how residents judge their city’s livability. Ensuring equity in the delivery of city services is one of the most powerful steps elected and appointed leaders can take to rebuild trust in government, improve communities and make the case for increased public investment.

The safety net County governments are usually where communities’ frontline health and human services needs are met. Money from the federal and state governments flows through counties for critical safety net assistance: public medical centers and community clinics, food stamps and supplements, basic income support and other family and children’s services.

Education The nation’s underfunded public school districts face extraordinary challenges. Reeling under decades of budget cuts, they often lack even basic resources in the classrooms to sustain quality education, and they struggle to meet priority goals of class size reduction, special needs instruction, student health and psychological care and school safety. Despite those difficulties, districts have choices that can make a real impact on the educational outcomes of their students and on the community at large. They can shift spending from security forces to classrooms. They can invest in restorative justice programs that cut off the school-to-prison pipeline.9 They can create community schools that integrate neighborhood, health and other social services in school programs.10 2. Procurement and contracting Local governments need to buy everything from fire trucks to uniforms to paper. Procurement and contracting are arenas in which local authorities often have

Why cities matter 37 broad legal latitude, even in states with preemption policies. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, total government procurement in the United States represents 12 percent of the nation’s GDP, and states and local governments represent over 40 percent of that total amount. Local government purchasing power supports jobs in the private sector, and it enables authorities to set standards for the quality of those jobs and who receives training and access to them. The challenge is that many local governments choose to purchase goods and services based on lowest cost rather than on community needs and input. Infrastructure spending represents a significant portion of local spending and is a necessity for local economic growth. Without functioning transportation systems – from rail lines to roads – goods don’t move, and our economy grinds to a halt. Rebuilding public water and power utilities is not only vital to residents’ health and safety, but it can also advance innovative and sustainable development and reduce poverty and inequality and support a clean and thriving future for all people by increasing access to quality job opportunities. State and local governments build American infrastructure and are responsible for most of the funding and virtually all the public decision-making. The share of transportation and water infrastructure spending from state and local governments increased from an average of 68 percent of total spending during 1960–1980 to 75 percent during 1990–2007.11 Contracting for services is another avenue to promote economic fairness and opportunity. Progressives have spent decades fighting the right wing’s crusade to privatize key government services, the result of which is often low-wage, deadend jobs, inferior work product and back-ended costs. The living wage campaigns that took place throughout the country in the 1990s and early 2000s were largely in response to relentless attacks on government services that were specifically intended to derail worker protections and the power of labor unions. Contracting policies can also be a means of leveraging environmental community benefits. Over 2,000 public utilities serve 21 million customers throughout the country, creating an opportunity for local governments to prioritize the expansion of clean and renewable energy production. 3. Economic development Cities have the potential to use financial and land use incentives to support “high road” businesses and create jobs. Through regulation and investments, cities can support and shape the growth of key sectors of the private market. Cities can use investment strategies to support important industries – such as healthcare, construction, hospitality and transportation – while also encouraging the passage of smart policies that support workers and communities. A 2012 New York Times analysis found that local and state governments had spent $80.4 billion in business incentives that year.12 That figure included cash grants, corporate income tax credits, sales tax exemptions or refunds, property tax abatements, low-cost loans or government guarantees and free services like

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worker training. The total does not count the significant financial value of land use entitlements such as density bonuses, which can radically increase the value of a given property. Driven by corporate and developer initiatives, many of the below mechanisms current operate essentially as gifts of public resources and authority for private gain. However, they could be used instead to promote quality jobs, high community standards and democratic participation. Subsidies to private businesses are often made without built-in accountability measures and public input. Subsidies can include tax abatements or write-offs, fee waivers or loans. Private businesses can also access financial assistance from federal programs like the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 108 loan guarantees and Community Development Block Grant funds, and from the Small Business Administration. Tax abatements can include a range of options that depend upon the taxing authority of a given region or city. They may include tax cuts or tax waivers that are given over a designated period. Cities have options to impose taxes on a range of services and activities, including utilities, business licenses and gross receipts and parking and sales. Public fnance can include bond measures that local governments issue, using either specific new taxes or the city’s general fund as sources of repayment. An entire industry, largely opaque to the general public, exists around municipal finance, and therefore requires strong public oversight. Managing those financial transactions has resulted in large profits for some of the country’s biggest banks, not to mention work for an army of consultants. Gifts of public land can be extraordinarily difficult to track. City and local governments are usually significant landowners in any given region. Particularly in the context of transit-oriented development (TOD), public authorities can make a big impact on how development happens. Tax increment fnancing, or TIF, is a process in which redevelopment authorities acquire the right to use the projected increase in property taxes that occur as a result of new, government-sponsored development. TIF is a bonding mechanism to help finance new development. Projected increases in other taxes (for example, parking or utility taxes) could also be reinvested in new developments. 4. Proprietary power Local governments own nearly 5,000 airports, 127 seaports, several hundred convention centers and more than 25,000 water systems. When cities or local authorities own key properties they have the power as “market participants” to set standards on how business is conducted on their property. For example, proprietary power can enable cities to set living wage standards for airport concession workers. They can raise environmental standards by ensuring that all vehicles operating on that government property meet high emissions standards. Under certain circumstances, proprietary powers can be invoked to require labor peace, or labor harmony, agreements. These agreements protect the

Why cities matter 39 government’s proprietary interest – such as a financial interest in lease revenue – against disruption because of labor unrest like strikes or lock-outs.

Sales of public land Cities often own properties throughout their region, which they may not adequately track. One key challenge for progressive advocates is to push back against the so-called “highest and best use” standard for the disposal and sale of public land. In Seattle, Puget Sound SAGE successfully advocated for legislation at the state level and again at the ballot box requiring the regional transit agency to sell 80 percent of its land after construction of the transit infrastructure was completed for affordable housing. 5. Land use Cities have enormous power to determine land use – what can be built where – in any part of their jurisdictions, though some states preempt this power in specific cases. Land use policy can be an incredible tool to effect progressive change. For example, the City of Los Angeles approved in 2016 over 140,000 permits with a total value of $6.9 billion.13 Even smaller cities such as Raleigh, NC, approved in 2015 over 7,000 permits with an estimated value of $1.8 billion.14 Zoning rules can discourage uses that have negative environmental or social impacts on communities. Alternatively, they can encourage development in industries that have, or could create, quality jobs – for example, by easing the process for land use approvals or parking regulations. Zoning rules can encourage smart growth: the kind of dense, transit-focused development that connects people to jobs, provides affordable housing and limits environmental impacts. In many states, zoning rules can require the development of affordable housing, or limit displacement of existing affordable housing. Affordable housing linkage fees and inclusionary zoning (requiring that a percentage of new units are affordable) are important vehicles to respond to a paramount challenge in cities across the nation: displacement of low-income residents of color when a neighborhood gentrifies. The policy goes hand-in-hand with a tenant protection bill banning discrimination based on tenants’ sources of income. Building more affordable housing is a keystone strategy to addressing gentrification, but even when money exists – through in-lieu fees or housing bonds – we cannot build fast enough to meet the need. Municipalities have a range of options to protect the displacement of low-income residents.15 Rent control (a municipal regulatory power) and policies like “no net loss” are absolute necessities. 6. Regulatory powers Raising a city’s minimum wage is a perfect example of how regulatory power – in legal parlance, “police power” – can be used to powerful effect. (“Police powers”

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are the broad powers governments must adopt and enforce laws and regulations that protect public health and welfare – such as speed limits – and apply within the boundaries of the jurisdiction.) Politically, regulatory powers are broadly accepted in arenas like health inspections but enforcing wage standards is often viewed differently. Other examples of regulation sometimes include labor standards like requiring employers to offer paid sick time or adopt fair scheduling and fair chance hiring policies like “Ban the Box.” Again, preemption efforts by organized corporate opposition are a threat to those kinds of pro-worker protections.

Civil rights protections Local government is responsible for abiding by state and federal civil rights laws, like Title IX (banning gender-based discrimination in education) and the Civil Rights Act. Although local governments are not responsible for enforcing federal laws, litigation efforts at the local level to ensure enforcement can arise from local organizing and advocacy.

Sanctuary cities Organizers and public officials in cities across the country have taken the work of protecting and supporting immigrants into their own hands even as the federal ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agency carries out a draconian, inhumane crackdown on immigrant families. More than 118 cities and counties across the country have declared themselves sanctuary cities, where police and other local public authorities will not cooperate with ICE or enforce immigration laws themselves.16 Taking one step further, many cities have used their spending authority to create legal defense funds to support immigrants caught up in the federal dragnet.

Bail reform As the Vera Institute of Justice writes, “America is at a tipping point. In a country that leads the world in locking up its own people, mass incarceration has emerged in recent years as a defining civil rights issue.”17 Bryce Covert in The Nation reports that pretrial detention is a major reason why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and that 70 percent of the jail population is arrestees. “The number of Americans sitting in jail without a conviction is larger than most other countries’ entire incarcerated population.”18 Too poor to make bail, arrestees remain behind bars while awaiting trial. The cash bail process not only swells the incarcerated population but also inflicts financial punishment on arrestees’ mostly low-income families. Reforming the system is thus paramount to criminal justice reform, and it is gaining support across the nation, in conservative and progressive areas alike. Seventy-eight Alabama cities, accounting for more than 40 percent of the state’s population,

Why cities matter 41 reformed their bail practices in response to legal pressure from the Southern Poverty Law Center.19

Sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination prohibitions At least 225 cities and counties have prohibited discrimination based on gender identity in all public and private employment.20 The passage of local ordinances that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity shows how passing policy in dense urban areas can be leveraged to cover large portions of a state’s population. For example, LGBTQ advocates and their allies in Florida have protected 60 percent of the state’s population by passing ordinances in 11 counties and 25 cities.21 In Arizona, the passage of anti-discrimination laws in just five cities covered a full 35 percent of the state’s population.22 7. Taxation Cities typically levy a variety of taxes to generate income for local services. These include hotel/tourism taxes, utilities surcharges, trash pickup fees, business license taxes, real estate transfer taxes and property taxes. Several cities have income or earned income taxes. Corporations and right-wing activists have spent decades working to erect obstacles that block municipalities’ ability to raise revenue – from the 1978 California Proposition 13, which capped property tax assessments and paved the way for other state-level “revolts,” to Colorado’s 1992 “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” which imposed municipal revenue and spending caps. (For more on tax and expenditure limits, see the National League of Cities “City Rights in an Era of Preemption.”)23 Local governments can work around those restrictions to determine funding priorities. In Denver, the 2012 passage of Measure 2A removed restrictions on the city’s tax base, although the city still requires a public vote on any tax increases.24 Without actually raising new taxes, Measure 2A allows Denver to retain and spend $68 million annually that it already collects but, under previous policy, had to return to taxpayers (at considerable administrative cost) in order to remain below state-mandated revenue caps. Voters have shown a willingness to tax themselves for the services and improvements they care about. In November 2016, voters in Dayton, Ohio approved the first income tax hike in 32 years. The measure imposed a 0.25 percent income tax increase to, among other goals, expand access to affordable preschool for the city’s four-year-olds. Voters in Cincinnati approved a fiveyear, $48 million-per-year property tax levy that will generate funds to subsidize two years of preschool and support the city’s public schools. Cleveland voters approved an income tax increase from 2 to 2.5 percent to pay for budget shortfalls and to enhance city services. In 2020, the Seattle City Council approved a new progressive tax on big businesses that will raise more than $200 million a year for housing, local business assistance and community development. Like

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so many local and state governments during the COVID-19 public health and financial crisis, Seattle was facing a massive budget shortfall estimated to be at least $300 million.

Rebuilding democracy Since 2010, those seeking to advance policies in the interest of the common good have had to reckon with the knowledge that they’d lost significant ground – not just in the federal government but also in the states and judiciary – to a far-right agenda. As the post-Vietnam-era progressive movement splintered into a multitude of issues and constituencies, diffusing financial, intellectual and organizational resources, billionaire corporate conservatives cannily built a well-funded, disciplined and multitiered network of activists and institutions across the country. Not only did they successfully shift power at every level of government, they also seized control of how Americans talk about and view the role of government in our democracy.

Restoring faith in government Long before President Donald Trump’s barrage of Twitter rants about government institutions and employees, the right-wing machine developed and carried out a disciplined and multifaceted strategy to accomplish a simple objective: convince the American public that government is “the problem” in the hopes of shrinking it, reducing regulatory and tax burdens and capturing control of public resources. They have enjoyed tremendous success. In 1958, the National Election Survey found that 73 percent of Americans said they had faith in the federal government; in 2017, that number dropped to just 20 percent.25 It’s the central challenge we face as progressives: the need to rebuild trust and faith in government to solve our common problems and challenges. Cities and regions are uniquely positioned to lead a renewal.

Investing in civic engagement Urban areas are home to an increasingly diverse electorate, offering new opportunities to expand voter participation among historically underrepresented communities. In 2006, New Mexico became the first state where white voters are no longer the majority of the eligible voting population.26 Voter registration drives in Arizona resulted in 150,000 more new Latino voters in 2016 than in 2012, a 27-percent change.27 In a December 2016 piece for The Hill, policy analyst Diana Lind notes that “residents of most major American cities typically vote at rates 5–15 percent lower than their suburban neighbors,” and that therefore “cities represent an untapped opportunity[.]” Lind’s analysis underscores the need for the kind of nonpartisan civic engagement programs in cities that we believe can rebuild a vibrant democracy.

Why cities matter 43 An issue that has hampered progressive action is that progressive voters tend to be clustered in urban areas and the coastal states. The inefficient distribution of voters shows on their own, cities can’t determine the success of a progressive policy agenda at the state or federal level. But as anchors for voter education and mobilization efforts in the surrounding metro areas, they can become decisive. In cities throughout the country, we’ve seen how winning policies that unite working- and middle-class voters develop leaders and build public support for solutions that government can create. The logical next step is to expand organizing and coalition-building to a greater number of and broader reach within metropolitan areas, pushing broader progressive outcomes. For example, in Arizona, increased organizing could level the playing field between pro-corporate and pro-democracy issue advocacy and enhance the potential for enacting progressive policy. The majority of Arizona’s population is clustered in three counties: Maricopa (anchored by Phoenix), Pima (anchored by Tucson) and Coconino (anchored by Flagstaff). Together the three counties represent 78 percent of the state population. Similarly, in Colorado most of the population is clustered in nine Front Range counties, including four surrounding the Denver area. The nine counties account for 80 percent of the state population (the four Denver-area counties account for 45 percent of the state total).

Capacities needed for progressive power Organizations and coalitions in cities have already achieved measurable successes, enacting a wide range of policies that benefit working families, and they have the political and organizing infrastructure to expand governing capacity. In the section below, we lay out the basic elements needed to win progressive policies and governing power. Success does not require having all elements in place. But long-term investment in the following “core capacities” is imperative to bigger and broader wins and sustained progress.

Grassroots organizing Everything begins and ends with effective grassroots organizing. Effective organizations that can mobilize large numbers of people and engage in deep leadership development must be at the core of any successful coalition.

Coalition building A power analysis of the regional landscape – a tool developed by Anthony Thigpenn – allows advocates to measure their capacity to move an agenda. Power analysis enables identification of potential allies, of opposition individuals and groups, of decision-makers’ sympathy for or aversion to progressive policies and of key constituencies needed to be organized to win.

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A key lesson from urban progressive movements over the past several decades is the need to build multiracial coalitions with deep relationships between labor unions and diverse communities that can mobilize large numbers of leaders and members. The labor movement still has more resources and political power than other sectors of the progressive movement. On their own, labor unions’ money and power are insufficient to winning our most ambitious policy goals. Nor do community organizations on their own. Successful coalitions need to have their eyes on the prize: winning and governing. Real governing power comes when both “inside” and “outside” forces work in concert and around the goal of governing. Coalitions need a clear understanding of the importance and role of leaders on the inside, especially when those elected or appointed officials are our allies who have become stewards of public institutions and need our help to govern. It is unlikely that one organization will have expertise in every area. Coalitions allow groups to share and maximize the capacities that already exist within their organizations.

Research and analysis Progressive advocates need an understanding of their regional economy and its relationship to government policymaking and resource allocation. Developing a full picture of a regional economy requires identification of growth sectors as well as current and potential job distribution and training opportunities. Likely there are academics and experts in the regional economy who can identify existing analyses and help advocates map the landscape. Corporate research is another necessary capacity to develop a full picture of key regional corporate players, private equity companies and pension fund investments. A regional economic analysis should also take into account current environmental challenges, especially those that harm low-income and vulnerable communities. It is helpful to identify not just the area’s big polluters but also the businesses that are committed to responsible environmental practices. The next step is to understand how government intersects with the regional economy and environment. A good place to begin is to document upcoming infrastructure investments and major new economic developments. To chart a course for a future campaign, a coalition should understand the range of economic development programs being used in local government; have an inventory of publicly owned land, including, airports, ports and convention centers; and develop some understanding of major city and county public contracts. It is critically important to build relationships with agency staff to secure early and continuing information about potential economic development decisions.

Legal support Advocates should seek to partner with lawyers who have an orientation to performing legal work in the service of organizing and policy goals. When the Stand

Why cities matter 45 Up Nashville Coalition began looking for ways to require community benefits in exchange for public investment in private development, they quickly ran up against Tennessee’s extreme state interference laws. A team of lawyers that paired veteran local counsel with national experts from the Partnership for Working Families worked with the Coalition to develop the “Do Better” bill. The policy passed in January 2018 serves as a public accountability tool to help rate and compare developers’ proposals (on criteria including local jobs and affordable housing) before elected officials approve public subsidies. Strong legal support can help coalition members clarify the difference between technical issues that require a legal response, and political issues that require a power-based solution. Campaign opponents, city attorneys and elected officials often raise legal concerns as a reason that a new policy is not possible. Strong legal support can help respond to potential legal issues on their face but also help campaigners understand when those concerns are not legitimate.

Civic engagement Successful advocacy is grounded in organizing and coalition building. Developing long-term political power requires effective year-round voter engagement, which does not happen when outside organizations parachute into communities solely at election time. Coalitions and grassroots community need in-house capacities: managing voter lists, developing improved canvassing skills and securing legal advice to stay within the bounds of allowable 501(c)3 and (c)4 activities.

Leadership development As we are focused on the paths toward governing power, it’s important to note that local governments are where leaders learn how to govern. The viability and longevity of the progressive movement require sustained efforts at developing grassroots leaders who effectively advocate for and organize communities, and who can serve in government positions, whether staff, appointed or elected. Leadership development and training is needed not just for people seeking elected office, but also for organizers, campaign directors, grassroots leaders – for all levels of leadership necessary to move an agenda for the common good.

Overcoming state interference As this chapter indicates, in the vast majority of states, cities have the authority to innovate and protect their residents across a broad range of issues. However, since 2011, corporations and right-wing organizations have supercharged a tactic pioneered by the gun and tobacco lobbies to strip cities of their power by passing and enforcing “preemption” laws at the state level that prohibit measures that women, people of color, LGBTQ communities, tenants and low-wage workers have fought for and won like minimum wages and benefits and protections of housing affordability, immigrants’ rights and racial equity. Some states have even

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recently acted to preempt the authority of cities and counties to protect their residents from COVID-19 by prohibiting local restrictions on business operations. The Partnership tracks many of these laws through an interactive map,28 and the Economic Policy Institute has traced the dramatic upward trend since 2011 in preemption of workers’ rights measures.29 The Koch-brother-funded organization ALEC and its corporate members have driven much of this power play to stifle progressive solutions and hamper the power of local organizing and democracy. The evidence tells us that their goal is deregulation at every level of government. And they are making headway. Most or all, the states that preempt local standards related to wages, benefits, scheduling, construction jobs or housing affordability have minimal or no state regulation related to those issues. In the last two years, Uber and its corporate allies have successfully lobbied to preempt local regulation and severely curb state regulation of their industry in 41 states, and are currently putting $110 million into a California ballot measure that would do the same a nearly permanent way. Congress is actively weighing nationwide corporate immunity against worker and consumer protections. Race, gender and other systems of identity have been central to this recent wave of state preemption. First, the leadership and activism of women of color has enabled many of the recent local progressive victories, while preemption laws have been adopted by overwhelmingly white, male legislators. In fact, at the height of the recent wave of preemption, state legislatures were, on average, an astounding 76 percent male and 75 percent white, and the two states that lead the nation in state preemption laws have legislatures that are almost entirely white and male. Second, the negative impact of the state preemption laws is borne disproportionately by women and people of color.30 Louisiana was the first state to preempt local minimum wages and has the biggest gender pay gap in the country. When seven majority-Black cities where Black low wage workers are paid less than white low wage workers moved to raise their minimum wage, overwhelmingly white legislatures preempted them.31 State preemption has also become a weapon in the far right’s emboldened war on immigrants: since 2017, nine states have adopted laws that limit or prohibit sanctuary city measures or the use of municipal identification, whereas only one state had done so before 2017. Fortunately, in the last two years, people have organized and fought back and are starting to turn the tide. The 2018–2019 legislative session saw a dramatic decrease in the total number of state preemption bills adopted nationwide. Following a grassroots campaign, Colorado repealed its law preempting local minimum wages. Today, thanks to statewide organizing by POWER and Pittsburgh UNITED, a proposal in Pennsylvania’s House to repeal minimum wage preemption has 40 cosponsors. Grassroots groups led by Stand Up Nashville in Tennessee have garnered wide support for their demand that the governor use emergency powers to suspend or repeal state preemption laws stopping localities from dealing with the crises stemming from COVID-19. Minnesota’s highest court upheld Minneapolis’s wage and benefit ordinances against preemption

Why cities matter 47 challenges and Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned a ruling that Pittsburgh’s paid sick days law was prohibited under state law. In addition, progressive advocates in states where preemption is a threat may have other strategies available. A number of state laws (including preemption laws) protect local authority within certain spheres, especially when it comes to self-governance and managing cities’ own personnel, funds and property. Coalitions might also use tools like community benefits agreements and other agreements between private actors to cement commitments for progressive change that do not rely on local government action and are thus almost certainly preemption-proof.

Conclusion The multiplicity and gravity of the challenges we face – as individuals, communities and a nation – can only be solved with the energy of millions of people acting together. If we want to rewrite the rules of our economy and society to create a just, sustainable and prosperous nation, we need to harness the energy in America’s cities, where real power can add up to national solutions. Polls consistently show that most voters align with key elements of the progressive agenda.32 People want good jobs, basic economic security, healthcare, decent housing, clean air and water and real opportunity to pursue their dreams. But public support of those economic, social and environmental goals does not automatically lead to the power to enact an agenda. The urgent need to shift public attitudes about the role of government and to secure the inviolability of foundational democratic principles would exist regardless of the 2020 election’s outcome. After four decades of engineered authoritarian attacks on the country’s democratic ideals, the progressive movement urgently needs to focus on the demand that our government institutions act on behalf of the majority and advance the common good. In summary, achieving meaningful gains requires progressives to: Pursue governing power Progressive, multiracial, multi-issue coalitions must pursue governing power in cities across the country, beyond the coasts. The coalitions should have a regional focus to include suburbs and small towns while consciously building toward statewide power. Build capacity needed to govern Local, regional and statewide organizations and coalitions must build these essential governing capacities in order to succeed grassroots organizing; leadership development that includes a pipeline to elected and staff government positions; civic engagement; research and policy development; legal expertise; communications; and fundraising. To underscore, there must be real grassroots engagement and organization. If we aren’t talking to people – lots of people – nothing else matters. The movement must achieve greater scale, using every tool available to reach large

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numbers of people while staying rooted in face-to-face organizing and leadership development as the permanent engine of large-scale organization. Invest far more resources in cities across the country Ironically, the right wing, which has long sneered at the concept of community organizing, has over the past decade invested far more resources than the left into grassroots advocacy and training. The progressive movement will only achieve success if money and staff are distributed where they are needed most: at the ground level in diverse regions of the country. Understand and wield the powers of governance In the wake of the November 2016 election, tens of thousands of people have expressed interest in running for local- and state-elected offices around the country. It’s not enough to win one seat, or even the majority of seats, on a City Council, school board or county board. Elected representatives need to understand and use the authority at their disposal to govern for the common good. Likewise, advocates working on the outside of government need to understand what opportunities they have to influence change on a policy and program level. Stand unifed against all forms of bigotry being used to divide the nation Institutional and quotidian racism, rabid xenophobia and religious intolerance, insidious and overt gender and sexual orientation bias, gross economic injustice – all are inseparable as social and economic dynamics in this country and therefore should be equally inseparable centerpieces of a progressive governing agenda. The bottom line is that we simply can’t succeed without true unity, reflected in our priorities, our leadership and our vision.

Conclusion There isn’t one campaign, one strategy, one organization or one city that can rebuild American democracy on its own. In order to achieve widespread fairness and equity in our institutions, progressives need an expansive view of the movement and their own ability to effect change – in urban, suburban and rural communities throughout the country. A successful progressive movement requires a sophisticated understanding of power, an aligned governing philosophy, the commitment and resources to expand and maintain reach and capacity, coalitional strength grounded in true diversity and – no less – faith and persistence in our values.

Notes 1 We analyzed the nation’s 100 largest cities and the counties and metropolitan regions they anchor. Our partner, USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), used census and other data sources to paint a detailed picture of demographics, economics, and voting eligibility and participation in each of those cities, counties and metro areas. Our research team also analyzed economic, environmental and climate data. We analyzed the seven core legal powers of local governments to identify the potential scale of impact: direct spending, procurement and contracting, economic development, proprietary power, land use, regulation and taxation.

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2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Further, we conducted interviews with leaders in a geographically diverse set of cities to identify how local actors are already using those powers to advance the common good. We spoke with organizers and elected officials in Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Jose, Raleigh/Durham, Phoenix, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Nashville and Indianapolis. We deliberately use the term “city” in a variety of ways – as anchors of metro areas that operate as coherent – and diverse – economic and political regions; as specific government institutions that possess a set of legal powers and responsibilities; and as a proxy for other local governments (e.g., school districts, water authorities, counties) that share geography and possess some fundamental governing responsibilities and powers capable of advancing the common good. https://www.census.gov/govs/local/ https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas -emissions https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/index.php?view =consumption#summary https://www2.census.gov/govs/local/summary_report.pdf http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-local -governments https://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/2012_summary_report.pdf https://jprc.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1447101213resou rcerestorativejusticeinusschoolssummaryfindingsfrominterviewswithexperts.pdf https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/community-schools-effective -school-improvement-report https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/4248-the-infrastructure-deficit/State _and_Local_infrastructure_spending.ff3c4b496e8a4510b380fb97f4ffb543.PNG http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html?pagewanted=all Fiscal year 2016, Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. Fiscal year 2015, Raleigh Development Services Department. For more details on these options, see: https://www.scag.ca.gov/Documents/ ComprehensiveGuideToLocalAffordableHousingPolicy.pdf https://www.scribd.com/document/342459907/ICE-Declined-Detainer -Outcome-Report-Jan-28-to-Feb-3-2017-1#from_embed https://www.vera.org/ending-mass-incarceration https://www.thenation.com/article/america-is-waking-up-to-the-injustice-of -cash-bail/ https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/12/06/splc-prompts-alabama-cities -reform-discriminatory-bail-practices https://www.hrc.org/resources/cities-and-counties-with-non-discrimination -ordinances-that-include-gender http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality_maps/profile_state/FL http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality_maps/profile_state/AZ https://nlc.org/sites/default/files/2017-02/NLC%20Preemption%20Report %202017.pdf https://www.denvergov.org/content/denvergov/en/mayors-office/programs -initiatives/measure-2a-service-investments.html http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958 -2017/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/us/politics/how-the-american-electorate-is-changing.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/us/politics/how-the-american-electorate-is-changing.html?_r=0. See also the chapter on CASE in this book.

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28 https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/preemptionmap 29 https://www.epi.org/preemption-map/ 30 https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/sites/default/files/publications/PWF %20Gender%20Preemption_0.pdf 31 https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/blog/states-preempting-local-laws-are -extension-jim-crow 32 http://prospect.org/article/most-americans-are-liberal-even-if-they-don’tknow-it

4

Regional power building today A New New Deal revisited Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds

In 2009, we published A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement. While individual groups and strategies had gotten attention, ours was the first book dedicated to regional power building as a distinct approach to rebuilding the left in general and a growing capacity for progressive governance in particular in America. In A New New Deal, we chronicled the stories of pioneering efforts to build progressive power and governance and predicted that these early efforts were planting the seeds of a new American New Deal. Four of these early efforts – LAANE, Working Partnerships USA, EBASE and CPI – formed the nucleus of what would eventually become the Partnership for Working Families (PWF). We predicted then and are gratified to see today that these efforts have demonstrated how organizing at the regional level builds the capacities for progressive governance and plants seeds of A New New Deal for America. At the time our book was released, PWF was a relatively recent creation. Today we see the success of regional power building as evidenced by the growing number of affiliates that make up the Partnership for Working Families. While the basic framework we outlined in 2009 remains true, the strategies and character of the movement have evolved in significant ways. Leaders and activists have adapted to widely differing regional conditions. They have taken up new challenges and opportunities. And they have developed increasingly sophisticated approaches to making change in twenty-first-century America. In this chapter, we examine how regional power-building strategies have adapted and grown over the past decade. Before delving into the recent evolution, however, we first step back to take a brief look at the decades-long trajectory that fostered the emergence of regional power building in the first place.

Why regional power building emerged in the 1990s Regional power building arose as a response to the neoliberal globalization that began in the 1970s and that developed full momentum during the years of President Clinton. Globalization, and the free trade agenda encompassed by such landmark trade deals as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) under Clinton, expanded economic boundaries beyond the political boundaries

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of the nation state. It also pushed from the transnational to national to state and local levels a neoliberal agenda of unrestricted corporate action (so-called markets), austerity for social budgets and the wholesale transfer of wealth upward through government and corporate actions. This shift shredded the postwar social contract which had connected economic growth with political values of promoting a certain measure of shared prosperity. In 1953, General Motors was the nation’s largest employer. The often-cited quote “What’s good for GM is good for the country” could be true at a certain level as many, but not all, standards of living did rise as American companies prospered in the 1950s and 1960s1. Under rising neoliberal globalization corporate, however, success came less and less from a prosperous workforce and community and more at the very expense of people’s standard of living. Today, Walmart is the nation’s largest employer. One could say that “what’s good for Walmart leaves many Americans only able to afford to shop at Walmart.” Political values of shared prosperity gave way to economic growth as an end in itself and growth at all costs. By the 1990s, the neoliberal globalization shift began to foster new relationships and unity among organized labor, community activists, environmentalists and other progressive groups as it became steadily clearer that no one could achieve their goals by themselves. The very issue of free trade brought together broad coalitions from the nearly won 1993 struggle against NAFTA’s passage to the epic “Battle in Seattle” during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting. At the same time, neoliberal thinking had come to dominate not simply the Republican Party, but also mainstream Democrats as signified by the preeminence of the Democratic Leadership Council within the party. From Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, so-called “New Democrats,” sought to win elections by embracing a type of “kinder, gentler” neoliberalism that drew massive corporate campaign funds and which pegged its hope on winning Black, white, moderate “swing” voters first lost to Ronald Reagan. These trends came together in labor’s defeat at the hands of a Democratic President over NAFTA and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress – two events which helped push a change of leadership at the national ALF-CIO. Under its new President John Sweeney, the federation sought to reverse labor’s decline, in part, by embracing coalitions with other progressive groups and by revitalizing its often-moribund state and local AFL-CIO bodies. Historically, in the US trade union movement ambitious leaders looked toward advancement within their own union structures, not central labor councils which were relatively marginal institutions. The AFL-CIO’s new Union Cities initiative looked toward retooled labor councils to become leaders in innovation, coalition building and revitalized organizing. This initiative gave license to labor leaders to pursue innovative regional work and backed them with some staff support from the national body. It also provided space to rethink organized labor as not simply a workplace institution but also as a community force. In many of the regions that would give rise to PWF affiliates, the central labor councils became sites for a vigorous contest for leadership power, often with young women and/or people of color coming into top elected positions.

Regional power building today 53 At the same time, the broader progressive community in America, which had gotten used to pushing for change primarily through federal action, had begun to realize that rebuilding the left was going to involve a return to local and regional organizing. And while globalization seemed to render national boundaries less effective at influencing corporate behavior, the success of areas such as Silicon Valley suggested that regions had become ever more important as the sites of economic decision-making. The stage was set for regional power building to arrive on the scene. Regional power building strategies aim to establish a new twenty-first-century social contract for shared prosperity by organizing at the very regional level at which the global economy is built. The pioneering regional leaders and organizations established a three-pronged power building approach around policy, coalitions and political action. The heart of A New New Deal explored each of these prongs in turn. In broad strokes each one remains valid today, although the specifics of each have evolved considerably. We take up each in turn.

Developing a regional policy agenda A New New Deal focused on the “think and act” tank model that provided the foundation for many Partnerships for Working Families affiliates. The “think” part focuses on developing a regional policy framework, grounded in rigorous academic and action research, while the act part encompasses building deep networks and coalitions to make that agenda reality. As we explored in our chapter Developing a Regional Policy Agenda, this “think” work aims to go beyond a typical laundry list of issues collected from partners on the ground to establish an integrated agenda for regional governance. Such an agenda has to speak directly to the core issues of diverse groups while also connecting them into shared work. An integrated agenda promises to address systemic change getting at the root causes of some of today’s most intractable social problems as opposed to fighting one defensive struggle after another. Ultimately, a strategy to achieve progressive governance becomes more than simply a collection of policies instead of an overarching framework for re-establishing a relationship between economic growth, community well-being and shared prosperity. It seeks to rethink the very role and operation of local and regional government. This includes even supposedly mundane policies, such as public procurement, that can be rethought to promote equity through, for example measures to increase the use of local and minorityowned businesses. We identified the economic development arena as providing the glue which allowed regional power building projects to connect broad agenda building to concrete action on the ground. PWF affiliates viewed this realm in much broader terms that traditional development thinking. Potentially, virtually all municipal and county policy can be thought of as having to do with economic development since they all connect public authority and resources to private economic decisions. Thus, school reconstruction becomes not simply education policy, but also economic development decision about who gets access to jobs, training and

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careers and what quality of jobs local government fosters. Administrating port facilities connects worker rights to the environmental health and the economic well-being of surrounding communities as many shipping companies exploit their workforce while polluting neighborhoods. This broad conception of economic development has, if anything, gotten even more expansive over time as evolving work links to such questions as mass incarceration, attacks on immigrant communities and climate justice. The tools for broad economic development policy have also grown over time. In A New New Deal, we profiled tactics such as living wage campaigns, community benefits agreements and sectoral partnerships. Today’s work is both more diverse and draws more linkages across issues. For example, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy is part of the Our Water LA Coalition which helped pass, by the needed two-thirds popular vote, Measure W in November 2018. On the surface this policy is an environmental initiative that will raise $300 million to fund the modernization of the water system and better capture and clean stormwater. Climate change now challenges the region with severe droughts punctuated by periods of intense rainfall that becomes polluting runoff lost to the ocean rather than captured for future use. However, water action is also a deep equity issue about jobs and environmental justice. The coalition works to ensure that low-income communities and communities of color gain extensive access and training for the estimated 6,500 construction and 1,300 operations and maintenance jobs resulting from Measure W. These communities are also the ones disproportionately impacted by runoff pollution. The coalition works to ensure that water projects in low-income communities get priority and that such communities have a clear voice in what and how water work is done. When we wrote A New New Deal, a quick glance at LAANE’s website would reveal sections around “Living wages” and Community “Benefits Agreements.” Today, its “Our Work” page offers headers such as “Water,” “Energy,” “Hospitality & Tourism,” “Education” and “Grocery & Retail.” These whole-industry labels reflect broad, integrated work. What we see emerging today among PWF affiliates are comprehensive programs for governing. The neoliberalism that dominates American politics operates not simply as a collection of policies, but also as an integrated world view that includes which questions are deemed most important, what assumptions go into answers and which values undergird public action. As regional power building grows, it puts into practice an alternative world view. In this regard, the last decade has seen at least two important developments. First, combating institutional racism has become fully a central focus and set of questions in and of itself. From the beginning, regional power-building strategies developed around the needs and actions of low-income communities of color, with a particular emphasis on improving job quality and job access. Raising wages and job quality certainly provides a core component necessary for dismantling institutional racism. However, by itself, higher and more stable incomes do not “rise all boats equally” nor get everyone to the same place. As the Black Lives Matter, anti-mass incarceration, immigrant rights and environmental justice

Regional power building today 55 movements make clear overcoming institutional racism requires recognizing and addressing how racism shapes every aspect of our society. Current regional activism reflects a subtle yet important shift in emphasis from one in which tackling class and economic issues are seen as especially helping people of color to one in which centering work around the needs, reality and perspectives of working-class communities of color captures the deepest levels of injustice and results in agendas that improve the lives of all working families. Second, regional power building changes the assumptions about what it means to govern. Governing involves more than simply electing officials and enacting policies. In A New New Deal, we tapped into the literature on urban regime theory to capture a more holistic picture of governance which includes the assumptions, norms and practices that guide not just the law-making but also the administrative side of government. Governing regimes encompass a constellation of both public and private actors and constituencies whose needs and perspectives are the ones most considered in government action. Typically, in the United States, on the private side these interests tend to be dominated by those who are most politically active and/or whose investment decisions are deemed most important for regional economic health. Neoliberalism presumes that business investment, not community consumption, decisions are the most important for economic success. The result is to relegate citizen democracy to the act of voting, and, for an active minority, using basic civil liberties to press for policy changes from the outside. Such a conventional understanding of democracy and political action leaves hidden a world of private power. The right wing figured out long before the left wing the significance of the fact that in state and local governments, most legislators operate on a part time often volunteer basis with limited staff support. Furthermore, just because a law gets placed on the books does not mean it gets implemented or implemented in the way proponents wanted. State and local administrative capacities can be limited – especially after years of neoliberal austerity budget cuts. Into this world stepped innovative right-wing groups like the infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC built a capacity to provide allied state legislators with model legislation on diverse policy areas developed by taskforces run by corporate executives and conservative activists and supported by think and act capacity. Links with the corporate community also provided elected officials not simply with access to campaign contributions but also rewards when private investment decisions allowed them to take credit for fostering or saving “jobs.” From the beginning, regional power building invested in growing progressive, people-centered capacity to develop legislation and administrative policy. Its leadership development efforts foster not only potential future candidates but also activists prepared to sit on appointed boards and/or take administrative posts. Diverse campaigns and political work also change and expand notions of whose interests have to be taken into account in order to deliver real regional success. Today, regional power building continues to expand our notions of democracy further by more formally integrating power-building institutions and

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community voices into the actual governing process. Neoliberalism has aimed to privatize government – putting public authority and resources into the hands of for-profit business. The progressive alternative does not simply have to confine itself to refunding and rebuilding traditional bureaucratic public structures. Public resources and authority can be placed into the hands of the very community groups and people-driven nonprofit organizations most committed to delivering a service or enforcing a regulation. For example, for over two decades, Working Partnerships USA has won policies around living and minimum wages, earned sick leave, worker protections and so forth. However, WPUSA found that real change was only as strong as the enforcement of the new policies. Often local governments do not have the capacity to monitor and vigorously enforce laws. Recently, WPUSA partnered with the Santa Clara County government to establish an Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement – one of eight such local offices in the country. In addition to enforcement and regulation, the Office is charged with outreach and education and research and policy development. The Office not only provides direct staffing for enforcing the county’s labor laws, but it also brings into the process worker and community organizations through the Fair Workplace Collaborative. Working Partnerships USA serves as the Fair Workplace Collaborative coordinator and also provides labor and workplace rights training for workers as well as referrals to safety net and other appropriate services. Other members of the Collaborative are worker centers, legal clinics and community organizations such as Day Worker Center of Mountain View, Step Forward Foundation, Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants and the Vietnamese American Roundtable. Over the years, WPUSA has also built relationships with various ethnic chambers of commerce and thus the Collaborative also includes the Latino Business Council of Silicon Valley and Enterprise Foundation/Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center. Small businesses that are trying to be good citizens have a vested competitive interest in enforcing labor laws with companies that pursue a lower road. By building an effective relationship with local government, the Collaborative allows these grassroots organizations to be all the more successful in organizing and empowering workers. Thus, progressive enforcement fosters an empowered community. The county Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement and its partnerships also provide a resource for area cities and towns that do not have the capacity to enforce their labor standards and that contract with the county to provide that capacity. With the Office and Collaborative in place, the County and WPUSA were able to quickly respond to COVID-19. Within a week, the partners had mostly pivoted to a county-funded but WPUSA-run program of 50 outreach workers and a repurposed hotline that by September had helped over 20,000 people apply for unemployment, pay rent and access other crucial services as well as legal aid. They also put together a team that reached out to small people-of-color-owned businesses to provide resources and guidance in staying safe amid the pandemic. Also amidst COVID-19, WPUSA was able to draw on 25 years of experience reaching out to the community to partner with the county’s office in charge of

Regional power building today 57 locally implementing the US Census. With most of the funds coming from the county, WPUSA built a team of 65 door knockers (safely masked) and 20 phone callers tasked with reaching out to the most marginalized communities to ensure that all people are counted – and thus that the county government fully receives population portioned state and federal funds. The effort furthers a process in which public resources are used to help foster organizing and leadership capacity among those communities traditionally most silenced and marginalized from centers of power. Such innovations can come alongside a less formal process that changes the culture of more traditional public administration as policies, norms and personnel evolve. For example, staff participation in a 2015 cohort for the Government Alliance on Race and Equity changed the Alameda County Public Health Department’s perspective on race equity from one of simply promoting staff diversity to a more systemic understanding of race and equity work. Getting at why heavily African American communities suffered disproportionate health difficulties meant examining issues such as transportation, housing and air quality. Doing so changed the way the department designed its programs and whom it served. In one project, the department partnered with community organizations to examine the impacts of the foreclosure crisis on health. In another, it partnered with the same groups around questions of displacement, gentrification and health. On other occasions, department staff gave testimony on how proposed projects to transport coal and to build new crematoriums in low-income communities would increase already-high asthma rates2. Over time, expanding the formal process of who participates in policy and governance with changing progressive practices, personnel and norms within public administration broadens our democratic expectations from ones of “I elected you, I go home now while you take care of the problems” to active citizens who both work with and demand actions, resources and regulatory authority from engaged and responsive government.

Deep coalitions Coalitions between labor and community groups have become an increasingly common part of the progressive landscape over the past three decades. In the book, we described how regional power building projects provided state-of-theart examples of strategic coalition building. Most labor-community coalitions are ad hoc with one partner developing a campaign that others support. Over time partners may support each other’s efforts. Partners may also come together for a common project – such as a ballot or legislative effort – with the coalition not lasting past the specific campaign. Regional power building involves these types of coalitions, especially the shared campaign. However, more is going on. Coalition building for regional power requires long-range strategic thinking. Regional power building leaders deliberately seek cross-sectional efforts that move partners from transactional (“I support you, you support me”) to transformational relationships. In this later case, partners join together for a shared

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agenda that allows them to get at deeper underlying causes that they not change by themselves. For example, on the one hand, Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) campaigns – an early innovation of regional power building groups – allows individual partners to collectively make specific demands of large project developers – demands that directly addressed the needs of their constituencies. Since they allow for multiple provisions, CBAs can incorporate many issues from diverse groups. At the same time, winning a first CBA, then others, begins to transform the local development process. The typical behind-closed-doors negotiations dominated by private interests give. The voices of unions and community groups become part of economic development process – ultimately as much as business people and public experts. By building off of initial efforts and success, both the policy development and coalition building of regional power building seeks to bring groups together in increasingly sophisticated and ambitious ways. Commitment to the transformational agenda combined with the personal relationships cultivated over time allows partners to continue their overall work together even when the inevitable differences over specifics issues and political questions arise. Strategic thinking for regional power also involves considering how coalition campaigns can grow those partner organizations and groups that allow ordinary people to participate with their own voice. In A New New Deal, we examined how regional efforts deliberately fostered labor unions and other worker organizing, low-income neighborhood organizations, immigrant rights groups and interfaith networks that each in their own way organize ordinary people to speak and act for themselves. Such work continues to be a core part of the strategy. However, where the community organizing infrastructure has proven weak in their region, several PWF affiliates have come to realize they needed to invest directly into community organizing work. For example, the case study of United for a New Economy in this volume explores how UNE transformed itself to pursue innovative grassroots chapter building in suburban communities outside Denver. Overtime regional power building efforts have actively worked to cultivate leadership and staff that reflects the diversity found within their coalitions and to put people from historically marginalized communities front and center. Success in doing this has not just changed the faces “in the room,” but also the very practice of organizing for social change. In 2017, the nonprofit consulting group Change Elemental and its partners posited in a series of articles in Nonproft Quarterly five interconnected elements that appeared to be emerging in the most effective activist practices for progressive change3. Since we have found these elements reflected in the work of PWF affiliates, they are worth mentioning in detail. They are: 1. Advancing deep equity4:Deep equity goes beyond simply diversifying leadership and staff. Deep equity places improving the reality of communities or color and other marginalized groups at the center of meaningful change. It honors differences. It asserts that relationships really matter and that they have to be built with honest, authentic conversations about what can be

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2.

3.

4.

5.

tense issues. Deep equity recognizes that addressing trauma and healing must also be part of an equity agenda. Cultivating leaderful ecosystems5:Regional power building reflects the broader progressive trend of groups working together in coalition and building change networks. In such a context, leadership becomes more about the capacity to create something of meaning and align values and actions across groups of people or communities. It is about relationships among people and how they support, complement and supplement each other and the broader ecosystem. Leaderful ecosystems are mutually supportive and highly equitable and support the kind of engagement that will yield meaningful and sustainable social change. Valuing multiple ways of knowing6:There is a strong bias in the US dominant culture to value only one way of knowing – a knowing grounded in data, analysis, logic, theory, a rationalist approach to truth. Progressive change embraces many different ways to understand and engage with the world – including through experiences, art and ancestral wisdom. By not privileging one way of knowing over others regional power building can bring in most effectively voices typically marginalized by the existing power structure. Infuencing complex systems change7:As a long-term, collective project regional power building is about deeper big picture change. It embraces intersectionality. Its leaders are in it for the marathon, not a sprint as changing complex systems requires long-term multidimensional work. Creating space for inner work8:Seekers of justice and deep equity have come to realize that meaningful and impactful change connects the inner and outer worlds. In other words, leaders and activists change themselves as they change government and society. Realizing and focusing on the complementary process of personal transformation allows progressives to refuel and replenish their own reserves, to tap skillfully the transformative energy of emotions like love, joy and anger, and cultivate synergy, alignment and collective strategy in ways that heal rifts among people and within groups.

While these elements can be reflected in the formal program and work of affiliates, they also operate at levels of internal cultures and relationships among staff, leaders and constituencies. For example, in an interview of a staff person for one of the case studies in this book, the staff raised the challenges of investing in racial healing. For white staff this self-reflection can take the form of understanding their own privilege and fostering a space in which “you can visit the home of someone who is a low-income undocumented resident and build a relationship in which you can relate to each other.” Having previously worked in the labor movement, this person had learned to be a “warrior” for whom dealing with personal identity questions and issues was something private to be done on your own. Staff and leaders of color have to handle the dynamics of, for example, walking into a room of white labor leaders or politicians and their staff, some or many of whom may not have reflected on their assumptions and internal culture as a white person in America. Then add gender differences into the equation.

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How does an organization deal with the interpersonal complexities and internal culture dynamics related to race and gender in America in ways that are productive and which fosters similar productive engagement amongst coalition leaders and constituencies?

From access to governance: Building a politics of “we” not “me” In A New New Deal we argued that political action within regional power building stood out for its emphasis on grassroots mobilization during and between elections and its integration with policy campaigns and deep coalitions. Aggressive political action also reflected changes within the labor movement as regional labor councils worked to foster greater electoral unity within the house of labor and unions shifted resources from campaign contributions to field operations that mobilized members and the broader working-class communities. As labor began building electoral coalitions with community organizing networks, faith-based organizations and so forth, it enlarged the targeted populations it engaged in conversations and organizing. In the last decade, the importance of mobilizing nonvoters has grown, especially among communities of color. As the nation heads toward becoming a “minority majority” country, an increasing number of states – including our case study states of California and Arizona – are already there. As a growing part of the US population that experiences below-average voter participation rates, Latinos and immigrant communities in particular have formed the focal point for broad electoral engagement coalitions. Fully engaging such voters requires going well beyond the traditional “get out the vote” work of a single election season, but requires the kind of year-after-year sustained integrated voter engagement described in the introduction and reflected in some of the case studies. Regional power-building projects also reflect a further organizational political evolution that has accelerated in recent years. Like many progressive organizations across the country, PWF affiliates are 501© 3 organizations. They can take charitable contributions, including foundation funding, but cannot engage in direct political action. They can, for example, provide expert testimony on a piece of progressive legislation, but they cannot have their staff advocate for a particular piece of legislation with an elected official. They can mobilize people to vote in elections and can do extensive education about issues but cannot directly tell people to vote for a specific candidate, party or ballot initiative. Indeed, in A New New Deal we described how PWF affiliates developed often alongside a transformation of organized labor’s electoral action, including revitalized central labor councils. However, over the past decade a growing number of affiliates have experimented with C4 and other legal forms that allow for a more seamless integration of nonpartisan and partisan activities. These structures involve enough complexity that we describe them in more detail in the appendix to this chapter (see Appendix: Legal Structures for Financing Partisan Political Action). They include C4s, Political Action Committees and Limited Liability Corporations.

Regional power building today 61 Winning elections, however, is only the beginning to establish progressive governance. The regional agenda development and deep coalitions provide a kind of eco-system within which progressive champions exercise office. Training can knit these parts together and foster progressive governing that operates quite differently to the status quo. In A New New Deal, we described the Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) program as an example of how regional power-building projects have created tools to directly foster deep relationships among partners outside of specific campaigns. CLIs bring together leaders and activists from diverse groups – including would-be public officeholders – to learn about the regional economy, economic development process, public authority and regional power structure – all for the purpose of understanding and planning for how to work together to build progressive regional power. We mentioned Building Partnerships as a national support group helping groups develop similar programs. Now called 1000 Leaders, and run out of Working Partnerships USA, this far more developed project prepares leaders inside and outside the halls of government to govern in a new way. Most political training in the United States focuses on how to get elected. Postelection material tends to restrict itself to the legal and technical aspects of governing. By contrast, 1000 Leaders focuses on how to act effectively with progressive values once elected or appointed to office. The training only takes place in regions with some kind of long-term powerbuilding infrastructure because the progressive model of governing focuses on collective leadership. Trainees do not come as individuals, but as part of a team that includes actual or potential elected office holders, appointees to public positions, public staff and leaders of grassroots-based groups and other organizations. Conventional politics places individuals in office, who typically run individualized campaigns. They then sink or swim on their own having to struggle with the often overwhelming duties of public office combined with the general scarcity of resources to support them. By contrast, progressive champions operate as part of a broader coalition that moves a people’s agenda from both the inside and outside the halls of government. What holds officeholders and the broader coalition together are deeply held shared values. The Values-Based Leadership, one of 1000 Leaders’ two flagship training programs, helps participants tap into the values that grow out of their life experience and that motivate them to become activists in the first place. Conventional politics suggests that these values need to be set aside to successfully maneuver the insider horse trading and compromises required to govern. By contrast, the progressive approach embraces these values, which are far larger than any single issue or policy. They connect the insiders with the movement partners outside. For those in elected or appointed public office being open and honest about their values can allow them to build relationships of mutual respect with fellow officeholders, even among those who do not share the same agenda. They also allow progressive champions to motivate and empower staff. While leading with values, effective officeholders also need a firm grasp of the technical sides of governing. Leading a New Way, the other flagship training, helps progressive champions with the hard skills, technical expertise and strategic savvy

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needed to govern effectively – again in partnership with the movements that helped get them elected. We have delved into these trainings because they point to a new way to govern. Progressive governance is rooted in collective action using deeply shared values. It, and the 1000 Leaders program, is also built around a politics of inclusion. The electoral work seeks to put into public office people who in their diversity look like and reflect the communities that vote for them. Progressive governance, however, also actively works to bring front and center into the governing conversations voices of those communities traditionally marginalized and excluded from the halls of power: people of color, women, LGBTQ, immigrant, working class and others. It redefines who is an expert. Traditional governing looks to those with professional titles, academic credentials and business connections to guide what needs to and should be done. By contrast, progressive governance looks to the everyday people who live an issue to know what they need. Furthermore, it understands that the process of organized movements allows people to come together, find common ground and articulate what is and is not in their best interests. Collective, values-based, inclusive leadership is powerful. As many of the case studies demonstrate, it makes for effective progressive governance that can make changes even before achieving outright legislative majorities.

The resource challenge The PWF affiliate network has shown both depth and breath. Early in its history the Partnership made the strategic decision to focus on fostering strong and lasting affiliates rather than attempting to spread far and wide. As the case studies in this book illustrate by and large, the affiliates have demonstrated lasting power and have significantly evolved their work. Since we published A New New Deal, the network has also added new affiliates such as Stand Up Nashville and Central Arizonans for a New Economy. At the same time PWF and its affiliates have had a breath of reach far beyond their regions as specific innovations have spread throughout the country. For example, Community Benefits Agreements have become a standard tool for progressive economic development activism nationwide with PWF having provided support not just to affiliates, but also to the broader CBA movement for years. Regional power building’s future is intertwined with the question of resources. Power building projects don’t just ask people to donate to staff-directed efforts, but encourages individuals to become change agents and grow their and their coworkers and neighbors’ capacity. Nevertheless, power building work itself requires resources.9 The capacities that full-blown power building projects must develop include the following: • •

Coalition building: not just for individual campaigns but also to grow deep relationships among core partners over time Agenda development: understanding regional political economies takes work and expertise. Power-building projects need to articulate the underlying

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• • • • •

problems, identify meaningful solutions that can be enacted at the local level, map out the constituencies of a winning coalition and formulate effective messaging that pulls everything together Mobilize grassroots action to push for policy change and support base building Foster effective policy enforcement Develop effective and values-based grassroots leadership Develop values-based candidates who can become skilled and effective legislators, executives and public board appointees Grow and maintain a data-driven network of mobilized voters.

Not all of these capacities happened all at once. And each capacity can develop through many stages from basic to more and more sophisticated. During the emergence of the power-building model much of this capacity has been built by philanthropy-funded 501©3s – the PWF affiliates. More recently we have seen this structure supplemented with related C4 organizations. Yet, philanthropic resources can only go so far. Typically, the regional power-building infrastructure begins in a region’s core city. Yet, decisive political change requires power building to extend into enough suburbs to shape the region and state. Urban gentrification makes many, especially older suburbs, key sites for organizing. How do power-building projects grow the resource base to become truly regional? Further, how do enough power-building projects develop in enough regions in enough states to change the nation decisively? Future innovation in regional power building includes experiments to grow a funding infrastructure that goes beyond foundation philanthropy. Fortunately, some projects have already begun to experiment in this emerging field of Independent Resource Generation (IRG). Two basic approaches have emerged within the broader field of progressive power-building work: market and nonmarket. Market-based approaches raise resources by offering a good or service related to power-building work. Examples include the following: • • •

• •

Field vendors sell canvassing and person-to-person capacity for allied causes Initiatives to offer consulting services relevant to nonprofit organization’s areas of expertise Certification programs in which companies pay grassroots organizations to become certified in meeting certain public standards. For example, in Texas the Better Builder wage and safety certification is conducted by and supports the Worker Defense Project Development of monetized apps relevant to an organization’s constituencies. Power building-linked online English as a Second Language classes are one example Creation of worker co-ops producing marketable products. In Ohio, organizers are exploring a craft brewery coop that would generate revenue for power-building work

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While offering promising revenue-generation capacity, market-based approaches have to grapple with many challenges associated with starting a business, conducting effective market analysis and balancing profit-making and social justice through a duel bottom line. Nonmarket methods seek to draw in funds directly to support power building goals. This can take the form of grassroots canvassing, membership dues and online-based fundraising. As new models for these strategies develop, learning from the first- and second-generation attempts at membership models becomes all the more important. Another nonmarket approach is to structure public policy enforcement such that fees and fines go to support the grassroots infrastructure that won and wants to enforce and expand a given policy change. As we have already explored, progressive governing can take the form of bringing in grassroots organizations into public policy implementation and enforcement. Such measures can enhance the effectiveness of government programs while providing public resources for those organizations that enhance community voices. While the specific Independent Resource Generation (IRG) mechanisms may differ greatly, they share several key characteristics. They provide continuous and ongoing resources. They are sustainable over the long term. The funding they provide is unrestricted. They face common challenges such as gaining access to capital through loans, grants and investments and dedicating, attracting and developing staff with the skill set required for Independent Resource Generation.

Looking toward the future The task of finding even more resources is the kind of advanced challenge that underlines the essential conclusion that the basic regional power building model works. When we wrote A New New Deal we had hoped that we had found a viable path for helping transform regions, states and ultimately the nation. Yes, regional power building meant policy wins, new coalitions and getting more progressive champions in office. But it also meant more. It involved building the popular organizations that allowed people to speak and act with their own voice. It fostered experiments with new ways of governing. And ultimately it contributed to the historic progressive task of rebuilding institutional power that can contest with corporate domination of our politics and society. We are happy to say that regional power building has lived up to our hopes. At the same time, the rise of Trump and the Democrats’ loss of so many state legislative seats during the Obama presidency has underlined that there are no shortcuts to lasting national and state progressive change. Progressives need to build durable power by bringing people together in the communities in which they live. They need to organize around agendas for meaningful and concrete change, grow people’s capacity for activism and leadership and build intimate relationships among the various grassroots progressive groups that allow people to fight for change. As the stories of PWF affiliates found in this book illustrate a new America is indeed being built within the shell of the old.

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Appendix – legal structures for fnancing partisan political action The right wing figured out before progressives how to use different legal forms to push an agenda backed by with direct political power. Much has been said about how money dominates US politics, but what does that actually mean in practice – especially at the state and local level? Yes, campaign contributions by corporations are part of the story, as are the 527 campaigns enhanced by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. However, the Right’s organization infrastructure goes much deeper. Groups such as American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the State Policy Network (SPN) and Americans for Prosperity are some of the more famous examples of the dense ecosystem that corporate funders and wealthy individuals have built over the past decades. In addition to 501©3s, the right wing has made use of: 501(C)4s: are nonprofit organizations whose primary activity must be social welfare, but which are allowed to engage in lobbying and political action. Of the roughly 81,000 registered 501©4s, 4,000 engage in political activity. Such activities can include independent expenditure campaigns that advocate for the election or defeat of specific candidates but which by law cannot coordinate directly with a candidate’s campaign. While a legal grey area, generally the majority (over half) of a 501©4’s funds must go to their social welfare activities. Unlike 501©3s, they do not have to disclose their donors, thus allowing image-sensitive corporations to conceal their political action. Political Action Committees (PACs): traditionally PACS can raise funds and make contributions to candidate campaigns subject to campaigns finance laws. Since 2010, so-called Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditure campaigns. Limited Liability Corporations: this legal form can be used to establish firms that do lobbying and political campaigning. The Right has also used corporate LLCs to raise millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to also fund independent expenditure campaigns. Most important, the right wing has worked out how to build such structures to operate in coordination so that the sum is far greater than the parts. For example, C3s and C4s can enter into agreements to share activities, resources and staff. C3 charitable and community work can get folded into the social welfare work of a C4. C3s and C4s can contract with LLCs to do civic engagement or political work, respectively. To put it stark power terms, this integrated infrastructure allows activists to tell elected officials to support some legislation or actions not just because it is the “right thing to do,” but because they can win or lose their next election based upon their level of cooperation. To put it in a more democratic left wing perspective, such an infrastructure allows progressive groups to hold officeholders accountable to their campaign promises and to provide strong backup to

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champions who unapologetically stand up for the community within the halls of government. Several factors help explain why the Left has been slower to develop such structures. Culturally within the Left PACS, LLCs and C4s can bring negative associations of undemocratic monied influence. Furthermore, working out the legal details of these structures and their interaction with 501©3s requires a special skill set, all the more since they are subject to 50 different state employment, campaign finance and other laws, in addition to federal regulations. Establishing them thus requires a significant investment of resources and expertise to create new and often unfamiliar types of organizations. Once formed, each organizational type has its own set of reporting requirements that needs to be properly exercised. Governed by state law, these organizations are also best created within states while for far too long the left wing remained too myopically focused on federal politics. The proper legal interaction among such structures is complicated enough that groups may not get the most out of them, or even use them at all despite their investment, due to fears of running afoul of legal prohibitions. These concerns, however, are challenges to be confronted, not avoided. Today, the PWF includes affiliates that have begun, or in some cases travelled extensively, down this path. Regional power-building efforts included a growing number of partner C4s – even those whose names share key words with the 501©3. For example, the chapter on Phoenix explores how Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) founded a C4 (CASE Action) as part of its growing efforts to mobilize Latinos and other voters. Such new strategies are part of a broader development among progressive activism in the United States as change groups realize the need to build political muscle and to experiment organizationally. The need to help groups do so has effectively fostered nationallevel technical support. For example, with field partners the New Left Accelerator (NLA) engages in research, documenting best practices and providing technical assistance with the goal of helping state-based organizations engaged in the full range of strategies and tactics they need to build power and win key policy battles. Pilots and research that NLA is conducting in 2020 will help the field understand how to build permanent in-state infrastructure to support hybrid organizational power building efforts.

Notes 1 The quote is attributed to GM president and shared holder Charles Wilson during his hearing for Secretary of Defense in 1953. The actual quote appears to have been “I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” 2 Sheryl Petty and Amy Dean “Five Elements of a Thriving Justice Ecosystem: Pursing Deep Equity” NonProft Quarterly April 13, 2017. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/five-elements-of-a-thriving-justice-ecosystem-pursuing-deep -equity/ 3 They are also summarized on the group’s website at: changeelemental.org/ resources/five-elements-of-a-thriving-justice-ecosystem/ 4 Sheryl Petty and Amy Dean op.cit.

Regional power building today 67 5 Aja Couchois Duncan, Susan Misra, and Vincent Pan “Cultivating Leaderful Ecosystems” NonProft Quarterly April 21, 2017. 6 Elissa Sloane Perry and Aja Couchois Duncan “Multiple Ways of Knowing: Expanding How We Know” NonProft Quarterly April 27, 2017. 7 Natasha Winegar, Susan Misra, and Ashley Shelton “Influencing Complex System Change” NonProft Quarterly May 3, 2017. 8 Sheryl Petty, Kristen Zimmerman, and Mark Leach “Toward Love, Healing, Resilience & Alignment: The inner Work of Social Transformation & Justice” NonProft Quarterly April 21, 2017. 9 An earlier version of this discussion was written by Dean and Reynolds for the proposal for “The Independent Resource Generation Hub for Building Power.”

Part 2

The founders today

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LAANE brain Understanding the model and future of the Los Angeles alliance for a new economy Manuel Pastor, Ashley K. Thomas and Peter Dreier

Introduction The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) is the acknowledged powerhouse and anchor of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF). While PWF owes its origins to many organizers and organizations, LAANE was the start-up that pioneered a new kind of hybrid institution – one based in the labor movement but not entirely of it; one tied to organizing but also focused on research; one set up to push government to adopt more progressive policies but to do so by working with elected officials and allies within government; and one created to design policy packages to address economic problems often caused by irresponsible corporations and help build power for the labor, community organizing and environmental justice movements.1 LAANE emerged in the wake of the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, a social explosion triggered by the acquittal of LA Police Department officers whose brutal beating of Rodney King was caught on camera. But while the police beating and the subsequent acquittal was the match, a significant portion of the tinder was the despair caused by persistent racial inequalities and economic injustice. By the early 1990s, Los Angeles had become a city where people of color comprised a majority of its roughly 3.5 million (at that time) residents. Yet this “new majority” was emerging just as the city and the broader regions were experiencing extreme economic dislocation due to deindustrialization and growing numbers of the working poor.2 The widening economic divide, growing racial discord and a massive influx of immigrants was a challenge to the region’s labor movement, which was still disproportionately dominated by white leaders and which had not invested in efforts to organize the new wave of workers in manufacturing, services and other sectors. As a result, the labor movement was losing members and losing political clout. Only the growth of public sector unions – representing city, county and school district employees – kept LA’s labor movement afloat as a power broker in local and state politics. The creation of LAANE was based on the untested premise that the labor movement could be revitalized if it invested in organizing the new wave of

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immigrant workers and forged coalitions with multiracial community and faithbased organizations and, later on, environmental justice groups. LAANE’s emergence was part of a broader “social movement moment” in Los Angeles which saw the start and expansion of a myriad of activist organizations, partly in response to the 1992 civil unrest. Gradually, the typical method of building power through single-issue organizations was supplanted by the mosaic of intersecting groups constituting a movement ecosystem. The relative decline of corporate capital – and fragmentation of the city’s business elite – in this period also opened up a pathway for new ideas and, importantly, a new narrative or story about who the economy was for and how it worked.3 Into that combination of a vacuum and a whirlwind entered LAANE with a new model of building community power, shifting the narrative and impacting policy. Win after win – first slowly gained, then seemingly stacked on one another – created momentum. A modest but hard-won living wage ordinance led to the creation of community benefits agreements which in turn led to campaigns at America’s most active ports, which led to proposals to create construction careers and restructure the city’s recycling programs. Along the way, LAANE became increasingly sophisticated at an inside-outside game that involved relationships with political figures and bureaucrats as well as supporting the revolving door of activists going to work for government agencies and LAANE recruiting key government staffers to join its own staff. LAANE has since become a major actor in the city’s and region’s politics and culture, with an annual “city of justice” dinner that brings together activists, philanthropists, politicians and celebrities and raises up to $800,000 of LAANE’s $4 million annual budget. It’s been an inspiring record of accomplishment but shifts may be needed to meet the future. While the rhetoric and some of the work has been regional, LAANE’s biggest victories have been in the city of Los Angeles. Recognizing that weakness – particularly the way it limited gains at the ports which are controlled separately by the cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach – LAANE has developed a long-term campaign to shift the politics of Long Beach, itself a city with over 450,000 residents. That campaign – which has required the development of a local organizing base – has evolved in ways that could impact the organization in a positive direction as it grapples with how to combine grassroots organizing, coalition building among progressive nonprofits and engagement in electoral politics. LAANE has also been grappling with the changing politics and climate around racial injustice. This has involved looking at each of its campaigns through a racial lens, hiring more African American staff and encouraging its union partners to recognize the importance of both race and class issues to building a broad progressive movement. As LAANE has won more and more policy battles, it has also come to recognize the importance of not only passing those policies but also making sure that they are effectively implemented: getting the city government to restructure an entire recycling industry is different than securing a living wage for subcontracted workers. And finally, with the economy derailed by the COVID19 crisis, LAANE’s message that we do better when we protect all of us is highly

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relevant but it is also highly likely to be challenged by a business sector seeking to take advantage of economics distress and labor’s diminished strength.4

LAANE emerges For most of the twentieth century, Los Angeles was viewed as America’s Eden – the land of sunshine, beaches, open spaces, opportunity and ambition. But it was an imbalanced vision: in the post–World War II period, the city’s business and civic elite forged a local growth coalition – made possible by federal funds and policies – that promoted a combination of suburban sprawl and downtown redevelopment, largely locking out the poor and people of color from the benefits of both.5 The resulting economic and racial disparities led to the Watts rebellion of 1965. Another in a long line of incidences of police violence unleashed longsmoldering, cumulative rage at the police and at pervasive racial discrimination, with unrest resulting in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries and 3,952 arrests. Then Mayor Sam Yorty and business leaders did little to respond to the grievances that led to the violence; instead, Yorty stoked racial tensions by encouraging stronger police measures and downplaying the social and economic causes.6 This energized the city’s liberal forces to find an alternative to Yorty and his conservative agenda. A liberal alliance, primarily of Black and Jewish Angelenos, coalesced around Tom Bradley – a police lieutenant prior to his election in 1963 as the first Black member of the Los Angeles City Council – to replace Yorty. Bradley narrowly lost in his effort to unseat Yorty in 1969, but was successful 4 years later, and served as mayor for 20 years. More than just a mayor, Bradley became a symbol of the city’s racial enlightenment, an image he reinforced by fostering cross-racial alliances (although he also declined to get involved in an early 1970s fight for compulsory busing to integrate the Los Angeles schools). By the mid-1980s, however, the Bradley coalition had begun to falter. The 1978 passage of Proposition 13, a statewide tax limitation, restrained the ability of California’s cities to raise funds. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, rapid deindustrialization, declines in private sector unionization and subsequent cuts of federal funds for urban social programs put the squeeze on the cities. Although Bradley increased municipal hiring of African Americans and Latinos, diversified the police department and helped minority entrepreneurs gain access to city contracts, he did little to stem the city’s loss of well-paying jobs and its widening economic disparities. Politically, he became increasingly reliant on private developers and investors and began to neglect his original political base.7

Los Angeles uprising When the city again exploded in civil unrest in April 1992 – leading to 55 deaths, 2,383 injuries and more than 17,000 arrests – it was clear that the great promise of the Bradley coalition had dissipated. By then, the city’s business leadership had also become more fragmented and less cohesive. During its postwar boom, Los

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Angeles was run by a shadowy handful of businessmen – the so-called Committee of 25 – who spoke with one voice, typically through the then reactionary Los Angeles Times. By the early 1990s, there was no longer a well-organized, coherent corporate power structure led by people with a long-term stake in the city’s well-being. Increasingly, the largest corporate employers in Los Angeles were run by branch managers who were accountable to higher-ups located outside the region and even outside California. Meanwhile, the city’s economy increasingly became dominated by real estate developers, large universities and major hospitals. Politically, the vacuum of business leadership was filled primarily by elected officials’ reliance on contributions from a wide variety of firms with a direct stake in local policymaking. These include contractors that do business with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the port, the airport, the school district and other government agencies, and developers seeking zoning approvals and tax breaks. The response of the Los Angeles political and business elite to the 1992 riots revealed how out-of-touch they were with everyday life in the city’s neighborhoods, particularly those populated by Black and Latino residents. Bradley appointed Peter Ueberroth, who had orchestrated the business community’s embrace of the 1984 Olympics, to spearhead the city’s official response to the riots. The Rebuild LA program, later called simply RLA, was top-down in its structure and program. Its 94 board members included a wide spectrum of business, government, civic, religious and celebrity names, but it had no organic connection to the riot-torn neighborhoods it was supposed to serve. RLA hired a private consulting firm to estimate how much private investment would be needed to address the high levels of joblessness in the area. The answer: $4 billion to $6 billion. But RLA raised and invested less than $400 million in its five years of existence.8 But while the 1992 civil unrest revealed the region’s economic and racial chasms as well as the shortcomings of the corporate elite, it also highlighted the gaps in Los Angeles’ progressive movement. In the wake of the uprising, progressives were rightly angry at the police brutality and economic disenfranchisement that produced the rage – but they were also rightly chagrined that that righteous anger had burnt the city rather than spawned a new vision for the city that could guide social change activists. In the wake of the unrest, activists began to experiment with new models, including a region-wide strategy focused on organizing bus riders, a campaign to push the entertainment industry to train and hire residents of South LA and a sophisticated electoral strategy that eventually led to the election in 2005 of Antonio Villaraigosa, a former labor organizer with deep ties to labor and communities of color.9 While LAANE eventually emerged as a key part of that progressive infrastructure, it was building on earlier efforts to improve worker power. With unionization declining in tandem with deindustrialization, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) brought its national Justice for Janitors campaign to Los Angeles in 1988. Focusing on mobilizing and unionizing the mostly immigrant workforce among janitors in LA’s largest office buildings, the campaign

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won significant wage and benefit victories by “masterfully combining topdown and bottom-up strategies.”10 It used corporate and industry research to help organizers develop strategies at the national level, while also employing a stepped-up commitment to organizing and empowering rank-and-file members on the ground. That campaign showed the power of the inside-outside game – combining lobbying elected officials with protest – at which LAANE would later excel. This was particularly evident in a violent police attack in 1990 on janitors protesting the national cleaning company International Service Systems (ISS) in LA’s tony Century City area, which led unions to enlist pressure from Mayor Tom Bradley to resolve the conflict. This victory for immigrant janitors (and a related campaign that led to the unionization of over 70,000 home health care workers) laid the groundwork for a new approach to achieving a pro-worker agenda. Maria Elena Durazo, the daughter of immigrant farmworkers, had led a revolt within Local 11 of the hotel workers union to make it pay more attention to the increasingly immigrant workforce – and she knew more was needed to advance their interests. She tapped Madeline Janis, an immigrant and tenants’ rights lawyer and activist who had led CARECEN, a key Central American refugee rights organization, to establish a nonprofit group that would bridge the gap between labor and LA’s liberal community and elected officials, clergy and academics. Working alongside them was Miguel Contreras, Durazo’s husband, who had learned his organizing skills working for the United Farmworkers union, worked for the hotel workers and in 1994 became political director of the LA County Federation of Labor, and two years later, its head.11 The first iteration of what was to become LAANE was an organization called the Tourism Industry Development Council (TIDC).12 Formed in 1993, TIDC intended to capture the attention of a hospitality industry preparing for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the international soccer championship. The idea – which later became a pillar of LAANE’s organizing model – was to draw attention to the low wages in the industry just as reporters were arriving looking for “color stories,” a strategy that emphasized the power of communications. But it also included a strategy to forge an alliance with other sectors, in this case by organizing tours of neighborhoods of color that were left off the usual map of “places to see” but included small businesses that could benefit from having visitors and their dollars steered in their direction.13 TIDC had several of the elements that would eventually become key to its successor formation, LAANE. First, it was labor-initiated and was intended not only to raise worker wages and expand union membership but also to forge connections with communities of color and with unexpected allies like small business. It also was very conscious about advancing a particular narrative: one could hardly look at the name, the Tourism Industry Development Council, and make the usual anti-labor claim that it was attempting to sink the industry; rather, the story needed to be done to make the industry and its workers thrive. Under the subsequent banner of “shared prosperity,” LAANE would seek to revise the notion of a “healthy business climate” by recognizing the importance of living wages,

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affordable housing and (eventually) a clean environment as key components of a prosperous economy.14 TIDC also reflected another characteristic: it was nimble enough to shift focus when a battle emerged with regard to another aspect of the tourist industry, the threat of worker dismissal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In 1995, Republican Mayor Richard Riordan asked the City’s Airport Commission to award new franchises for the stores and restaurants at LAX. The new owners laid off about 300 workers and replaced them with lower-paid, nonunionized employees. Working closely with Local 11 of the hotel workers union and with the support of progressive City Council member Jackie Goldberg, TIDC and allies got the City Council to adopt a pioneering worker retention law requiring new owners of LAX franchises to keep the existing employees and to pay them living wages.15 That victory set the stage for a major campaign to get the Mayor and City Council to adopt a “living wage” ordinance modeled on one passed by another labor-community coalition in Baltimore.16 In 1997, the LA City Council passed the living wage ordinance – mandating higher wages (initially $7.25, which is $11.75 in 2020 dollars) and benefits for workers at firms that had contracts with the city. Operating then as the Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition, LAANE and its allies among unions, community groups and faith-based groups17 spent a year building support on the 15-member City Council, spearheaded by Council Member Jackie Goldberg, a close labor ally. The Los Angeles business community fiercely opposed the law, with the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce claiming that the law, if passed, would cost the city $130 million a year. Responding to business pleas, Mayor Riordan, a moderate Republican, vetoed the law, but the City Council overrode the veto. The living wage campaign added an additional element to the LAANE model: research to counter business claims and lay out alternatives. In 1996, the coalition fighting for the wage hike brought in an economist, Robert Pollin, to do a study for the City of Los Angeles which suggested that there would be positive impact on reducing worker poverty and minimal impacts on costs or employment levels. Perhaps as significant, LAANE commissioned an important study after the fact that demonstrated that the estimated positive impacts were indeed what developed.18 It showed that the Chamber of Commerce, which had warned that the law would trigger economic hardship, was crying wolf – setting a pattern for work challenging business claims that progressive policies “kill jobs” or otherwise stifle private investment. The living wage campaign also put workers at the center of the campaign and provided opportunities for them to tell their stories and put a human face on the reality of poverty. And it led to the development of a new name: the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. There was controversy over the rechristening: some on the TIDC board wanted the title to instead refer to a “just economy” but the idea of simply claiming that a “new economy” had to be just – much like developing the tourist industry had to promote worker livelihoods – won the day. Indeed, LAANE’s use of phrases like “new economy” and “living wage” was

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an intentional effort to identify itself with forward-looking and positive change, rather than be viewed as simply a protest movement trying to stop bad things from happening. LAANE soon began to build on the living wage approach of demanding quid pro quos from businesses with city subsidies. It did so by coming up with another new policy vehicle: community benefits agreements (CBAs). This phrase, too, was designed to position its opponents on the wrong side of the narrative battle. In its first CBA campaign, in 1998, LAANE targeted a major new hotel, retail and theater development project in Hollywood. Like most real estate projects, this one needed many approvals and permits from the City. LAANE’s major ally on the City Council, Jackie Goldberg, represented the Hollywood area and was willing to use her leverage over city approvals to insist that the developer agree to provide traffic improvements, a living wage for construction workers, a firstsource hiring plan to hire back laid off airport workers and a policy of union-neutrality in exchange for city approvals. This campaign signaled yet another piece of the LAANE model falling into place: an inside-outside game where political allies would carry the ball while LAANE would help mobilize labor and community support. After winning the CBA campaign in Hollywood, LAANE took on an even bigger target – the proposed major expansion of the Staples Center – then home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers, Sparks and Kings sports teams as well as a major concert venue – in downtown LA. LAANE worked with a coalition of community groups to negotiate the CBA with the developer. Leveraging the need to obtain required city approvals and subsidies, the coalition forced the developer to agree to a “first source” hiring policy for people whose home or job was displaced by the development, a requirement that 70 percent of the 5,500 permanent jobs would pay a living wage or be covered by a collective-bargaining agreement, and concessions about improving nearby parks and promoting affordable housing. A key element of this effort was the partnership between LAANE and community groups with seemingly less power who had long been suspicious that their concerns would be swept to one side in any coalition with labor, particularly given the history of the building trades unions who generally took the side of developers in order to secure union-wage jobs for their members. While not quite fully equal partners – and the reality is that the unions turned to the community only after the developer had reneged on initial promises to labor – the 2001 Staples Center CBA helped to make real the labor-community alliance, including a surprising role for immigrant residents finding their way to political power.19 The idea of labor teaming up with local tenants, environmental justice groups and others to secure local benefits from development was reinforced in the 2004 effort to secure a CBA with Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that runs the region’s airports. A seemingly motley crew of local activists, labor leaders, environmentalists and others secured a $500 million agreement that promised to soundproof houses and schools, provide jobs to local residents and generate small business opportunities in the areas surrounding the airport.

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LAANE rising The living wage and CBA victories put LAANE on the map of the wider labor movement and local and national foundations. This brought additional resources which also made possible the ability to think ahead rather than simply reacting to opportunities. LAANE’s research and policy staff began to look at the LA economy in terms of specific economic sectors and to analyze whether, and how, these sectors were dependent on government for subsidies, permits and regulations. With this lens, LAANE could focus on specific industries and forge alliances with labor, community and environmental groups that sought to hold those industries and corporations to higher standards of corporate responsibility. As Madeline Janis, LAANE’s executive director from its beginning through 2012, commented: The left tends to focus on the economy from 60,000 feet high. It leaves progressives with no sense of what they can do to change it. If you focus on hotels or manufacturing or retail, you can figure out an agenda.20 Since the early 2000s, LAANE’s campaigns have focused on restructuring the ports of Los Angeles, reworking the trash and recycling industry, guiding the development of the construction careers that might be generated from massive public investment in light rail and alternative energy and requiring companies in the retail sector to adopt “fair work week” policies for its employees. Much of the work reflected an emerging Blue-Green analysis and coalition, particularly at the Ports. One early sign of LAANE’s clout was that Mayor James Hahn, a liberal Democrat elected in 2001, appointed Janis to the board of the powerful Community Redevelopment Agency, where she used that position to advocate for more pro-labor and community-oriented progressive policies and not cater to businesses and real estate developers, as the CRA had done in the past.21 In 2005, with support from Latinos and white liberals as well as Black voters defecting from Hahn, Villaraigosa defeated Hahn and then won reelection four years later, ushering in what was initially one of the most progressive big city regimes in the nation. Moreover, a majority of the 15-member City Council owed their seats to support from unions and their community allies, giving LAANE significant influence inside City Hall. In 2013, Eric Garcetti succeeded Villaraigosa; Garcetti also had a close relationship with LAANE and attended its annual fundraising dinner, while his wife was on LAANE’s advisory board. By cultivating these allies inside City Hall, LAANE was able to make significant headway in a number of major campaigns. Before examining LAANE’s historic and contemporary campaigns in more detail, we want to acknowledge that in evaluating LAANE, it is difficult to completely distinguish how much of its success has been due to its model of combining research, communications, organizing and policy advocacy as core elements of its campaigns – and how much has been due to the political skills of its leaders and the wider political and economic milieu. On the former, Marshall Ganz has stressed that one of the key elements of successful organizing and political

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advocacy is the ability of leaders to be nimble and flexible enough to take advantage of the conditions they confront.22 Studies of social movements often understate, or ignore, the importance of political skill. Successful activists understand that human beings are actors in their own history. They don’t wait for the time to be ripe. Instead, they ripen the time.23 As for the milieu, recall that Los Angeles was in a particular moment of historic transformation and social movement experimentation – and this made it possible for LAANE to thrive. To be clear, we are not arguing that LAANE’s approach is uniquely confined to a particular place; the fact that PWF organizations in other cities have adopted all or part of LAANE’s approach suggests that it has much to offer. Rather, we are suggesting that context matters, including a particular reconfiguration of labor and community partners, a uniquely fragmented business class and a growing social movement ecosystem. Replications in other locales have had to figure out how to identify points of leverage within their local political economy.24 For example, Working Partnerships, LAANE’s sister organization in the hightech Silicon Valley area of northern California, initially followed a LAANE template, working on a living wage hike as its signal campaign. But much of what it eventually pursed was quite distinctive, including a campaign to provide health insurance to all undocumented children, a focus on tackling the issues of gig work and temp agencies and an emphasis on affordable housing, a serious concern not only of the region’s working families but also the high-tech companies that were having difficulty attracting employees who could afford to live within commuting distance of their jobs. In short, both LAANE and Working Partnerships (and other PWF affiliates) responded to and were emblematic of the context in which they emerged. LAANE is very much of the labor movement but it also very much of Los Angeles – and one of the distinct pluses of the PWF model has been the clear commitment to adapting to local conditions rather than assuming a sort of lock-step franchise operation. This is a clear lesson – one not always followed – for other organizing and political networks.25

What is the LAANE model? The LAANE model centers on labor-community partnerships, expanding the role of the labor movement beyond bargaining for wages and benefits to building a movement that secures benefits for an entire community through addressing the structures of industry.26 Although deceptively simple, the model blurs longheld lines in the sand between workers and the structure of production as well as between economy and community. To do this, LAANE targets industries that are “sticky” and so less likely to move from a region if wages increase, regulations are strengthened or taxes are more progressive. These industries include transportation, construction, education, tourism, logistics, waste management and energy provision. In this way, it further connects the responsibility of businesses to the communities in which they operate and make profit. LAANE also leverages the

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Research

Organizing

Communications

Policy

Figure 5.1 LAANE’s Elements of Successful Campaigns.

power of the public sector, utilizing and even creating new methods in which public power can shape commerce, including regulation, universal wage and benefit standards, enforcement and discretionary approvals. Over time, campaigns have been developed in comprehensive, including research, policy development, organizing and communications. Internally, that translates to a “team model” with expertise in each area working collectively toward systemic change. Externally, it translates into an inside-outside strategy that cultivates relationships with both decision-makers and those who implement policy, and a self-conscious focus on the need to build and sustain power (Figure 5.1). Organizing has always remained at the center of the LAANE model. Whether the organization is engaging workers at job sites, impacted communities, labor leadership, “grass tops” of progressive leadership or unlikely partners, the model cannot function without its center. The role, targets and intensity of that organizing has changed across time and with the particular needs of campaigns. With partners, there is a strategic process to understand the organizing landscape – the interest of organized workers and community members, the mobilization needed to move policy and the capacity and needs of unorganized workers and communities. Finally, there is a commitment to organizing and power building as fundamental rather than instrumental; they are not vehicles for a policy win but ends in and of themselves that will help to correct the long-term imbalances of the current economic system.27 A key aspect of organizing is to give workers and community residents a public voice in the campaigns. LAANE devotes significant time and resources to

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identifying people who can tell their stories to others in similar situations, to the media, to targets, including public officials, corporate executives and others. This is partly about communications but it is not instrumental in the sense of parading individuals to win a policy; there is a sincere effort to build a cohort of leaders. As a result, it has been critical in all of LAANE’s campaigns to identify leaders and ensure that workers and community residents are the public face of the campaigns. The role of research has remained vital to the work of LAANE. Beginning with the living wage study in 1996, research has been used as a tool to assert the collective benefits of increased wages to cities and communities, thus extending the number of stakeholders involved in a wage fight. LAANE’s research also demystified the mechanism of industries, allowing campaigns to craft nuanced solutions. Research reports have also become central to crafting a communications strategy targeting the media, partly because they offer a sense of rigor and confidence in both the analysis of the problems being exposed and the policy changes being proposed. LAANE has occasionally collaborated with outside researchers but it also employs full-time staffers who are responsible for conducting research – typically by crafting profiles of particular industries and learning what leverage local, county or state government has to force these industries (or particular companies) to act more responsibly. Some LAANE researchers have degrees in planning, geography, public policy, sociology or economics, but some learn on the job. The research is designed not simply to provide knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but to be useful in waging campaigns – it is sometimes called “tactical investigation.” Careful research – for example, learning how the recycling industry or the ports really work – has also profoundly informed the design of policy mechanisms that could help raise wages and shift conditions for workers. As for policy, in a world wracked by deindustrialization and slipping union strength, policy change can be seen as a much more efficient approach to changing conditions. Mandating better wages or openness to unionization through a community, benefits agreements can leverage community and political power to assist workers even when labor organizing is relatively weak. Over time, LAANE built the internal capacity (and the broader ecosystem capacity) to craft policy language and design policy mechanisms. From CBAs, Project Labor Agreements, community shared solar and exclusive waste franchises, LAANE leadership, staff, partners and lawyers from across the ecosystem designed policies that busy and understaffed public officials could adopt as their own and champion. But LAANE recognizes that changing policy isn’t simply a matter of developing good ideas. It also requires developing the political clout to get elected officials or businesses to adopt and implement them. Every aspect of LAANE’s strategy involves changing the power dynamics between capital and labor. Part of LAANE’s hidden strength lies in narrative and communications. LAANE has its own communications department and assigns at least one of its staff to each campaign as part of the team approach. Each campaign seeks to generate media attention so that the public and policymakers, as well as corporate

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targets, understand that the “problem” has become an “issue” – a matter of controversy that needs to be debated and resolved in order to improve people’s lives. The research staff helps identity the problem and craft a solution. The organizing staff helps to mobilize workers and allies, and to train leaders to tell their personal stories. The communications staff seeks to generate public attention to the problem and the campaign to solve it. According to Danny Feingold – who joined LAANE in 1999, helped develop LAANE’s communications capacity and eventually served as communications director until 2016 – he inherited a narrative waiting to be fully realized. In his view, the living wage campaign established the notion that “there was a responsibility on the part of both government and business to make sure that the companies that were benefitting from taxpayer money were using that money in a way that would support people to be able to live at a decent level.”28 But equally important was that this sort of measure – and everything else LAANE would propose – would be good for the economy as a whole.29 At the time, this was not a well-trodden argument utilized in the labor movement nor was it a solid part of labor communications; unions tended to expand on why something would be good for workers rather than for the whole economy. But the CBA struggles provided a perfect opportunity for a broader argument of how equity could improve prosperity, and this became part and parcel of LAANE’s communications strategy. An additional component of each campaign (and the overall organizational) strategy is an “inside-outside” approach with several different dimensions. The first is an effort to elect or appoint “movement officials” who are accountable and in relationship with an independent base.30 Over the years, LAANE has successfully lobbied to get public officials to appoint LAANE staff, leaders and/or allies to key institutions like the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Ports Commission (which oversees half of the busiest port complex in the world), the Planning Commission, the Public Works Commission and the LA Convention and Tourism Development Board. Several LAANE staff have also transitioned into positions within the legislative and administrative arenas.31 And it’s not just a one-way street. LAANE has been successful in hiring staff with experience in government and with unions and other allies, in order to take advantage of their skills and personal contacts. For example, current executive director, Roxana Tynan, began working at LAANE in 2001 after having worked as an organizer for UNITE HERE and then as a deputy to LA City Council member Jackie Goldberg, who was LAANE’s closest ally in spearheading the living wage campaign on the inside. In addition, members of LAANE’s board of directors – which includes leaders of unions, immigrant rights, housing justice and environmental organizations as well as two academics – have ties to elected officials, journalists and funders that they utilize on LAANE’s behalf. Another inside-outside dimension is the cultivation and maintenance of a movement on the outside that can apply pressure and hold elected officials accountable, including through protest, rallies and demonstrations, media and grassroots lobbying. LAANE uses staff resources to both organize workers and

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community members to put pressure on elected official and dedicates staff time to lobbying elected officials, with several staff registering as lobbyists with the city of Los Angeles. Another often overlooked component of the inside-outside game is the cultivation of relationships with bureaucratic staff within the administrative arena who will ultimately craft and implement the programs and enforce wins. LAANE has exceled in this task: by building relationships with bureaucratic staff in the early phases of the campaign, its staff are able to get buy-in and utilize administrative expertise as they write policy recommendations and reports.

The model in action: the ports The Ports Campaign illustrates the LAANE model in action. Starting in the mid2000s, the campaign sought to address the woefully low wages of port truck drivers. At the time, drivers who were misclassified as independent contractors were making nearly 30 percent less than drivers who were classified as employees.32 All drivers were also subject to serious health impacts because they typically experienced long waiting times in their idling diesel trucks to pick up cargo. That same pollution had devastating health impacts on the Los Angeles region and the communities near the port and along travel routes, making residents subject to high levels of asthma and other disorders. The campaign released an innovative research report, The Road to Shared Prosperity: The Regional Economic Benefts of the San Pedro Bay Ports’ Clean Trucks Program, that laid out a policy solution called the Clean Trucks Program and calculated the direct and indirect benefits to communities surrounding the port complex, the region as a whole and the port truck drivers themselves.33 LAANE then worked to build an unusual multi-sector coalition called the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports that included traditional environmental organizations, people of color-run environmental justice organizations, public health organizations and, of course labor, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents truck drivers and hoped to organize the port drivers if they were re-classified as employees. This was an early instance of a labor-environmental coalition (sometimes called a “blue-green” alliance) with constituencies and organizations that had rarely worked together in the past.34 And because the port’s toxic pollution primarily hurt low-income communities of color and because the drivers were disproportionately people of color, the campaign had an important element of racial as well as economic justice.35 The policy solution, the Clean Trucks Program, linked reducing pollution through shorter idling times and phasing out older vehicles with reclassifying drivers as employees. The argument – one that was embraced by environmental groups long used to the logic of asking companies to pay for the externalities from their operations – was that if trucking companies were forced to pay drivers as workers rather than independent operators, they would be incentivized to reduce waiting time (and diesel-idling time) at the ports. Moreover, larger trucking companies with worker-drivers would have more financial capacity to purchase

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lower-emission trucks compared to small independent driver-owners, who were already saddled with extraordinary financial burdens and were forced to drive old polluting diesel engine vehicles.36 What is more, LAANE’s initial analysis concluded that inclusion of a measure to encourage “employee conversion” would help Los Angeles County realize nearly half a billion dollars in direct and indirect benefits (in 2007 dollars), all on top of even larger benefits due to improvements in health as a result of lower truck pollution.37 That larger package of benefits included a reduction in publicly funded antipoverty programs, indirect benefits to communities from increased wages and a reduction in health care costs.38 The program was adopted by the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in 2007 and 2008. Subsequent research found that the Clean Trucks Program exceeded its environmental goals, reducing emissions by 90 percent and reducing health costs by 96 percent.39 But the worker part of the program came up short. Long Beach rejected the employee conversion element when it adopted the policy and Los Angeles created a severability clause that would allow it to implement the program even if parts of it were rejected in court.40 And that did indeed happen: in 2013, after winding its way through the courts, a final decision from the US Supreme Court found in American Trucking Ass’ns v. City of Los Angeles that the agreements used to require trucking companies to treat drivers as employees was preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act.41 The loss had major ramifications for workers in the industry, most of whom were technically considered independent owner-operators. As Cummings explains: “In so doing, the drivers themselves suffered a setback: with employee conversion undermined in federal court, drivers assumed the burden of purchasing and maintaining clean trucks without the economic benefits promised by employee status.”42 The Ports campaign has continued fighting the misclassification and wage theft in the administrative arena, specifically the National Labor Relations Board and the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Additionally, LAANE has expanded across the supply chain to build partnerships with Warehouse Workers Resources Center to develop a broader campaign to improve working conditions for employees in the goods movement sector across several Southern California counties. And the campaign had lasting impacts. It cemented the Blue-Green work, building trust between labor and environmental activists. In particular, environmental organizations saw LAANE (and, by extension, labor) sticking with the environmental aspects of the deal and, in turn, were supportive at retaining the employee conversion components even when it was clear that the program’s clear air goals would be met. The Ports campaign also clarified LAANE’s emerging approach of undertaking research on a sector, identifying the workers and other constituencies concerned about that industry’s practices, and forging policy solutions that would help build alliances between labor, community allies and elected officials.43 Perhaps as significant, the Ports campaign jump-started an effort to target Long Beach – the second biggest city in LA County with over 400,000 residents – as a ripe opportunity for building a political base and extending the LAANE model on a semi-regional basis.

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LAANE campaigns Raise LA and the Fight for 15 LAANE continued to win major victories in 2010, expanding its portfolio of industry, community and labor partners. Arguably, the biggest victory was the Raise LA campaign. This was part of a growing nationwide movement to raise wages of the lowest-paid workers in key industries that rely on poorly paid employees. Building on the momentum of “living wage” laws that covered workers in businesses with municipal subsidies and contracts, labor and its allies began to target large employers, including fast-food restaurants and Walmart, through corporate campaigns of embarrassment and pressure. The movement soon came to include winning higher across-the-board minimum wages in cities for all workers, not just those employed by companies with city contracts or those employees in certain sectors. Known as the Fight for 15, in most cities, SEIU funded the local organizing efforts, with the first major victory won in SeaTac, Washington (the site of the Seattle airport) in 2013. That was followed the next year by an historic city-level agreement to a $15 minimum wage for all of Seattle.44 As with the first walkout in New York in 2012, the LA campaign began with an industry-specific focus on low-wage workers – in New York it was fast-food workers, in Los Angeles, it was hotel workers.45 LAANE’s long-term partnership with Unite/HERE Local 11 set the stage for action and in 2014, the City Council passed a law raising wages to $15.37 for workers in hotels located near LAX, based on the legal argument that those hotels depended on the city-owned airport for their livelihood and thus were, in effect, subsidized by the municipality.46 LAANE and its allies then turned to an increase in the overall minimum wage. The campaign involved a significant amount of organizing and grassroots lobbying and LAANE dedicated resources to help organize workers to lobby the LA City Council. Additionally, LAANE staff made a significant effort to gain the support of unions whose members were not low paid – some of whom believed that a minimum wage increase could undercut their leverage in contract negotiations.47 In most cases, LAANE’s appeal to union solidarity prevailed, adding the influence of these unions to the lobbying effort. By the spring of 2015, the LA City Council passed an historic increase in the minimum wage that would reach $15 by 2020 (and then subsequently increase by the rate of inflation). LA was the third major city to adopt such a bold law.48 Concurrent campaigns led to the passage of a $15 minimum wage at the County of Los Angeles (which manages the unincorporated areas) in 2015 and the Cities of Santa Monica and Pasadena in 2016.49 California passed its own minimum wage less than a year after the City of Los Angeles.50

Don’t waste LA One of LAANE’s most significant “blue-green” victories has been the Don’t Waste LA Campaign to remake LA’s waste and recycling systems. This multiyear-long project included extensive research on the private waste and recycling

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industry that collected garbage from LA’s businesses, institutions, homeowners and landlords. Several reports focused on the impact of that system on garbage and recycling workers as well as on the city’s infrastructure and environment, and proposals for an alternate way of doing business that would improve worker and environmental conditions. The campaign team also developed an intense partnership with both staff in the city’s Sanitation Department and elected officials to adopt a new approach over the opposition of the powerful waste and recycling industry. Near the end of 2010, city residents were sending 7 million tons of trash and recyclable materials to landfills that were nearing capacity. Almost anyone with a truck could obtain of the city’s open-market permits to collect garbage. LAANE’s initial research report discovered that different waste haulers were collecting on the same block. Workers who collected and recycled the garbage faced dangerous conditions, including high rates of injury, illness and encounters with toxic materials.51 When city officials set an ambitious goal of becoming a zero waste city by 2030, LAANE saw a clear window to take their Blue-Green coalition to City Hall to address working conditions, environmental concerns and systemic change in the inefficient crazy-quilt waste and recycling industry. According to one assessment: LAANE worked with the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and other environmental groups that wanted fewer trucks on the road and a mandate that trucks run on alternative energy. They also teamed up with labor organizations that wanted workers processing trash to get good benefits and higher-than-minimum starting wages. Together, they urged the city council to rewrite rules so that companies that meet alternative-energy and worker-friendly standards would get exclusive city contracts in what’s called a franchise system.52 By 2016, the City of Los Angeles finalized its new waste and recycling system based largely on the LAANE design. The program was ambitious, attempting to shift from a “wild west model” of individual operators picking up at different locations at different times (clogging the streets with traffic and pollution). The new alternative was a franchise system in which the city was split into zones and waste and recycling companies bid for the exclusive right to manage refuse for that zone. The program was set to reduce emissions, provide universal recycling and eventually begin to offer composting. It also mandated better safety conditions for workers who collected and recycled the waste. With its eye always focused on workers’ rights, LAANE recognized that a franchise system would make it easier for those workers to unionize and improve their better pay and working conditions. This ambitious makeover struggled at the finish line as elected officials of color voiced concerns about the lack of diversity among haulers and suppliers.53 Moreover, the roll out of the program was beset with major hiccups – partly the result of reorganizing a reluctant industry that was highly competitive, inefficient and resistant to regulation. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times reported

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that “apartment owners and business operators who have experienced repeated missed trash pickups and astronomical bills since the city forced them into a garbage-hauling monopoly program called RecycLA.”54 In response, the city created the Removing Barriers to Recycling Program which rolled back and refunded certain fees, delayed others and increased public education.55 LAANE and its allies were familiar with the dilemmas of implementing a new program that involved municipal regulation of a reluctant industry. It had initially experienced similar problems in implementing the living wage and Clean Port policies. By the time the Don’t Waste LA campaign was won, the City was looking to LAANE as not just an advocate for policy change but a source of expertise and knowledge about the industry.56 In fact, just as the City Council was close to passing the ordinance, Mayor Eric Garcetti hired LAANE’s Don’t Waste LA campaign director, Greg Good, to oversee its operation. The fact that an architect of the program was helping in implementation illustrated the importance of LAANE’s inside-outside approach to policy change. Under Good’s leadership, the City eventually improved the program’s implementation and it soon was viewed as a model for reforming a complex industry that had previously operated with few rules or standards, to the detriment to its workers and the wider community.57 Other cities, including New York City, looked to Los Angeles to transform their own waste and recycling systems.58

New efforts LAANE has waged several other campaigns in the “blue-green” spirit, bringing together economic and environmental concerns. Among these has been a series of efforts that made the nation’s largest municipal utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), adhere to strong environmental standards and, along the way, strengthened ties between community and consumer groups and labor. One example was a campaign for an energy efficiency program that trained workers to provide free energy efficiency upgrades for low-income rate payers. This led to the creation of the Utility Pre-Craft Trainee Program, a multiyear paid training program with a pipeline to well-paying utility jobs. As of 2020, the program had trained nearly 200 workers and there was a waitlist of another 1,600 people. Beyond energy, LAANE also crafted a stormwater campaign at the county level to increase investment in infrastructure, reduce pollution in around the county (particularly into the Pacific Ocean and its estuaries), recharge local groundwater reserves, decrease reliance on imported water and create good-paying construction and operation jobs that would be targeted toward local low-income communities.59 LAANE worked with a coalition of community, environmental and labor groups to pass Measure W, which increased property taxes (called a parcel tax) in LA county to pay for the program. In November 2018, 70 percent of voters approved Measure W.60 The implementation of Measure W will invest an estimated $300 million per year to upgrade the area’s nearly century-old regional water systems. This will make Los Angeles County – a desert whose sprawling

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development was made possible by government efforts to import water and construct a maze of highways to promote its car-oriented infrastructure – more resilient in the face of climate change which is expected to impact Los Angeles in the form of reduced snow pack and thus increased stormwater from each storm.61 Another major, albeit tentative, victory for LAANE was its campaign to regulate short-term rentals in Los Angeles. The campaign was triggered by Airbnb’s entry into the LA market, which prompted dual concerns about removing rental housing from the residential inventory and creating short-term commercial rental units that competed with local hotels for tourists, something UNITE HERE viewed as a serious threat to its members. Before beginning the public phase of the campaign, LAANE staff wrote a major research report, AirBnB, Rising Rent, and the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles, which identified the problem and framed the issues, and which generated significant media attention.62 As a LAANE staff member explained: “[The report] found credible data, brought novel analytical techniques to tell a new story, and allowed us to reframe the conversation. Simple, clear, and powerful.”63 The campaign also included a neighborhood organizing strategy to organize local Neighborhood Councils across the city.64 LAANE spearhead a campaign that led to the City Council adopting the Short-Term Rental Ordinance (drafted by LAANE staff) in 2018. The ordinance limited short-term rentals to only a primary residence, known as “home sharing,” and requires those hosts to register with the City.65 It also bans home sharing from units that are under their rent stabilization ordinance and entered into an agreement with Airbnb, requiring them to remove illegal listings. Despite this victory, the city government has been half-hearted in its efforts to enforce the new law, in part because doing so requires the allocation of significant public resources to identify and prosecute violators.66 Additionally, Airbnb has resisted participating in the enforcement of the law and instead spent $280,000 lobbying the City to delay or dispose of the enforcement mechanisms.67 After it passed the first living wage, LAANE faced a similar problem of the city’s lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the law and successfully pressured the city to allocate funds to implement the law, but comparable success around the Airbnb law has proved elusive. One of the newest additions to the LAANE portfolio is the Reclaim Our Schools LA (ROSLA) campaign which set out to address wages and working conditions of teachers, lack of resources for students and advocating for a “community schools” model of education. Los Angeles has the second largest school district in the nation and it is not overseen by the City Council where LAANE had built power over decades of work – so this required a new strategy, new analysis of power and new partners. The campaign stretched LAANE’s capacities by working in partnership with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the local teachers union and local community groups that prioritized grassroots organizing of communities of color, including the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and Students Deserve. Similar to the CBA model, LAANE championed in the 1990s, the Reclaim Our Schools campaign utilized a Bargaining for the Common Good model,

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which integrates community demands into collective bargaining negotiations – again expanding who is included in the collective.68 Beyond raises for teachers and smaller class sizes, the campaign called for cap on charter schools, an end to random searches of students, the establishment of wrap-around services in new community schools, and added staff including nurses, librarian, counselors and lawyers to help families with immigration cases. Twenty months after the UTLA contract expired, months of intense negotiations, and in the midst of nationwide #RedforEd teachers’ strikes, Los Angeles teachers and community members went on strike in January of 2019.69 The weeklong strike persevered through the pouring rain on some days and 50,000 strikers and supporters marched and rallied in downtown Los Angeles – a huge show of labor power in a city when that power is often exercised behind the scenes.70 By the next week, Reclaim Our Schools was announcing its victory and once again demonstrating the success of the community-labor partnership.71 One project still in progress is the Fair Work Week campaign. LAANE has long partnered with the United Food and Commercial Worker Local 770 on campaigns to increase wages and address working conditions in the retail and grocery industries. Their partnership has included campaigns on sick time, securing alcohol sales, cannabis regulation and support for workers that went on strike in 2003–2004 and nearly averted another in 2019. In its most recent iteration, the partnership has focused on the impact of unstable scheduling on workers. Through significant survey data collected by LAANE and the UCLA Labor center, their report Hour Crisis: Unstable Schedules in the Los Angeles Retail Sector demonstrated significant impacts on workers and their families, including being forced to pay bills late, being locked out of childcare centers, missing classes and increased stress.72 Introduced in 2019, the proposed Fair Work Week Ordinance relied directly on the research done by LAANE and UCLA Labor Center. The policy could impact as many as 70,000 workers in the retail industry and could include measures to give two weeks’ notice for schedules, 10 hours between shift and the right to decline or request changes to worker schedules without retaliation.73 The measure was initially approved and sent to the City Attorney’s office to create the formal ordinance language, unfortunately, that language landed back in the hands of elected officials in February of 2020 just as the Coronavirus pandemic began. In response, LAANE and UFCW shifted gears, and joined with nearly 200 organizations to form the Healthy LA Coalition advocating for, among other things, personal protective equipment, paid sick leave and rights of return.74

Leaning into Long Beach The Ports campaign had revealed an important weakness: LAANE and its allies carried significant political weight in the city of Los Angeles – that was not actually regional power. LAANE and its allies were able to persuade LA leaders to build concession requirements into the Clean Truck Program that would allow independent drivers to convert to workers that could then be organized by the

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Teamsters. But the union-friendly portion of that effort was derailed by Long Beach’s conservative political leaders.75 Responding to pressure from trucking firms and prompted by a business-oriented mayor, Bob Foster, in early 2008, the Port of Long Beach approved its own Clean Truck Program without an “employee conversion” element.76 As we noted earlier, it was a significant blow. As Cummings writes: “When industry could not stop the Clean Truck Program in Los Angeles, it ramped up lobbying pressure on Long Beach and succeeded in defeating employee conversion there. The Los Angeles-Long Beach split paid political and legal dividends …” as it created worries about the movement of traffic and jobs from one port to the other and also created a legal argument about different treatment of operators in two adjoining jurisdictions.77 In order to move forward, LA’s Clean Truck program had included a severability clause so that most of the regulations would stand even if employee conversion was struck down in count – and such a negative ruling came in 2011 (and was reaffirmed by the US Supreme Court two years later). LAANE had won a significant commitment to reduce diesel pollution, earning the trust of environmental and environmental justice allies, who returned the favor by acknowledging respect for a group whose political footprint far exceeded theirs and could have been patronizing rather than partnering. But it had not been able to deliver for its core labor base. Vengeance – or at least a rebalancing of political power – was in order. LAANE recognized that Long Beach’s power structure would portray any effort by LA-based groups to transform the city’s political culture as interference by outside interlopers. As Hytrek notes, there were “unsuccessful efforts by outside union activists to pass a Labor Peace Ordinance in 2006 and Big-Box Ban in 2007” that convinced progressives that transforming the city required developing a more organic local base.78 LAANE understood that it needed another sort of inside-outside game, in this case not between advocates and politicians but rather between the stronger and experienced organizing infrastructure outside of Long Beach and the nascent efforts within that City. The strategy to leverage the broad LA-based social movement ecosystem emerged in the next few years. For example, in 2009, LAANE wrote a report called A Tale of Two Cities: How Long Beach’s Investment in Downtown Tourism Has Contributed to Poverty Next Door that became the centerpiece for a town hall hosted by a newly formed Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community. LAANE’s research highlighted how a reliance on a low-wage tourist industry had actually exacerbated poverty in the city. The combination of outside expertise and local roots gave the report credibility. This led to a remarkable campaign in 2012 – led by UNITE HERE Local 11 and local community groups, with the support of LAANE – to pass an ordinance that required larger hotels to pay their workers at least $13 an hour and provide at least five sick days a year. While certainly a campaign with union support, it was key to develop a coherent community base of supporters beyond the roughly 2,000 affected hotel workers. To do so, the Long Beach coalition launched “LB Rising!,” a leadership development program that included training local activists in integrated voter

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engagement (IVE), a method that combines community organizing with more traditional efforts to “get out the vote.”79 The campaign also recruited small business supporters, something that helped to rebut the usual Chamber complaints that something so clearly targeted at larger employers would somehow hurt small businesses that might actually benefit from the extra spending in the community. The Coalition’s proposal, labeled Measure N, passed with nearly two-thirds of the vote in November 2012.80 The Measure N victory reset the tone in Long Beach and by the end of 2013, the City Council had passed worker protection ordinances for employees of the Long Beach’s Airport and Convention and Entertainment Center. In addition, unions won several long-simmering labor conflicts, including winning votes for unionization at two major hotel properties.81 But the power of the emerging progressive movement was tested when advocates tried to persuade the City Council to adopt a Hospitality and Workload Safety Ordinance that was also known as “Claudia’s Law” in honor of a hotel worker, Claudia Sanchez, “who fell into a coma after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage after completing a 14-hour shift in 2015.”82 One of the proponents of the measure was Jeannine Pearce, a former LAANE employee and a leader of Long Beach Rising, who – with the support of unions and community activists – had been elected to the City Council in 2016, a confluence that reflected the more traditional inside-outside game associated with LAANE.83 However, the measure failed to pass the City Council in a deeply disappointing 5–4 vote in September 2017. LAANE and the Coalition responded with the same sort of electoral end-run around traditional city leaders that had won them a living wage: they went to the voters in November 2018 with a ballot proposition, Measure WW, which built in protections around sexual violence and excessive workloads in hotels with more than 50 rooms. In an eerie coincidence, the final margin of victory – 64 percent – was exactly the same as that for Measure N.84 And the victory had an impact beyond its immediate protections to vulnerable workers: in the words of Victor Sanchez, LAANE’s lead organizer in Long Beach, the win: gave us a lot of influence … (so) we are considered when decision making around issues that are tangential to our mission and to what people know we do. We don’t have a hard time having a conversation with electeds. We can have those conversations. Now, whether or not we have power over them, I think that’s our gap. We have not reached a point where we have power to say we’re going to move this policy and we know we can pass this.85 The Long Beach victories illustrate the importance of long-term investments in community organizing and electoral organizing beyond one election cycle or one campaign. The Long Beach strategy has its roots in LAANE’s ties to UNITE Local 11, the hospitality union that helped to birth LAANE. But to build real sustainable grassroots progressive power, LAANE recognized that it had to build a long-term movement that went beyond one union and one issue

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and that trained local residents and workers to take leadership. That recognition was brought home by the opposition of Long Beach’s political leaders to the employee conversion portion of the Clean Truck Program. This was a delicate dance because local groups in Long Beach were relatively politically weak compared to their experienced LA counterparts. At the same time, LAANE had to play a role in developing the kind of authentic organized base that so many other progressive organizations bring to the table. This was a bit of a departure for LAANE as it does not have its own individual dues-paying members and, for the most part, has relied on the unions to mobilize their members on the ground. Although LAANE helped craft the strategy for the Long Beach Coalition, its success was due to its ability to train local leaders and to forge an alliances that went beyond labor issues and included protecting immigrant rights and renter rights and bringing those constituencies together to elect sympathetic candidates to the City Council. LAANE’s Long Beach effort has also contributed to heightened regional power. For example, when COVID-19 struck in the spring of 2020, the City of Los Angeles passed a worker retention and recall ordinance for hotel and janitorial employees on April 29 that required employers to rehire the workers it laid off when the pandemic hit. This victory reflected the power of labor and progressives in that city. The County, with its own progressive super-majority on the Board of Supervisors, followed suit on May 12.86 LAANE’s investment in Long Beach paid off when that city passed its own ordinance patterned after the LA measure on May 19.87 Far from being a drag on pro-worker regional change, Long Beach was emerging – imperfectly, as lead organizer Victor Sanchez notes – as a key component of the larger strategy.

What’s next? LAANE has had setbacks and losses along the way – with one of the most painful being the 2002 voter rejection in Santa Monica of a minimum wage ordinance that sought to cover larger businesses operating on the lucrative coastal and downtown shopping areas and another being the legal setback suffered to the employee conversion program that was part of the Ports campaign.88 Still, it’s been a remarkable run of successes for LAANE. Now operating with a budget of around $4 million a year and a staff close to 40, its model of combining organizing, research, policy development and advocacy and communications has helped to transform the political economy of Los Angeles.89 Its sophistication at the inside-outside political game has grown over time, including an occasional revolving door between LAANE and City Hall in terms of staffing one side or the other. And while we have suggested that some of the effectiveness of LAANE was due to the specific milieu – Los Angeles in the 1990s was primed for change and the transformation of the state of California by progressive advocates and politicians was partly the result – LAANE has played a key and unique role in the ecosystem of social movement building.90 LAANE’s impact on movements and politics has not just been regional but also statewide. This has had a direct dimension: LAANE has strong allies in the

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state Assembly and Senate, and its founder and former board chair, Maria Elena Durazo, is now an influential state senator who continues to use LAANE leadership as a sounding board for innovative policy ideas. But the group’s influence has also been indirect: by working through the Partnership for Working Families to build power in metro areas as a stepping stone to state influence, it has provided an example for other groups interested in broadening their reach in order to achieve more power to win policy victories. For example, in many states, environmental justice advocates have often been locally focused and somewhat fragmented; in the Golden State, they have linked together under the banner of the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) and been highly effective in securing legislation and influence.91 Similarly, the Million Voters Project consists of seven networks – which in other places might be competitive or at odds – that link regions and groups across California to pursue integrated voter engagement for key ballot propositions.92 Scale is important in another sense: LAANE and PWF’s ultimate goal goes beyond adopting specific policies regarding particular industries and constituencies. Their aim is to build power in order to make America’s cities more humane, livable, democratic, diverse and environmentally sustainable. In that enterprise, LAANE and PWF are part of a broader movement to build progressive cities that can eventually sway both state and national policy.93 So how will LAANE build on its almost three decades of organizing accomplishments? As noted, the work in Long Beach is critical to LAANE’s future for three reasons. The first is that it represents a regional strategy – born out of the need to move a reluctant city and now paying dividends in the form of Long Beach taking up progressive measures alongside the City and County of Los Angeles. The second is that it represents a different kind of organizing: while LAANE has sometimes engaged in base-building and leadership development, Long Beach is the most sustained effort to develop an independent base rather that engage in coalition work or rely on the ability of unions to move their troops. Third, it offers a model for not only persuading elected officials to adopt its policy ideas but also for putting their own members and allies into those elected positions, thus changing the inside-outside dynamic. In the future, LAANE will also likely place more focus on policy Implementation, a concern highlighted by the awkward roll-out of the Don’t Waste LA program. This is less exciting than organizing a campaign but necessary as bureaucrats need the assistance. LAANE is now in the enviable but still difficult position of seeking to maintain momentum by both coming up with new wins while consolidating old victories. LAANE will also need to pay even more attention to racial justice and racial equity, a topic that has gained more urgency thanks to the emergence of Black Lives Matter and the upsurge of protest in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. While LAANE’s work lifting up low-income workers has had an impact on racial disparities – and its construction careers work has been particularly helpful to Black and Latino workers – LAANE’s narrative and policy initiatives have remained more universalist in tone. It has also had challenges

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retaining Black staff, and in recent years, LAANE has been more intentional about evaluating the experiences of former Black staff, recruiting new Black talent, and aligning with groups that are concerned about such issues as excess policing, overincarceration and the need to reallocate funds from policing to prevention. LAANE’s initial core narrative was “shared prosperity” – pushing policies that distributed the benefits of economic growth to the city’s low-income working class. It soon added “healthy environment” to its core policy agenda and organizing goals. But in an era in which the reality of anti-Black racism has risen to the fore, it is essential for all in the progressive movement to recognize the necessity of centering a racial justice lens. LAANE has added “racial justice” to its narrative and sough to offer labor, environmental and people-of-color constituencies an understanding that their concerns are interwoven and not separate. Maintaining and strengthening that narrative – that a healthy economy goes beyond business profits to include good jobs, decent housing, public health, clean air, immigrant integration and the dismantling of racism (including the racial wealth gap) in all aspects of society – will be part of LAANE’s ongoing challenge. All of this is particularly urgent in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, the coronavirus is an enormous opportunity: as a disease which reveals our social illnesses of employment precarity, racial disparities in wealth and health care, uncertain legal status and so much more, there is an opening to raise consciousness and change policy. LAANE has jumped into this, pushing, for example, Public Health Councils at workplaces in Los Angeles County which could become vehicles for worker voice. But this is just the beginning of what needs to occur for an economy in which suffering is likely and the usual business complaint that fairness will cost jobs will probably gain ground if the important work of narrative change is not central. There is hope. As we were completing this chapter, one public official commented to us: “I have found myself at multiple times over the last several months thinking to myself I could really use some LAANE brain.” What was meant here was the ability to look forward, craft a story, design new policies, build power, win political victories and pay attention to implementation, all in the service of economic, racial and environmental justice. Such an approach is needed now more than ever not just in Los Angeles but in every city and state in which the PWF affiliates operate – and hope to operate. The future of American labor, of communities of color and of an economy and environment that works for all depends on it.

Notes 1 Technically, Working Partnerships USA was founded before LAANE in 1995; at that time, what was to become LAANE was still operating as the Tourism Industry Development Council and the Living Wage Coalition. It is also the case the LAANE was less the creature of the local central labor council than WPUSA although the Fed did play a supportive role. See Amy Dean and David B. Reynolds, “Labor’s New Regional Strategy: The Rebirth of Central Labor Councils,” New Labor Forum 17, no. 1 (April 1, 2008): 48.

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2 Manuel Pastor, “Contemporary Voice: Contradictions, Coalitions, and Common Ground,” in A Companion to Los Angeles, ed. William Deverell and Greg Hise (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010), 250–265. 3 Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele, “LA’s Progressive Mosaic: Beginning to Find Its Voice,” August 10, 2000, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/las -progressive-mosaic-beginning-find-its-voice/. 4 We should be clear that we are not dispassionate or distant observers of LAANE: Pastor has served on the LAANE board (with some interruptions) since its earliest days, Ashley Thomas worked as a researcher for LAANE in the 2010s and Peter Dreier had been a board member since 2006. We hope that this brings us closer to the material in ways that matter for an accurate telling of the story but we are also careful throughout to be sure that our clear admiration for LAANE is coupled with an assessment of strengths, weaknesses and challenges. 5 Jennifer Wolch, Manuel Pastor Jr, and Peter Dreier, eds., Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Making of Southern California, 1st ed. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 6 Raphael Sonenshein, Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 7 Pastor, “Contemporary Voice.” 8 For example, four food-market chains vowed to build more than 30 new supermarkets in the inner city, where the number of chain markets had declined by nearly half in the previous decade and where residents typically paid more for lower quality food than their counterparts in more affluent neighborhoods. But according to a study by Amanda Shaffer, a decade after the uprising there was actually one less chain supermarket in the riot neighborhoods. Peter Dreier, “America’s Urban Crisis a Decade after the Los Angeles Riots,” National Civic Review 92, no. 1 (2003): 35–55, https://doi.org/10.1002/ncr.4; Amanda Shaffer, The Persistence of LA’s Grocery Gap (Los Angeles, CA: Occidental College, Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Center for Food and Justice, May 2002). 9 Manuel Pastor, Jr., “Common Ground at Ground Zero? The New Economy and the New Organizing in Los Angeles,” Antipode 33, no. 2 (March 1, 2001): 260– 289, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00183; Manuel Pastor and Michele Prichard, LA Rising: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building (Los Angeles, CA: USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, April 2012), http://dornsife.usc.edu/ pere/larising/; Peter Dreier et al., “Movement Mayor: Can Antonio Villaraigosa Change Los Angeles?,” Dissent, Summer 2006; Robert Gottlieb et al., The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Liveable City : Updated with a New Preface (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006). 10 Ruth Milkman, L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 161. 11 Peter Dreier, “Moving in the Labor LAANE,” New Labor Forum 20, no. 3 (2011). 12 https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8dj5m6s/ 13 Kevin Baxter, “A Tour of the Countries,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1997, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-22-me-51185-story.html. You can see a video, “A Day in the Life,” about the tours that were organized at https://socialjusticehistory.org/lalabor/workingla/archives/tag/laane 14 Harold Meyerson, “No Justice, No Growth: A New Labor-Left Alliance Scrambles LA’s Growth Politics – and Creates Middle-Income Jobs in a City Where They’re Vanishing,” LA Weekly, July 23, 1998, http://www.laweekly.com/1998-07-23/ news/no-justice-no-growth/. 15 https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8dj5m6s/entire_text/

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16 Interview with Madeline Janis, October 5, 2020. 17 LAANE relied on CLUE LA (Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice) as a significant partner in its organizing strategy for living wages. Founded in 1996 to bring faith-based organizing into the living wage fight, CLUE remains a dynamic part of the organizing ecosystem of economic justice organizations and remains a long-time partner of LAANE’s (they even have offices in the same building that serves as Local 11’s headquarters). 18 David Fairris et al., Examining the Evidence: The Impact of the Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance on Workers and Business (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, June 2005). 19 Manuel Pastor, Chris Benner, and Martha Matsuoka, This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity Are Reshaping Metropolitan America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Leland T. Saito, “How Low-Income Residents Can Benefit from Urban Development: The LA Live Community Benefits Agreement,” City & Community 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 129–150, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6040.2012.01399.x. 20 Harold Meyerson, “L.A. Story,” The American Prospect, August 6, 2013, http:// prospect.org/article/la-story-0. 21 Jim Newton, “Madeline Janis: L.A.’s Labor Warrior,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2007, sec. Opinion, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-op-newtonjanis17ju n17180920-story.html. 22 Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 23 Peter Dreier, “Social Movements: How People Make History,” Mobilizing Ideas (blog), August 2012, https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/ social-movements-how-people-make-history/. 24 Roxana Tynan, Nikke Bas, and Donald Cohen, Unmasking the Hidden Power of Cities: Using Their Authorities, Energy, and Promise to Secure the Common Good (LAANE, In the Public Interest, Partnership for Working Families, June 2018), https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/sites/default/files/publications/ Unmasking-the-Hidden-Power-of-Cities_0.pdf. 25 Mark R. Warren, Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Manuel Pastor, Jennifer Ito, and Madeline Wander, “Changing States: A Framework for Progressive Governance (Los Angeles, CA: USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, June 2016), http://dornsife.usc.edu/pere/changing-states/. 26 Madeline Janis, Danny Feingold, and James Elmendorf, They Said It Was Impossible: How to Win Progressive Change When the Odds Are Against Us (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, 2012), https://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/report -janis-et-al.pdf. 27 Pastor, Ito, and Wander, “Changing States: A Framework for Progressive Governance.” 28 Interview with Danny Feingold, October 7, 2020. 29 Fortunately, this argument about why equity might be a positive tonic for the economy was also finding increasing support in academic research. See, for example, Manuel Pastor, Jr. et al., Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, “Brother, Can You Spare Some Time? Sustaining Prosperity and Social Inclusion in America’s Metropolitan Regions,” Urban Studies 52, no. 7 (2015): 1339–1356, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098014549127; Randall Eberts, George Erickcek and Jack Kleinhenz, Dashboard Indicators for the

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Northeast Ohio Economy: Prepared for the Fund for Our Economic Future, Working Paper 06-05 (Cleveland, OH: The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2006), http://www.clevelandfed.org/Research/Workpaper/2006/wp06-05.pdf. Pastor, Ito, and Wander, “Changing States: A Framework for Progressive Governance.” For example, L.A. Mayor Garcetti appointed former LAANE organizer Greg Good as his Executive Officer for the Office of City Services and as Director of Infrastructure; in 2020, he became president of the City’s Board of Public Works. The former chair of LAANE’s board, Maria Elena Durazo, was elected to the State Senate in 2018, a point to which we return in the conclusion. Jeannine Pearce, a LAANE organizer, was elected to the Long Beach City Council in 2016. And one of the coauthors of this piece, Ashley Thomas, went to work as an aide to Council Member Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Jon Zerolnick, The Road to Shared Prosperity: The Regional Economic Benefts of the San Pedro Bay Ports’ Clean Trucks Program (Los Angeles: Alliance for a New Economy, August 2007), 12, https://laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04 /Road-to-Shared-Prosperity.pdf. Zerolnick, “The Road to Shared Prosperity.” This actually built on the initial alliances formed about the CBA for the LA airport in which a host of labor and environmental issues were tackled simultaneously, providing a base for collaboration and trust-building. Zerolnick, “The Road to Shared Prosperity,” 11, 17, 26. Consumer Federation of California et al., Foreclosure on Wheels: Long Beach’s Truck Program Puts Drivers at High Risk for Default (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, August 2008), https://laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/B568P314C.pdf. Zerolnick, “The Road to Shared Prosperity,” 7. Zerolnick, “The Road to Shared Prosperity.” Anne Goodchild and Karthik Mohan, “The Clean Trucks Program: Evaluation of Policy Impacts on Marine Terminal Operations,” Maritime Economics & Logistics 10, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 393–408, https://doi.org/10.1057/mel.2008 .13; Gunwoo Lee et al., “Assessing Air Quality and Health Benefits of the Clean Truck Program in the Alameda Corridor, CA,” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 46, no. 8 (October 1, 2012): 1177–1193, https://doi .org/10.1016/j.tra.2012.05.005; Bill Mongelluzzo, “LA, Long Beach Double down on Clean Ports Goal,” Journal of Commerce, June 14, 2017, https://www .joc.com/port-news/us-ports/port-los-angeles/la-long-beach-double-down -clean-ports-goal_20170614.html. https://www.portoflosangeles.org/environment/air-quality/clean-truck-program Scott L. Cummings, “Preemptive Strike: Law in the Campaign for Clean Trucks,” UC Irvine Law Review 4, no. 3 (2014): 939–1165. Ibid, 944. The ports could only expand to support Southern California’s logistics industry if they figured out how to reduce pollution and correct for the ongoing environmental injustice. This was something pushed by the ports but also by the Southern California Association of Governments; the fascinating thing is that no other actor could align all the conflicting parties and LAANE did just that (only to be undercut by the trucking firms seeking to retain their exploitation of the independent owner-operators). Peter Dreier, “How Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Victory Began in Zucotti Park,” https://prospect.org, June 5, 2014, https://prospect.org/economy /seattle-s-15-minimum-wage-victory-began-new-york-city-s-zuccotti-park/;

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Manuel Pastor et al. Steven Greenhouse, Beaten Down, Worked up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, 2020. Steven Greenhouse, “With Day of Protests, Fast-Food Workers Seek More Pay,” New York Times November 29, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30 /nyregion/fast-food-workers-in-new-york-city-rally-for-higher-wages.html Alexis Stephens, “Hotel Wage Hike Comes on the Heels of Marriott’s Housekeeper Tipping Campaign,” September 26, 2014, https://nextcity.org/ daily/entry/la-hotel-wage-hike-raise-minimum-wage-housekeeper-tip. This sentiment was not unique to Los Angeles, as the conversation inside the labor movement was happening across the country. Victor Luckerson, “Here’s Every City in America Getting a $15 Minimum Wage,” Time, July 23, 2015, https://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/; Emily Alpert Reyes and David Zahniser, “Los Angeles City Council Approves Landmark Minimum Wage Increase,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2015, https:// www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-minimum-wage-vote-20150602-story .html; Lydia DePillis, “With Victory in L.A., the $15 Minimum Wage Fight Goes National,” Washington Post, May 22, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/wonk/wp/2015/05/22/with-victory-in-l-a-the-15-minimum-wage -fight-goes-national/. The quick adoption of a $15 an hour minimum wage in Santa Monica was particularly welcomed by LAANE and its allies. As we note in the conclusion, one of LAANE’s bitterest losses during the era of living wage campaigns was the 2002 voter rejection in that city of a minimum wage ordinance that sought to cover larger businesses on the coast or in the downtown area. John Myers and Liam Dillon, “Deal Reached to Boost California’s Minimum Wage to $15, Avoiding Ballot Box Battle,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-minimum-wage-deal-20160326 -story.html. Sabrina Bornstein, Don’t Waste L.A.: A Path to Green Jobs, Clean Air and Recycling for All (Los Angeles: Alliance for a New Economy, January 2011), http://www .forworkingfamilies.org/sites/pwf/files/publications/2011.01_LAANE_Dont _Waste_LA.pdf. Aura Bogado, “Garbage Is a Dirty Business. L.A. Is Trying to Clean It Up,” Grist (blog), October 19, 2016, https://grist.org/cities/garbage-is-a-dirty-business-l -a-is-trying-to-clean-it-up/. Cole Rosengren, “Los Angeles City Council Approves Commercial Waste Franchise Contracts,” Waste Dive, December 9, 2019, https://www.wastedive .com/news/los-angeles-city-council-approves-commercial-waste-franchise-contracts/432090/. “Editorial: Can L.A.’s Garbage-Hauling Monopoly RecycLA Be Saved? Better Start Working on Plan B,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2018, https://www .latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-trash-pickup-plan-b-20180208-story .html. For more, please see https://www.lacitysan.org/san/faces/home/portal/s-lsh -wwd/s-lsh-wwd-s/s-lsh-wwd-s-zwlaf?_adf.ctrl-state=cyty7hsi1_5&_afrLoop =8700027695683418 Interview with Greg Good, September 29, 2020. Paul Rosenberg, “Can L.A. Save the Planet? City’s ‘Zero Waste’ Plan Could Be a Model,” www.salon.com, Salon (blog), October 8, 2017, https://www.salon .com/2017/10/08/can-l-a-save-the-planet-citys-zero-waste-plan-could-be-a -model/. Katie Honan, “New York City Council to Vote on Overhaul for Commercial-Waste Collection,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/

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articles/new-york-city-council-to-vote-on-overhaul-for-commercial-waste-collection-11569780986; Eric A. Goldstein, “Big Changes Coming to Commercial Waste Handling in NYC,” Natural Resources Defense Council (blog), October 29, 2019, https://www.nrdc.org/experts/eric-goldstein/changes-coming-nycs -commercial-waste-collection-system. The Planning Report, “Katy Young Yaroslavsky Unpacks Measure W: Implementation of LA’s ‘Safe, Clean Water Program,’” The Planning Report, September 3, 2019, https://www.planningreport.com/2019/09/03/katy -young-yaroslavsky-unpacks-measure-w-implementation-la-s-safe-clean-water -program. Nina Agrawal, “L.A. County Stormwater Tax Officially Passes,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln -measure-w-20181130-story.html. Alison Hewitt, “UCLA Researchers Project Southern California Rainfall Levels through End of Century,” Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, December 12, 2014, https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/news/ucla-researchers -project-southern-california-rainfall-levels-end-century/. Roy Samaan, AirBnB, Rising Rent, and the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, March 2015), http:// www.laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AirBnB-Final.pdf. Interview with Jon Zerolnick, October 7, 2020. Neighborhood councils are a hyper-local “advisory body” of elected residents. These neighborhood boards were added to the city charter in the 1990s, in part, as a response to the massive size of city council districts which are the largest districts in the nation. For more on Neighborhood Councils, please see https:// empowerla.org/councils/ See: https://planning.lacity.org/ordinances/docs/HomeSharing/adopted/faq .pdf Emily Alpert Reyes and Ben Poston, “Thousands of Online Listings Are Violating L.A.’s New Short-Term Rental Law,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2020, sec. California, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-09/los-angeles -short-term-rental-violations. The Times Editorial Board, “Editorial: It Took Los Angeles Years to Adopt Rules for Airbnb. Don’t Delay Them Now,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-15/los-angeles-airbnb -short-term-rentals-rules. Joseph A. McCartin, “Bargaining for the Common Good,” Dissent 63, no. 2 (2016): 128–135, https://doi.org/10.1353/dss.2016.0029. Joseph A. McCartin, Marilyn Sneiderman, and Maurice BP-Weeks, “Combustible Convergence: Bargaining for the Common Good and the #RedforEd Uprisings of 2018,” Labor Studies Journal 45, no. 1 (March 2020): 97–113, https://doi .org/10.1177/0160449X20901643. Melissa Gomez and Joel Rubin, “‘Feeling Powerful’: LAUSD Teachers and Supporters Dance and Chant on a March from Grand Park,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2019, sec. California, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me -edu-lausd-strike-teachers-march-20190114-story.html. Jennifer Medina and Dana Goldstein, “Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike to End as Deal Is Reached,” The New York Times, January 22, 2019, sec. U.S., https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/la-teacher-strike-deal.html. Janna Shadduck-Hernandez, Hour Crisis: Unstable Schedules in the Los Angeles Retail Sector (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Labor Center, 2018). Margot Roosevelt, “Erratic Hours Are the Norm for Workers in Retailing. Can Los Angeles Buck the Trend?,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2019, sec. Business,

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https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-retail-scheduling-20190302-story .html. Brenda Gazzar, “Los Angeles Activists Call for Stronger Tenant, Worker Protections amid Coronavirus Crisis,” Daily News, March 27, 2020, https:// www.dailynews.com/los-angeles-activists-call-for-stronger-tenant-worker-protections-amid-covid-19-crisis. Gary Hytrek, “Space, Power, and Justice: The Politics of Building an Urban Justice Movement, Long Beach, California, USA,” Urban Geography, December 3, 2019, 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1693171. Consumer Federation of California et al., “Foreclosure on Wheels: Long Beach’s Truck Program Puts Drivers at High Risk for Default.” “Preemptive Strike: Law in the Campaign for Clean Trucks,” 1159. Gary Hytrek, “Space, Power, and Justice: The Politics of Building an Urban Justice Movement, Long Beach, California, USA,” Urban Geography, December 3, 2019, 10, https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1693171. May Lin et al., Vote, Organize, Transform, Engage (VOTE): New Frontiers in Integrated Voter Engagement (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, October 1, 2019), https:// dornsife.usc.edu/pere/vote; Manuel Pastor, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future (New York: New Press, 2018). Hytrek, “Space, Power, and Justice,” 13. Kelsey Duckett, “Long Beach Hyatt Hotel Workers Plan to Unionize with Unite Here Local 11,” Long Beach Press Telegram, April 8, 2013, https://www.presstelegram.com/technology/20130408/long-beach-hyatt-hotel-workers-plan-to -unionize-with-unite-here-local-11. Jason Ruiz, “Advocates Dismayed as Long Beach Council Votes Down Hotel Workers Protection Ordinance • Long Beach Post News,” Long Beach Post, September 20, 2017, https://lbpost.com/news/advocates-dismayed-as-long -beach-council-votes-down-hotel-workers-protection-ordinance/. Jeannine Pearce, https://ballotpedia.org/Jeannine_Pearce Hugo Martín, “Long Beach Voters Approve Measure WW to Give ‘panic Buttons’ to Hotel Workers,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2018, https://www.latimes .com/business/la-fi-long-beach-hotel-measure-20181107-story.html. Victor Sanchez, Interview, LAANE in Long Beach, September 25, 2020. https://hrwatchdog.calchamber.com/2020/05/los-angeles-city-and-county -adopt-worker-retention-right-of-recall-ordinances/ https://hrwatchdog.calchamber.com/2020/06/long-beach-adopts-worker -retention-recall-ordinances/ Richard H. Sander and E. Douglass Williams, “Santa Monica’s Minimum Wage: Assessing the Living Wage Movement’s New Frontier,” Economic Development Quarterly 19, no. 1 (February 2005): 25–44, https://doi.org/10.1177 /0891242404268705. LAANE’s funds come from a mix of philanthropy, union partners, and sympathetic individual donors. Pastor, State of Resistance. Ibid, 152–153. Lin et al., “Vote, Organize, Transform, Engage (VOTE): New Frontiers in Integrated Voter Engagement.” Peter Dreier, Todd Swanstrom, and John H. Mollenkopf, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century (Studies in Government & Public Policy), 2nd Revised edition (University Press of Kansas, 2013); Rachel M. Cohen, “Progressives Help Progressives—Across City Lines,” The American

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Prospect, January 13, 2020, https://prospect.org/api/content/ae4a6610-3407 -11ea-bdb0-1244d5f7c7c6/; Tynan, Bas, and Cohen, “Unmasking the Hidden Power of Cities: Using Their Authorities, Energy, and Promise to Secure the Common Good”; Pierre Clavel, Activists in City Hall: The Progressive Response to the Reagan Era in Boston and Chicago (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); Patrick Sisson, “At the City Level, Progressives Flex New Power,” Bloomberg. Com, November 5, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020 -11-05/progressives-score-election-wins-in-u-s-cities.

Interviews Feingold, Danny. Personal Interview. October 7, 2020. Good, Greg. Personal Interview. September 29, 2020. Janis, Madeline. Personal Interview. October 5, 2020. Gonzalves, Rudy. Personal Interview. September 10, 2020. Sanchez, Victor. Personal Interview. September 25, 2020. Tynan, Roxana. Personal Interview. August 24, 2020. Zerolnick, Jon. Personal Interview. October 7, 2020.

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25 Years of Working Partnerships USA in San Jose Barbara Byrd

Introduction Working Partnerships USA was created in 1995 to function as the 501(c)(3) arm of the South Bay Labor Council, AFL-CIO, whose affiliated unions at the time represented more than 110,000 union members. The creation of Amy Dean, the Executive Officer of the Council, Working Partnerships developed a visionary plan to organize the growing high-tech workforce in the region within the broader context of raising the living standards of workers and communities of color across San Jose and Santa Clara County. According to Sal Ventura, the current president of the South Bay Labor Council and a retired IBEW member: “When WPUSA started in 1995, it was a think tank/grassroots organizing entity … . It organized, educated and inspired community leaders and activists to believe in and realize significant and progressive change in Silicon Valley.”1 Dean built support for this broader agenda within the Council, including building support among affiliate leaders and conducting a survey of unions, assessing members’ hopes for the future and uncovering concern with broader social issues. To accomplish this ambitious agenda, labor would need to embrace the policies that focused more broadly on health equity, affordable housing, effective transportation options and environmental justice. And community and faithbased organizations would need to join the effort, creating deep relationships that could withstand inevitable disagreements over strategy and tactics. The 1990s and early 2000s were pivotal years. The Santa Clara valley was becoming Silicon Valley as the tech industry grew. Meanwhile, the existing gap between the rich and the poor, and poverty levels in communities of color especially, was expanding. Public funding for schooling, health care and social services was shrinking, and housing costs were fast becoming the highest in the nation. The labor movement in the Bay Area was strong, but unions were not always on the same page with each other, nor with emerging community groups. Working Partnerships was formed to try to meet these formidable challenges by expanding labor’s institutional power to encompass a broader, communityrooted, social and economic justice agenda and to mobilize collectively around that agenda; and its nonprofit status enabled it to leverage additional resources for its agenda as well. Working Partnerships was one of the first coalitions to

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 103 reflect a shift away from primarily institutional identification to a focus on broader goals. As Derecka Mehrens, Working Partnership’s current director, says: Our institutions are important so people can feel democracy in their everyday lives and understand that being in community together in an organization is important … . But we’ve realized that we can’t be institution-loyal only. We have to be movement loyal.2

The early years In its first decade, Working Partnerships logged some impressive victories and learned invaluable lessons from its setbacks. The coalition won adoption by the City of San Jose of one of the country’s strongest living wage ordinances; the passage of a universal health system for children in the county (the Children’s Health Initiative); enactment of an inclusionary zoning provision in the city to require affordable housing in market-rate developments; and a community benefits agreement covering downtown development. These successes helped contribute to the election of labor majorities on both San Jose and Sunnyvale City Councils. Some argue that the collective impact of these successes was to change the narrative in the region from one of domination by wealthy developers to one where community concerns were weighed heavily. Even its ultimately unsuccessful initiatives, like an experimental staff service it set up in 1999 to help raise the wages of contingent workers, were important learning experiences. The staff of the organization expanded, and its victories significantly enhanced its fundraising capacity. Diverse community and faith organizations helped move the agenda – ACORN, People Acting in Community Together (PACT), the Interfaith Council on Race, Religion, Economic and Social Justice and the Greenbelt Alliance, to name a few. The Great Recession that started in 2008 slowed the economy and progressive efforts at the same time. Still, Working Partnerships, under the leadership of Cindy Chavez and later, Ben Field, continued to build its coalition and win victories. In 2010, the same coalition that had won the Children’s Health Initiative launched Healthy Workers, a new health care program for low-wage workers in small businesses. And in 2012, the South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships joined with students from San Jose State University in a municipal ballot measure campaign to raise the minimum wage to $10, an increase from $8. The signature campaign of Chavez’s tenure, the measure passed in spite of having been outspent two to one. After years of austerity politics and budgets, with services being slashed and people suffering, the campaign energized a broad labor-community coalition. At the time, only five cities in the country had a local minimum wage rate, and the very idea was controversial. The passage of the $10 wage in San Jose became one of the first of many that followed. By 2013, the tech industry had fully recovered. As reported in one of Working Partnerships’ research reports: “[In 2013] Silicon Valley’s top 150 tech companies pulled in a record $103.7 billion in profits, an enormous generation of wealth; by comparison, the entire California state budget for both K–12 and

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higher education totaled only half that amount.”3 Significantly, however, the majority of working class and communities of color had not recovered. Regional unemployment remained high.

Working Partnerships USA today And in spite of earlier successes, the challenges in the region have persisted and the urgency of Working Partnership’s mission has grown. Silicon Valley today is both more prosperous and more unequal. Santa Clara County is California’s sixth most populous county, with a population of 1.9 million, more than half of whom live in San Jose. According to the Family Needs Calculator,4 28 percent of Santa Clara County’s households live below the standard, and racialized households are more likely to fall below the standard: 56 percent of Latinx households, 43 percent of Black households, 24 percent of Asian-American households, 23 percent of Native American households and only 17 percent of white households fall below the standard. San Jose is the Bay Area’s most populous city, home to more than a million people and the headquarters of eBay, TiVo and Adobe … . It is also one of the wealthiest cities in the world, where a salary of six figures only just qualifies as middle class.5 This wealth masks deep inequalities. San Jose has one of the biggest gaps between the rich and the poor in the country – the highest earners make 10.5 times what the lowest earners, and the gap continues to widen.6 It is no wonder, then, that the cost of living – especially housing – continues to force low-income workers, who are predominantly Black, Latinx and Asian immigrants, out of the immediate area. By 2014, Working Partnerships USA had grown large enough to require more structural independence from the Labor Council. Prior to that time, the chief officer of the Council had also served as Executive Director of Working Partnerships, and the organizations shared staff. But as Ben Field, Former Executive Officer of the Labor Council, explains, “at a certain point, the work of Working Partnerships got to be so substantial and complex that it wasn’t possible for same person to run both organizations.”7 Today, Working Partnership’s budget is larger than that of the Council, and the organization maintains a staff of 25 compared to the Council’s five. But the organizations still work closely together, meeting weekly to confer on projects and issues, and they share a strong sense of co-ownership of both vision and campaigns. The current Executive Director, Derecka Mehrens, was raised in a union family in Oregon. She found her calling in community organizing, and prior to joining Working Partnerships served as Director of the California chapter of ACORN. She became Working Partnerships’ Organizing Director in 2008, and in 2013 was named its first full-time Executive Director. She began to focus her attention on community needs, grassroots organizing and building leadership among communities of color.

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 105 Successful campaigns since 2013 have centered around organizing and job protections, affordable housing and homelessness and economic justice. Some of these successes, which will be discussed in more detail later, include the following: • • • • • • • • • •

•

The creation of the Silicon Valley Rising coalition in 2015 that led to the unionization of 9,000 workers – one of the largest private sector organizing efforts in the entire country during that time The publication in 2016 of Tech’s Invisible Workforce (which helped set the stage for that wave of union organizing in Silicon Valley) The founding of the Trades Orientation Program (TOP) in 2015, whose success in recruiting and graduating workers of color and placing them in union apprenticeship programs In 2016, the passage in San Jose of Measure A, a $950 million bond measure to support efforts around homelessness and affordable housing In 2016 and 2017, labor and community pressure led the City Council to vote to strengthen rent control, reducing annual rent increases from 8 percent to 5 percent, protecting 250,000 renters in San Jose The creation of the San José Opportunity to Work Initiative in 2016, which protected part-time workers by prohibiting employers from hiring new part timers without first offering the hours to part timers already on the books In 2017, after a decades-long fight, passage of a just cause eviction protection ordinance covering over 400,000 renters in multifamily housing Also in 2017, Silicon Valley Rising led a successful effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 in 8 Bay Area cities, resulting in wage increases for over 150,000 workers In 2018, a Community Workforce Agreement to prevent wage theft, protect workers and create career ladders for underrepresented communities in construction The launch of Gig Workers Rising in 2018, which won a victory in the legislature that classified drivers as employees (the bill was nullified by the passage of Prop 22 in the November 2020 election, after Uber, Lyft and other corporations spent $200 million on the campaign) In 2019, creation of the Fair Workplace Collaborative program with the county Office of Labor Standards Enforcement to provide worker rights education and help victims of workplace abuses

The strategies that Working Partnerships developed in its early years persist with a broadening of focus related to its increasing emphasis on communities of color and the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in the region and the state.

Effective research and policy development This is the arena where Working Partnerships began to make its mark and where it continues to demonstrate its efficacy. The research document mentioned

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above (Tech’s Invisible Workforce), for example, has been widely cited and more important, used more broadly by elected officials and community leaders to frame a conversation about exploitation of a largely Black and Latinx workforce by contractors operating in the tech industry. The plight of low-wage workers in the tech industry has been tied to broader community concerns about housing, transit, education and health care. These issues have in turn been connected to specific neighborhood struggles, bringing these grassroots groups into the broader Working Partnerships network. The research helped strengthened the hand of policymakers and, along with other inside and outside strategies, made possible new policy initiatives as well as union organizing victories in the tech industry. Over the past decade, Working Partnerships has also participated in regional and statewide organizing and related research, coauthoring studies with partners in government, higher education and the nonprofit sector. Some of this research and policy work has resulted in regional and statewide campaigns that enhance its ability to address big issues like transit and housing.

Building deep relationships and strong coalitions Tied to the research and policy work, relationship building has also been a key strategy. The work started within the labor movement in the early years of Working Partnerships, and today many outside the Bay Area marvel at the solid front presented by Labor Council affiliates. According to David Bini, the Executive Director of the local building trades council, for example, the trades have seen the value of specific Working Partnership programs and have appreciated their help with development agreements. As an example of the former, Working Partnerships helped launch the Santa Clara County Construction Careers Initiative, a collaborative effort in which industry, community and the public workforce development system have come together to transform access to high-quality construction careers for disadvantaged workers by creating a Community Workforce Pipeline into construction apprenticeships. The Santa Clara County Trades Orientation Program (TOP) was designed by this collaborative to address the barriers of lack of information and lack of coordination that prevent many low-income communities from accessing construction apprenticeships. By emphasizing coordination and integration of training and job placement services, TOP is creating a pathway for qualified low-income and disadvantaged workers into middle-wage construction careers. Since its launch in 2015, Santa Clara County TOP has graduated a total of 369 students with the industry-recognized MC3 credential and supporting them with job development and career coaching. Eighty percent of graduates are people of color, 33 percent are female, over one-third were formerly incarcerated and nearly half were homeless or in temporary or transitional housing. The track record of support has led to 85 percent of graduates securing placement in employment/apprenticeship within one year, with an average starting wage of $24/hour. The success of this program has strengthened relationships between construction unions and

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 107 communities of color, and is strongly supported by both groups as well as the public workforce development system. Other unions have benefited from Working Partnership’s support of their organizing efforts, both direct and via public pressure – UNITE HERE, SEIU, IBT and ATU, to name a few. Weekly meetings between leaders of the Labor Council and Working Partnerships deepen the relationship. As Bini puts it, “I think of folks there as part of my kitchen cabinet – and I feel like I’m part of theirs.”8 Even during rare incidents of conflict, disagreements are kept private and do not derail the larger relationship. It comes down to a history of positive accomplishments. As Sal Ventura, IBEW member and current president of the Labor Council says: “What keeps us engaged are the positive outcomes and the continuous display of hard work, energy and inspiring results … . For us, you have to show us that it will work.”9 Relationships with community organizations also benefit from winning together. Community organizations bring grassroots organizing capacity that has become especially important over the past five years. In return, Working Partnerships has demonstrated its willingness to help build the capacity of smaller neighborhood groups, sharing staff and the broader community perspective when helpful. As Camille Fontanilla, Executive Director of SOMOS Mayfair, commented, in working with them, “[W]e’ve been able to center ourselves on our mutual desired outcomes … . And our relationship allows us to deal with strife when it happens,” as is inevitable when turf and funding issues get in the way. Relationships are among leaders, she explains, but they extend to the level of member leaders as well, thanks to the many meetings, gatherings and group brain-storming sessions.10 Rosa de Leon, Organizing Director of Californians for Justice, talks about the power of the experience of her members on Working Partnerships campaigns. But it is also clear that because of partners like Californians for Justice and SOMOS, Working Partnerships has made education issues a priority.11 The power of these deep relationships is palpable. Working Partnerships provides the background research, policy details and resources. Community organizations bring their connections with activists on the ground, and their ability to reach into neighborhood networks quickly. Real policies are enacted and real lives affected. It has been the visible coalition organizing and mobilizing that have persuaded elected officials and business leaders as well that they must be responsible to the broader community, and that the coalition partners will stand together to make sure political decisions are made in the community interest. Some have referred to Working Partnerships as a “coalition of coalitions,” whose partners may vary depending on the specific issues and priorities at any given time. But judging from the work that has been done, the relationships persist even when the actual work focus varies. Coalition work is not without conflict, of course. Sometimes self-interests diverge. And the differences in resources and capacity between labor and community carry the potential for imbalances in decision-making clout. But community partners appreciate the assistance they get from Working Partnerships and

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work to be transparent when necessary about their willingness and ability to assist in particular campaigns. And when there are conflicts, the deep relationships and trust allow for continued dialogue – “hard and beautiful conversations,” as Maria Noel Fernandez puts it.12

Changing the narrative Working Partnerships’ research and policy development, combined with its ability to pull together a broad coalition in support of economic and social justice in Silicon Valley, accomplishes more than just winning specific campaigns, though that is certainly an outcome. It also impacts the broader narrative of life in San José, Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley in general. It provides a counterpoint to the views of the mainstream media as well as tech and business interests. By demonstrating how the health and well-being of the tech industry does not automatically filter down to the community – and sometimes makes things worse economically for those who live in that community – Working Partnerships is able to shift the conversation overall. Fernandez talks about how they learned to tell the story of us, our vision for the future. We’ve spent a lot of energy on that … . We know how people get their info these days – from videos and from social media, and from people telling their own stories.13 And Working Partnerships is able to use those methods effectively to move its progressive agenda. Maya Esparza, Council member from the 7th District, recalls volunteering in a minimum wage ballot measure campaign prior to her election. She believes that its success relied on the way Working Partnerships combined research with coalition work and mobilization. They had to do the research and the legal analysis as well as the political analysis . And they did the mechanical work around getting signatures for it to qualify for the ballot, which is a huge organizing effort. But they also did a grassroots collaboration and partnership with other organizations and nonprofits and community groups throughout the City of San Jose, and actually Silicon Valley, to support that effort . The political ideology at the time was that it would be devastating to the business landscape.14 In other words, the strategies of research, compelling policy and organizing helped elevate an alternative message – and led eventually to a unanimous vote of the City Council to raise the minimum wage to $15. Some observers note that whereas in the early days of the organization its close ties to the Labor Council made it a target for anti-union daily newspapers and business leaders, today Working Partnerships is viewed as a community coalition where labor plays its role along with a broad group of other organizations.

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Strategic opportunism Working Partnerships’ approach has been characterized as “strategic opportunism.” Bob Brownstein, long-time strategic adviser to the organization, explains that it “has always probed the socio-economic-political reality, looking for opportunities to make things happen.”15 Strategic opportunism is pragmatic in the short term but keeps its eye on the long-term goal of building the power to govern. It’s not just what can we win now, but what we really need to do to get set up for next thing. We look for things that our allies are prioritizing. We look for gaps where our involvement is going to be critical. Drafting policy at the local level, organizing in the community, talking to council members – these things often make the difference, explains Louise Auerhahn, the Director of Economic and Workforce Policy, and a long-timer Working Partnerships staff member.16

Leadership development Intimately connected with its other strategies, leadership development is a fundamental activity for Working Partnerships. In its early years, the Labor-Community Leadership Initiative (LCLI) attracted leaders from labor, community and faith institutions, sharpening their grasp of the regional economy and strengthening their relationships with each other. Over the 25 years of its existence, thousands of leaders have been trained on current events, policy, economics, budgeting and strategic opportunities. For current and potential elected officials, the policy component of the training has been important. But the curriculum also focuses on knowing what to look out for in the political arena, what kinds of questions to ask and getting up to speed on issues prior to one’s election. Brownstein conducts a budgeting train-the-trainer program. His goal is to train a corps of people to analyze local government budgets and understand specific points in the budgeting process, then to train others in these skills. With its increased focus on low-income families, immigrants and communities of color and the advent of the Silicon Valley Rising campaign, leadership development continues but has become more campaign-focused. Community forums allow community members to build a collective vision for development in the city and region. Activists are trained to take on more leadership roles in neighborhoods, in meetings with policymakers and on the job. The strategy has paid off. More people of color have emerged as spokespersons for campaigns, and women, especially women of color, hold key positions within Working Partnerships and in many of partner organizations. One example is Ari Morales, who joined a neighborhood action team, then became a spokesperson for the Opportunity to Work Initiative and is now a Lead Organizer at Working Partnerships. Maria Noel Fernandez, then a young

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community organizer with Sacred Heart Community Services, went through multiple series of trainings with WPUSA, including Values-Based Leadership and Leadernet programs. Today she serves as Deputy Executive Director of Working Partnerships USA and was the founding campaign director of Silicon Valley Rising. And Betty Duong, another alumni of Values-Based Leadership, went on to become the County of Santa Clara’s first director of the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, an office that went on to create a model for community, labor and government to collaborate on stopping wage theft and other abuses and to help lead the County of Santa Clara efforts on public engagement through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governance and the Inside-Outside Strategy The strategies outlined above – research and policymaking, coalition building and deep relationships, strategic opportunism, changing the narrative and leadership development – combined with 25 years of successful organizing – have undergirded Working Partnerships’ effort to build regional power. The goal has been to win specific reforms, but more important, to build the power to govern. The political context is daunting in the South Bay. Gaining and holding power is a never-ending effort, according to Brownstein, because of term limits and turnover in addition to the financial power of the tech industry, developers, the San Jose Chamber of Commerce and other special interest groups. The priorities of the County Board and the City Council can shift from year to year requiring different strategies. The overall approach to participating in governance that Working Partnerships developed has been characterized as an “inside-outside” strategy. Outside, the work is the traditional work of community organizing, like identifying issues, mounting campaigns, mobilizing people to speak up for themselves: people power. Working Partnerships and its allies know how to agitate and can turn out hundreds to City Council meetings to press their case. They know how to counterpose their vision to that of the tech industry and larger business community, and they use their research capacity as well as their public platform to push that alternative vision. As one County Supervisor David Cortese puts it: “Working Partnerships is really about disrupting the status quo. We want justice, right now, for everyone. Disruption is a fundamental tool. Is part of the culture of the organization – throwing a wrench into the gears.”17 But there is also an inside strategy. Working Partnerships is committed to preparing activists and allies to govern and to follow up by supporting elected officials who share their values and goals. On the front end, they train and work with activists/organizational leaders using the concept of values-based leadership. These include people who are heads of institutions – nonprofits, unions, elected officials – training together and thinking deeply about how they use their positional power toward their values. Newly elected officials have access to additional training (“Leading a New Way” – one of the programs that Cindy Chavez introduced during her term) that covers hands-on skills of governing – hiring

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 111 and working with staff, technical issues, power analysis and the strategic thinking required for serving as a public official. The coalition lobbies elected leaders on its own priorities, but it also works to help values-matched elected leaders win fights that may not be priorities for the coalition. “We need them to be successful, not just accountable,” explains Mehrens.18 The coalition tries to monitor city and county governance, to work with progressive elected officials as a team, to provide them with helpful information and to mobilize support for their initiatives. The support is appreciated. Dave Cortese initially supported Working Partnerships because they were “advocating on social justice platform that seemed natural and familiar to me … . that aligned with my values.” They have earned credibility as a think tank, he explains. “I can adopt their positions, understand the rationale, then go to bat for them … . They make it easy to be with them.”19 The other piece of the inside strategy that is important to consider centers on the tension around making compromises. Working Partnerships has learned to balance an adversarial approach with the willingness to negotiate and sometimes compromise. But this does not mean compromise for its own sake. Rather, it is a strategy that opts for compromise as the alternative when the coalition lacks the power to win outright in the short run. This can lead to tensions with allies when their analyses of the power dynamics diverge, or when organizational partners have to consider the needs of their base. One example was negotiations around the Google project (see below), when some argued that it was better to oppose Google altogether than to settle for a half-victory. Working Partnership leaders countered that it was important to get a win for the 2,000 security officers, janitors and food service workers who would work on the Google campus someday and would want to unionize. This approach is key to a long-term strategy of preparing to govern. Working Partnerships focuses on building power for the long haul while winning limited victories in the short run. Given the huge and intractable issues around which it organizes, this practical approach seems to be working.

Silicon Valley Rising Perhaps the best way to illustrate the strategies described above is to briefly outline the development and accomplishments of Silicon Valley Rising (SVR). SVR is an umbrella campaign that emerged from a series of in-depth conversations with civil rights, affordable housing, faith and other community organizations, as well as unions attempting to organize in the region. As Maria Noel Fernandez, who served as SVR’s first director, explains: Everyone was talking about inequality. Santa Clara County was ground zero for that inequality. Now, everyone knows Silicon Valley isn’t paved with gold, but then, they didn’t. The organizations agreed that we might not see eye to eye on everything, but we identified what we could throw down on. We agreed to target Silicon Valley corporations, and help workers facing

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Silicon Valley Rising partners agree to a number of goals: • •

•

To advance policy that raises floor for working families (the minimum wage victory was one of those policies). To produce and preserve affordable housing. Victories in this category have included strengthening rent control, just cause eviction protection for renters in city, an inclusionary zoning ordinance and commercial linkage fee to require developers to contribute to affordable housing, displacement protections for low-income tenants, and Measure A – a $950 million affordable housing bond. To organize low-wage workers on high-tech campuses. Following the publication of Tech’s Invisible Workforce, organizing these workers became part of the larger community struggle for justice in Silicon Valley. To date, there have been wins among Google bus drivers (the Teamsters union), security officers (SEIU USWW) and, most recently, cafeteria workers (UNITE HERE Local 19). Enrique Fernandez, Business Manager of Local 19, talks about the 3,000+ new members who’ve been organized, who will be getting health care benefits for the first time. He also explains that the campaign was part of a broader struggle for social justice. When organizers talked with workers during that campaign, it was affordable housing they mentioned as often as wages and benefits, so that the connection between the workplace and the community was a natural one. The power that Working Partnership and SVR brought to bear made the organizing possible. In fact, Fernandez talks about being contacted by other tech workers – professionals and engineers – who are supportive of the organizing.

Google and the Diridon project Struggles with employers in the tech industry present the biggest challenge to Silicon Valley Rising. They wield major influence in the region because of their status as major employers (40 percent of the regional workforce is employed in tech), their vast resources and their ability to play off community organizations against each other using those resources. The best example of an SVR campaign has been the effort waged to impact Google’s proposal to develop a huge swath of downtown San Jose. In 2017, Google proposed a mega project – a huge new tech campus now predicted to employ 20,000 on 50 acres in the downtown core, next to the Diridon transit station, which itself is slated to be expanded into the largest transit hub on the west coast. SVR’s use of inside/outside strategies, coalition-building efforts, wins and on-going challenges illustrate the strategic model developed by Working Partnerships over the years.

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 113 When Google announced its plans, SVR and its allies feared that without a strong community voice, the project would create huge problems – rent increases, displacement and the proliferation of low-wage service jobs. It was clear that SVR would not be able to rely on the Council and the Mayor to craft an acceptable agreement with Google. Leaders began meeting with community organizations and unions with a stake in the issue. Some were already partners; some were new to the coalition. Some of the community organizations had accepted donations from Google in the past and had to work through the conflict internally before signing on. The coalition then organized a series of community forums and large rallies to focus community demands for job creation, local hiring and affordable housing supports. The city continued to negotiate with Google, the mayor ignoring community protests, with employer groups like the Silicon Valley Leadership Group touting the projects benefits and its purported support by San Jose residents. By early 2018, SVR had escalated its tactics and focused its demands. In an open letter to Google’s CEO, the group demanded financing for an affordable housing fund, pay for legal assistance for San Jose tenants facing eviction and support for laws protecting tenants’ rights. In February, ignoring community demands, San Jose’s City Council approved a pricing proposal for nine parcels of land at six downtown addresses to Google for $67 million, which San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said was the taxpayers “getting their money’s worth.” July 2018 found protesters erecting tents outside the convention center where Google was holding a marketing convention. [Jeffrey] Buchanan [Working Partnership’s Director of Public Policy] said it has been a year since Google announced its eight million square feet of office space project around San Jose’s Diridon Station, but the Mountain View-based tech giant has yet to make a single commitment to invest in the community’s affording housing.21 SVR kept up the pressure. In October 2018, 200 people marched to Google headquarters in Mountain View in October; Salvador “Chava” Bustamante, Director of LUNA, hand-delivered a letter to Google’s CEO calling on the company to sign a community benefits agreement and meet a list of demands around housing and affordability. In November 2018, Working Partnerships filed a lawsuit against Google and the City of San Jose. The suit argued that nondisclosure agreements signed by Mayor Liccardo and as many as 18 city staffers at the request of Google were “illegal and invalid.” “We are very afraid that there is a backroom deal happening,” said Maria Noel Fernandez of Working Partnerships. “It really does make me question what could possibly be so disturbing about this project that they have gone to these lengths to keep it secret.”22 At a 10-hour City Council meeting in December 2018, marked by protesters chaining themselves to chairs and observers being removed from the council chambers, with testimony from over 200 people and continuous protests outside

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the building, the City approved a deal with Google to sell the company 10 acres of land downtown. Since that night, protests have continued at Google events, including the company’s annual shareholder meeting. In June 2019, SVR organized a meeting that clearly demonstrated the goal of centering the voices and leadership of low-income and communities of color. Asserting that, once again, tech companies were earning huge profits while lowwage workers struggled to get by, feeding and cleaning up after computer scientists and engineers, the participants met and debated. The objective was to develop a more specific statement about community demands. A discussion letter was circulated at the meeting, based on research that would shortly be published, outlining the need for Google to invest in affordable housing.23 The letter called for building more than 5,000 affordable and 12,000 market-rate homes. It raised the possibility of developing a “large-scale model for shared equity homeownership for low-income families that is permanently affordable.” And it called for a fund devoted to providing families facing eviction with legal help. Forum participants worked in small groups, including some in languages other than English, to react to the letter and add their own ideas. Later that same month, Working Partnerships released the research report which reflected the community discussion and support. The report predicted that by 2030, near the end of campus construction, local renters would face $235 million in rent hikes. The report estimated that the average annual rent would increase by $816 per year – $68 per month more. To offset this increase, it called for an additional 5,284 subsidized below-market-rate housing units to be built and 12,450 market-rate units.24 Working Partnerships prepared for Google’s upcoming annual meeting, developing a shareholder proposal and organizing a protest of Google workers, contractors and community members. A week later, in a move that was clearly in response to SVR’s pressure campaign and growing influence on the public narrative, as well as the specific demands arising from the community meeting, Google pledged close to $1 billion for housing: $750 million worth of real estate to be rezoned for residential use; $250 million to finance 5,000 units; and $50 million for community grants to nonprofits. The move generated “cautious praise” from SVR. This announcement demonstrates that Google is listening to the thousands of people in San Jose and around the Bay Area who have demanded the tech giant take responsibility for its role in the housing crisis. This shows that when communities speak up, they can better shape a better approach to tech growth, said Maria Noel Fernandez, SVR’s campaign director, adding that there was still much that Google needed to do. Jeffrey Buchanan agreed that the investment probably wouldn’t offset San Jose’s housing crisis, estimating that the company will rely on 8,000 low-wage service workers at the new tech campus. “We continue to see Google buying land in downtown and north San Jose and other parts of Silicon Valley, and yet we still

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 115 have very few details on what affordable housing will entail,” he said. “There was concern around this initially and there continues to be because a blog post is not going to pay anybody’s rent here in Silicon Valley.”25 “Density in the downtown is the future of San Jose,” said Buchanan. “As we pursue that, we have to protect our history as a working class city and protect our communities of color. These two ideas don’t need to be in conflict, but it takes leadership.”26 The Google pledge was a short-term victory, and some more radical community groups condemned SVR’s stance, calling for continued agitation. But SVR leaders saw it only one step in an ongoing struggle, and a morale-boosting, if limited, win. In December 2019, the city announced the start of negotiations with Google over a community benefits agreement to focus on affordable housing, avoiding displacement and local hire/training. Though reflecting SVR’s call for just such an agreement, SVR worried that negotiating behind closed doors would be ineffective and called for openness and regular report-outs to the community. The CBA process was scheduled to conclude by summer 2020. The struggle against Google and its heavy-handed development plans illustrates the power and the unfinished business of Working Partnerships’ insideoutside approach. Research and policy papers, coalition building, organizing and mobilizing, changing the narrative and leadership development in communities of color all played a role in bringing about the wins that have been achieved by Silicon Valley Rising. But the tech industry still dominates the economy, with almost all its flagship companies headquartered in Silicon Valley. Their missiondriven business model – good product, excellent service, a great rate of return for investors and reliance on outsourcing to meet labor needs – results in a failure of responsibility toward community and workers and necessitates continual organizing and attention to issues of the contingent workforce.27

The work continues Since early 2020, Working Partnerships has focused on several other projects. Among these are the following: •

The San Jose Fair Elections Initiative, which was designed to reduce corporate influence over elections by prohibiting mayoral and City Council candidates from accepting donations from lobbyists, anyone who has received city contracts of more than $250,000 and large residential or for-profit developers. In addition, it would move the historically low-turnout mayoral election from gubernatorial to presidential election years, when turnout is 30 percent higher. Polling indicated that 80 percent of voters supported it. However, allegedly due to the San Jose City Clerk losing roughly 3,000 signatures submitted by the campaign, the measure was dismissed for falling just short of the necessary number of valid signatures. While the initiative was not placed on the ballot, the City’s newly created Charter Review Commission is now considering moving the Mayoral election to Presidential Years as part of a larger examination of the City Charter, which could be placed before voters

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Barbara Byrd on the June 2022 ballot. Additionally, after the significant public interest in FEI, the City Council voted to direct the Board of Fair Campaign and Political Practices to examine reforms to the City’s campaign finance laws to prevent pay-to-play politics. Work at the regional and statewide levels. Work continues Bay-Area-wide and with state allies on issues such as housing, public transportation, tax reform and education – issues that cannot be resolved within a single city or county. Working Partnerships has developed a reputation for leadership that puts it in the center of many of these strategic conversations and campaigns. A statewide measure supported by labor and community organizations like Working Partnerships, as well as a host of elected officials, has qualified for the November 2020 ballot. Partner organizations like SOMOS Mayfair and SEIU are strong supporters, along with progressive elected officials. Schools and Communities First would reform California’s Prop 13 by taxing commercial properties at their market value while protecting residential properties, raising over $12 billion annually for schools, community colleges and local communities. Gig Workers Rising worked in 2019 to support Uber, Lyft, Instacart and other workers who organized strikes, held rallies and picketed at investors’ homes. They lent their support to Assembly Bill 5, which reclassified gig workers as employees. In 2020, GWR organized opposition to Proposition 22, which re-classifies app-based drivers as independent contractors. GWR and its allies were outspent by Uber, Lyft and other corporations, who spent $200 million to bypass AB 5.

Building power during a pandemic Ben Field comments on what the current work looks like, amid the pandemic: Everything is thrown into disarray by COVID-19 and the economic fallout. It’s thrown everyone off their game. And of course, it’s a tragedy for a lot of people. Up to a couple of months ago, we were advancing an affirmative agenda that involves electoral and policy work – housing, raise the floor for working families, and variety of electoral issues. In addition, we were continuing our long-time focus on health care and transportation … . Also, we were helping out with various organizing efforts. That work will continue to be important. But we’re also going to have to deal with the various consequences of COVID-19.28 Maria Noel Fernandez adds that COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequities but also, ironically, created an opportunity. This crisis will propel our work forward. We’re seeing the cracks we’ve been trying to fix for so many years. This is an opportunity to make some structural reforms – to go beyond band-aids to real change. We’re doing rapid

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 117 response, but it’s also clear that things we thought were impossible – homelessness solutions, for example – they’re not! We need to figure out what the reforms are that we really need.29 In response to the crisis, Working Partnerships immediately jumped in to provide support plus community organizing. In early April 2020, they conducted a major expansion of their Fair Workplace Collaborative program, establishing a hotline to provide information about unemployment insurance, state disability insurance, paid family leave and other resources. In cooperation with Santa Clara County’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and other partners, they launched Santa Clara County CAN: COVID-19 Assistance Navigation. Pushing large companies to act faster with a commitment to “fully include subcontracted and service workers in coronavirus response plans,” SVR called for more educational materials, protective equipment and safety training for contract workers, along with paid sick leave and access to health care for any workers who may require treatment. And in April, they succeeded in getting the City Council to pass an emergency sick leave ordinance that will close the three big loopholes for essential workers in the recently passed federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act — businesses with larger than 500 workers, employers with less than 50 employees and misclassified gig workers. This rapid crisis response has led to significant growth in Working Partnership’s online and digital organizing capacity. “We’ve had to figure out how to organize while sheltering in place,” concludes Mehrens.30

Lessons learned As one of the longest-lived of the 501( c)(3)’s affiliated with the Partnership for Working Families, Working Partnership has much to offer in the way of lessons for those seeking to grow their own nonprofit. 1. Confict may be an inevitable feature of coalition work, but it can be addressed if partners are willing to deal with it directly. Working Partnerships has had to navigate internal disagreements throughout its history. This has required being direct when disagreements or outright conflicts occur, engaging in hard conversations, and moving through the disagreements while remaining committed to being part of a “safe family.” Staying superficially united without this difficult work is insufficient. As other coalitions have experienced, working through internal conflicts is one of the most difficult parts of power building, and yet it is the most essential. 2. One size does not ft all – the context matters. Mehrens asserts: One thing we’re clear about is that all this work is highly relational and contextual. It’s the approach that matters. Your work and policies will look really different depending on your analysis of your opposition, your base, your context. Do a power analysis, understand the industry

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3. Strong leadership makes a difference. Cindy Chavez reflects that having brilliant staff has been a hallmark of Working Partnerships – from Amy Dean to Derecka Mehrens, the leaders and staff have been strong, smart, strategic and capable of inspiring others. Bob Brownstein, for example, who was budget director for the mayor of San Jose, brought his expertise to Working Partnerships had the confidence and stature to take on complex fiscal issues as an equal with city officials. Current staff with their strong community organizing backgrounds bring an energy and insight that matches Working Partnerships’ vision.32 4. But it’s the people that make the organization. Brownstein reflects that [m]aking something like this happen is a big commitment – not a job. You need people who are willing to make this kind of commitment. They need to demand a lot of themselves, especially in the beginning … . When they signed the Declaration of Independence, they talked about their lives, fortunes and sacred honor – we need to commit those principles to work for working families.33 5. Be patient, and be in it for the long haul. “Getting policy in place and working and helping people takes a long time, and you’re not necessarily done when you think you’re done,” says Louise Auerhahn. And Brownstein echoes this: “You’ve got to be patient. A lot of this is long haul stuff. It takes time to build allies, credibility, and sufficient staff size.” And it takes time to win important battles. “It took 20 years to get just cause eviction protection,” he adds. Mehrens sums it up by urging that organizations think in terms of governing, not just winning a couple of elections: Until we truly govern the top 50 regions in the country, where we can direct resources and help our partners write the budget, set the rules, build the outside and inside game – I don’t think we can change the country … . We have to build for the long term.

Conclusion The story of Working Partnerships USA, and an analysis of its successes and ongoing challenges, is both inspiring and sobering. It is inspiring because its wins have been many and impressive. Forcing Google to make concessions to the community, organizing low-wage workers, winning policies that raise the standard of living for all community members, elevating people of color to leadership positions in political and community spheres and continuing to build governing power with its allies – these victories are what has made Working Partnerships one of the best known of PWF’s affiliates and motivated many other organizations to adopt its vision and emulate its activities. But the story is a sobering one, as well. The forces of neoliberalism – of corporate dominance and attacks on democracy

Working Partnerships USA in San Jose 119 – are daunting. No single victory is enough, and a determination to stick with this difficult and stressful work is necessary to keep the organization moving forward. Fortunately, Working Partnerships USA has developed a vision, put together a leadership team and built a strong community coalition to make forward movement possible against the greatest of odds. There is truly much to learn from its work.

Interviews • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Auerhahn, Louise, Director of Economic and Workforce Policy, Working Partnerships USA, video interview, March 17, 2020. Bini, David, Executive Director, Santa Clara & San Benito Building and Construction Trades Council, video interview, March 16, 2020 Brownstein, Bob, Strategic Adviser, Working Partnerships USA, video interview, March 18, 2020 Buchanan, Jeffrey, Director of Public Policy, Working Partnerships USA, phone interview, October 22, 2020 Bustamante, Salvador “Chava,” Executive Director, Latinos United for a New America (LUNC), video interview, March 18, 2020 Chavez, Cindy, Santa Clara County Supervisor, District 2, video interview, April 15, 2020 Cortese, David, Santa Clara County Supervisor, District 3, video interview, April 20, 2020 De Leon, Rosa, Organizing Director, Californians for Justice, phone interview, May 12, 2020 Esparza, Maya, San José City Councilmember, District 7, phone interview, May 17, 2020 Fernandez, Enrique, Business Manager, UNITE HERE Local 19, phone interview, May 6, 2020 Fernandez, Maria Noel, Deputy Executive Director, Working Partnerships USA, March 19, 2020 Fontanilla, Camille, Executive Director, SOMOS Mayfair, video interview, April 22, 2020 Field, Ben, Former Chief Officer, South Bay Labor Council AFL-CIO, video interview, April 2, 2020 Jacobs, Ken, Director Center for Labor Education and Research, University of California Berkeley, phone interview, May 8, 2020 Mehrens, Derecka, Executive Director, Working Partnerships USA, video interview, March 5, 2020; phone interviews, May 13, 2020 and October 23, 2020 Ventura, Sal, President, South Bay Labor Council AFL-CIO, video interview, March 16, 2020

Notes 1 Sal Ventura, video interview, March 16, 2020. 2 Derecka Mehrens, phone interview, October 23, 20.

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3 WP USA, Tech’s Diversity Problem: More than Meets the Eye (August 2014), p. 2. 4 Insight Center, Family Needs Calculator (formerly The Self-Suffciency Standard), 2018. https://insightcced.org/2018-family-needs-calculator/ 5 “Google’s Millions Will Transform San José, But at What True Cost?,” The Guardian (July 3, 2019). https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/03/ googles-millions-will-transform-san-jose-but-at-what-true-cost 6 Marisa Kendall, “Income Inequality in the Bay Area Is among Nation’s Highest,” Mercury News (February 16, 2018). https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02 /15/income-inequality-in-the-bay-area-is-among-nations-highest/ 7 Ben Fields, video interview, April 2, 2020. 8 Bini, David, video interview, March 16, 2020. 9 Ventura, op cit. 10 Fontanilla, Camille, video interview, April 22, 2020. 11 Its involvement in the Schools and Communities First ballot initiative is an example. 12 Fernandez, Maria Noel, phone interview, March 19, 2020. 13 Ibid. 14 Esparza, Maya, phone interview, May 17, 2020. 15 Brownstein, Bob, video interview, March 18, 2020. 16 Auerhahn, Louise, video interview, March 17, 2020. 17 Cortese, David, video interview, April 20, 2020. 18 Mehrens, Derecka, Interview, May 13, 2020. 19 Cortese, op cit. 20 Fernandez, Maria Noel, op cit. 21 NBC Bay Area, “’Hey Google: Affordable Housing Now,’ Protesters Erect Tents Outside San Jose Convention Center,” July 10, 2018. 22 Wong, Julie Carrie, “Lawsuit Targets Secrecy Agreements Surrounding Google’s New Campus,” The Guardian, November 13, 2018. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed by the judge in the case, but it had a definite impact on the public debate. 23 WPUSA, The Google Rent Hike, June 2019. 24 Ibid. 25 Jennifer Elias, “Google’s Plan for a Mega Campus in San Jose Lurk Behind its Recent $1 Billion Housing Pledge,” July 11, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com /2019/07/11/google-san-jose-expansion-helped-drive-1-billion-housing -pledge.html 26 “Google’s Millions Will Transform San Jose: But at What True Cost?”, op cit. 27 Field, Ben, op cit. 28 Ibid. 29 Fernandez, op cit. 30 Mehrens, October 23, 2020, op cit. 31 Mehrens, March 5, 2020, op cit. 32 Chavez, Cindy, video interview, April 15, 2020. 33 Brownstein, op cit.

Part 3

From (neo)liberal to progressive cities

7

Community labor united Building bridges in Greater Boston Penn Loh and Mark Erlich

Introduction On the eve of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, more than 1,000 marchers protested a proposed BioSafety Level-4 laboratory based on concerns about the transport and handling of dangerous pathogens, including those used in bioterror incidents. Community leaders attacked the lab as an example of dumping yet another risk on a lower-income community of color. Peace activists criticized the federally funded facility as a militarization of the public health agenda. Yet, at a City Hall hearing on the biolab earlier that year, union members from UNITE HERE Local 26, mostly Black and Brown residents of Boston, packed the room in support of the project, which was backed by their political ally Mayor Tom Menino. Though many of the opponents were also people of color from the same neighborhoods, the tensions between unions and the community-based social justice movement were on public display. By 2010, a new alliance, Community Labor United (CLU), had not only brought together unions and community groups, but had also led three successful campaigns. CLU was building solidarity across racial divides and growing a broader progressive power base. In its first campaign, several million dollars in contracts to paint Boston Public School buildings were awarded to the Painters Union, which provided living wage work to more than 50 Boston residents. In the second, CLU helped rally community support to unionize almost 1,500 security guards, who were predominantly Black and brown and lived in Boston’s lower-income neighborhoods of color. And in the third, CLU spearheaded a statewide coalition of labor, community and environmental groups to win living wages for green jobs and partnerships between utilities and community organizations to increase access to energy efficiency programs. This chapter tells the story of how Community Labor United has been building the progressive movement in Boston and statewide in Massachusetts.1 CLU emerged in 2004 in a city and state with a politically influential labor movement and a growing base of community organizing groups in lower-income neighborhoods of color. There were obvious opportunities for building progressive power, yet also long-standing barriers to this new alliance. The 1970s school desegregation in

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Boston had inflamed racial strife, pitting working-class whites against communities of color. Boston’s labor hierarchy reflected the membership of its most influential unions as well as the city’s political leadership – mostly white and male. But the area labor movement was in the throes of change by the beginning of the new millennium. Boston itself was diversifying. With an influx of immigrants from Latin America, Caribbean and Asia, Boston’s population was made up of a majority of people of color by 2000. With the decline of manufacturing, officials from the building trades and the public sector unions had come to dominate the leadership positions. But a number of unions in the service and hospitality sectors were growing, and their membership was significantly more diverse and more likely to be city residents. Since its launch in 2004, CLU has built deeper relationships and alignment among progressive unions and community base-building organizations (CBBOs), across racial lines. It has coordinated campaigns focused not just on the metropolitan region, but also built statewide linkages. It has become an important space for convening, visioning and developing strategy and has filled some crucial capacity gaps for CBBOs. This chapter traces CLU’s origin from the Greater Boston Labor Council, its early campaigns from 2006 to 2014 and its shifts toward considering deeper and longer-term structural change in the last six years. The chapter concludes with reflections on CLU’s successes, challenges and future.

Labor and community context The changing labor movement in the latter 1990s laid the groundwork for alliances like CLU. Labor activists who supported John Sweeney’s reform candidacy as president of the national AFL-CIO in 1995 initiated discussions about the need for a labor-community formation to support membership growth. At the time of the election, organized labor represented a mere 15 percent of the working population, down from a peak of 35 percent in the 1950s. The Sweeney administration hoped to reinvigorate organizing programs, political action and community coalitions with its “Union Cities” program. Though Boston was not part of Union Cities, the effort advanced the notion that the future of the labor movement was increasingly dependent on cooperation with community organizations that also advocated for working people. Union Cities staff tried to convince local unions in designated cities to commit 30 percent of their resources to organizing in Union Cities campaigns, but it largely failed as the Central Labor Councils (CLCs) had no authority to carry out the mandate, and most local unions were either in survival mode or uninterested in taking direction from the AFL-CIO. The reality of power relations in the trade union movement is that local unions are far more responsive to the parent body – their International Union – than to a local CLC, where the affiliation is voluntary and frequently a low priority. As one International Union president said at the time, “I’m not going to have a local CLC telling me what to do with my local union.”2

Community labor united 125 The very decentralized structure of the AFL-CIO and its state and local councils had long been a barrier to sustained and coordinated activity. The Greater Boston Labor Council, representing 140 unions in 24 cities and towns, had just one full-time officer and limited its activities to periodic political endorsements. Many local unions had become increasingly divorced from the communities they worked in, as members left the cities for working-class suburbs. As union membership continued to shrink, it was becoming apparent that labor was no longer sufficiently sizable and powerful to chart its own destiny on a unilateral basis. At the turn of the millennium, Boston was both fertile and infertile ground for the emergence of a community and labor alliance. It was, in many ways, a union city, but the taint of racism that characterized Boston’s municipal politics and civic life was reflected inside many union halls. In the wake of the city’s busing crisis in the mid-1970s, the United Community Construction Workers (UCCW), led by Leo Fletcher and future City Councilor Chuck Turner, challenged the lack of job opportunities for Black residents in the largely unionized construction industry. The Boston Building Trades and construction employers coalesced in a political and legal strategy to fend off UCCW demands. On the other hand, the very same building trades unions reached out a decade later and built one of the state’s most effective electoral coalitions to beat back Question 2, a 1988 referendum initiative that would have gutted the state’s prevailing wage law, a bedrock for union wages in the public construction market. Remarkably, polling indicated that women and minorities supported the union stance, despite the historic practices of racial and gender exclusion in the industry.3 There had been other examples of effective political coalition building – in the 1990, Question 3 referendum affecting public sector workers and the creation of the 1997 Boston Living Wage Ordinance. Through the 1990s, the population of Boston had changed significantly. By the 2000 Census, Boston had become a majority minority city, a result of growth in immigrants of color. In 2000, more than a quarter of Boston’s population was foreign born, with the top countries of origin being Haiti, Dominican Republic, China, Vietnam, El Salvador and Cape Verde.4 Communities of color had gained political strength from Mel King’s Rainbow coalition and mayoral campaign in 1983. As these communities continued to diversify through the 1990s, a growing set of community organizing groups emerged to serve them. SEIU and the Hotel Workers were among the unions that represented the increasing number of service sector workers from Boston’s communities of color. Meanwhile, members of other local unions were electing a new generation of progressive labor leaders, many of whom had been forged in the heat of the Question 2 campaign and had a model of what a successful coalition could accomplish. Rich Rogers had received his political education during that 1988 referendum election as assistant to the president of the state AFL-CIO. In December 2003, he was elected as the new head of the Greater Boston Labor Council and brought openness to the idea of institutionalizing coalition work.

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CLU’s startup When Rogers had secured his election, Sandy Felder, then the Massachusetts State Director for the national AFL-CIO, approached him about the idea of initiating a new organization to bring unions and community organizations together. Individual unions had sought community support for particular campaigns in the past, but typically the alliance vanished with the end of the campaign. Enid Eckstein, a National AFL-CIO staffer from 1996 to 2001 who worked with labor councils to build broader relationships, termed the arrangement “a rent-a-community-group for a contract fight.” As Rogers put it, there had been a practice of bringing community groups in for one issue: “It looks good. It helps you, and gives them a check. And then, see you later.” The concept for Community Labor United was different. CLCs in California, Colorado and Georgia had been experimenting with new formations with the encouragement of the national office. CLU was intended to be permanent and stable, supported only by unions and community groups that were already committed to organizing, developing a strong research capacity and carefully selecting campaigns to work on that would unite, rather than divide, the two wings of the fledgling structure. An early CLU document clarified the distinction: CLU, while initiated by labor … is being consciously formed and structured with community organizations as equal partners … By doing so, we avoid the risk of building a community labor coalition that is focused primarily on labor’s interests with that of the community coming second.5 Rogers recognized that in order for the concept to succeed, CLU would have to overcome hesitations about short-term transactional relationships. In early 2004, he asked Lisa Clauson, a white woman who had led ACORN for thirteen years, to birth the new endeavor. Clauson was an effective choice because, in Felder’s words, “Lisa was a strong organizer who had the faith and trust of the labor movement and the community movement.” The national office provided a modest seed investment, but Clauson was asked to spend six months establishing the viability of the concept while simultaneously raising money to fund the organization and her own salary. Clauson initiated a series of one-on-one meetings with community and labor leaders soliciting opinions about the potential value of a CLU and their willingness to be participants. “We wanted both unions and community organizations that were focused on new organizing in low- and moderate-income communities and growing a membership base,” noted Clauson. “That was important because it was about building power, not just doing good community things.” Clauson intentionally reached out to community partners first, without labor, in order to build their ownership over the idea. “I worked hard during those one-on-ones to not have too much of a preconception of what the collaboration should be and what the goals and plans should be.” While Clauson engaged community partners, Rogers gained commitments from key unions to join CLU.

Community labor united 127 In addition, Clauson sought to convince foundations to fund an organization that had no track record, no membership base, no board and little more than a vision. The national AFL-CIO was not supplying additional resources, a situation that was only exacerbated by the internal conflicts at the national level leading up to the 2005 schism when a group of International Unions (some of which were the most supportive of community/labor alliances) left Sweeney’s AFL-CIO and formed Change to Win. If CLU were to be established as an organization truly independent of labor, it had to develop a revenue stream outside the union world. Fortunately, Clauson’s planting seeds bore fruit in grants from the Hyams and Discount Foundations to launch the new venture. By the end of 2004, there was a critical mass of interested community groups and unions. The leaders of these groups came together in early 2005 for a twoday retreat facilitated by Amy Dean, founder of one of the first labor-community alliances, Working Partnerships in San Jose, and Anthony Thigpen from the basebuilding organization Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) in Los Angeles. They led an exercise in which community and union participants brainstormed all the stereotypes that they had of one another and conducted a power analysis of the city. The outcome was the formation of a Strategy Committee consisting of representatives from nine community organizations and seven labor unions. “Lisa’s going to be running the thing,” said Rogers, “and she’s on the community side. We built the governing structure intentionally, so it wasn’t more union people.” The community partners on the Strategy Committee represented communities of color across the Boston region. They included Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Brazilian Immigrant Center, Chelsea Collaborative, Chinese Progressive Association, City Life/Vida Urbana, Greater Love Tabernacle Church, Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance and Project RIGHT. These groups were fighting for housing and tenants’ rights, environmental justice, anti-displacement and immigrants’ rights. Several ran workers centers. The labor organizations that came aboard in this early phase included GBLC, New England Regional Council of Carpenters, Painters and Allied Trades DC35, District 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Service Employees International Union 615 (now 32BJ), United Food and Commercial Workers 1445 and UNITE HERE. The Boston Teachers Union joined soon after. Clauson and Rogers recognized the importance of selecting campaigns that could unite communities and unions. Similar alliances had foundered in other cities when campaigns pitted community groups against unions and long-standing political relationships were threatened. Rogers decided CLU campaigns would not take on development projects, such as the bioterrorism research laboratory supported by the Building Trades and opposed by community groups. Fighting development would also have placed CLU in immediate opposition to Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino. While Menino often had contentious relationships with public sector unions that represented city employees, he maintained very strong

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connections with most private sector unions, including SEIU, the Hotel Workers and the Building Trades. Clauson further understood that “any campaign we took on was never going to be a campaign that would be all things for all people, all organizations.” So, it was the role of the Strategy Committee to pick campaigns that would strategically engage various CLU constituencies. Then each campaign would be guided by its own committee where “certain organizations would be more actively involved and other organizations would be less involved,” according to Clauson.

Building trust, having hard conversations CLU took a slow and deliberate process over two years to build the relationships necessary to address and bridge the historical tensions and cultural differences between unions and CBBOs. Rogers knew that many “community groups had no trust with the unions.” Elena Letona, the then Director of immigrants’ rights group Centro Presente and a participant in the first retreat, felt that “year in and year out we were used, we were sold out, and nothing changed for the community.” Rogers also notes the cultural differences. While unions tended to have shorter meetings, he saw that community partners were into “things like ice breakers – tell me about what your weekend’s like. … They want to get to know the union person.” Mimi Ramos, director of New England United for Justice (NEU4J), the successor to ACORN, affirmed that CLU was a “space to get to know each other and know each other’s work a little differently.” CLU launched a Civic Network Leadership Institute in 2006 to deepen relationships and foster collective learning. Adapting a curriculum that Amy Dean had developed at Working Partnerships, the Institute brought together about 20 community and union leaders and several elected officials for eight sessions of several hours each over a few months. Sessions included more “touchy-feely” exercises, joint learning about labor and community movements and history, power analysis and education on key issues, as well as space to have difficult conversations. Lydia Lowe, then Director of the Chinese Progressive Association, remembers “learning about how unions are organized so that community groups would understand a little bit more how they function and vice versa.” Lauren Jacobs, who was with SEIU 615 at the time, remembers a session where State Representative Byron Rushing talked about the history of busing and desegregation in Boston. Jacobs recalls “two folks that were there – one white, one black – who said this is the first time I’ve been in an interracial room where we’ve discussed this.” Mimi Ramos agrees that “the power of CLU and an entity like CLU was to have those tough conversations with each other and to be real with each other to break those barriers down.” Enid Eckstein, with 1199 SEIU at the time, recalls similarly that there was a “safe environment” based on trust that allowed for “some hard conversations in that room about racism and about

Community labor united 129 busing and the legacy in a way that people had a comfort level that they would never have outside of a common experience.” Lowe also remembers fairly early on in CLU having these conversations about difficult issues …, talking for instance about development struggles and affordable housing and the tendency of community to want to do affordable housing as cheaply as possible using non-union labor, and the building trades wanting to build anything rather than looking at what the community’s needs were. … Through CLU we started having these connections that we didn’t have before. Darlene Lombos coordinated the second Leadership Institute in 2007. A Filipina-American who had come out of community and youth organizing in Portland Oregon, she had been hired as a CLU organizer in 2006 and went on to become co-director and then Director after Clauson left CLU in 2011. She sought to build a cohort of community and union leaders and create shared language around the economy. Lombos believes it wasn’t just about the information and content of each training. It was more about the long-term relationships that got built through that cohort. … That really did build the foundation for people willing to do stuff together that might be different.

Proving the model: 2006–2014 CLU waged a small but manageable first campaign in 2006 to capture the $2.3 million in annual Boston public school re-painting contracts. For Rogers, there was a lot of pressure to choose a fight that could be won: “when you get a group like this you have to win your first organizing campaign. You can’t lose.” Jim Snow, who was then Organizing Director of the Painters Union, thought “that it was great that we could be the lead-off hitter and show that change is possible, that not everyone in the trades is a bad guy or even a guy.” For many years, the bulk of the work had been awarded to nonunion suburban firms that failed to hire Boston workers. Snow suggested to Clauson and Rogers that these conditions provided the basis for a campaign that could advocate for union jobs for city residents. CLU subsequently rolled out a 56-page report that documented problems with price gouging and wage theft, and the embarrassing reality that only 4 percent of the $4.87 million spent by the school system over a two-year period went to wages for Boston residents. The report proposed shifting from a contract award system to a direct-hire program similar to one in the neighboring city of Cambridge.6 Initially, the School Department resisted the suggestion. Working with community groups like ACORN, Sociedad Latino, YouthBuild, ACE and others, the Painters Union convened a series of well-attended recruitment meetings to demonstrate that the workforce could realistically be made up of neighborhood

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residents. Snow remembers “long lines around the building of people wanting to get in.” But, he continues: [W]e had to overcome a lot of suspicion and a lot of misgivings about embracing us as a partner in doing this. So that was a campaign in its own right. I mean, as much difficulty as we had with the city, it was a really sensitive proposition to be able to persuade these community-based organizations that we were good at our word, that we would do what we said we would do. Labor’s influence with Mayor Menino brought the administration to the negotiating table, where the joint pressure of unions and community led to an agreement with the School Department. The campaign provided 51 Boston residents the opportunity to work at union wages. Seventeen of these workers were recruited from community partner organizations as painter apprentices.7 As Rogers recalls the campaign, “it doesn’t have to be a huge victory, but it showed that an alliance like this can deliver.” CLU’s second campaign Secure Jobs, Secure Communities launched in 2007 to link the unionizing of security guards working in downtown office buildings with the interests of the communities where the guards lived. It was a much bolder and ambitious campaign than the first. Unlike the re-painting program which targeted a public sector entity, this initiative tried “to figure out joint labor community campaigning in the private sector through a private sector vehicle,” according to Jacobs of SEIU 615. Jacobs recalls that the guards were “mostly black, mostly Haitian, Dominican, West African immigrants doing the work, living in Dorchester and Roxbury.” The targets included the largest security firm and the biggest building owner in Boston, both companies owned by Blackstone investments. Secure Jobs, Secure Communities joined union and community interests by making demands on Blackstone to invest in their workers and the neighborhoods they lived in. Jacobs says that the connection between how these companies were treating workers and their impact on the neighborhoods first came up in the CLU Leadership Institute discussions. Though the campaign helped support the successful unionization of almost 1,500 guards and higher wages, Jacobs was disappointed that the campaign largely failed to extract meaningful community benefits from building owners. Campaign leaders negotiated directly with Blackstone, but the 2008 collapse of the investment banks affected Blackstone and its willingness to address these demands. Nonetheless, Jacobs believes that this campaign contributed to the growth of the labor and community movements in several critical ways. First, union organizers really owned that “we are part of the community in a real way, not as lip service.” They understood that “our only job isn’t just to deliver a paycheck. It is to really deal with … how people live dignified lives.” Second, she believes that this was a “commitment to doing Black organizing” for unions. “We were specific. These folks are treated this way because they are Black.” And it challenged the community partners to recognize that “we can’t

Community labor united 131 only have fights with City Hall, that the major drivers of inequality and harm in the community are private actors.” While CLU’s first two campaigns were driven significantly by worker issues, Clauson felt that the third should be a campaign that was community focused but had a union angle. We knew the unions would come if we found some jobs, so we intentionally started with community partners organizing in low-income communities of color that had been most affected by environmental degradation so that environmental justice would be at the core of the organizing.8 The Green Justice Coalition (GJC) demanded good green jobs and access to energy efficiency resources for communities. As with the other campaigns, CLU researchers produced an initial report – The Green Justice Solution – in December 2008 to frame the challenges and the opportunities. Because there was a 2008 state legislative mandate for utility companies to increase their investment in energy efficiency, CLU knew that the GJC would also have to be a statewide coalition. The GJC’s campaign committee expanded beyond CLU’s Bostonbased community and union partners to include environmental groups (such as Clean Water Action) and CBBOs from across Massachusetts. Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts (N2N), one of the anchor groups in GJC, was organizing in cities outside of Boston such as Worcester and Springfield. Alliance to Develop Power was based in Springfield as well, while the Coalition for Social Justice was rooted in Brockton, Fall River and New Bedford. The inclusion of community organizing groups from outside greater Boston was necessary to build statewide power, as there has often been a Boston-centric bias when working on issues affecting communities of color. Organizational connections were deepened through GJC. Building statewide power is challenging in Massachusetts. Governance is fragmented across municipalities and there is no meaningful regional or county level authority. While the Boston metropolitan planning region includes 101 cities and towns, many programmatic initiatives require state approval due to homerule limitations on municipalities. As Ramos laments, “many of our issues die at the State House because we don’t have enough of us statewide.” On issues like energy, decision-making is primarily at the state level, which regulates the private stockholder-owned utilities. GJC mobilized community members and unions to influence the statewide energy efficiency plan required under the 2008 Green Communities Act. Hundreds showed up at key public meetings, which were usually attended only by a handful of experts, consultants and environmental advocates. By 2010, GJC had won responsible contractor agreements with the utilities to ensure that contractors (and subcontractors) provide a livable wage, training and career ladders. It had also won a requirement for utilities to pilot Community Mobilization Initiatives working with CBBOs to create more access to energy efficiency and weatherization programs for low- and moderate-income residents and direct work to union contractors who would hire local workers.

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According to Lydia Lowe of CPA, which participated in one of the pilots, “it was a great vision, but it pretty quickly became really complicated and very bureaucratic because of the way that energy programs are organized.” In Chinatown, a number of former bus drivers who were organized by CPA started pre-apprenticeships with the Painter’s Union through this energy efficiency work. A few stayed in union work for several years, though Lowe notes that “the language barrier made it really difficult for us to get a lot of people in.” Still, Lowe acknowledged that many of these workers became long-term members of CPA as a result of this campaign. GJC continued to wage statewide efforts after the first energy-efficiency campaign. GJC’s Public Transit Public Good campaign brought transit workers together with communities dependent on transit across the state and in 2012 helped win a $2.5 billion increase in state transit funding, discounted fares for youth, elderly and disabled and representation of riders and workers in regional transit planning. Today, GJC is working on tax reforms for funding transit and advocating for equity in clean energy and solar policy, pushing a statewide environmental justice bill, supporting microgrid energy development in lowerincome neighborhoods and convening a statewide Green New Deal table. CLU was also part of a wage theft campaign in 2014 that led to municipal ordinances in seven cities. In 2018, CLU launched Care That Works, a coalition of childcare providers and families to fight for affordable and accessible childcare. This coalition is entirely led by women, a recognition that CLU’s earlier campaigns had been largely male-oriented.

Pivoting the movement: 2014–present In the last six years, CLU has continued to evolve and build its niche within the progressive movement ecosystem in Massachusetts. In 2014, CLU Director Darlene Lombos began convening a small group of women of color leaders – executive directors of community organizations and rising leaders within labor. What started as informal conversations after work hours about the frustrations and limitations in building a strong progressive movement turned into a discussion of continuing racial tensions between community and union leaders in the midst of the 2013 mayoral campaign between Marty Walsh and John Connolly. Though CLU’s community partners ultimately endorsed Walsh, his long history as a labor leader unleashed negative feelings, despite the fact that both candidates were white. It struck Lombos that “CLU had more work to do bridging the racial divides between labor and community.” After the election, Mayor-elect Walsh invited nearly all CLU’s community partners to serve on his transition committees. But Lombos remembers with regret that “we didn’t have anything comprehensive and clear for him to put into place. There was no clear agenda with detailed policies. There was even fighting amongst us about whose issue to focus on first.” Elena Letona, who had become Director of N2N, agreed that “we were completely siloed and we were going from short-term campaigns to nothing.” Ramos felt that

Community labor united 133 “we’re so campaign issue focused that we don’t think about how our issues are connected.” These conversations led to a series of retreats in 2015–2016 to develop a 10-year Agenda. Participants acknowledged that the political power structure had not shifted significantly, despite best efforts. Republican Governor Charlie Baker had been elected in 2014, and many of the state legislature’s power brokers remained conservative Democrats. Trump’s election in 2016 generated even more interest in a long-term agenda, resulting in a series of regional assemblies in five major cities across the state the following year. According to Ramos, the 10-year Agenda further developed statewide strategy. “We started to have this conversation about what would it take to build a seven-to-ten city strategy focused around truly building grassroots power on the ground.” It also created an opportunity to connect with other coalition efforts such as the Mass Voter Table and the Right to the City Alliance. The process culminated in the statewide Summit for the Public Good in December 2017, attended by more than 300 participants. The 10-Year Agenda9 sets out a long-term political platform that is both “aspirational and concrete” with “both policy and corporate campaigns.” It lays out shared values and goals and commits partners “to model the change we want to see,” “contest power at its source” (i.e. corporations), “create an inclusive democracy” and “united front” and “keep race, class, and gender at the center of our movement.” GOALS OF 10-YEAR AGENDA FOR MASSACHUSETTS We will organize for the following: •

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Protect the soul of our cities, fight against displacement and expand our publicly owned and operated institutions, such as education and transit, land and housing and health and human services Ensure corporations and major industries operating within Massachusetts pay their fair share, contribute to the public good, stop polluting and no longer make profits off the backs of all workers and our communities Grow a powerful, inclusive electoral block that expands our democracy, transforms our governance system and increases voter rights, public financing of elections and diversity at all levels of government Defend and strengthen the rights of all workers through organizing collective bargaining contracts and challenging corporations directly to serve the common good Educate current and future generations in a way that honors our history and legacy of struggle, resistance and liberation Build community land trusts, neighborhood gardens and local cooperatives that put the health and well-being of our planet and our families at the center of policies that will serve the public good

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Penn Loh and Mark Erlich Invest in a system of care that nurtures our young, promotes the dignity of our elders and the wellness of all generations through universal programs for child, health and senior care Seat our own people in powerful positions within community organizations, labor unions and government Create an inclusive and welcoming Commonwealth for all people to plant roots and thrive regardless of immigration status

Informed by this 10-year Agenda, over the last two years CLU has been emphasizing three movement pivots: targeting corporate power, fighting the Right and investing in our people. CLU identified 13 (“Baker’s Dirty Dozen”) corporations and individuals in Massachusetts driving the right-wing agenda in the state. CLU and some of its community partners are now targeting Fidelity for its role hosting donor-advised funds that are supporting xenophobic, anti-Muslim and homophobic groups. CLU is providing research, popular education tools and communications to help align partners and allies. CLU’s research has been, since its founding, a crucial resource for its partners, particularly CBBOs, which typically do not have dedicated research staff. CLU’s research staff has grown from one to three and has also developed strong ties with other research partners such as Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, Political Research Associates and Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. It developed a training fellowship for emerging researchers of color with Center for Popular Democracy and Tufts, which resulted in the recruitment of Senior Researcher Sarah Jimenez. While research capacity is well established at CLU, it does not have dedicated communications staff. Eckstein believes that CLU should provide “research that helps mobilize people and tells the narrative of Boston and creates a public dialogue about the future of our community,” but, she continues, more work needs to be done in developing a comprehensive analysis of the problems and a commonly accepted set of solutions for the future. In terms of building grassroots capacity, Jacobs believes that CLU has already “been a critical part of the movement infrastructure.” CLU is able to play this role because it has built its own organizational capacity, growing to a staff of eight and a budget of $1.7 million in 2019–2020. Importantly, almost half of the funds raised from foundations are deployed in ways to directly support its partners, particularly the CBBOs. CLU’s sharing of resources has always been part of its intention and practice. Clauson was concerned that CLU would compete for funding with its community partners and, as a result, developed a principle in the early meetings that fundraising efforts would be transparent and that CLU would undertake joint fundraising to support community partners. Letona explains that when

Community labor united 135 N2N joined the GJC, it was able to access a $75,000 grant “that was a major lifesaver” for the organization. Similarly, when Lombos launched the 10-year Agenda, she raised funds for the participants. Letona credits Lombos with sharing “meaningful dollars so that when you are engaging in the coalition work with CLU, you feel like you are respected, that your time is valued and respected.” CLU has helped fill capacity gaps in the CBBO sector in multiple ways beyond fundraising. In 2016, it started an Administrative Hub to help stabilize several small, under-resourced groups such as New England United for Justice (NEU4J), an organization that grew out of the collapse of the ACORN network. Like many leaders of CBBOs, NEU4J’s Ramos was thrust into her position from being a grassroots member, without formal training to manage nonprofits and fundraise. By 2016, the organization was struggling so much financially that she had to lay herself off at times. CLU stepped in to fiscally sponsor NEU4J and cover Ramos’ salary as director. They provided a grantwriter and staff support for administrative systems. Within two years, NEU4J’s budget grew from $150,000 to $330,000. In addition, CLU provided a space for the directors of the groups they were sponsoring to meet regularly and support one another. Most recently in 2019, CLU helped support the development of an Organizing School, led by Ramos and NEU4J, to train organizers to build stronger relationships and organizations. This pilot was in response to needs identified in the 10-year Agenda and brings together grassroots leaders from across CBBOs, similar to the way that Highlander Center’s Citizenship Schools supported grassroots leaders in the civil rights movement. Finally, CLU’s investment in people can be seen in the number of leaders it has nurtured and groomed. CLU has helped change the face of the labor movement in the region. In 2019, Lombos was elected to succeed Rogers as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the GBLC, the first woman and first person of color to hold the seat. Rogers had laid the groundwork, helping her first become GBLC Vice President. According to Rogers, Lombos’ election could not have happened “if Darlene hadn’t been vice president for six years. We thought about this a long time.” Lombos’ successor at CLU is Lee Matsueda, previously a senior staffer with one of CLU’s founding community partners, Alternatives for Community & Environment. Clauson went on from CLU to organize at UNITE HERE Local 26 and is now organizing with the Carpenter’s Union. There are a number of other high-profile examples of key community leaders now in leadership roles in unions.

Refections CLU has influenced the regional progressive movement in multiple ways. It has centered relationships as a key to building power. CLU intentionally created opportunities like the Leadership Institute for community and union people to get to know one another. For Letona, CLU’s impact is not just the

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campaigns or even the shared grant resources, “it’s about good organizing, [which] is at the very core relationship-building.” Lowe says that for CPA, “through our connection to CLU, we were able to deepen our relationships with labor, and we were able to access people that we would not have otherwise accessed before.” Though CLU was born out of GBLC and remains connected to the labor movement, it is not dominated by unions and has become a coordinating space for CBBOs that extend beyond labor. Rogers noted that he “never tried to tell a CLU affiliate, a partner of CLU what to do. … It makes a difference that CLU is down there leading the charge. … That’s the distinction I tried to make.” The outside foundation support that CLU has garnered gave it the ability to move more independently of the union network. For Jacobs, the fact that the unions were not providing most of the funding meant that they had to “put in the sweat equity of investing in the relationships and arguing a point and then organizing folks to see your point of view.” CLU’s connection to, but independence from, unions has given it opportunities to be flexible and nimble and take risks. According to Ramos, “CLU is bold. They’re not afraid to try something, even though we’re not sure what the end result is going to be.” For Jacobs, CLU’s movement pivots are an example of how it “is thinking and analyzing the moment and then really putting it into practice.” Because CLU did not need everyone to agree on every campaign or initiative, it could move in areas where there was a critical mass of interest among union and community partners. One consequence of this structure, though, is that not all members felt equally committed. Eckstein of 1199 SEIU said that because CLU took on campaigns that focused and engaged one or two unions, not all original founding board organizations were equally engaged. But we always felt it was important to be there to support CLU and to support the building of CLU and the work of the labor council. Similarly, Lowe noted that CPA was not active in many CLU campaigns, even though they were partnered with 1199 SEIU to organize Chinese home health care workers. CLU has also helped support the progressive forces within labor, most visibly seen in Lombos’ election to leadership of GBLC. However, its influence is also reflected in the political positions labor has taken. Lowe thinks that unions “became this much stronger, progressive voice that was organized. And it wasn’t just coming from a little side caucus, but from labor leaders. I think that’s pretty significant.” CLU has been a critical part of the movement infrastructure for CBBOs as well. From helping raise funds to nurturing under-resourced groups to building organizing capacity, CLU has filled gaps in the CBBO sector. Significantly, CLU has kept at its center the leadership of women and people of color and their communities.

Community labor united 137 CLU continues to navigate the tensions between advocating for reforms within current power structures and laying the groundwork for transforming those structures through organizing those most affected. Lowe appreciates how “CLU is very rooted in a real assessment of politics as it is today,” whereas in some other alliances “sometimes people are so caught up in this radical vision that they kind of are not in touch with what’s our actual assessment of forces now.” This tension is manifested in the differing levels of enthusiasm, as well as concern and confusion over the 10-year Agenda and the movement pivots. Lowe feels that the agenda was “still a little bit too much just a conglomeration of things that we knew we were working on.” Letona believes that while they could have gone further, the 10-year Agenda “gave most of us at least a glimpse into how we could do this work better.” Lombos acknowledges that the 10-year Agenda did not result in a shared policy agenda that could be pursued with each two-year state legislative cycle, as she had envisioned. Instead, Lombos had CLU launch its Public Good campaign against privatization to model how to implement the 10-year Agenda. While some union people were involved in the 10-year Agenda, unions did not drive the discussion. Rogers admitted that he “just couldn’t understand it,” but appreciated that there was funding raised to support the process and “that’s what the funders wanted to see.” Lombos understands that corporate campaigns can be difficult and that power holders often deliberately hide themselves from the public, and “CLU partners still need the immediate public target for a campaign, so they have been asking CLU to help connect the dots for them.” As CLU looks toward the next five years, it continues to take on the difficult challenges in building progressive movements for transformational change. It strives to hold the center between communities and unions and help repair continuing racial and gender divides. It is also working to maintain and grow the bases of its grassroots community partners while trying to scale up power. CLU Director Lee Matsueda says that in the midst of a global pandemic and racial justice uprising, “we want to be in this for the long game and we want to address emergency needs.” CLU is still pursuing what founding director Clauson describes as “merging the creativity of the community organizing sector with the power of the labor sector.” Lombos believes that CLU is confronted with the “movement conundrum” of how to align forces that go beyond coalitions and campaigns, but that “doesn’t get away from the actual base building or the power building on the ground.” Matsueda sees CLU as a convener “that not just convenes people for a campaign’s sake, but also takes a step back from all of the stuff that’s happening on the ground and assesses what’s going on.” As one organization, CLU cannot do it all, with only eight staff supporting several simultaneous campaigns. It plans to help meet research needs of its members through partnerships with other state and national research organizations. Though CLU has developed some statewide linkages, Matsueda understands that state legislative work is “just not our skill set.” Thus, CLU is building its

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relationships with two other statewide formations involving labor and community – Jobs with Justice and Raise Up Massachusetts. Matsueda believes that CLU can offer a sharper analysis on corporate targets, such as with the Dirty Dozen. CLU recently raised funds with Jobs with Justice to link their emergency COVID-19 aid efforts to organizing. Over its past 16 years, CLU has helped win campaigns that could not have been won by any of the individual partners, resulting in policy gains and improvements in people’s lives. CLU has promoted deeper relationship building between communities and labor. It has become an important piece of the movement infrastructure for CBBOs. CLU has helped develop the narrative defining obstacles faced by progressive forces as well as movement shortcomings. Reflecting on CLU’s impact, Lombos believes CLU has become a “good bridge” within the progressive movement. CLU is positioned for future years, using the resources and relationships it has assembled, to build even more bridges and further reduce barriers to cross them.

Notes 1 Both authors have been involved with CLU as leaders of their respective community organization and union that helped found CLU. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 11 key leaders throughout CLU’s history, reviewed archives and also drew upon their own experiences. 2 Fernando Gapasin, “The AFL–CIO’S Road to Union City: A Bold Plan to Move Unions to the Left,” WorkingUSA, September 2010. 3 Mark Erlich, Labor at the Ballot Box, Temple University Press, 1990. 4 Carmen Rixely Jimenez, “New Bostonians Demographic Report,” Mayor’s Offce of New Bostonians, 2006. 5 As quoted in Janice Fine, “When the Rubber Hits the High Road: Labor and Community Complexities in the Greening of the Garden State,” Labor Studies Journal 36, no. 1 (2009): 148. 6 Community Labor United, “Our Schools, Our Futures,” 2006. 7 Monica Bielski Boris, “Starting on the Road to Regional Power: Community Labor United and the Greater Boston Labor Council,” Working USA 12, no. 1 (March 2009): 7–15. 8 As quoted in Fine, 148. 9 http://www.massclu.org/10-year-agenda/

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Aligning labor and community groups The Alliance for a Greater New York Penny Lewis

The twenty-first century has so far seen an impressive growth of urban-based organized forces successfully making progressive changes in their cities. By itself, working to make one’s city more just or equitable is nothing new. What’s different is a recognition by many of those leading such efforts of the import and impact of city-level change for national and even global efforts. Focusing on the city as ground and target of change, their local efforts – for higher wages, health care, affordable housing, fewer carbon emissions, support for immigrants – at once foster democratic activism locally and demonstrate that such organizing yields results. Moreover, groups that internationally include municipalist political parties and platforms, national progressive representative networks like “Local Progress” and locally a medley of labor, community and “right to the city” oriented groups often share the hope that such “rebel cities” might collectively exert pressure throughout the system toward similar transformational changes. As geographer Neil Brenner observed: The urban is no longer only a site or arena of contentious politics but has become one of its primary stakes. Reorganizing urban conditions is increasingly seen as a means to transform the broader political economic structures and spatial formation of early twenty first century world capitalism as a whole.1 New York City boasts a sizable infrastructure of community, labor and political organizations fighting for progressive social change. The city’s historical and contemporary labor strength, neighborhood and community organizing, politically progressive policies and expansive nonprofit sector, all contribute to activating this dense network of engaged citizenry. But the problems of the city, too, are vast. In the summer of 2020 almost 60,000 people were without homes and another close to half million without jobs. Affordable housing is scarce and gentrification common. Racial inequities in schooling, income and other critical metrics persist across the city. Numerous communities face concentrated poverty, police oppression, dirty industries and low wages. The city as a whole experiences inadequate support for its public goods and services, and the effects of the lopsided power of the wealthy. All these and many other urban social problems also define the

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greater New York area. At every moment a multitude of efforts are underway to remedy these ills, but strategic engagement with the challenges thrown up by a city of its scale is a daunting challenge. How to make use of the people power on offer in a city like New York and direct its leverage toward meaningful social transformation can be a thorny path for its organizers and advocates. Given the prominence and power of New York, it’s also the case that the stakes for achieving such transformation stretch beyond its borders. The municipalist vision of “rebel cities” leading the way toward a just and sustainable future gets a big boost when breakthroughs take place in “global” cities like New York, Los Angeles and many of the other cities profiled in this book. Obviously, there is no single route to success. But the alliance-building models introduced by the chapters in this book, under the auspices of the Partnership for Working Families, demonstrate some key directions that successful coalition efforts take at the local level and how they can amplify their power through supra-local connections. In particular, such efforts make use of a power-building model that focuses on issues that find broad support, put great energy into developing coalitional strength and lead with strong research and policy to advance the collective vision of the alliance. NYC’s PWF affiliate, the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN) distinguishes itself with just such a strategic vision and path. What might be ALIGN’s greatest asset is that it is one of the only organizations of the city that sets out to bridge the often separate spaces that the thousands of community organizations and nonprofits, and hundreds of union locals and labor organizations, work within. Coalitions come and go. ALIGN’s project is to help forge a new social justice landscape in New York City, with durable, trusting connections forged between the activist nodes in labor and community. This coalition is essential for New York, as well as other cities where such alliances are built, to both win and sustain progressive change.

Origins ALIGN was launched in 2011 by the merger of two other organizations, New York City’s Job with Justice (NY JWJ) and Urban Agenda, setting out to “build a model of strategic campaigns that would tackle the issue of income inequality as well as climate change,” recalled Maritza Silva-Farrell, ALIGN’s Executive Director. For close to two decades, NY JWJ had brought together unions in the city with community groups, working to leverage the power of each in their respective work. With a general goal of realizing labor-community solidarity in practical collective work, much of its work was reactive, picking up on campaigns that its partners had launched on their own. NY JWJ would bring community groups out to support unions during contract campaigns, or union members to rally with community members when immigrant rights were infringed or affordable housing threatened. Over time, however, NY JWJ began to engage longer-term coalitional efforts toward shared community – labor goals. For example, its TRADES campaign (Trade Unions and Residents for Apprenticeship Development and Economic Success) brought together building trade unions,

Aligning labor and community groups 141 NYC public housing residents and community groups to successfully pressure the city’s public housing authority to make use of union contractors in its construction work while providing (legally mandated) jobs and skills training to its residents. During this same period, the organization Urban Agenda had formed to support the growing nexus of labor-environmental alliances that had started in earnest in the late 1990s. In NYC, Urban Agenda convened labor, community and environmental groups around green jobs and environmental justice initiatives for the city and state, using research and strategic communications to successfully intervene in energy and job policy at both city and regional levels.2 The success of the TRADES campaign demonstrated that proactive coalitional efforts could bring transformational results, while Urban Agenda’s success in advancing policy objectives using strategic research together suggested paths toward a new combined model. By 2011 the emergent ALIGN had identified and created this niche in the city’s complex infrastructure of social change organizations. Its website underscores its focus on “Economy – Environment- Equity,” and states its mission, “ALIGN is an alliance of community and labor united for a just and sustainable New York.” Since its founding, ALIGN has initiated numerous successful campaigns that have changed both city and state policy, as well as the relations between groups in the city.

Organizational form and operations ALIGN’s board consists of unions, community groups and other progressive organizations that together with staff conduct a yearly strategic planning process to decide on and review campaigns. The members of the organization are “essentially” the organizations that sit on the board, which today includes from labor, the union Presidents of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees District Council 37 and the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union, senior representatives from the Communication Workers of America, the Teamsters and the New York Central Labor Council. Together this means hundreds of thousands of workers in a cross section of New York industries, including the public sector, service, communications, transport and the trades, have direct representatives on ALIGN’s board. Its community representatives include Executive Directors of leading groups, including Make the Road, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), Community Voices Heard and New York City Communities for Change. These organizations are embedded in multiple neighborhoods across the city, and are together at the forefront of immigrant rights, housing, environmental justice and education issues. Many of these board affiliates are also regional or even national in scope, and together with their connections to the PWF and the national Jobs with Justice, these geographically broader affiliations help ALIGN situate its campaigns in a broader strategic and coalitional context. Other unions and groups are regularly consulted in ALIGN’s work, regardless of board membership. “As much as we build our work around our long-standing alliances, which are our Board, we also think about how what we are doing implicates other members of the labor movement as well

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as the social justice movement,” Silva-Farrell explained. Silva-Farrell has been the Executive Director at ALIGN since 2016, though she joined the group during its founding period. She is originally from Ecuador, where she studied journalism, and she brings her communications and strategic expertise to the numerous campaigns she has helped lead successfully before and during her time at ALIGN. ALIGN’s seven staff members bring organizing, campaign, research, policy analysis and communication skills to the work of the group, and it’s from this group that many of its campaign plans are first hatched. The staff bring campaign proposals forward, and the board develops and ultimately approves the agenda for the group. The day-to-day decisions then take place in the coalitions themselves, debating and deciding which strategies and approaches to take. At any given time, ALIGN has many such campaigns underway. In some it is the lead partner, initiating the work of the group. In others, ALIGN is one of many. But in most of its work, it plays a similar initial role: “We create the space, we develop the strategies together, we make recommendations, and we build consensus with folks in the coalitions we build with.” In the decade since its founding, the coalitions ALIGN started or supported have achieved numerous transformational wins in New York City. In 2012, Walmart-Free NYC helped win a “high road retail” development in East New York, and its work has kept Walmart out of New York City to this day. The Alliance for Just Rebuilding (AJR) helped direct hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy toward devastated waterfront communities in 2012, including public housing developments, with specific agreements to hire from local communities and expand trade apprentice opportunities for impacted persons. AJR also achieved governmental transparency through a “Sandy tracker” policy that tracked contracts, construction and progress in the rebuilding efforts. Leading up to the People’s Climate March in New York in 2014, ALIGN helped to develop the “80×50” plan for 80 percent reduction in the city’s carbon emissions by 2050, eventually adopted by the city. ALIGN extended this work through its participation in NY Renews, a statewide coalition that in 2019 won the NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which has set the statewide target of 100 percent renewable energy sources for all sectors by 2050, with substantial investment in clean energy funds to disadvantaged communities. Climate Works for All, another ALIGN coalition, was successful in passing local law 97 against the strong opposition of the city’s real estate board, which mandates that certain large buildings be retrofitted. And in 2019, after a multiyear effort, Transform Don’t Trash won the passage of commercial waste zones, addressing the profound environmental degradation and low labor standards created by the commercial waste industry.

Strategic strengths of the model Four dimensions of ALIGN’s work stand out as essential to their strategic orientation. We begin with the campaigns they choose to develop. The ALIGN staff makes a lot of use of the verb “align” in their descriptions of their work, as the

Aligning labor and community groups 143 group precisely looks for the points of connection where disparate partners can find common ground. Being “in alignment” with one another allows for groups that may not comfortably see eye-to-eye on all issues to nevertheless unite in long-term mutually beneficial projects. In some respects, it is akin to a “united front” policy in politics, in which a common goal unites disparate forces for the duration of the fight to reach it. The issues are also usually those with national or global reach, even if the solutions on offer are local in this instance. Campaigns for affordable housing, green jobs, sustainable economic development for poor communities – all of these find resonance with sister cities, and, through networks like the Partnership for Working Families and Jobs with Justice, often direct echoes in simultaneous campaigns being launched elsewhere. Second, ALIGN combines shorter-term goals with longer-term solutions in its work. The policy goals that ALIGN’s staff and partners fashion are often practical and immediate, but they also initiate longer-term processes that are aimed at dismantling the structures of inequality that contribute to the problems in the first place. ALIGN encourages its partners to orient themselves in a more distant time horizon, beyond the urgency of the moment, a horizon that asks the partners to examine the roots of the social problems they face and to look ahead toward their full solutions. They ask, why do workers and communities face the challenges they face? What is actually needed to solve the problems that give rise to these problems? Matt Ryan, ALIGN’s former executive director, described these dynamics at work in the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, the coalition ALIGN formed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. We had to somehow marry very immediate, short-term recovery demands with a longer-term transformational and inspiring vision. That is, if we don't have a long-term vision around climate sustainability, we’re not really going in the right direction. It’s not just about recovery, it’s about long-term sustainability, both for the planet and for our communities.3 Third, ALIGN takes a geostrategic approach to its work. Like those who advocate a “whole worker” perspective in the labor movement, ALIGN recognizes that workers are community members and community members are workers, and that workplace issues affect what happens in homes and home issues affect what happens at work. As a result, the social and geographic boundaries of their organizing can’t be limited to either their workplace or neighborhood. Instead, ALIGN has been among the groups in the city recognizing the leverage that geographically based relationships and connections lend social justice campaigns. Their conference room includes a map of the whole city, with color-coded tabs representing the clusters of environmental, community, religious and labor groups across the city. ALIGN’s campaigns thus pay attention to the geographical reach and footprint of their campaigns, and where possible build roots in specific communities. By making workplace campaigns community campaigns and vice versa, the place of organizing becomes another site for growth and leverage. The very structure of the coalitions they build addresses limitations that

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are otherwise nearly inherent to workplace-based organizing and neighborhoodbased organizing alone.4 Finally, building on and emerging from these other elements are the transformational relationships that ALIGN fosters in the coalitions it builds. “This is the movement-building component of the work,” emphasized Silva-Farrell. Disparate groups move together because of the alignment around issues they’ve identified, but that shared project could stop at transactional exchanges. At the center of ALIGN’s vision, however, is a transformed landscape of social action in New York. We talk about a long-standing alliance of community and labor, one that is not only going to serve the purpose of the current strategic campaigns that we’re doing, but also long-term, for those organizations to continue working on projects with us, or without us. ALIGN’s essential work is developing these deeper relationships for the longer term. Otherwise, “it’s going to be all about transactions that just patch holes.”5 In the abstract, labor and community share common interests. In the particular, while there are many points of convergence, there are many break points as well. That means that the conflicts that inevitably arise between coalition partners must be anticipated, faced and, to the extent possible, worked through. Relationship building like this requires authenticity and trust among the partners. To some extent, working together is its own glue. When individuals and organizations come to know each other, and struggle through concrete campaigns with one another, relations of trust and respect ideally develop. But actual success takes structure and sustained attention to making sure the relationships continue to work, structure and attention that the neutral ALIGN brings to the effort. At the start of campaigns, ALIGN typically leads the effort to collectively outline principles of decision-making within the coalitions that reflect the nuances of the different interests, power, constraints and freedoms that different partners bring to the table. Throughout the campaigns, ALIGN checks in on these principles, and works to surface any tensions that are occurring in the practice of the work. Together, the tangible and intangible elements of joint work should help provide ground for future collaboration between the partners, even when there might be disagreements and divergences along the way.

Campaigns of choice: Transform Don’t Trash New York City Of the numerous campaigns ALIGN has initiated in recent years, “Transform Don’t Trash New York City” (TDT-NYC) is perhaps most illustrative of the strengths of its model. NYC’s commercial waste industry is a prime instance of a scandalously unregulated private market. Household waste in the city is picked up by unionized sanitation workers who make above-average salaries, have sick days, benefits and pensions, and who work confined neighborhood routes with

Aligning labor and community groups 145 relatively well-serviced trucks for normal length work days. Commercial waste, by contrast, is like “the wild West,” as many observers note. Over 90 contractors independently bid to pick up business garbage from anywhere across the city, using a combined fleet of over 4,000 badly serviced vehicles. As a result, the drivers literally race from one end of the city to another to collect trash in loud and dirty trucks, straining against the clock to complete their routes. It’s no surprise that waste and recycling is the fifth most fatal job in the United States; Orrett Ewen, who worked as a helper on the back of a truck for a commercial trash company for nine years, described the “bad safety culture. If you complain about being overworked, they will give your shifts to someone who won’t complain. Private sanitation workers learn to shut up about safety so we can keep our jobs.”6 Trash and recycling are regularly mixed together, in part because of time pressures on the drivers, in part because of lax oversight at transfer stations and in part because of pricing incentives that make landfill use more profitable than diversion for recycling for workers (who are paid in weight carted) and companies as well (as maintaining recycling operations is expensive as compared to the price fetched by recyclables on the market). Garbage transfer stations are concentrated in just three neighborhoods, which therefore bear the brunt of constant truck traffic moving garbage through their streets, emitting dangerous levels of particulate matter into the air. “A lot of times they’re rushing. They speed. It makes our community dangerous for kids to live for fear of being struck, or not even being able to develop properly because they don’t have clean air to breathe,” explained Hunts Point resident Stephan Smith, who supports the TDT-NYC campaign.7 Between the truck emissions, nonrecycling, faulty equipment and incentives against a safe speed of work, the commercial waste industry is a health and safety disaster for its workers, the communities they are based in and the city as a whole. It was clear to ALIGN and its board that a campaign to transform the commercial waste industry would be an ideal focus, especially as similar initiatives were being taken up through national affiliates of the Partnership for Working Families, among whom best practices were already being shared.8 In addition to board member organizations like NYC-EJA and Teamsters, whose constituents and members were immediately affected by the problematic industry, the vision for the campaign directly linked good jobs for workers to community health, and in that way furthered the work of linking labor, community and environmental concerns, and amplified broader “Green Jobs” initiatives of which ALIGN had been a part. It resonated with efforts to decrease the city’s carbon footprint, thereby appealing more broadly to climate justice partners as well. With the election that year of Mayor Bill DeBlasio, the issue of safe streets also became more prominent, as the mayor pledged that the city would work toward zero pedestrian traffic deaths, and other groups, such as Transportation Alternatives and other safe street groups, became outspoken supporters. All in all, the coalition includes nearly 30 endorsing organizations today, as well as dozens of small business supporters from across the city. The core partners that have steered its work from the beginning include ALIGN, NYC-EJA, the Teamsters, as well as the

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Natural Resources Defense Council and the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI). From its launch in 2013 through the following year, the coalition focused first on developing the policy solution that would remediate the multifold problems caused by the industry. The program that emerged was to create a waste zone system in the city, with hauling companies bidding on specific geographic areas within which they would collect commercial trash. Companies that won contracts would have to meet various worker and environmental standards. In such a system, trucks would not have to travel long distances, which would address pollution (fewer miles traveled by the diesel trucks) and its concentration in particular neighborhoods, as transfer stations would be more evenly distributed across the city. Such regularized zoning would also allow for the development of rail and barge infrastructure for shipping trash, both significantly cleaner forms of transit. The health and safety of communities would be protected, given the reduced truck pollution and slower pace for drivers. And workers’ hours – regularly 10–14 hours that would sometimes stretch to 16–17 hours in a shift – would be reduced, meaning their own safety (and again, that of pedestrians) would be protected while still being able to pick up the same amount of trash as before. Finally, recycling criteria and enforceable standards could help shape the initial bids, and be met by workers who were under less time and wage pressure. The policy that ALIGN researchers and analysts developed would also include strict criteria for the companies that would bid on such franchise zones, regulating their truck fleet, safety protocols, training and rates of pay. Unspecified changes to the waste system were publicly endorsed by Mayor DeBlasio in 2016, and that same year the chair of the sanitation committee in the City Council introduced the specific zone system legislation to the Council. Yet the city government did not move quickly. The coalition faced industry opponents, including the newly formed New Yorkers for Responsible Waste Management, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against the zone system efforts. In 2018, their spokesperson argued that the system would “eliminate customer choice, decrease industry employment, and increase costs to businesses.”9 There was skepticism within the Department of Sanitation as well, in particular about exclusive contracts being awarded to particular zones. As recently as October 2019, former commissioner Kathryn Garcia explained her wariness regarding exclusive zones, as “those are essentially monopolies. It will be very, very large companies then that take over this industry.”10 While the coalition pointed to the recycling jobs that could be created with a new system, the decrease in hauler competition would also likely mean fewer small-carting businesses, and possibly increased prices in exclusive zones. The Real Estate Board of New York also opposed the measure, given the preference of many of their members to contract with their own specialized waste collectors. To increase support and overcome opposition, the TDT-NYC coalition sustained a multiprong strategic campaign over six years. Early on, they convinced the City Council chair of sanitation to ride along behind a commercial hauler in the middle of the night to witness the problems first hand. ALIGN wrote their

Aligning labor and community groups 147 first report, appropriately titled, “Transform Don’t Trash New York: How to Increase Good Jobs, Recycling, and Justice in the Commercial Waste Industry,” in 2013, and after that regularly issued deeply researched policy reports drilling down on the different problems caused by the industry and the advantages of adopting their policy solutions. “Reckless Endangerment”; “Dirty, Wasteful and Unsustainable”; “Not at Your Service” about negative effects on small businesses; “Reckless Endangerment” about the trucks; “Clearing the Air”; “Clean City, Green Jobs”; “More Dangerous than Ever”; “A Wasted Opportunity”; “Just Jobs for Waste Workers”: these and other reports were issued as the coalition pushed for legislative fixes. Amplifying this research, coalition members pushed for and won City Council hearings on the issues, providing testimony from experts and coalition partners. In these and other venues, the campaign was able to frame its own vision for reform within the zero waste and reduced emissions goals of the mayor, making it more difficult, politically, for the administration to ignore their demands. In pulling together the various stakeholders in this fight, TDT-NYC worked within the communities of the South Bronx, North Brooklyn and Southeast Queens, in which numerous affiliates of the NY EJA were based, many of whom played active roles in the campaign over the years. Kellie Terry, who grew up in the South Bronx and serves as Executive Director of THE POINT Community Development Corporation in Hunts Point, explains: It’s not a matter of luxury for us. We don’t have a choice. It’s about ‘Can my kid breathe?’ ‘Can I breathe?’ ‘Can we have a healthy and happy family here in the places we have to live?’ Environmental justice is not an option for us. Transform Don’t Trash encompasses many issues we’ve been fighting for generations.11 NYC EJA affiliates encouraged their members to share stories, testify in hearings and speak at press conferences and town halls. Voting guides and educational efforts in the neighborhoods helped agitate residents who had endured decades of disproportionate environmental stress. Thus the geographic, moral and electoral power of communities was harnessed toward the goals of the campaign. Similarly, TDT-NYC used petitions in neighborhoods as well as among small businesses to demonstrate the city-wide support for their goals. Dozens of small businesses that wanted to support better standards and recycling were formally brought in as endorsers, and they publicly voiced their support for reform to members of the City Council. The legal expertise brought by the NYLPI maintained the high credibility of the coalition, with members of the organization often providing the lead authorship on the reports and reviewing the coalition’s policy prescriptions for legal accuracy and practicality. The Teamsters, who represent sanitation workers, perhaps had the greatest organizational power in the coalition. Beyond mobilizing their members to turn out for events and speak out and share their stories, the union used its political influence to bring together decision-makers and create audiences for the coalition throughout the campaign.

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The City Council finally passed legislation achieving nearly all the coalition’s goals in late 2019. Certain compromises were reached, including preserving some limited competition within zones for multiple carters. Given the timing of the victory, so close to the pandemic, the city and the coalition are continuing to work together to figure out the best paths for implementation. The commercial waste industry has taken severe blows, with office buildings closed or barely in use, and surviving small businesses are seeing great shortfalls in their revenue. The city budget is similarly ailing. Working with the city, the coalition partners are faced with tough decisions: “Do we go ahead with implementation as is? Do we need to scale back? How do we continue to be sure that workers continue to have jobs?” Silva-Farrell points to this period, of what can happen after a victory, as one in which the durability and depth of the coalition is most tested: You need to have a very good collaborative coalition to be able to understand that [during an extreme crisis like this] we cannot just have a clean cut policy in place; we need to be a little more flexible in how we implement it. As they address this at this writing, ALIGN has in the meantime helped create a relief fund for unemployed waste workers whose immigration status denies them unemployment benefits. Given ALIGN’s long-term goals, it is not incidental to note that years of working together on the campaign has forged a strong bond between the members and leaders of Teamsters Local 813 and community members and organizations within the Environmental Justice Alliance, who now regularly support each other’s campaigns across the city, beyond TDT-NYC. Similarly, the fact that the coalition is still working together a year after its victory speaks to its overall depth. When the policy finally passed, one member of the city administration admitted privately to having worked for years to “break up the group,” but to no avail. “It was just too strong.”12

Campaigns of necessity: organizing in a crisis Much of the impetus behind the creation of ALIGN in 2011 was a recognition that it is difficult to create fundamental changes from the position of reaction and defense. Pro-active campaigns, seeking transformational changes in directions that can at least initially be set by the organizers, are its primary focus. In the past decade since ALIGN’s founding, New York City has been visited by two profound crises: Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both were set in motion by natural and social forces well beyond the control of the city itself, and directly or indirectly resonated with similar disasters taking place all over the country and the world. In a more rational system with more effective governance and the will for longer-term planning, it’s possible to imagine that both could have been anticipated and better prepared for. In each of these moments – one ongoing at this writing – the adeptness of the ALIGN model is ironically revealed in its reactive mode, rather than its preferred

Aligning labor and community groups 149 path of advance planning. Usually, it’s the political right that is credited with never letting a good crisis go to waste. But first with Sandy, and in 2020 with the pandemic, ALIGN recognized that the crisis was also an opportunity for a response that could re-fashion the city’s alliances and pressure the city and state to fix themselves not just in the short term, but with an eye to a future that is sure to bring more crises of these sorts. The city reeled in surprise in 2012 as the waters rose and the subways were flooded, but the sudden devastation caused by Sandy had recent precedent in the United States, in the much more catastrophic loss endured by New Orleans following the breaking of its levees in 2005. ALIGN organizers quickly appreciated certain negative lessons from the experience of this sister city, most important being that you have to move fast in a crisis. ALIGN’s former executive director Matt Ryan recalled that public institutions and public agreements were rapidly undermined by reactionary and business interests in the wake of New Orleans’ flood, and it meant “if we didn’t act quickly to increase our capacity and our ability to shape the public narrative across community and labor, we could find ourselves very vulnerable in New York City,” particularly from real estate interests who would just as soon see the waterfront depopulated of its poor communities and rebuilt as high-end development. From this defensive posture came with it the realization of a larger opportunity. Crises afford a moment when people are paying attention, when people care, when people are open for action, and it matters who steps in to help shape the direction the response takes. The very name of the effort they launched, Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, underscored a commitment to existent communities – disproportionately poor communities of color – who were left most vulnerable in the aftermath. Here, its experience of coalition work placed ALIGN in a good position to reach out to partners with whom “there was a baseline level of trust and understanding.” But they also recognized that the nature of the crisis meant that the scope of their coalition could expand to include partners who had never worked together before. Ultimately, the AJR drafted a platform for the city, “Turning the Tide,” with over 40 organizational sponsors, including unions representing workers in health, construction, building services, transit and retail; citywide immigrant rights and racial justice groups; day labor organizations and workers centers; environmental partners; organizations representing safety and health, lawyers and educators; and community groups from affected communities across the city and region’s waterfront. Within weeks of the storm basic principles were established; within six months a detailed analysis of the many shortcomings of the city’s recovery plan was published; within nine months, Turning the Tide’s demands for good jobs, affordable housing, sustainable energy and community engagement had been released; and before a year had passed, mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio visited Far Rockaway, one of the hardest-hit communities. There, according to the New York Times, DeBlasio “suggested that he had signed on to much of [the] agenda” of AJR, and the paper quoted the candidate as saying, “with these new resources from the federal government, we have to use it as a moment, not just to right the wrongs

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of Sandy but start righting some greater wrongs.”13 Ultimately, over $1 billion in federal funds were directed toward initiatives defined by AJR’s priorities.14 ALIGN’s response to the current COVID-19 crisis is still underway, but follows a similar path. Before New York City had even shut down in the first wave, ALIGN issued a statement calling on city and state leaders to prioritize the welfare and economic security of workers, families, and everyday people. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, our elected officials here in New York and across the country should be taking action that dramatically expands the public sector workforce and puts workers, families, and communities at the heart of all our future policymaking. As the fatal lack of personal protective equipment for all essential workers emerged as a defining issue in the crisis, ALIGN began working toward legislative standards that would compel employers to provide a safe workplace environment for all employees. ALIGN pointed out that such a lack of standards is a racial justice issue as well: over 75 percent of the million essential workers who kept the city moving during the pandemic’s worst months in its first wave were Black and Latinx, and the city’s communities of color have disproportionately fallen ill and experienced greater rates of death and serious disease. At this writing, the New York Health & Essential Rights (HERO) Act that ALIGN initiated has sponsors in the New York State Senate and Assembly. It outlines enforceable standards for workplace safety, which employers would face fines for breaking. Of central importance is that it would also establish worker safety committees, comprised of workers themselves, that would both oversee and report compliance. This recognizes the most common issue brought forward by the nurses, grocery store clerks, nursing home attendants, restaurant workers and farmworkers who are among the groups supporting the legislation: workers are the people best situated to assess the ongoing health of their workplaces. Whistleblower protections would protect those workers who report on safety failures. This structured and protected voice at work would exist in all workplaces, not just those with unions. If passed, such committees would be a leap forward for worker organization and voice in New York.

Putting the alliance to the test Labor and community are not always easy partners, and not all campaigns will unite their interests. When and how ALIGN should take positions and join actions in the face of nonunity is complicated and nuanced. For example, in 2018–2019, ALIGN eventually proved to be divided over the issue of Amazon’s proposed new headquarters to be based in Long Island City, Queens. For ALIGN board members such as Make the Road and New York Communities for Change, Amazon HQ2 was an obvious target to be fought. The ongoing crisis of affordable housing and threat of further gentrification, the travesty of massive government subsidies for a stupendously rich corporation, Amazon’s own

Aligning labor and community groups 151 anti-unionism and terrible employment practices at its warehouses, as well as its software support for immigration detention, made it a pariah. One ALIGN board member, RWDSU, was actively trying to organize Amazon warehouse workers, and facing steep resistance from the company. For other ALIGN board members at the time, such as SEIU 32BJ, which represents building service workers, and building and construction trade locals, Amazon’s HQ2 meant that member jobs in building services and construction were assured. These unions were more optimistic about Amazon’s overall promises of jobs and the possibility of an expanded tax base for the city. Additionally, some union voices argued that New York’s strong labor movement and progressive infrastructure would itself bring Amazon in line with New York standards, offering the national movement a chance to actually unionize the behemoth. Other labor and community voices, with the example of Seattle’s union strength and density to point toward, were significantly more skeptical about the power of NYC to reign Amazon in, and also skeptical about the actual job growth such development would provide community members. That both the mayor and governor supported the deal, and were pressuring all others to follow suit, also set the tone of the responses among different groups affiliated with ALIGN and across the city, as the calculated risks of support or opposition were necessarily measured through the status of relationships and other ongoing campaigns that involved the city and state’s most powerful executives. The ALIGN board had been in discussions about its longer-term strategic campaigns around Amazon, and had already taken the position against the tax-payer subsidies being suggested by city and state leaders – “that was a no-brainer; they are rich enough,” explained Silva-Farrell. ALIGN board members began to take different individual paths in their approach to HQ2, with most actively opposing, some supporting, some withholding support while trying to force Amazon to win specific demands. Ultimately, ALIGN worked with its board members among labor and community who opposed the deal. “Coalition building is never easy,” Silva-Farrell points out. The “bread and butter” of the organization is brokering connections between sometimes uneasy partners, sometimes consensus is reached and sometimes the groups agree to disagree. In the case of Amazon, against all odds, the resistance was effective. Nearly everyone was surprised on Valentine’s Day, 2019, to learn that Amazon had retracted its plans to come to Queens. Perceived as a victory by most on the board, it was held as a loss by others, and ALIGN lost board members. Reflecting on this, Silva-Farrell observed that “we missed our opportunity to do a little more movement building at the moment.” Speaking of lessons the organization learned from that experience, she explained: We can be bold, it’s important to be bold at moments like this. I still believe we were on the right side, but our approach at the end was too celebratory, and we could have taken more account of the other side of things. Because of the close relationships forged over time, however, ALIGN continues to work closely with organizations left their board at that time. This includes

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SEIU 32BJ, which has endorsed the NY HERO campaign and continues to work in the NY Renews coalition, and building trades affiliates who continue to work closely in the Climate Works for All coalition. On the other side, in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, and the reinvigorated Movement for Black Lives, ALIGN was repeatedly approached to join calls to defund the police budget in New York City. Once again, the board was split on this. All of the members of the board were actively involved in the movement, many of them on the streets daily in the protests of summer 2020. But even among those BLM supporters were unions who represented civilian workers whose jobs could be at risk by the unspecific “defund” demand, who did not want to move to support it without greater clarification of what defunding would involve. The community groups on the board were supportive of the defund demand. Here, the lack of clarity and dissension about the specific demand, and the lack of alignment between labor and community around this particular strategy and tactic, led the organization to “take a back seat” in this demand of a movement that it otherwise strongly supported. Committed to long-term partnerships and ongoing conversations, the organization chose to not join in the bold demand of that moment, but with the goal of being able to continue to remain a part of the burgeoning anti-racist movement with greater unity through the ongoing work of communicating and struggling together, to do the “deep work of collaboration.” Silva-Farrell described these case-by-case decisions as being part of the longer-term perspective that the organization and its board take in their collective work. The importance of our work is in relationship building, and the trust that we can build with our partners, and sometimes it can be a bit tricky. But we have to be authentic partners; we all have to be authentic in terms of how we show up. In the crowded and contentious context of New York City politics, continuing authentic relationships among active groups whose real or perceived interests at times diverge requires work and attention. The strategic campaigns and deep relationship building practiced by ALIGN through its staff and board member organizations offers a hopeful model for progressive forces that recognize that the scope of social change needed, locally and nationally, requires common struggle and deep connection. ALIGN’s success with crafting and passing creative policy solutions offers further inspiration to the labor and community groups of New York that progress can in fact be achieved through coalitional efforts and policy. Beyond New York, the local achievements of the alliance, amplified by those of other PWF affiliates, join those urban efforts globally forging a path for broader social transformation in the direction of economic and racial equity and environmental justice.

Notes 1 Neil Brenner, ed., Implosions/Explosions: Toward a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis, 2014, p. xx. See also Miriam Greenberg and Penny

Aligning labor and community groups 153

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3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

Lewis, The City Is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Strategies in an Urban Age. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017. Interview with Maritza Silva-Farrell, June 30, 2020. For more on the formation of ALIGN, see its website, https://alignny.org. For more on the TRADES coalition, see Kate Rubin and Doug Slater, “Winning Construction Jobs for Local Residents: A User’s Guide for Community Organizing Campaigns,” Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, July 2005 (http://research.policyarchive.org /8709.pdf). For more on Urban Agenda’s green jobs initiatives, see Jack Dafoe, “Repowering Gotham: State Action to Build New York City’s New Energy Economy,” a report by the Apollo Alliance convened by Urban Agenda, 2006 (https://community-wealth.org/content/empowering-gotham-state-actionbuild-new-york-citys-new-energy-economy). Interview with Miriam Greenberg and Matt Ryan, May2, 2016. Miriam Greenberg and Penny Lewis, “From the Factory to the City and Back Again,” The City Is the Factory. Silva-Farrell interview. Kiera Feldman, “Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection,” Pro Publica, January 4, 2018, and “Worker Stories, Transform Don’t Trash NYC,” http://transformdonttrashnyc.org/resources/worker-stories-orrett-ewen/, accessed September 5, 2020. Community Members Stories, Transform Don’t Trash NYC. http://transformdonttrashnyc.org/resources/community-member-stories -stephan-smith/, accessed September 5, 2020. Partnership for Working Families, Transforming Trash in Urban America, 2013. http://transformdonttrashnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/0313 -Recycling-Report.final_.pdf, accessed October 11, 2020. Feldman. Cole Rosengren, “Who Comes Out On Top if New York Passes Commercial Waste Zones?” Waste Dive, October 9, 2019. Community Members Stories, Transform Don’t Trash NYC http://transformdo nttrashnyc.org/resources/community-member-stories-kellie-terry-sepulveda-the -point-development-community-development-corporation/, accessed September 5, 2020. Silva Farrell interview. Michael Barbaro, “To Address ‘Greater Wrongs,’ de Blasio Outlines Wide Path to Hurricane Recovery,” New York Times, September 29, 2013. Ryan – Greenberg interview. See also Miriam Greenberg, “Radical Ruptures: Crisis Organizing and the Spatial Politics of Uneven Development,” The City Is the Factory.

9

Building a bigger “We” Reflections on more than a decade of building community power in Pittsburgh Diana Polson

Introduction “We need to stop meeting like this,” says Jennifer Rafanan Kennedy, the Executive Director of Pittsburgh United at a City Council hearing about water privatization. “Or was it about affordable housing? Or maybe it was in our fight for paid sick days?” It is always the same story: the consistent need for her and the economic justice coalition she leads to ensure the concerns of the community are addressed. Pittsburgh’s working class and communities of color are rarely consulted and their needs are too often overlooked in economic development and other city investments that affect their lives. Even in Pittsburgh, a city with a reputation for progressive attitudes, the need for the community to have an organized voice continues as those representing private capital wield more power and influence than the people of this city. The Pittsburgh region is no stranger to organizing. Over a hundred years ago, there were fierce labor battles as steel was reorganizing and changing community life. Homestead Steel Works, located on Pittsburgh’s eastern border, was home to one of these confrontations, known as the Battle of Homestead, where unionized steel workers stood up and fought the Pinkertons – private security forces that brought nonunion workers into the plant to take their jobs. While the workers lost the battle, it is remarkable that even back then the labor movement relied on support from the broader community to help the workers as they fought for a voice on the job and better working conditions. Ministers espoused support for the striking workers in their sermons and in letters to the editor. Said one Reverend, “what the public wants of Carnegie is justice, not the kind of charity he has been dealing out of late.”1 A New York Times account of “the uprising of a population” described an old, white-haired woman who stood on guard near the river with a blackjack, or a leather-covered club, exclaiming “Let me get at them!”2 Imagining this older woman in 1892 standing guard and ready to fight the Pinkertons with a club says something about the spirit and history of Pittsburgh – an eagerness to fight for one’s community, despite the odds. Pittsburgh United was born out of a different fight, more than a century later, but one that resembles that which undergirded the struggle that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and their supporters fought for in 1892.

Building a bigger “We” 155 That is, those with wealth and power making decisions about people’s lives, work and communities that do not benefit, and in many cases harm, the wishes or voice of those communities or workers. The story of Pittsburgh United is rooted in this struggle to ensure communities are able to, not only have a voice in decisions that affect their lives, but become architects of the world around them. Many people tout Pittsburgh’s transition from a steel city to the new “eds and meds” economy as a success story powered by its many universities, old money in the form of endowments from industrialists, a large health care industry and a growing tech sector. While aspects of Pittsburgh’s story are admirable, especially when compared to the fates of other post-industrial cities, Pittsburgh’s resurgence has been inequitable. The city’s revival has further entrenched disparities, creating, as many have dubbed, two Pittsburghs. How does a coalition of community, labor, faith and environmental organizations come together to ensure community benefit accompanies economic development? How do you ensure poor and working-class residents both know about and have a voice in the big decisions that impact their communities? These mechanisms aren’t baked into the structure of our democracy and how our cities function. They must be fought for and won. The story of Pittsburgh United is one of creating these spaces – building a more inclusive democracy through the push for equitable development and economic and racial justice.

The region’s political economy from which Pittsburgh United was born In order to understand the establishment and growth of Pittsburgh United, we must contextualize its inception in the political economy of the region at the time. Pittsburgh is known as the Steel City because its economy was largely based around the steel mills in the region, which brought with them heavily polluted waters and smoke-filled air as well as good-paying jobs and stable communities across the city due to the wins of the labor movement. Between World War II and the early 1970s, the Fordist mode of production was dominant, featuring more stable labor relations and capital investment that was fixed geographically. However, as capital became increasingly mobile in the 1970s, steel began to leave the region in search of cheaper labor and more lucrative returns. The closing of the mills led to high regional unemployment and community deterioration. This overlapped, at least in part, with white flight in Pittsburgh (from the 1950s to 1970s) – that is, the fleeing of, mostly white, middle-class populations from the city to the suburbs, which disintegrated the city’s tax base, facilitated in part by redlining policies. Pittsburgh has lost more than half of its population since 1950, when population was at its peak (from 676,806 in 1950 to 294,860 in 2020).3 Harrison and Bluestone termed the period in American history – the 1970s and 1980s – the Great U-Turn when the idea of the American Dream or the promise, at least for white men at the time, that hard work will lead to improving living standards took a turn. Average wages continued to increase after World War II and through the early 1970s, at which point real wages began to plummet.

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In the 1980s and on, unions were intentionally disempowered, low-wage labor began to grow and the gap between the country’s wealthiest and our poorest expanded rapidly.4 Taking the place of the Fordist mode of production was a Post-Fordism economy, often referred to as neoliberalism, characterized by more flexible capital, declining domestic manufacturing, unions being stripped of their power and the expansion of the service industry. Expansion of a temporary and low-wage service sector led to a connected increase in unemployment, particularly in urban communities of color.5 Neoliberal urban policymaking became the dominant response, which includes “a preference for free markets, ... heighted competition to attract private capital, and public expenditure on development projects targeted at the immediate benefit of relatively high-income businesses and people.” The purpose of the state during this period, as David Harvey posits, is the redistribution of resources upward, the success of which can be seen in ever-growing inequality since the 1980s. In Pennsylvania, the top 1 percent captured 3.4 percent of overall income between 1945 and 1973. But between 1973 and 2015, the top 1 percent captured 46 percent of income growth. In Allegheny County, the top 1 percent earns, on average, 24.5 times that of the bottom 99 percent, which puts our county in the top 7 percent most unequal counties in the United States.6 This inequality is evident in Pittsburgh’s uneven development, with some neighborhoods developing quickly, mostly for the benefit of higher-income residents, while others continue to crumble due to underinvestment and a lack of good jobs. In the 1980s and 1990s, federal funding to cities declined significantly. Federal funding accounted for about 15 percent of city revenues on average in 1978 but by the late 1990s federal funds accounted for only 3 percent of city funds, with cuts to Community Development Block Grants, mass transit assistance, employment and training funds and housing funds. State funds to cities also declined during this period. Facing declining support from federal and state governments, cities often competed with one another to attract capital and keep or attract a higher income tax base. Often this was done through large subsidies for developers.7 Communities responded to this by innovating new tools to build community power. Community benefits agreements (CBAs) were one such mechanism to ensure economic development projects were benefiting the communities where they were being constructed. With cities turning increasingly to enormous subsidies of entertainment complexes, sports stadiums, shopping malls, university expansions and other projects, city government was, in most cases, giving away public money to incentivize these types of projects without community input or guaranteed benefit. Cities justified these subsidies by saying the benefits would “trickle down into the local economy, generating ancillary investment [and] high employment in the hotel and retail sectors.”8 The reality is that these policies intensified uneven metropolitan development and these public monies rarely had any requirements attached in terms of local hiring, good jobs created or other community benefits.9 Community benefits agreements set up

Building a bigger “We” 157 a contract between communities and private investors/developers when city governments refused to play that role.10 Like many Partnership for Working Families affiliates, Pittsburgh United formed around a fight for a community benefits agreement.

The struggle for community benefts in Pittsburgh’s Hill District The Hill District Pittsburgh United grew out of a struggle around urban redevelopment. African American communities in cities across the United States became targets for redevelopment, often because previous disinvestment left these communities with large areas of vacant land and buildings with low market value. Redevelopment efforts often come with promises of investment and revitalization, but in reality they push low-income people out of their own neighborhoods. Pittsburgh was no different. The Hill District, which is a grouping of historically Black neighborhoods and was the center of Black life in the city, is sandwiched between downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland where the universities are, effectively the connector neighborhood between Pittsburgh’s downtown and the eds and meds based in Oakland. The Hill was, from developer’s perspective, ripe for their own taking. In the early 1900s, the Hill District was a multi-ethnic area where new immigrants would move when they first came to Pittsburgh – Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Poles and Black Americans from the south. As white immigrants moved out of the neighborhood, it transitioned to become, in the 1940s, primarily a Black neighborhood. In fact, in the 1950s the Hill District was the most densely populated Black neighborhood in all of Western Pennsylvania. Razing of the Lower Hill in the 1950s and 1960s led to tremendous displacement of Black families. The desire of developers and city leaders to develop the Hill District can be traced back to the 1940s. In fact, an article by George Evans in 1943, a member of Pittsburgh City Council at the time, identified the Hill District as a prime target for development. Despite the neighborhood being the center of Black community life at the time, Evans stated: “Approximately 90 percent of the buildings in the area are sub-standard and have outlived their usefulness, and so there would be no social loss if they were all destroyed” (italics for my own emphasis). The neighborhood and the people within it were considered expendable.11 When the Civic Arena and accompanying parking lots were put up in the 1950s, more than 8,000 people were displaced from the Lower Hill and 400 businesses disappeared, many of whom relocated to Homewood in the Eastern part of Pittsburgh or to large public housing communities as a result of this displacement.12 Many renters received little relocation compensation and minimal benefits from the federal government because a large number of residents left the area before the project was approved, in anticipation of displacement.13

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Pittsburgh’s frst community benefts agreement In Pittsburgh, as was common in other cities, a key economic development strategy was aimed at achieving higher tax revenue by attracting higher-income residents.14 Pittsburgh, under Mayor Tom Murphy’s leadership in the 1990s, took this approach, with large city investments aimed at maintaining Pittsburgh’s tax base. This included investments in two huge sports stadiums – PNC Park for the Pirates and Heinz Field for the Steelers – as well as the Convention Center and 1,000 acres of industrial development.15 Pittsburgh’s hockey team, the Penguins, however, continued to be in the old Civic Arena and in 2007 threatened to leave the city for Kansas City, Missouri, if the city did not help subsidize a new stadium. In a backroom deal, the Mayor of Pittsburgh at the time, Luke Ravenstahl, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell and the Allegheny County Executive, Dan Onorato, agreed to provide public funding to the Penguins equaling more than $750 million in public subsidies and the gift of public land. The deal included more than $500 million in public funds to build the new arena and power to the Penguins to operate the new arena and keep all the revenue from parking, which at one time amounted to about $14,000 every day in revenues generated.16 As was typical of these types of development projects, no discussions with community members or organizations were initiated or had. The Hill District community came together, organized by the Hill District Consensus Group, to lead a fight for community benefits to accompany the new Penguins development. The Hill District Consensus Group was an organization that was formed in 1991 and grew out of a need for the community to come together around ongoing development efforts in the Hill District. Around 2005, the Consensus Group began to study the community benefits agreement concept, happening in places like Los Angeles. In May 2007, the Consensus Group launched a coalition called One Hill and recruited member organizations like local block clubs and neighborhood associations. Together, this coalition created a vision statement and decided on what their priorities would be as they sought a community benefits agreement, including funding for a grocery store, access to family sustaining jobs being developed as a part of the development and historical preservation and greenspace. At around the same time, in 2006, Gabe Morgan of SEIU 32BJ, Barney Oursler of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, Ronell Guy of the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing and Sam Williamson of UNITE HERE met with John Goldstein from Partnership for Working Families to learn more about the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) community benefits agreement model to win worker and community benefits from developers getting public subsidies. Kerry O’Donnell, president of the now defunct Falk Foundation, led a group of five local foundations interested in funding a CBA effort in Pittsburgh similar to the LA model – these funds would be matched by the Ford Foundation. One stipulation was that the recipient of the grant should have union buy-in from the beginning. Hill District neighborhood groups also applied for the

Building a bigger “We” 159 funding, but they didn’t have union partners, so Gabe Morgan and what became Pittsburgh United (early on Pittsburgh UNITED stood for Pittsburgh Unions and Neighborhoods Invested in Transforming Economic Development) received the grant initially for a project aimed at creating a CBA around the Casino development on the Northside at the time. When it became clear that organizing a CBA for the Casino was untenable and too late, the coalition put their resources toward support for the Hill community fight. Pittsburgh United initially launched in May 2007. The coalition consisted of UNITE HERE, SEIU Local 3 (building services), One Hill Coalition, Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network (PIIN), Action United, NAACP Pittsburgh, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, Northside Coalition for Fair Housing and Sierra Club. As Leroy and Purinton wrote in 2005, to create CBA’s “labor and community partners use their leverage through the threat to mobilize en masse to oppose the approval of developments during these public processes.”17 Tom Hoffman, who had come from SEIU International, was Pittsburgh United’s first director. Tom described this same strategy, in other words: “organizing a coalition around securing a community benefits agreement is so different from union organizing for a contract – the only thing we had was the trouble we could make.” Pittsburgh United complemented the One Hill Coalition’s rich neighborhood organizing by bringing other resources to the coalition, including financial resources, the connections and strengths of the unions and other partners and access to other parts of Pittsburgh. One of Pittsburgh United’s strategies was to show Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and the public, via a robust media campaign, that Black and white Pittsburghers were united in the fight for a community benefits agreement. Pittsburgh United organized a bus tour to the Hill District for residents across the city to learn about the history of the Hill District and the importance of ensuring this new development would benefit Hill residents. Carl Redwood taught bus riders about the history of the Hill, dispelling the racist myth that the Hill was destroyed because of looting and rioting in the 1960s, but rather because of deindustrialization, white flight and the displacement of thousands of individuals in the lower Hill via eminent domain for the building of the Civic Arena. While the neighborhood once had direct routes downtown, the Hill was literally cut off from the city’s downtown with the construction of the Civic Arena and the cross-town boulevard (Route 579). This and other actions helped to solidify support outside of the Hill for such an agreement with the Penguins. Negotiations between the neighborhood and the Penguins had fits and starts. A number of events happened that, at times, derailed negotiations between the One Hill Coalition and the Penguins. The One Hill Coalition and Pittsburgh United walked into one meeting with the Penguins to find another group of Hill residents sitting at the table, saying they represented the Hill District. This allowed the Penguins to say “we don’t know who to talk to” and walk away. In another instance, Mayor Ravenstahl, the city and the county tried, after some push by the coalition for a CBA, to write their own community benefits agreement by decree without any negotiations or input with the actual community. In

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response, the coalition burned the decree on the local news, creating additional drama and interest by the press.18 After this event, the Penguins made a donation toward a grocery store and left the negotiating table. Pittsburgh United and its’ union partners in particular, were helpful in conducting research about the Penguins corporation and strategizing about different points of leverage. They followed the money and realized there was a pressure point. The co-owner of the Penguins, Ron Burkle, also a major hedge fund investor, needed public pension funds to back his worldwide investments. Trustees of the largest of those funds, the California public workers pension fund, were considering whether the public unrest over the Penguins investment in Pittsburgh might have made further support for Burkle’s investments too risky. When this became apparent, the president of the Penguins corporation returned to the negotiating table and an agreement followed. On August 8, 2009, the 132 community, faith and union organizations joined by most local political leaders signed the One Hill Community Benefits Agreement. Prior to this struggle, additional circumstances helped to set the stage for the creation of Pittsburgh United. First, the two primary unions that represented arena workers joined the CBA coalition. These unions were exploring social movement unionism at the time, defined, in part, by understanding a union’s role as a part of a wider ecosystem of organizing for social and economic change. Both of these locals were going through internal transformations at the time, transitioning away from narrow contract organizing and toward broader wins for its members and their communities. SEIU Building Services Local led by Gabe Morgan and UNITE HERE led by Sam Williamson were reinvesting in organizing at the time. Increasingly these union partners witnessed the establishment or expansion of jobs that kept their workers in poverty while Mayor Ravenstahl gave public money to developers with little regard to workers. Building services union (SEIU Local 3) leader, Gabe Morgan, had just finished a Justice for Janitors campaign in which the union was trying to organize nonunion janitors in office buildings in Oakland and the South Side. The employers pushed back against the union and it wasn’t until the union took to the streets and aligned with other organizations aimed at lifting people out of poverty, including the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, Just Harvest and the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing, that the union campaign was successful at their goal of securing family health care for their workers. In fact, it was Gabe Morgan from SEIU and Ronell Guy from the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing, who were the main architects behind Pittsburgh United, in part due to opportunities they saw in their recent partnership. Sam Williamson, with UNITE HERE at the time (now with SEIU 32BJ), noted that while the unions could have (and actually did) secured a more narrow set of wins for their stadium workers through negotiations with the Penguins, the unions also saw value in fighting for a broader agenda for their members, some of whom lived in the Hill District. This was the first time many community activists saw unions fight for the needs of the larger community, not just their members.

Building a bigger “We” 161 One lesson that the coalition learned through the Penguins stadium CBA process was the importance of building a strong coalition of forces aimed at creating progressive change. While One Hill had tremendous organization and connections within the neighborhood, the coalition that Pittsburgh United organized brought strengths, resources and connections that each organization individually did not have. The community and Pittsburgh United were able to come together temporarily to successfully negotiate a CBA, but the process was difficult. As one might expect, a well-resourced, union-heavy and white-led organization (Pittsburgh United) joining a fight led by an African American community that had been raked over the coals for years was full of challenges. Even with significant leadership within Pittsburgh United’s coalition partners by people of color, mistrust of unions and others by residents of the Hill District persisted, especially given the history of discrimination by local craft trade unions. The process of organizing the CBA at times accentuated this mistrust. As Laing documents, more could have been done to align visions, strategies and power.19 It helped to have community organizer Carl Redwood at the helm, who was a well-respected and principled leader within the Hill District and skilled at bringing together a variety of players for the pursuit of a common goal. The Hill District CBA included $8.3 million in financial resources for the community. It also included a community-driven Master Development Plan, community members getting first priority for jobs created and initial city and developer funds of $2 million to develop a grocery store in the neighborhood.20 These benefits were a significant accomplishment for the community. Perhaps just as important was the way this struggle launched Pittsburgh United forward as member organizations deepened their commitment to fighting together for a better Pittsburgh.

Locked out: Pittsburgh’s Northside development fght leads to better public policy Pittsburgh United turned its attention toward organizing another CBA around development on Northside land, between the Steelers and the Pirates stadiums. The Stadium Authority offered the developer, Continental Properties, the land for a low price of $8 a square foot with no requirements around good jobs or other community benefits. They were developing a hotel (now the Hyatt Hotel) and Stage A&E, a concert venue. Initially when Pittsburgh United pushed the Stadium Authority for a CBA, the Authority tentatively agreed. But this was short lived. Those on the Stadium Authority board who voted with the community actually got removed from the Authority by Mayor Ravenstahl. In fact, Bill Peduto, who went on to be Mayor after Ravenstahl, was one of those Authority members removed. Another challenge Pittsburgh United faced was they were unable to achieve the same level of community participation as they had in partnership with One Hill Coalition and this, combined with the doubling down on the fight by the Mayor, halted the effort.

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What became clear in the fight over the Northside development is that a strong coalition can only get so far in the face of strong political opposition. Pittsburgh United, and those in the city who cared to make progressive change, also needed to organize for more direct political power, making sure those in office shared their values. Mayor Ravenstahl stacked the Stadium Authority with those who would side with developers and kicked off members who sided with the community, limiting the ability for Pittsburgh United to be successful. The Steelers also had incredible power in the city – police and armed guards – didn’t allow for actions to be held in the parking lots surrounding the stadium. The local media stopped covering these actions and the effort failed to provoke large-scale outrage, as the Hill District fight had. Pittsburgh United, with Barney Oursler as the Director at the time, turned to civil disobedience to escalate the opposition to this development and ignite broad community support. Oursler, Rachel Canning and Angel Gober (Pittsburgh United’s staff members at the time) were arrested on July 16, 2009. On July 23, PIIN activists were arrested outside Continental’s offices in Homestead.21 Labor actions were also scheduled, led by SEIU and UNITE HERE leaders. Instead of the action happening at the hotel site, as planned, Morgan and other union leaders led 100 union members to Mayor Ravenstahl’s office, first thing in the morning on July 24, 2009. A giant chain and padlock were put on the doors to Mayor Ravenstahl’s office by staff so the local union members couldn’t get access to him. A hundred people stood outside his padlocked doors chanting “The mayor works for us!,” “Just one ask – build the middle class!” and “Quit giving public money to those who don’t respect union contracts.”22 Another round of union members returned in the afternoon and in the face of the locked Mayor’s office, Doug Shields, the president of City Council at the time, threw open the doors to the council’s chambers – down the hall from the Mayor’s office – and proclaimed, as Barney Oursler remembers: “The people’s chamber will listen to the people now. Come in and tell us what you need!” This moment represented an opportunity to shift from fighting for community benefits development by development toward policy change to win community benefits. Jennifer Rafanan Kennedy, Pittsburgh United’s current Executive Director, said: “It was clear from this fight that we couldn’t fight one development at a time. We had to control development on a broader scale.” Pittsburgh United began to organize to pass city legislation that would make city-funded development projects better for the environment and community: cleaner air, water and better wages. Pittsburgh United broadened its coalition even more and launched a campaign for more sustainable development, including three pieces of legislation: prevailing wage, stormwater mitigation and clean construction. City Council passed a prevailing wage law for service sector workers in the City of Pittsburgh at the end of 2009, which was the end of the two-year legislative session. The legislation said that any job that was a grocery, hotel, food service or janitorial job in a certain size building in a tax-subsidized development had to honor the regional wage and benefits level – basically they would need to pay a union wage. But on New Year’s Eve at the end of the legislative session around 5 pm, Mayor Ravenstahl vetoed

Building a bigger “We” 163 the legislation. Pittsburgh United had to go back to the drawing board because they didn’t have the votes to override the veto. Luckily, new, more progressive council members would be joining City Council soon thereafter. In the meantime, the mayor proposed his own prevailing wage legislation. His proposal was dramatically scaled back and ruled out any subsidies provided by the Authorities, which essentially all government funding for development is funneled through. Gabe Morgan of SEIU told the media “It’s not easy to write a prevailing wage bill that doesn’t apply to any workers, but the mayor may have done it.” Morgan told the press he couldn’t find a single worker that the mayor’s prevailing wage would cover.23 Once the new City Council members were sworn in, they once again passed the community-backed prevailing wage law in part due to PIIN’s actions and organizing of faith leadership around the issue. This time, the legislation passed with a veto proof majority. The second piece of legislation Pittsburgh United pushed to get passed, and successfully won, was the Clean Water/Stormwater Mitigation legislation in Pittsburgh. Essentially the legislation sought to ensure that any new development receiving city money had to follow the same guidelines of stormwater abatement that the federal government follows. The final piece the coalition passed was the Clean Air/Clean Construction legislation. Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), a 50-year-old environmental group in Pittsburgh working on improving the air quality in the region helped to lead this effort as part of Pittsburgh United. The legislation stated that construction companies must demonstrate that they are using clean construction equipment and are meeting the highest standards in terms of diesel emission reductions for city projects or projects that would receive city subsidies of $2.5 million or more. In collaboration, Pittsburgh United and GASP had to win the blessing and support of the building trades and the Constructors Association of Western PA so they spent a significant amount of time talking to these groups about their concerns and figuring out solutions. For example, the building trades expressed concern that the smaller mom-and-pop construction companies would not have the resources to comply. Rachel Filippini of GASP explained: We didn’t want to put smaller shops at a disadvantage so one of the things we were able to do, separate from the legislation, was work with the Allegheny County Health Department and a local funder (Heinz Endowments) to develop a pot of money that small businesses could apply to and get a grant to assist them in retrofitting some of their equipment. Filippini reflected: We were asking them to use technology that was tried and true that would not only reduce diesel particulate matter, and known carcinogens from affecting the communities and the people near these construction sites, but it will also benefit the workers, probably more than anyone.

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The building trades did not try to defeat or water down the legislation, especially after the work was done to ensure small business owners would not be at a disadvantage. The legislation passed in 2011. However, it was not implemented or enforced across the city. GASP followed it closely and assisted the City in revising the legislation so that it was more easily understandable to contractors and construction companies. This clearer, revised legislation easily passed in 2017. There were several things that Pittsburgh United and partner organizations identified as being key to passing this package of legislation. First and foremost was the strong coalition Pittsburgh United put together to commit to seeing this package of legislation through. Different organizations took the lead on different pieces of the package based on their expertise. Environmental groups, faith groups, community organizations, health care unions and other labor unions – organizations that typically operated in a certain silo were brought together to support each other’s agenda and committed to doing so. As Filippini remembers: To me, it was extremely powerful for us to have a press conference and to fill city council chambers with not just your typical ‘environmentalists’ who cared about the air quality issues. But we had, through our collaboration with Pittsburgh United, labor, community groups, faith based – all of these organizations were bringing their different perspective and their different constituencies. This showed city council members, and the public, that these issues weren’t strictly environmental. It demonstrated that these are community public health issues that affect all of us and we all benefit when the air gets cleaner.

Pittsburgh’s largest public investment: clean rivers and green infrastructure Much of Pittsburgh’s aging sewer system carries both stormwater runoff and sewage. When it rains, Pittsburgh’s stormwater system becomes overwhelmed and untreated wastewater flows into our rivers. The city’s sewers have been polluting the region’s rivers for decades and have been found in violation of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Water Act. The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) entered into a consent decree in 2008 with the EPA and the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). ALCOSAN was forced to develop and implement a plan to reduce sewage overflows for the region. In convening environmental organizations during the city campaign to pass stormwater legislation, Brenda Smith, who worked with Nine Mile Run, talked to Pittsburgh United’s Executive Director Barney Oursler about this consent decree. Smith pointed out that, while it is important to keep the city accountable in its investments, the investments the city makes pale in comparison to the upcoming ALCOSAN investment, which was going to be the largest public investment in the history of our region, forced by the EPA. Barney recalls Brenda

Building a bigger “We” 165 telling him that it was “going to be the worst investment you can imagine.” The standard option for fixing the city’s sewer system was to build bigger tunnels. But there was another solution that would have economic, social and environmental community benefits – green infrastructure. Pittsburgh United started organizing a campaign with partnering environmental groups and PIIN, having received funds from Heinz and other local foundations. In February of 2012, they launched the Clean Rivers Campaign. Jennifer Rafanan Kennedy, who led this campaign for Pittsburgh United, said: When we started, we didn’t know anything about the sewer, but we did know that people are the experts of what they want in their neighborhoods and how to organize around getting community benefit from public investment into our neighborhoods. The campaign was extensive. PIIN brought in faith leaders and people of faith. Action United canvassed to gather support from their networks. Clean Water Action organized middle- and upper-middle-income Pittsburghers. Sierra Club organized and mobilized its members to participate, and Nine Mile Run helped lead the way with technical knowledge of green infrastructure. The Clean Rivers Campaign, over the years, had many successes, including changing the narrative around the city’s sewer overflow problem and introducing an alternative solution of green infrastructure. The Campaign pushed ALCOSAN to create a “green-first, green-preferred” plan for fixing its sewer overflow problem, although this win is currently in question because ALCOSAN never fully committed to the plan. Another significant win is that the Clean Rivers Campaign organized and won a $30 million Customer Assistance Program to make sure low-income residents of Pittsburgh can get assistance with their sewer bills. Pittsburgh United’s related campaign, Our Water Campaign, which advocates for safe, affordable, public water, won both a Customer Assistance Program and a winter moratorium on water shutoffs for low-income Pittsburghers at Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, free and full lead-line replacements to reduce lead in Pittsburgh’s water system, and won a fight to keep PWSA public as the City threatened to enter a private partnership with People’s Gas.

“UPMC is the New U.S. Steel” In 2013, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, today one of Pittsburgh United’s strongest partners, was beginning to invest heavily in a battle to unionize the workers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). As Leo Girard, the President of the Steelworkers, said at a Pittsburgh United labor rally “UPMC is the new U.S. Steel.” This transition from Pittsburgh as a town dominated by US Steel to one where UPMC became king was epitomized in 2008 when UPMC spent “$750,000 to airlift its name in 20-foot letters and affix them to three sides of the U.S. Steel Tower. The symbolism couldn’t have been clearer.”24

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UPMC is the largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania and in Pittsburgh, employing 85,000 people.25 In 2013, UPMC had $10 billion in operating revenue (in 2018, the revenue projections had jumped to $20 billion), yet it pays few property taxes because of its status as a purely public charity. This status allows the medical center to receive $20 million in tax breaks each year from the city of Pittsburgh, another $30 million from the school district, as well as receive favorable terms when financing its own development. In 2012, Jeffrey Romoff, the president and CEO of UPMC, received a yearly paycheck of $6 million, while the health care workers he employed often faced low pay, no job security, a lack of a voice in the workplace and, ironically, little access to the health care they worked to provide.26 Lisa Frank, of SEIU Healthcare PA, described UPMC’s reach and impact on Pittsburgh: When they are the largest provider of care, the largest employer, the largest landowner, the largest charitable institution and they sit on the primest real estate – unless you think what they do with their wealth and power is right on, you have to contest it ... Pittsburgh is home to truly shocking disparities, often racial disparities, in health and wealth. We can’t NOT fight for healthcare justice if we give a shit about healthy communities. SEIU in 2013 sought to deepen its relationship with Pittsburgh United as it hit roadblocks in its union organizing. As Frank explained: UPMC workers had tried to form their union in the old fashion way and were met with a ferocious boss fight that included illegal firings, harassment, surveillance, the whole bit. But the workers weren’t willing to throw in the towel because it was too important to them that the largest employer in the state pay decent wages and provide decent health benefits. The fight was going to have to morph into more of a community campaign in order to be successful. Frank continued: “To us it looked like UPMC was hurting the whole community because of how they treated their workers and because they weren’t paying taxes.” To support the UPMC fight, Pittsburgh United wrote a report to highlight the incredible wealth of UPMC, the low wages and poor working conditions of workers and the subsidies resulting in millions of dollars each year being withheld from the community.27 Pittsburgh United helped to organize community support for the workers and broadened the fight to ensure UPMC would be both a good employer and community player. There were several valuable things that happened as a result of the partnership between SEIU Healthcare PA and Pittsburgh United. The partnership gave the UPMC health care workers a boost of confidence in a struggle that was incredibly hard. Workers knew they weren’t alone in what often seemed a colossal fight – they knew they had community support as they stepped up to organize workers at the largest employer in the state. The partnership with Pittsburgh United also helped SEIU understand, as Frank described,

Building a bigger “We” 167 what kind of animal UPMC was. There is a lot you learn from being a worker and you understand that relationship very well. It’s written down in your paycheck, it’s how you are treated on the floor, what you learn in the huddle. But to look more broadly at UPMC’s incredible profit, their tax-exempt status and the limitations they put on people using their health care facilities if they had the wrong insurance, was very important to linking the workers’ fight to the impact UPMC has on the broader community. For example, the teachers union ended up becoming an incredible partner because they realized that the taxes UPMC would pay if they were not tax exempt would yield millions more dollars for the school district. Pittsburgh United also helped to craft a message about UPMC as the new company store – low wage workers can barely afford the health care they work to provide and end up going into medical debt at the institution they work for. As Frank reflected: “We didn’t even know what we were dealing with until the community campaign.” In 2013, Mayor Ravenstahl brought a lawsuit against UPMC to challenge their charitable status. However, once Bill Peduto was elected in 2014, he ended up dropping the lawsuit despite explicit campaign promises and ads to continue it, the reasons why are still unclear. Rather than requiring the corporate giant to pay taxes by challenging their charity status, Mayor Peduto instead insisted he would deal with the problem by setting up an urban wealth fund that UPMC, Highmark, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon put money into. To this day, none of these entities has ever donated to the fund. Organizing to ensure UPMC is a good employer and community member is a long-term struggle. Despite UPMC workers still not having a union, there have been wins along the way. In 2016, because of incredible community pressure, UPMC announced they would (albeit slowly over time) raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour for entry-level positions in many of their Pittsburgh facilities. Also, in part because of Pittsburgh United’s work, patients with Highmark insurance were able to continue to access UPMC health care facilities. As Lisa Frank described, “There is no question that cancer patients and seniors would be out on their butts if it was not for Pittsburgh United. We won that one.” With the help of Pittsburgh United, UPMC workers also prevented UPMC from removing Martin Luther King Day as an official system-wide holiday, a proposal that was deeply offensive to UPMC’s many Black employees. The coalition that Pittsburgh United organized to support SEIU workers brought thousands of people into the streets over several years, supporting UPMC workers. As Oursler recounted: That really galvanized progressive organizations in Pittsburgh around the centrality of good jobs … a broad array of, not just labor, but all sorts of organizations learned about how people aren’t going to worry about their health in 20 years from the air they are breathing if they can’t feed their kids next week.

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This community campaign led Pittsburgh United to create the Worker Organizing Table.

“We want fries on our sandwiches, not the Flu!” The Worker Organizing Table is just what it sounds like, a space where labor and other organizations can figure out how best to support workers organizing in the city. The table ensured there was community and labor support for worker struggles in Pittsburgh. Alex Wallach Hanson, the Pittsburgh United organizer in charge of convening the Worker Organizing Table at the time said: “We had been working together to support various worker organizing struggles like fast food workers, hospital workers, adjunct professors, janitors, security guards, all working together and supporting each other. ... There was a real desire to take on something that was even broader.”28 Facilitated by Pittsburgh United, the participating organizations decided to work on a paid sick days campaign in Pittsburgh. The Coalition, including notably 32BJ who helped with the legislative campaign, worked with City Council member Corey O’Connor in 2015 to introduce paid sick leave legislation, which passed through the council a month later. Despite the quick victory, City Council members acknowledged the law may be deemed illegal because of Pittsburgh’s home rule charter which has been interpreted by the court as barring the City from regulating private business. As was expected, the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association along with five businesses in the city challenged the city’s law and the passed law sat in limbo for four long years. 32BJ signed on as an intervener when the city was sued and helped organize the city’s defense of the ordinance in court. Despite the quick victory, City Council members acknowledged the law may be deemed illegal because of Pittsburgh’s home rule charter, which has been interpreted by the court as barring the City from regulating private business. As was expected, the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association along with five businesses in the city challenged the city’s law and the passed law sat in limbo for four long years. The legal approach the city took, and won, in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, was that this law was a matter of public health, which the city does have the authority to address. The argument centered around the fact that the passage of paid sick days would prevent the spread of contagious diseases and other sicknesses. As luck would have it, Pittsburgh’s paid sick leave law went into effect days before the COVID-19 pandemic hit our region (although the timing didn’t allow people time to accrue sick days).

Affordable housing or whole foods – whose city is this? It is estimated that one in four of the city’s renters pay at least half of their income in housing costs. Rents have been rising and gentrification has swept across

Building a bigger “We” 169 Pittsburgh neighborhoods, including East Liberty, Lawrenceville, Garfield, the lower Northside, Downtown, the Strip District and the Southside. With the growth of jobs at Google, Uber and Amazon, and Pittsburgh’s ongoing efforts to attract a higher income population, high-cost rental units have increased sixfold. Meanwhile, as of 2016, there was a gap of about 17,241 affordable and available rental units in Pittsburgh for those households who earn at or below 50 percent of the median household income.29 With rising rents and increasing gentrification, Pittsburgh United saw the struggle over housing for poor and working-class Pittsburghers as an area that needed to be addressed. One particular housing crisis in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood sparked Pittsburgh United’s attention toward housing. Over 200 low-income residents of Penn Plaza, apartments in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, were given a 90-day eviction notice by the buildings’ owners in 2015. This Plaza just so happened to be located directly across the street from Action United, one of Pittsburgh United’s strongest community allies. Residents of Penn Plaza began bringing their eviction notices to Action United who began to organize a tenants’ association, supported by Pittsburgh United. This organizing effort turned into the Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition. Mayor Peduto proclaimed at a community meeting that he would make sure the city stopped the evictions. The City intervened, which didn’t stop the process, but instead extended the time allowed for residents to move out. Today, all of the residents have relocated and a Whole Foods is under construction. Community leaders have been vocal with their dissatisfaction with the mayor’s efforts. While housing activists and community members fought this East Liberty battle, Pittsburgh United focused their efforts on creating a housing trust fund for the city. Evictions continued, not only in East Liberty, but in Lawrenceville and other places across the city. As Pittsburgh United had learned through their development fights, it is hard to organize development by development, or eviction by eviction. Tenants organizing is incredibly important, but the bottom line is that property owners and developers often have every legal right to evict renters. Pittsburgh United organized an Affordable Housing Table, similar to the Worker Organizing Table, and this coalition pushed for the establishment of a housing trust fund in Pittsburgh, which would secure funding for the preservation and development of affordable housing in the city. Pittsburgh United organized tremendous public support for the initiative. Initially the plan was to create a ballot initiative. In a span of six to eight weeks, the coalition collected 15,000 signatures. Pittsburgh United was able to use this public support and political pressure to get City Council to pass the Trust Fund instead of taking it to the ballot. In 2016, this coalition won the first-ever city-wide affordable housing policy in Pittsburgh’s history – the Housing Opportunity Fund. This fund, administered by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), was established to support the development and preservation of affordable housing as well as the prevention of homelessness in the city. In 2017, the campaign won sustained funding of $10 million annually for the Fund via a small increase in the Realty Transfer Tax

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(from 4 percent to 5 percent).30 Having learned from past experiences, Pittsburgh United also fought for, and won, a process around implementation that ensured it benefited the people who most needed it, and engaged, in an authentic way, the community in directing the fund. Pittsburgh United ensured that the fund would be managed by an Advisory Board of community members, fought for increased and ongoing community input year over year and continually engaged with the URA to improve the HOF’s programs – especially those aimed at helping individuals and families weather a crisis and remain in their homes.

Incredible wins expose persistent obstacles Pittsburgh United has brought together labor, faith, environmental and community organizations into permanent coalition for over a decade, bringing the common organizing theme to life that “when we fight together, we win together.” The organization provides important infrastructure for the city, articulates a vision rooted in social, racial and economic justice and fights alongside residents to secure basic economic and social rights – the right to clean water and air, affordable housing, good paying, quality jobs and perhaps most importantly, the right to have and to use our collective voice and participate in our democracy. Pittsburgh United has had incredible wins resulting in over $1.3 billion in additional wages, benefits and community investments. Pittsburgh United’s experiences over the decade also exposed limitations to their organizing within the political and economic landscape. First, struggle after struggle and win after win exposed the problem that getting a CBA signed or passing legislation is only part of the battle. Without an eye toward implementation and accountability, wins will not always trickle down to the community. In the Hill District CBA, community first hiring resulted in few new jobs for community members. It took years to get a grocery store in the neighborhood and it has since left, leaving residents once again, with little access to fresh food. The Clean Air/Clean Construction legislation was passed in 2011 but because of poor implementation it had to be rewritten and repassed again in 2016. Pittsburgh United has also learned from these experiences and now has more of an eye toward implementation. The Affordable Housing Table and Pittsburgh United were able to include a community accountability process into the Fund, rather than having the establishment of the Fund at the end of the community engagement. This is a critical change. The other lesson Pittsburgh United learned was that organizing around issues is not enough if you don’t have leaders in office that support and advance the broader mission for economic and racial justice. At the local level this happened again and again – Pittsburgh United would make an advance only to be countered by those in power. These roadblocks have led the coalition to establish Pennsylvania United, a 501c4 to focus more broadly on making sure candidates get elected that deeply support their agenda, thereby changing what is politically possible. Sam Williamson reflected that perhaps Pittsburgh United’s greatest victory has been to change the political landscape of the city:

Building a bigger “We” 171 Without Pittsburgh United, the progressive movement in Pittsburgh would not be what it is today. We often lose sight of what the Democratic establishment looked like just eight years ago in Pittsburgh. We rightfully pushed out elected officials who would not go far enough to fight for their communities. Pittsburgh United pushed the city to become much more progressive over such a short period of time. Vocalizing a new vision for public policy and how government is managed has become the prevailing vision now in Pittsburgh. Despite this incredible, and often overlooked, victory of shifting Pittsburgh’s political landscape, there are still incredible challenges and the work doesn’t stop with the election of seemingly more progressive candidates. Executive Director Jennifer Rafanan Kennedy reflects: There was this real sense of accomplishment that our coalition’s work and success in changing the narrative of what is possible in the city had an impact on the political leadership. Yet, here we are, fighting very similar battles. We have to build more power.

“Building a bigger ‘We’”: winning the state back by expanding into western PA In the summer of 2016, Pittsburgh United began planning an effort to support UFCW in their contract campaign at Giant Eagle, a local grocery store chain that once paid its workers quality wages but has since the mid-1980s paid largely poverty-level wages.31 The grocery chain had stores across Western Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh United was on board to build regional support for the Giant Eagle workers, venturing outside of Pittsburgh and into the rest of Western Pennsylvania. Months later, in November 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency, taking Pennsylvania. This was the first time in 28 years Pennsylvania turned red in a presidential election. While much of Western PA, outside of Pittsburgh, had been slowly shifting from a blue, pro-union area to red in recent decades, it was Erie County, historically a very strong Democratic county, that turned red in 2016, impacting the result of the election. This led to much reflection by the coalition that makes up Pittsburgh United. As Lisa Frank said: When you look at the voting patterns and the degradation of civic engagement over the course of the years, what we came to was that we aren’t going to win this by having the most powerful Pittsburgh ever … winning Allegheny County isn’t going to win us the state. So, if we want to get out of the battleground problem, we are going to have to start talking to people and organizing people outside of Pittsburgh. The organization had already started this process with the Giant Eagle campaign and decided to form what is now called Pennsylvania United, a 501c4, that aims

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to build power in western Pennsylvania, invest in permanent progressive infrastructure and elect progressive candidates. Aside from the presidential election, other factors helped Pittsburgh United decide to expand beyond Pittsburgh and much of this came from their own victories and limitations. The city operates in a larger state political environment that was more conservative and had become increasingly limiting. Pittsburgh United’s Field Director, Alex Wallach Hanson, coordinates much of this organizing outside of Pittsburgh. He said this of the transition: The paid sick days campaign was really instructive to us because it showed us that however progressive the legislation we were able to pass in Pittsburgh, it really would be meaningless if we didn’t have power at the state level. The Democratic Party had essentially ceded rural areas over the past few decades, focusing their energies primarily in the cities and their surrounding areas. There has been a real void of any kind of progressive voice or vision in many western Pennsylvania counties. Wallach Hanson describes it as the “atrophying of the Democratic party infrastructure and the disinvestment by progressive organizations in this region.” Ronald Brownstein from the Atlantic reflected on the 2016 election by noting none of the divides based on race, gender, education or age was “more powerful than the distance between the Democrat’s continued dominance of the largest metropolitan areas, and the stampede toward the GOP almost everywhere else.”32 The same is true in Pennsylvania. As these exurban and rural areas turned red, conservative politicians went to Harrisburg to pursue a radical agenda aimed at strengthening corporate power, shrinking the social welfare state and taking power away from cities. Given this new reality, Pittsburgh United’s strong coalition decided it was their organizations that had the strength, resources, experience and connections to begin to contest for power in Western Pennsylvania. Many of the groups that make up Pittsburgh United (SEIU Healthcare PA, SEIU 32BJ, UFCW, Sierra Club) have strong membership, staff and connections in Western Pennsylvania, so they weren’t starting from scratch. Pittsburgh United’s member organizations had roughly 125,000 members of their unions or organizations who live in western Pennsylvania, many of whom live outside of Allegheny County. While none of these organizations had enough by themselves, when you put together the human and financial resources, Pittsburgh United had the beginnings of something. The organization began organizing member chapters throughout Western Pennsylvania, including chapters in Erie, Beaver and Washington counties. They also worked closely to support the Voice of Westmoreland leaders in developing a chapter and leaders in Crawford and Centre County. The goal of this organizing was to bring together white poor and working-class residents with communities of color around structural change, or, as Alex describes it, “building a multi-racial working-class movement for independent political power.”

Building a bigger “We” 173 The establishment of Pennsylvania United allows members to engage in an organizing cycle of issues and politics – organizing around issues most important to members and ensuring that the people who represent us, share our values. The Democratic Party and other organizations that focus solely on election work have been known for coming into low-income communities or communities of color prior to the election and then leaving immediately after. Meanwhile, community members’ problems and concerns typically remain unresolved from election to election. Pennsylvania United focuses on addressing those concerns through building permanent progressive infrastructure. Pittsburgh United is embedded in Pittsburgh with a rich history of civic engagement and therefore relies mostly on coalition building and organizing. The model outside Pittsburgh, however, is different and includes a mix of membership-based organizing and a coalition model. The way the work is done really depends on the extent of existing civic organizations in the region. As Wallach Hanson explains: This is a difference between Pittsburgh and some of these other areas where the infrastructure of other organizations is weaker so there is less of a coalition to organize. We want to be sure not to be duplicating work. In Pittsburgh there were a lot of membership organizations but not anyone who was bringing these groups and people together in coalition. In these other areas, there wasn’t much direct base movement organizing work. There is some of that but not many resourced organizations able to go between issues and political organizing. The work itself in each of these locations, while influenced and guided by Pittsburgh United’s theory of change, is really defined by the people who are living and organizing there. The organizing isn’t focused on Trump or any single politician, but on meeting the needs of members. The poor and working-class populations in these areas vary depending on the demographics, but the fact remains that all the residents of these communities need the same things: safe, affordable housing, health care, clean water and air, good jobs and a voice in how their communities work. While the mission remains the same, the campaigns are all different and defined by the members and their particular community needs.

Building power and leadership while creating spaces of hope and democracy Pittsburgh United has built a permanent coalition that works together to push the city to develop and grow more equitably. A permanent coalition is a coalition of forces that not only comes together to respond to a particular problem, but it also pools resources in an ongoing relationship, in this instance to build a more just Pittsburgh and beyond. Wallach Hanson reflected that “Building a permanent coalition is possible and necessary – it is significant that we have a deep 10 plus year old organizing relationship with many of the groups in our

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network.” Carl Redwood of the Hill District Consensus Group, who has been with the coalition since its founding, reflects: We have to keep weaving the unity – the unity happens when you keep working together and you’ve been to battle with folks. Everyone has a different lane and different strengths. But when we come together around the immediate struggles, we can begin to envision a different future. While Pittsburgh United has made significant progress in Pittsburgh, obstacles remain when organizing within the city limits. While it is true that cities have been the bastion of progressive experimentation in recent decades, the 2016 presidential election made clear that ignoring suburban and rural areas is not a winning strategy for the state or country. As Wallach Hanson said: “Cities are at the forefront of progressive change. This is true AND we have to be serious about building power in both urban and rural communities.” Building relationships and engaging people who are most impacted by the problems in our communities is both how community power is built, and what is valued most by those in Pittsburgh United. Lisa Frank explains: Leadership and leadership development continues to become the whole story to me. We cannot possibly win without more people using our democracy to assert their policy preferences. We have to help people figure out that any ordinary person can take responsibility for our collective future. This type of leadership development does not happen by having individuals implement someone else’s agenda, but by understanding power and being supported to speak truth to power. Carl Redwood explains that our organizing focus must be on the “hyper-exploited (working poor) and excluded (not in the labor force) layers of the working class. It is only when we meet their interests and needs that we will all be lifted.” As neoliberalism continually replaces the citizen with the consumer, people get pushed out of political life and into the marketplace, making the ability to engage in the construction of our communities more obtuse.33 In this shifting landscape, it becomes even more important to keep public entities public and to create spaces where people can engage in democracy. As Jennifer explains: “Everyday people are the experts. They know what their families and communities need. If there are no processes for having a voice, we try to create those spaces and bring voices together to build power.” With growing inequality, uneven development, disinvestment in low-income communities and the resulting despair, how do people come together to define a different vision? Pittsburgh United, and now Pennsylvania United, alongside their coalitional partners are experimenting to create this space: building leaders, long-term relationships and power to build a region that is better for all of us.

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Notes 1 David P. Demarest, Jr., ed., The River Ran Red: Homestead 1892 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p. 121. 2 Charles McCollester, The Point of Pittsburgh: Production and Struggle at the Forks of the Ohio (Battle of Homestead Foundation, 2008). 3 “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Population 2020,” accessed October 28, 2020, https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/pittsburgh-pa-population/. 4 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (Toledo, OH: ProQuo Books, 1984). Barry Bluestone, The Great U-Turn: Inequality in America 25 Years Later (Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Northeastern University, 2014), accessed October 28, 2020, https://luskin.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/bluestone_pres.pdf. 5 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1989). 6 Estelle Sommeiller and Mark Price, The New Guilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area and Country (Economic Policy Institute, July 2018), accessed October 28, 2020, https://www.epi.org/multimedia/unequal -states-of-america/#/Pennsylvania. 7 Matthew Raffol, Community Benefts Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development (The University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 2012). 8 Kevin Fox Gotham, “Urban Redevelopment, Past and Present,” in Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment, edited by Gotham (New York: Elsevier Press, 2001), 21–53; Raffal, “Community Benefits Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development.” 9 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Gotham, “Urban Redevelopment”; Raffal, “Community Benefits Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development.” 10 Raffal, “Community Benefits Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development.” 11 Carl Redwood and Bonnie Young Laing, “Organizing for Economic Justice: A Model,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). 12 Terri Baltimore, “Find the Rivers: How an Urban Neighborhood Embraced its Beauty,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). 13 Redwood and Young Laing, “Organizing for Economic Justice: A Model.” 14 Raffal, “Community Benefits Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development.” 15 David Feehan, “Community Re-Investment: Exploring Pittsburgh’s History of Rebuilding the Local Economy,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). 16 Redwood and Young Laing, “Organizing for Economic Justice: A Model.” 17 Greg Leroy and Anna Purinton, Community Benefts Agreements: Ensuring that Urban Redevelopment Benefts Everyone (Neighborhood Funders Group, 2005). 18 Chris Young, “Fiery Response: Controversy ignites over Hill District CBA,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/10/2008, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/fiery-response-controversy-ignites-over-hill-district-cba/Content?oid =1339591. Caption to photo reads: “One Hill Chairman Carl Redwood answers

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questions from reporters about the Community Benefits Agreement between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Hill District Community groups. After they were done talking about it, group members burned it.” Bonnie Young Laing, “Organizing Community and Labor Coalitions for Community Benefits Agreements in African American Communities: Ensuring Successful Partnerships.” Journal of Community Practices 17.1 (2009), 120–139. Redwood and Young Laing, “Organizing for Economic Justice: A Model.” Chris Potter, “Public Displays of Dissension,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/30/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/public-displays-of-dissension/ Content?oid=1342278 Chris Potter, “Demonstrators locked out of mayor’s office,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/24/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/demonstators -locked-out-of-mayors-office/Content?oid=1342268; and Chris Potter, “Public Displays of Dissension,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/30/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/public-displays-of-dissension/Content?oid=1342278. Caption reads: “Some 100 union members demonstrated outside the door to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s office for an hour, demanding to discuss city development policy.” Chris Potter, “Ravenstahl Strikes a Different Tone on Prevailing Wage Bill (UPDATED),” Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/8/2010, https://www.pghcitypaper .com/Blogh/archives/2010/01/08/ravenstahl-strikes-a-different-tone-on-prevailing-wage-bill-updated Pittsburgh United, “Unhealthy Choices: How UPMC’s Low Wages Endanger the Future of Pittsburgh’s Middle Class,” Pittsburgh United Report, 2013. Branko Marcetic, “The Hospital That Held a City Hostage,” Jacobin, 9/30/2018, https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/pittsburgh-upmc-hospital-single-payer -amazon. Moshe Z.Marvit, UPMC Drives Largest Anti-Union Campaign in Pittsburgh (The Century Foundation) https://posting.pghcitypaper.com/media/pdf/marvit_upmc_report__2_.pdf Pittsburgh United, “Unhealthy Choices: How UPMC’s Low Wages Endanger the Future of Pittsburgh’s Middle Class.” Oscar Perry Abello, “Workers Score Paid Sick Leave Victory in Pittsburgh Equity Factor,” Next City, 8/14/15, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/paid-sick-leave -pittsburgh-workers-victory Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Task Force, “Affordable Housing Task Force Findings and Recommendations to Mayor William Peduto and the Pittsburgh City Council,” The City of Pittsburgh, 5/2016, https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/ mayorpeduto/FinalReport_5_31_16_(1).pdf Just Harvest, “Pittsburgh Housing Opportunity Fund a Good Start for Affordable Housing,” Just Harvest Blog, 9/22/2016, https://www.justharvest.org/pittsburgh-housing-opportunity-fund-good-start-affordable-housing/ Stephen Herzenberg, Diana Polson, Mark Price, “The Right Choice for Giant Eagle and Western Pennsylvania: A Partnership with Workers that Improves People’s Everyday Lives and Well-Being,” Keystone Research Center, 11/2018, https://krc-pbpc.org/wp-content/uploads/20180228_GiantEagleReport Final.pdf John Russo, “The Pittsburgh Conundrum: Can You Have a Model City in a LeftBehind Region?,” The American Prospect, Summer 2017 Issue, https://prospect .org/labor/pittsburgh-conundrum/ Niklas Olsen, “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy,” Jacobin, 4/6/2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/neoliberalism-democracy-consumer -sovereignty

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References Abello, Oscar Perry, “Workers Score Paid Sick Leave Victory in Pittsburgh Equity Factor,” Next City, 8/14/15, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/paid-sick-leave -pittsburgh-workers-victory Baltimore, Terri, “Find the Rivers: How an Urban Neighborhood Embraced its Beauty,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). Edinburgh:: Community Development Journal, Ltd., New York: Oxford Univerity Press. Bluestone, Barry, The Great U-Turn: Inequality in America 25 Years Later (Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Northeastern University, 2014), accessed on October 28, 2020, https://luskin.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/bluestone _pres.pdf Bluestone, Barry and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (Toledo, OH: ProQuo Books, 1984). Demarest Jr., David P., ed., The River Ran Red: Homestead 1892 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992). Feehan, David, “Community Re-Investment: Exploring Pittsburgh’s History of Rebuilding the Local Economy,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). Edinburgh:: Community Development Journal, Ltd., New York: Oxford Univerity Press. Gotham, Kevin Fox, “Urban Redevelopment, Past and Present,” in Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment, edited by Gotham (New York: Elsevier Press, 2001). Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1989). Herzenberg, Stephen, Diana Polson, Mark Price, “The Right Choice for Giant Eagle and Western Pennsylvania: A Partnership with Workers That Improves People’s Everyday Lives and Well-Being,” Keystone Research Center, 11/2018, https://krc -pbpc.org/wp-content/uploads/20180228_GiantEagleReportFinal.pdf Just Harvest, “Pittsburgh Housing Opportunity Fund a Good Start for Affordable Housing,” Just Harvest Blog, 9/22/2016, https://www.justharvest.org/ pittsburgh-housing-opportunity-fund-good-start-affordable-housing/ Laing, Bonnie Young, “Organizing Community and Labor Coalitions for Community Benefits Agreements in African American Communities: Ensuring Successful Partnerships,” Journal of Community Practices 17.1 (2009), 120–139. Leroy, Greg and Anna Purinton, Community Benefts Agreements: Ensuring That Urban Redevelopment Benefts Everyone (Neighborhood Funders Group, 2005). Oakland, CA: Neighborhood Funders Group. Marcetic, Branko, “The Hospital That Held a City Hostage,” Jacobin, 9/30/2018, https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/pittsburgh-upmc-hospital-single-payer -amazon. Marvit, Moshe Z., UPMC Drives Largest Anti-Union Campaign in Pittsburgh (Century Foundation), https://posting.pghcitypaper.com/media/pdf/marvit _upmc_report__2_.pdf McCollester, Charles, The Point of Pittsburgh: Production and Struggle at the Forks of the Ohio (Battle of Homestead Foundation, 2008). Homestead, PA.

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Olsen, Niklas, “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy,” Jacobin, 4/6/2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/neoliberalism-democracy-consumer -sovereignty Pittsburgh United, “Unhealthy Choices: How UPMC’s Low Wages Endanger the Future of Pittsburgh’s Middle Class,” Pittsburgh United Report, 2013. Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Task Force, “Affordable Housing Task Force Findings and Recommendations to Mayor William Peduto and the Pittsburgh City Council,” The City of Pittsburgh, 5/2016, https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/ mayorpeduto/FinalReport_5_31_16_(1).pdf “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Population 2020,” accessed October 28, 2020, https:// worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/pittsburgh-pa-population/ Potter, Chris, “Public Displays of Dissension,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/30/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/public-displays-of-dissension/ Content?oid=1342278 Potter, Chris, “Demonstrators Locked out of Mayor’s Office,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/24/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/demonstators-locked -out-of-mayors-office/Content?oid=1342268 Potter, Chris, “Public Displays of Dissension,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 7/30/2009, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/public-displays-of-dissension/ Content?oid=1342278 Potter, Chris, “Ravenstahl Strikes a Different Tone on Prevailing Wage Bill (UPDATED),” Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/8/2010, https://www.pghcitypaper .com/Blogh/archives/2010/01/08/ravenstahl-strikes-a-different-tone-on -prevailing-wage-bill-updated Raffol, Matthew, Community Benefts Agreements in the Political Economy of Urban Development (The University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 2012). Chicago, Illinois (IL). Redwood, Carl and Bonnie Young Laing, “Organizing for Economic Justice: A Model,” in Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, edited by Akwugo Emejulu (Community Development Journal, 2012). Edinburgh:: Community Development Journal, Ltd., New York: Oxford Univerity Press. Russo, John, “The Pittsburgh Conundrum: Can you Have a Model City in a LeftBehind Region?,” The American Prospect, Summer 2017 Issue, https://prospect .org/labor/pittsburgh-conundrum/ Sommeiller, Estelle, and Mark Price, The New Guilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area and Country (Economic Policy Institute, July 2018). Accessed on October 28, 2020, https://www.epi.org/multimedia/ unequal-states-of-america/#/Pennsylvania Young, Chris “Fiery Response: Controversy Ignites over Hill District CBA,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/10/2008, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh /fiery-response-controversy-ignites-over-hill-district-cba/Content?oid=1339591.

10 Racial justice is economic justice Chicago’s Grassroots Collaborative expands economic fairness by prioritizing racial equity Marc Doussard Introduction Many of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) affiliates chronicled in this book added overt appeals to racial and ethnic justice to their core focus on economic issues during the 2010s. Chicago’s affiliate, Grassroots Collaborative, began this journey substantially earlier and amidst different circumstances. The organization began in 1997 as a small and provisionally funded body tasked with anchoring the city’s first living wage campaign. Grassroots transformed in 2007 with the arrival of current Executive Director Amisha Patel, a former SEIU organizer committed to transforming the organization into an advocate for racial justice. Even as other participants in community-labor organizing in Chicago focused on conventional economic justice organizing, such as a 2006 living wage bill for Big Box retailers and later minimum wage laws, Grassroots instead followed its focus on race to campaigns that engaged neighborhood inequalities within the extremely segregated city. After the Great Recession, Grassroots played central roles in three campaigns that anticipated today’s organizing agenda across US cities: (1) The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike, (2) a campaign to reform Chicago pervasive and undemocratic Tax Increment Financing program and (3) activism against state and local fiscal austerity. A focus on public spending unites these campaigns, and that focus derives from the organization’s underlying shift toward prioritizing racial justice. The mechanics of Grassroots Collaborative’s transformation provide valuable information for organizations working at the intersection of race, class and labor. The changes also provide conceptual guidelines for understanding the limits and possibilities of turning economic advocacy coalitions toward racial justice work. Postwar community organizing in the United States built on Saul Alinsky’s guidelines for developing pragmatic organizations that avoided ideology and cut small, incremental issues from large and abstract problems. As part of this strategy for rendering large problems workable, Alinsky counseled organizers to avoid the “third rail” issue of race – racism, he noted, was so pervasive and cut across so many issues that centering race in organizing threatened to undermine the type of control over issues that community organizers otherwise coveted. Even as community organizations began to address racial inequality directly in

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the 1980s and 1990s, the strategies and tactics of economic organizing retained Alinsky’s cautious incrementalism. For most of this period, observers understood racial justice frameworks as normative assets but practical liabilities. Grassroots Collaborative’s ultimate success on the racial justice issues it began to prioritize in the mid-1990s suggests that hypothesized trade-off is false. Advocacy for racial justice deepened Grassroots’ connections with citizens, helped to assemble a citywide coalition of neighborhood activists and provided a simplifying framework for communicating campaign messages about the technically exacting details of public investments and finance. The distinctiveness of Grassroots’ organizational goals, and the growing effectiveness of its advocacy for justice causes that expand on the familiar repertoire of workplace-focused measures, stand out. The context in which Grassroots Collaborative made these changes heightens the stakes of understanding its pivot to racial justice work. Extreme levels of racial segregation and the continued power of a governing regime that caters to developers have long made economic and racial justice reforms in Chicago both necessary and difficult. Grassroots’ pivot to racial justice work began under these prohibitively difficult circumstances: the organization faced a degree of difficulty that makes its transformation and success in using racial justice themes particularly notable.

From living wages to racial justice Grassroots Collaborative began as an ad hoc way to run Chicago’s first living wage campaign at the end of the 1990s. More specifically, it began at Manny’s delicatessen in the South Loop, where John Donoghue (Chicago Coalition for the Homeless), Madeline Talbot (ACORN), Keith Kelleher (SEIU), James Thindwa (Jobs for Justice) and a rotating cast of fellow travelers met to coordinate strategy for the then speculative effort to win a Chicago living wage ordinance.1 The evolution of community and labor organizers’ demands from the modest pay increases entailed in living wage provides a useful way to trace the organization’s evolution. Grassroots Collaborative formally incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2000, after Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley reluctantly signed the city’s first living wage law. The organization had just one or two full-time staff members in that period, and its work hewed closely to the template peer organizations in other cities pursued during that time: Grassroots conducted a series of local, citybased campaigns, organized marches focused on the rights of Chicago’s growing immigrant population and “flexed our muscles as much as we could on state policy fights,” as current director Amisha Patel puts it. Grassroots expanded its reach and capacities during the failed campaign to pass a $10 living wage for Big Box stores in 2006. The Big Box campaign, as it came to be known, advanced both the organization and Chicago’s network of community and labor organizers in significant ways. At the time organizers began to build support from Chicago’s 50-member City Council in 2005, the Big Box bill was by some measure the highest proposed municipal minimum wage in the country.2 Bigger and more ambitious than Chicago’s prior living wage law, the Big Box campaign

Racial justice is economic justice 181 attempted to extend the still-novel project of winning economic justice goals through municipal legislation. Instead, the failure of the labor-intensive Big Box campaign ended the narrow approach to economic policy that had begun with living wage ordinances. Grassroots Collaborative coordinated community organization and labor organizing for the Big Box law. Its efforts included securing in secret commitments to vote yes from a veto-proof two-thirds majority of City Council members. When the City Council passed the bill with that overwhelming majority in a surprise vote in June 2006, the decision to devote community and labor effort to the labor-intensive work of machine-style organizing appeared to payoff. The rapid collapse of the Big Box law over the next two months, however, led participating community and labor leaders to reassess. In announcing his veto and leading a campaign to reverse several of the “yes” votes needed to override the veto, Daley pointed to recent approvals for South and West Side Walmart to label the bill a racist attempt to price Big Box retailers out of majority African American neighborhoods.3 Organizers responded by door knocking and direct outreach on the South and West sides, but found their message lacking: explaining why the law only applied to Big Box retailers, and laying out the case that it wouldn’t cause job loss, weakened their core message about economic fairness (*). Additionally, as one of the campaign’s lead organizers noted, the South and West Sides really did lack basic retail, and residents were reluctant to support a law that might deter the promised Walmart. Grassroots and the organizations it coordinated had devoted years and substantial portions of their slender resources to the Big Box campaign. But Daley needed just two months to reverse the City Council’s vote and kill the proposal. This outcome led Grassroots Collaborative and the organizations it coordinated to re-examine the ratio of resources to potential payoff in campaigns like the Big Box campaign, just as the dissolution of many community benefits agreements during the Great Recession led their proponents to seek less risky and more effective approaches (see Chapter 16, this volume).

From class to race: Grassroots diversifes its staff and objectives In 2007, Grassroots hired former SEIU organizer Amisha Patel as its new executive director. Patel, who had added community organizing to her SEIU duties for workplace organizing, planned to change Grassroots’ focus. Her insistence that the organization begin to prioritize racial justice fits with the organization’s postmortem analysis of the Big Box campaign. She recalls: To take the position at grassroots collaborative was not an easy one. I went in with a few pre-conditions, one was that we needed to talk frankly about race. … During Big Box, the face of people on the protests was Black and Latino. But we weren’t talking about race, and that left an opportunity for Rich Daley to talk about race. Patel accepted the job running Grassroots on the condition that the organization begin to prioritize racial justice organizing. That work began internally, with

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a focus on addressing the gulf between the predominantly white leadership of Grassroots and its member organizations, and memberships based in communities of color: There was a lot of internal work that we did. I led a series of internal conversations about race from our members. … Just, you know, what does it mean to be a White leader in a Black organization? What’s the responsibility, what’s the steps that need to be taken to transition leadership? The Grassroots staff quickly and steadily expanded to include the organization’s first full-time organizer, and to gradually add additional organizers, social media specialists and policy analysts. The shift in internal focus and staff composition led to changes in political organizing. In particular, Grassroots prioritized inequalities in public spending, which shape Chicago’s deep race and class inequalities. Grassroots followed the Big Box campaign by organizing protests against public subsidies for Big Box retailers, a strategic shift that rerouted conflict away from individual retailer locations vulnerably to Daley allies’ messaging about race and toward city-level financial decisions in which the obvious preference given to business and white neighborhoods fit Grassroots’ long-term messages. Grassroots and its allies targeted multiple problems in public finance. On the revenue side, they focused on commonplace tax breaks for large retailers and otherwise profitable businesses. To link subsidies and tax breaks to public spending, Grassroots targeted Chicago’s enormous and problematic Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program. TIF districts, which covered more than one-third of the city’s area, earmark all property tax growth, including ordinary growth due to inflation, for discretionary funds controlled by City Council members.4 On paper, TIF funds can support a range of community-friendly measures, including job training, public health and affordable housing. In practice, TIF subsidizes the real estate development that displaces low-income communities of color, and decreases public school funding-per-pupil in areas of population growth.5 More broadly, Chicago’s persistent fiscal deficits and limited spending on basic services in low-income neighborhoods originate in the extremely regressive tax structure of Illinois. Organizing around finance presented both the challenge of building communities of interest on each of these issues, and the prospect of constructing a movement with influence across and beyond Chicago. Shifting focus from conventional labor-based organizing to advocacy on public finance entailed replacing the familiar language of better pay and working conditions with messages that appealed to the comparatively abstract subject matter of tax structure, public spending and budget priorities. The trade worked poorly at first: Grassroots organizers and their allies devoted significant resources to formal education on tax rates, public budgets and other numerically dense depictions of fiscal inequality. Number-packed PowerPoints, however, failed to connect directly with community members. Over time, Grassroots’ commitment to racial justice organizing solved the problem: the language of racial equality and critiques of institutional racism simplified messaging around public finance

Racial justice is economic justice 183 in a way that enabled movement participants to take action on the issue without becoming experts on effective tax rates, equalized assessed value, credit swaps or the other components of the complex machinery of fiscal inequality. Three organizing campaigns that came to fruition in the 2010s demonstrate the value of racial justice organizing to the broader project of contesting structural fiscal and economic inequality.

The Chicago teachers union strikes: prioritizing the community in community-labor organizing Grassroots Collaborative reduced its support for conventional community-labor organizing campaigns focused on wages after the failure of the Big Box bill in 2006. But it participated vigorously in the Chicago Teachers Union’s successful strikes organized during 2010. The inequalities in Chicago’s public schools overlapped with several of Grassroots’ core commitments. First, inequalities in public school funding and quality across neighborhoods represented an especially obvious example of racial inequality in public spending; Chicago’s extreme residential segregation magnified those inequalities. Second, low compensation for teachers magnified these problems and made clear that the city did not prioritize public services for students of color. Third, the Chicago Teachers Union made its case for educational investment by engaging the communities surrounding schools – an approach that overlapped with Grassroots’ commitment to building a citywide coalition of communities of color. The first Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012 responded to the same problems of structural racism and fiscal inequality that Grassroots was determined to prioritize. The Great Recession of 2007–2009 dramatically reduced Chicago’s sales, property and income tax revenue, and created shortages across every area of the city budget.6 In 2011, newly elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded with budget cuts, service reductions and facilities closures that made clear the racial hierarchy of the city’s spending priorities. Among the many proposed and actual cuts were bus services on the Black South and West Sides, neighborhood libraries, mental health clinics and public schools: Emanuel’s Renaissance 2011 plan proposed closing dozens of schools on the South and West sides, and created a pathway to replacing those public schools with private charter schools.7 The obvious racism of targeting cuts on low-income communities of color led the Chicago Teachers Union and Grassroots to “go for progressive education organizing from the point of revenue, and for Black and Latino kids, who are 90% of the school district.” The Chicago Teachers Union’s work preparing for the 2012 strike built new connections between community and neighborhood organizations, which union members recruited and educated on school funding (Doussard and Fulton, 2020). CTU leaders also linked austerity to racism, most memorably by publishing a report describing Chicago’s school spending as “Educational Apartheid.”8 Grassroots organized its own members to support the CTU strike in 2012. But the organizing actions it undertook also served the goal of developing its

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own members and educating union members in Grassroots’ member organizations about fiscal inequality writ large. In a representative action, Grassroots organized a 6,000-person pro-teacher march on the magnificent mile, which ended at a Hyatt Hotel that had received Tax Increment Financing subsidies even as Emanuel proposed closing schools. The visibility of school closures, the Educational Apartheid framework and the glaring discrepancies between subsidized development in the Loop and closing neighborhood schools simplified the problem of austerity in a way that education sessions on Tax Increment Financing and regressive income taxes could not: We made flyers for that action. … It was definitely targeted towards members of the public on Michigan Ave., but our primary audience was actually towards union members themselves. We were able to have a conversation with thousands and thousands of rank-and-file members that no other moment could have provided. Grassroots’ contributing role in the CTU strike was instrumentally important in and of itself. When the CTU won most of its demands from Emanuel in 2012, it both damaged the mayor and planted seeds that would become the “red for ed” movement elsewhere. The contents of the CTU’s demands represented another victory: in addition to winning gains on standard collectively bargained measures about pay and working conditions, the CTU demanded and won increased public investment in social services for low-income neighborhoods and students.9 The strike also changed Grassroots’ approach to campaigning against austerity. In order to tie the CTU strike to the campaign against Tax Increment Financing, Grassroots settled on the message of blaming Wall Street for cutting public budgets. The link between Wall Street and austerity allowed Grassroots organizers to convert the abstractions of finance into conventional organizing language: issues, individuals, organizations and targets. Framing educational funding as a racist problem originating with private finance helped Grassroots to develop effective action on extremely complicated and ill-advised financial deals negotiated by the Chicago Public Schools. The details of the deals at first presented a stout barrier to organizing. In 2003, CPS head (and future US Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan hired a banker who brought financial engineering techniques to the Schools’ borrowing. In one credit-swap deal, CPS issued $1 billion variable – floating – interest rate securities, which cost less in the short term but added more than $100 million additional debt to the school system during the 2008 financial crisis.10 Paying 9 figures to Wall Street while closing more than 50 neighborhood schools to cut costs seemed like an opportunity to convince residents of alternatives to austerity, but only if Grassroots organizers could make financial derivatives as clear of an organizing target as higher wages and conventional community-labor organizing goals. Grassroots and its allies began by attempting financial education. But presenting PowerPoints with definitions and tables on interest rate swaps did not connect with community organizations. Appealing to racial justice provided a

Racial justice is economic justice 185 solution. Community members understood how to engage financial technicalities once Grassroots tied banking to systemic racism. Patel explains: We have this set of 15 or 20 images with some words in it, showing up in history the intersection of white supremacy and capitalism. It was useful in … doing some of this fundamental work in terms of who broke the economy and who’s responsible for fixing it. … We pointed out, for example, that literal Wall Street itself was one of the first slave trading posts. Once the language of structural racism made the interest rate swaps legible, Grassroots connected CPS’s finances to a choice Emanuel had made to favor bankers over Chicagoans. Other cities that entered into swap deals before the Great Recession had sued banks to negate or renegotiate the terms of payment. Emanuel by contrast simply paid the banks the full amount of interest Chicago owed in a lump-sum payment. Grassroots could not stop the payment, but the outrage it seeded by publicizing Chicago’s decision damaged Emanuel elsewhere. Gradually, Grassroots would use issues like the interest rate swaps to build campaigns to re-invest in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Organizations like Grassroots frequently support unions like the Chicago Teachers Union. Grassroots’ prior commitment to racial justice organizing, however, transformed that support in ways that benefited both organizations. Like Grassroots, the Teachers Union came to its current form of activism via an analysis that centered racial inequality alongside, and sometime above, conventional workplace organizing issues such as pay and working conditions. Paying prior attention to racial equity within its own membership organizations positioned Grassroots to support the CTU strikes in ways that extend significantly beyond simply turning out members to rallies and protests (although Grassroots undertook that work as well). In organizing members to support the Teachers Union, Grassroots developed an increasingly clear and comprehensive set of messages about fiscal inequality and structural racism. These messages instrumentally supported the Teachers Union strikes and helped to activate members on the teachers’ behalf. They also provided a framework for expanding an advocacy coalition focused on finance, by tying disinvestment and privatization in Chicago Public Schools to austerity and racial inequality in public spending writ large. Ultimately, support for the Teachers Union helped Grassroots to expand its other work on behalf of racial justice causes.

Alternatives to gentrifcation: racial justice anchors the fght against Tax Increment Financing After the Great Recession, Tax Increment Financing posed substantial longterm and immediate problems for Chicago’s low-income neighborhoods. Illinois essentially set up Tax Increment Financing (TIF) in the 1970s, when it allowed cities to set aside for special use a portion of future property tax growth within an area designed as “blighted” (Weber, 2014). The elastic

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properties of the legal term blight allowed Chicago to center TIF districts in high-value neighborhoods, including much of the Loop. TIF funds quickly grew into sources of discretionary spending for City Council members who already enjoyed significant discretion over city funds. At the turn of the century, TIF districts covered nearly one-third of the city. The assignment of downtown, inner-ring neighborhoods and much of the expensive lake from to TIF districts diverted hundreds of millions of dollars of new tax revenues from Chicago’s General Revenue Fund to aldermanic discretion. Community and neighborhood organizations had long targeted TIF as a way to dramatize the impact of public spending decisions. Grassroots Collaborative’s actions against TIF after the Great Recession used the framework of racial justice to expand the coalition opposing TIF, eventually winning the reform legislation that activists had long sought. Like austerity, debt swaps and school funding, TIF presents low-income residents with layers of challenges – challenges whose diversity and complexity pose a significant test to organizing techniques that work best when citizens join together to oppose a single issue or problem. TIF districts increase long-term shortages in general-purpose city spending by freezing general-purpose property tax revenues at the level of the TIF district’s founding year, and earmarking all future growth in assessed property values – the “increment” in the title – for activities deemed to remedy blight. TIF ignores the reality of inflation: as property values, taxes and the cost of basic services expand each year, the real value of tax revenues designated for general spending diminishes. Furthermore, Chicago typically designates TIFs in areas of obvious interest to professionals and real estate developers, increasing the number of people and buildings for whom the city must provide services out of this diminished fiscal base (Weber 2014). Grassroots shifted its organizational focus toward TIF around the Great Recession. Initially, organizers focused on TIF support for Big Box retail development, including new Walmart super centers on the South and West Sides. The organization expanded its organizing commitments on TIF after determining the TIF program had multiple assets for the practical work of engaging members and building alliances. First, the transactional approach Chicago City Council members take to TIF means “there’s always another deal [for us] to organize.” Second, because TIF shaped Chicago’s investment in the built environment throughout the city, it provided a way for Grassroots to engage residents who were not attached to union organizing campaigns or labor-supported causes. Third, TIF provided clear grounds on which to oppose Mayor Rahm Emanuel: IT was obvious to us that he was going to be the next mayor. So we thought in advance about what are the issues we want to lift up, and what are the opportunities. We did an action the day before the inauguration in 2011 around a TIF surplus. … This was the time when we learned that Chicago Mercantile Exchange. … Had got a $15 million TIF. We went after the Central-LaSalle TIF in particular. The Lyric Opera got TIF money to add new brass door handles.

Racial justice is economic justice 187 The Mercantile Exchange used its subsidies to fund reconstruction of its bathrooms, a development to which Grassroots responded with the Alinskyianinspired tact of marching with a golden toilet (the present whereabouts of which remain a subject of debate). During the Emanuel administration (2011–2019) Grassroots committed to organizing around TIF spending and to foregrounding racial inequalities in where the City spent TIF funds and in the budget shortfalls TIF causes elsewhere. After Emanuel’s inauguration, Grassroots’ organizers, members and member organizations talked increasingly explicitly about the racial inequalities in TIF and public spending. In social media, interviews with newspapers, testimony at City Hall and basic membership development activities, organizers noted repeatedly that TIF funds subsidized developers who were making low-investment risks in high-value neighborhoods, and that growing TIF dollar values starved public services on which communities of color relied. The argument that Chicago’s TIF program was fundamentally racist gradually ascended to the status of conventional wisdom. Journalists, including influential Crain’s Chicago Business columnist Greg Hinz, began to include analysis of racial inequalities in stories and columns about TIF-sponsored development. Recasting TIF as a tool of racist development eventually led to the reformation of the TIF program itself. The impetus came in 2018, which the City proposed more than $1.3 billion in subsidies for the Lincoln Yards development in the heart of the expensive Near North Side. Working with Grassroots, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights filed a suit charging that both the Lincoln Yards development and Chicago’s TIF program itself violated the Illinois Civil Rights Act by redirecting public resources from low-income neighborhoods of color to high-income, white neighborhoods (Raice 2019). Even though Chicago succeeded in dismissing the lawsuit, the headlines and the claims of systemic racism led to other victories. In 2020, new mayor Lori Lightfoot authorized several TIF reforms, including using boards of community representatives to evaluate proposed TIF spending (Hinz 2020). The TIF reforms Lightfoot authorized were inevitably limited. The mechanisms of community review of TIFs raised particular concern, as a similar reform in Detroit was quickly co-opted by developers.11 At the same time, foreground racial justice led to city action that had eluded reformers for decades. Doing so also helped to build a movement that continues to pressure the mayor and City Council to follow through on the promise to make TIF more equitable.

Crossing scales and investing in communities of color: the Illinois people’s agenda The victories on public school funding and Tax Increment Financing arrived in the midst of ongoing and worsening fiscal austerity. Chicago and Illinois recovered slowly from the Great Recession; when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in March 2020, neither the city nor the state had returned to its pre-recession employment levels. The slow recovery originated at least partially in the State of

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Illinois’ budget problems. During the booming 1990s and the favorable budget years of the 2001–2007 business cycle, the city and the state had deferred billions in pension payments as a way to spend without raising taxes.12 Making up for those deferred payments and the missed interest progressively squeezed public budgets. The problems accelerated after the record-low turnout of the 2014 election, when Illinois voters handed the governor’s office to aggressive anti-union and anti-tax governor Bruce Rauner. Facing near-supermajorities in the Democratic-controlled state legislature, Rauner attempted to force a choice between core Democratic constituencies and a series of so-called reforms, including passage of Right-to-Work legislation, modeled on the changes Scott Walker enacted in Wisconsin. He used the budget as leverage, refusing to sign any state budget that did not enact pension cuts and restrictions on union bargaining.13 As a result, Illinois went without a budget for nearly three years. Routine state bills continued to be paid through courtnegotiated settlements, but funding for social services, education and other basic programs vital to community organizations suffered.14 Grassroots’ deliberate transformation into a racial justice organization and its growing opposition to austerity placed the organization in a position to lead on anti-austerity advocacy. As Illinois entered its second year without a budget in 2016, Grassroots released the Illinois People’s Agenda, an influential document that combined critiques of austerity with simple measures showing that Illinois lagged other Midwestern states in basic social spending. Illinois was the 5th most-populous and 13th-richest US state at the time the People’s Agenda was issued. Yet as Grassroots showed, state spending on education, higher education, health care and social services ranked in the bottom fifth of all US states – much closer to the levels found in Mississippi than to spending in comparably wealthy states with large financial sectors.15 As early as the first year without a budget, community organizations and unions unaffiliated with Grassroots credited the organization with shifting organizers’ focus from work to budget and from Chicago to Chicago’s relationship with the state.16 Following one of organizing’s most basic traditions, the Illinois People’s Agenda pointed to trade-offs. The state’s regressive tax structure, Grassroots argued, amounted to a decision to value high-income households over basic public services. Similarly, the higher interest rates Chicago and the State paid on debt favored banks at the expense of citizens. These points resonate intuitively with many of the activists who undertake the day-to-day work of basic organizing. Bundling them together in a single narrative that linked Chicago to Springfield and identified discrete choices in public spending progressively shifted debate away from tax rates and toward decisions in public investment. Leaders of Chicago’s community organizations and unions credit the People’s Budget and its supporting messages with shaping the discussion about state and local fiscal policy, and with building a constituency demanding increased state spending on education, health care and social services. The People’s Budget became the source of two separate organizing campaigns against austerity in late 2019. At the state level, a super-majority of the Illinois

Racial justice is economic justice 189 General Assembly voted to amend the state constitution to allow a progressive income tax. The measure proposed to raise billions in additional revenue via higher taxes on the wealthy; it represented a condition of possibility for increasing state spending on the services championed by the People’s Budget. Singling out the highest-income earners, however, had the effect of inducing Illinois’ richest citizens, including Hedge Fund billionaire Ken Griffin, to contribute tens of millions of dollars to opposing the amendment. It lost in the November 2020 general election. In Chicago, Grassroots and its collaborators turned the Illinois People’s Agenda into the basis of a new city-level organizing campaign in Fall 2019. The Reimagine Chicago budget proposed a number of reforms that would become commonplace on the urban equity agenda after the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd. As Patel explains, Reimagine Chicago provided a way to go against [new mayor and former prosecutor Lori] Lightfoot. It’s the idea of defunding the police to fund neighborhood health clinics and basic services. The first step is to make sure the police budget doesn’t rise annually. … Abolition isn’t actually at the forefront, but it’s a way think about another $150 or $200 million going to actually keeping us safe. Organizers on the Grassroots staff used Reimagine Chicago to continue building networks in the city’s low-income communities of color. The narrative of this work presently ends with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the ensuing complications for basic, grassroots organizing. Yet Grassroots’ commitment to racial justice work, and its commitment to cutting discreet issues out of the problem of finance, placed it in a position to link public safety, public health and racial disparity before the public health and police violence crises of 2020 drew national attention to those issues.

Expanding justice Grassroots Collaborative continues to work on labor-focus campaigns. The organization functioned as a hub for community and labor organizations involved in passing employment standards laws in Chicago, including a $13 minimum wage in 2014, paid time off in 2017 and fair workweek and $15 minimum wage measures in 2019. Grassroots also coordinated efforts to expand those Chicago laws to cover the rest of Cook County (the nation’s second most populous). The role that Grassroots and its member organizations play in linking unions and community organizations on those campaigns resembles the role other PWF affiliates play in their own jurisdictions. Ample reason exists to examine the organization’s victories, dilemmas and innovations in that work. Yet the organization distinguishes itself by acting early to supplant class-centered organizing with an approach to building power that focuses first on racial equity. The tension between these two approaches manifests in all corners of political-economic analysis in the United States today, from the right’s complaints about so-called social justice warriors to

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the call to defund the police to the scholarly contest between critical race theory and Marxian analyses of social class. Grassroots pivoted to racial justice organizing early and fully. Its development over the subsequent 13 years provides a lot of valuable material with which to make sense of the work racial justice does in winning the goals named by the Partnership for Working Families and its fellow travelers. Grassroots Collaborative’s achievements in the past decade suggest, simply, that the project of organizing for racial justice directly enhances economic justice organizing. Each of the three campaigns documented in this chapter shows concrete ways in which actions designed to diminish racial inequality expand the coalitions on which economic justice organizing depends. Grassroots’ support for the Chicago Teachers Union grew out of years focusing on the racial gap in public spending within a highly segregated city. Grassroots played an important role in organizing community support for the teachers’ strike because it had already developed relationships with community organizations spread across Chicago’s heterogeneous neighborhoods, and it linked disinvestment from public schools to wealth inequality, structural racism and the excess of power that finance industries hold. More subtly, but equally important, supporting the teachers led to Grassroots extending its analysis of racial inequalities in finance across political scales; that work eventually placed the State of Illinois’ regressive tax code at the center of organizing that had previously treated Chicago as a de facto island. Racial justice organizing contributed to victories on Tax Increment Financing in a more direct way. Chicago activists had worked for decades to reform the byzantine system of property tax set-asides, but always faltered on the complexity of the issues at hand and the complications of their own analysis. Terming TIF racist, and naming the racial implications of individual TIF decisions, added a structural coherence and simplicity that had been missing. The legal claim that TIF was fundamentally racist failed, but pointing to that claim as evidence of racism converted the problem into one elected officials could no longer sweep aside. The language of racial justice simplified the issue in a way that years of prior efforts failed. The impact of the Illinois People’s Agenda and Reimagine Chicago remains in doubt. As of this writing, the Progressive Income Tax amendment failed, and calls to fund community health rather than policing remain inspired without clearly influencing policy. Skepticism (or at this point, anxiety) about the impact of these campaigns for anti-racist, economically equitable public spending should not obscure appreciation of the work those campaigns do in demoting austerity from a taken-for-granted conclusion to an unpopular decision elected officials have to defend. The history of the other work undertaken by Grassroots Collaborative and its fellow-travelling organizations suggests that success will arrive. The organization’s transformation is itself instructive. Grassroots Collaborative was founded in the 1990s to support Chicago’s first living-wage campaign, which resulted in a law that impacted few workers and inspired little enthusiasm from its supporters. Twenty years later, living wage campaigns have flourished so thoroughly that they now stand as minimum wage campaigns, which draw little

Racial justice is economic justice 191 enough opposition that Grassroots downplays its contributions to their success. Reversing disinvestment in education and winning action against the taxpayer giveaways of Tax Increment Financing developed similarly. Winning these campaigns took longer than organizers could have expected at first, but the victories did come, and the returns on prioritizing racial justice suggest Grassroots will continue to expand its coalition and influence.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

(Tattersall 2013). (Doussard 2015). (Sites 2007). (Weber 2014). (Weber 2014). (Pagano 2013; Ashton, Doussard, and Weber 2014). (Lipman 2013). (Caref et al. 2012). (Ashby and Bruno 2016). (Grotto and Gillers 2014). (Berglund 2020). (Center for Tax and Budget Accountability 2018). (Bosman 2015). (Mendoza n.d.). (Grassroots Collaborative 2016). (Doussard and Lesniewski 2017).

References Ashby, Steven, and Robert Bruno. 2016. A Fight for the Soul of Public Education: The Story of the Chicago Teachers Strike. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ashton, Philip, Marc Doussard, and Rachel Weber. 2014. “Reconstituting the State: City Powers and Exposures in Chicago’s Infrastructure Leases.” Urban Studies, 0042098014532962. Berglund, Lisa. 2020. “Early Lessons from Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance.” Journal of the American Planning Association. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi /full/10.1080/01944363.2020.1823243. Bosman, Julie. 2015. “One State’s Struggle to Make Ends Meet: Why Illinois Is without a Budget.” October 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/us/ illinois-budget-stalemate-rauner-and-democrats-divided.html. Caref, Carol, Sarah Hainds, Kurt Hilgendorf, Pavlyn Jankov, and Kevin Russell. 2012. The Black and White of Education in Chicago’s Public Schools: Class, Charters and Chaos. Chicago: Chicago Teachers Union. Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. 2018. More of the Same: The FY2019 General Fund Budget Fails to Address Illinois’ Long-Term Structural Fiscal Issues. Chicago: Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. https://www.ctbaonline.org /file/549/download?token=Dl1gtHwu. Doussard, Marc. 2015. “Equity Planning Outside City Hall: Rescaling Advocacy to Confront Complex Problems.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X15580021.

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Doussard, Marc, and Brad Fulton 2020. “Organizing Together: Benefits and Drawbacks of Community -Labor Coalitions for Community Organizations” Social Service Review 94(1): 36–74. Doussard, Marc, and Jacob Lesniewski. 2017. “Fortune Favors the Organized: How Chicago Activists Won Equity Reforms under Austerity.” Journal of Urban Affairs 39(5): 618–634. Grassroots Collaborative. 2016. The People’s Agenda: A Path Towards Economic Prosperity for All Illinois Families. Chicago: Grassroots Collaborative. https:// grassrootscollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ThePeoplesAgend a071316.pdf. Grotto, Jason, and Heather Gillers. 2014. “Risky Bonds Prove Costly for Chicago Public Schools.” Chicago Tribune, November 7. Hinz, Greg. 2020. “Lightfoot Reveals Her TIF Overhaul Plan.” Crain’s Chicago Business, February 5, sec. Greg Hinz On Politics. https://www.chicagobusiness .com/greg-hinz-politics/lightfoot-reveals-her-tif-overhaul-plan. Lipman, Pauline. 2013. “The Rebirth of the Chicago Teachers Union and Possibilities for a Counter-Hegemonic Education Movement.” Monthly Review 65 (2): 1. Mendoza, Susana. n.d. Consequences of Illinois’ 2015–2017 Budget Impasse and Fiscal Outlook. Springfield, IL: Office of the Illinois Comptroller. Accessed November 11, 2020. https://illinoiscomptroller.gov/financial-data/find-a-report/special -fiscal/consequences-of-illinois-2015-2017-budget-impasse-and-fiscal-outlook/. Pagano, Michael A. 2013. Metropolitan Resilience in a Time of Economic Turmoil. Chicago, University of Illinois Press. Raice, Shayndi. 2019. “Activists Try to Stop a Huge Chicago Development Over $1.3 Billion in Tax Incentives.” Wall Street Journal, July 11. https://www.wsj .com/articles/activists-try-to-stop-a-huge-chicago-development-over-1-3-billion -in-tax-incentives-11562849876. Sites, William. 2007. “Beyond Trenches and Grassroots? Reflections on Urban Mobilization, Fragmentation, and the Anti-Wal-Mart Campaign in Chicago.” Environment and Planning. Part A 39 (11): 2632. Tattersall, Amanda. 2013. Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change. Cornell University Press. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr= &id=gvPa4uYKJYIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=tattersall+power+in+coalition&ots =JkAehDj0dn&sig=sv1TFv24gjAU1Cfoe8JsFsYMLrI. Weber, Rachel. 2014. “Tax Increment Financing in Theory and Practice.” In Financing Economic Development in the 21st Century, 297–315. Routledge.

Part 4

Storming conservative bastions

11 Transforming a conservative county The development of the Center on Policy Initiatives Jill Esbenshade

Visionary labor leaders formed the Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI) as a research and coalition-building organization with the goal of changing policy to improve the economic well-being of working people in San Diego. Over the past 20 years, CPI has developed into a multi-issue organization with a broad strategy for longterm structural change. Initially, CPI’s approach was to produce research on the region vis-à-vis working people’s economic status and the role of government in reproducing economic inequality. Then, use that research to develop and support local policies such as paying living wages in the public sector, creating community benefit agreements, increasing the minimum wage and guaranteeing earned sick days. In recent years, CPI has broadened its focus by explicitly centering marginalized communities and increasingly shifting its strategy from work on framing the debate and individual policy wins to influencing government’s priority-setting processes and supporting leadership development. CPI is taking a dual-pronged inside/outside approach to this work. By training leaders, CPI is helping to populate government decision-making bodies with community members dedicated to a progressive agenda. Simultaneously, CPI is anchoring coalitions that push more participatory forms of governance. This push for accountable governance has arguably shifted the orientation of both the City of San Diego and San Diego County. CPI has developed from a labor-focused organization winning specific policies for working people into an organization that centers on facilitating participatory democracy through changes in how government operates and who serves in government.

The conservative context of CPI’s conception California was not always a liberal state. After all, it gave the nation Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In fact, the majority of Californians voted Republican in every presidential election (except for Barry Goldwater) for the four decades from the start of the 1950s until the 1992 election of Bill Clinton. Even after turning reliably Democratic in terms of presidential voting, Californians continued to support very conservative state policies and often Republican governors throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

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In the 1990s, during the governorship of Pete Wilson, who embodied an earlier version of Trumpian racial politics,1 Californians voted for a series of ballot initiatives aimed at people of color. In 1992, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 184, “Three Strikes and You’re Out,” contributing to the state’s ballooning prison population. This was followed in 1994 by voter approval of Proposition 187, “Save Our State,” that would have taken away immigrants’ rights to health care, education and other state services had it not been found unconstitutional. Two years later, voters went after affirmative action by passing Proposition 209, ironically named the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” which prohibited the use of affirmative action in public sector education, hiring and contracting. In 1998, voters outlawed bilingual education by approving Proposition 227, the “English in Public Schools” initiative. San Diego, where Wilson had been mayor for 12 years, was even more conservative than the state in general. San Diego developed as a military town and has a long history of anti-unionism.2 While the city has nonpartisan mayoral elections, Republican-registered candidates won every election from 1992 to 2016, with one exception. The county was also Republican-controlled, with the same five white Republican county supervisors serving from 1995 to 2012. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s there were more registered Republicans than Democrats in the county. Part of the conservative hold was that labor unions in San Diego had failed to galvanize their membership. The San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council had low affiliation rates and a “sleepy leadership.”3 In 1995, in reaction to a rising progressive challenge within the local federation of unions, SecretaryTreasurer Joe Francis agreed to start a project focused on getting out the labor vote. He hired Donald Cohen, who had been a community activist, to head a Labor to Neighbor program. And the next year, reflecting a broader “changing of the guard” in the labor movement, Francis was ousted in favor of Jerry Butkiewicz.4

Stage one: inception of CPI Along with trying to activate the labor vote as political bloc in the city, Donald Cohen had begun to strategize with Mary Grillo, the new Secretary-Treasurer of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2028 (now Local 221), about creating a kind of think tank that would build community-labor alliances and could thereby be a “counterforce” in the conservative San Diegan environment.5 Cohen took a trip around the country to meet with labor-community alliances, including the precursor to Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and groups in Milwaukee, Madison and Minneapolis/St. Paul. He saw that in other places organizations had built sophisticated multi-issue coalitions, with multipronged approaches to change. When the National Network for Grantmakers met in San Diego, Cohen was asked to make a presentation “about an organization that did not yet exist.”6 Funders were interested in a “California strategy”: if you can move California solidly liberal, you would be moving the

Transforming a conservative county 197 country. To move San Diego, a bastion of pro-business ideas among government officials, news media and voters, Cohen thought they needed an organization focused on generating “an alternative vision, strategy and policies.”7 With a $112,000 start-up grant from Rockefeller, the Center on Policy Initiatives was launched in 1997.8 The vision was that CPI would contribute to creating a more progressive San Diego in four ways. The left had to have its own research capacity to produce data-driven research that would reveal the problems of working people. To change attitudes, they needed to be able to communicate that research in ways that would influence policymakers and reframe the public’s understanding of issues like development, regional economic well-being and the importance of government services. To actually translate changing perspectives into changing policy, they needed power. Power would come from building coalitions. And finally, they needed to run campaigns to move the ball forward.9 Despite a clear idea about the pillars of work, the cofounders were murkier on what specific policies they should advocate for.10 They started by hiring a researcher, Enrico Marcelli, to write a report on economic inequality in the region: Poverty and Prosperity in the New Economy. According to Donald Cohen, the “goal was to put the issue of working poverty on the agenda, which we did.”11 In fact, the report had the desired effect with the conservative San Diego UnionTribune headlining their article: “A Tale of Two Cities.”12 CPI then hired Quynh Nguyen to do a landscape analysis. She met with every union and community organization she could to find out their perspective on the issues brought forward in the report and their thoughts on how to address inequality in the city.13 At the inception, CPI was very closely tied to labor. The cofounders were Donald Cohen, who was serving as political director of the labor council at the time, and Mary Grillo, head of SEIU Local 2028. CPI was originally housed at SEIU. The earliest driving issue was promoting decent jobs, which meant raising wages for low-wage workers, protecting public sector jobs and drawing attention to what types of jobs were being created by so-called development. The first campaigns included organizing support for the local Justice for Janitors campaign and fighting privatization of government services.14 Not coincidentally, both janitors and county workers were members of SEIU.

Stage two of development: setting the stage Two foundational changes were needed before the Center on Policy Initiatives could really push policy change: (1) reframe the narrative about San Diego and (2) help facilitate progressive power in the city. In 1972, the then Mayor Pete Wilson promoted “America’s Finest City” as San Diego’s new moniker, to boost city pride after a fraught withdrawal of the Republican Convention.15 CPI set out to show that hidden under the fine images of shimmering bays, white sands and upscale hotels were a lot of hard-working people barely making ends meet. Between 1998 and 2004, CPI produced a series of reports that focused not only on the economic divide but also how San Diego’s governments contributed

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directly to this inequality. CPI revealed the extensive use of temporary workers by both private industry and county government, and the devastating nature of such insecure employment for workers. They examined the growth strategy of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) and its contribution to growing inequality. They looked at how local government’s redevelopment projects not only subsidized private business, like Walmart, but also expanded the lowest-paid jobs; and then went on to publish another report on how those same jobs cost taxpayers in the long run. CPI also documented how San Diego, in contrast to other California cities, undertaxed its businesses and high-income earners, leading to a dearth of city services for needy residents. Thanks largely to their reports and the communication strategy around them, CPI had been featured in over 100 media reports by 2005. Parallel to their research and framing work, CPI also spent the first phase of its development fostering a progressive political infrastructure through coalition building and activist training. Two in-house programs that were started in this period were the Inter-faith Coalition for Worker Justice (ICWJ) and Students for Economic Justice (SEJ). Despite being an atheist himself, Cohen knew the power of faith-based organizing having worked in the Sanctuary movement of the 1980s, which had offered shelter to Central American refugees and fought to end US military aid to repressive governments in the region. With funding secured from the Rockefeller Foundation, CPI launched ICWJ out of its own office with Jesuit volunteers as staff. CPI eventually hired Rabbi Laurie Coskey to run the organization. ICWJ brought progressives from many faiths to picket lines and City Council hearings. Through their own churches and synagogues, ICWJ was also able to appeal directly to business owners and policymakers. Moreover, Rabbi Laurie framed discussions with moral authority, pointing out for instance that budgets are in fact “moral documents” that show where government’s values lie.16 From the beginning, CPI also saw the possibilities of training young San Diegans to become activists in their own community. CPI ran SEJ as a summer program beginning in 2000 with cohorts of local college students being trained in the history of the labor movement, political strategizing and organizing tactics, as well as interning with local unions and later also with community organizations. Some graduates of the program became student activists upon returning to school in the fall. At the University of California San Diego, they helped campus janitors win their union contract.17 Many SEJers went on to jobs in unions, nonprofits and City Council offices in the city.18 SEJ was an important part of consolidating a progressive community in San Diego, by fostering both individual activists and strengthening links between CPI and other activist organizations where SEJers interned or later worked.

Stage three of development: winning policy victories CPI had some early policy victories, such as a living wage for bus drivers and requiring hotels to meet wage and hiring standards for some jobs to receive city

Transforming a conservative county 199 subsidies,19 but it was really in 2005 that CPI saw the fruition of its narrative framing and power-building work. Their two most significant policy wins to date came in the same year: a Living Wage Ordinance for city contractors and a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) for the new baseball stadium development plan. Each success was the result of coalition building and dissemination of research findings, both of which put pressure on city law-makers. CPI had been working on the Living Wage campaign for five years before City Council finally approved it on April 12, 2005. To make the point that wages were far too low, CPI had been publishing and then updating a brochure-type report called Making Ends Meet, which used government data to estimate the cost of living in San Diego and the percentage of people in the region whose salaries fell below this basic self-sufficiency standard.20 Eventually, CPI would create a template for other Partnership for Working Families (PWF) affiliates to produce such reports for their own region, helping move forward the living wage fight nationally.21 In 2004, another report, Hidden Costs: the Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in San Diego, documented the resulting burden on public coffers of below self-sufficiency wage jobs. Working people were forced to rely on government welfare and health benefits originally meant for the unemployed. The city was directly contributing to the reliance of working people on public support by allowing its own workers, mostly hired through contractors, to be paid below a living wage. Many workers, including security guards, janitors, parking attendants and landscapers, at City Hall, police stations and other government facilities were among those extremely low-paid workers without health insurance described in CPI’s reports. In lobbying City Council, Executive Director Donald Cohen argued that such workers should be able to survive in the same city they served, and that the city was allowing taxpayers to pick up the expenses for workers whose employers failed to pay a living wage. He was also able to preempt the opposition of complaining restaurant owners, who he pointed out would not even be affected by the ordinance since it applied primarily to employees of city contractors.22 He did so much lobbying that the Union-Tribune reported conservative City Councilmember Brian Maienschien as saying, “I’m seeing Donald Cohen in my sleep.”23 CPI had also brought together unionists, religious leaders, congregation members, students, workers and community activists to protest for a living wage, to attend council meetings, to hold vigils and to lobby council members. Part of their strategy was to highlight workers’ stories. On the day of the vote, the crowd was so large that the meeting, which lasted six hours, had to be moved from City Council chambers to the nearby Golden Hall.24 Six months later, CPI had another big win when City Council approved a land-use permit for the largest development project in San Diego history, Ballpark Village, only after the developer had signed a community benefits agreement (CBA). The CBA required the developers of Petco Park, and the surrounding area, to include truly affordable housing units for low-wage workers, to hire local residents for construction jobs and provide training programs as part of that process and to implement high environmental standards.

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This agreement was negotiated between developers and ACCORD (A Community Coalition for Responsible Development). ACCORD, a coalition of 27 affordable housing, community, environmental, faith-based and labor organizations, was brought together by CPI to improve the practices of downtown developers. CPI also published two reports in 2004 and 2005 – Left Behind: A Survey of Low-Wage Workers in Downtown and Shortchanged: Investing in LowWage Jobs Downtown – that made the case that workers in the city’s redevelopment area were largely being paid poverty wages and not provided health insurance. These wins really established CPI as a force within San Diego politics. On April 14, 2005, the local business paper, The Daily Transcript, headline read “Passage of living wage underscores power shift,” and a few days later another read, “Cohen has his hand on city’s ideological steering wheel.”25 Moreover, the wins changed community activists’ relationship to government. Murtaza Buxamusa, CPI research director in 2005, explains how his own evolution from trained economist to empowered activist mirrored a broader transformation in the city: Economic theory is about the money circulating in the economy and therefore growth pays for itself, like “rising tides lift all boats” … [we move] from that towards an empowerment theory. It’s not about economic development on its own … not just about let’s give people better wages, it’s about self-determination … do you actually have the right to be able to sustain yourself, self-sufficiency is not just about putting food on the table, it’s about self-determination, about what you want to do in life. I think that is how unionism feeds into this because unionism’s not just about the wages and the benefits, it is about having a voice at work. So, the diffusion of that philosophy from unions to the community groups, and back and forth, that is the essence of what CPI brought for me personally. I could see the difference of having a voice at the table … for example in the Ballpark project, once we did that, each of these groups, they became more aware … of enforcing of their rights, and the developers started paying attention. We don’t have to always win, but that paradigm shift – that awareness that we can be at the table, changes your mindset forever. You can never go back. You just go, why can’t I be at the table and decide what happens there? … When I talk about Ballpark Village it’s not about getting 10 or 20 more units of low-income housing or whether the birds die or not, it’s really about whether you had a voice in the project, that’s the key here.26 In both campaigns, the new-found power to influence local government decisionmaking depended on research reports and coalitions. The three-pronged model – research, organizing and policy work – had been modeled after LAANE’s work, which had resulted in Los Angeles’ Staples Center CBA and the city’s living wage ordinance. LAANE’s victories provided inspiration and orientation for CPI as it struggled in a much more conservative, pro-business context.27 Both the threepronged strategy and the focus on community benefits agreements and living

Transforming a conservative county 201 wage campaigns would be adopted by the Partnership for Working Families when it was founded the following year.

Stage four of development: changing the process As founding members of California PWF – the predecessor to PWF – CPI, along with LANE, EBASE and Working Partnerships USA, provided models for other affiliates. When leadership turned over at CPI, with the departure of Donald Cohen as executive director in 2010 and the arrival first of Clare Crawford and then Kyra Greene, PWF provided continuity in training, strategic planning and vision building.28 CPI still uses the same three-pronged approach to create important changes for working people in San Diego. At the same time, their work began to focus on changing the process of governing in addition to achieving specific policy wins. Moreover, their focus has broadened to include issues less directly related to labor, like education and participatory budgeting, and to more explicitly address racial inequality. As Deputy Director Quynh Nguyen explains, CPI came to the position that “solving worker injustice alone does not solve racial injustice, there has to be both.”29 Policy wins, usually based on research and labor partnerships, continue to be an important part of CPI’s work. Working with AFSCME they were able to stop privatization of government services, like the city landfill and thereby maintain public sector employment. CPI supported the Building Trades in winning a project labor agreement from San Diego Unified School District. They helped the United Taxi Workers of San Diego persuade City Council to open up the taxi permitting system so that exploited lease drivers could become owners. Most recently, CPI worked with UNITE-HERE Local 30 and SEIU-USWW to successfully advocate for an emergency recall and retention bill that protects laid-off hotel and janitorial workers during the COVID-19 crisis. In June 2014, CPI had its biggest policy win in terms of affected workers with the passage of an ordinance raising the minimum wage for an estimated 172,000 in the city and requiring employers to offer five earned paid sick days affecting approximately 279,000 employees.30 In fact, at the time, this was the largest number of affected workers for any city’s minimum wage ordinance in the country. The liberals on the City Council overcame the Republican mayor’s opposition in a rare moment of having a veto-proof supermajority. However, the business community quickly referendized the issue through a misleading signature collection process. Some petition gatherers told voters their signatures would allow a minimum wage increase to get onto the ballot, while the intended result was to stop the already approved increase from going into effect.31 Despite CPI and its Raise Up Coalition running a signature rescinding campaign and sending out counter-gatherers to clarify the intent of the measure, the signature collection was successful and the measure was scheduled for the next election, a year and half away. Now the Raise Up Coalition would have to win a ballot fight against the highly resourced Chamber of Commerce and their allies.

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In order to meet this challenge, CPI formed Policy Action as a necessary “tool in our toolbox,” according to then ED Clare Crawford.32 What had become clear, through the referendizing of a Big Box prohibition, Barrio Logan Community Plan and then the minimum wage fight, was that although business interests had lost control of City Council, they could neutralize progressive policy decisions through the referendum process. In order to actively fight on ballot initiatives, CPI formed a 501(c)(4) that could legally spend an unlimited percent of its budget on these campaigns.33 CPI used the C4 status to run a successful campaign for the minimum wage, but also contributed to the statewide campaign. By the time the vote came around in June of 2016, the state of California had already passed a guarantee of three earned sick days and an incremental yearly increase to the minimum wage that would outstrip the San Diego increase. The looming San Diego vote, along with successful campaigns in several other California cities, had pressured the state to raise the minimum wage and provide earned sick days. In turn, passage of the state bill deescalated the intense opposition of the business community to the San Diego measure. Along with the traditional three-pronged approach to policy wins, CPI is now also focusing on facilitating more participatory democracy. With an inside-outside approach, CPI is creating leadership pipelines so that community members can represent their own interests in governmental bodies and pushing for community control of government priorities. As Kyra Greene, the Executive Director since 2017, explains the transition: We still do fight for individual policies but we’re simultaneously thinking about how we can govern, not just assuming that we have to target government but talking about concepts of co-governance.34 This empowerment work is largely taking place through the three CPIanchored coalitions – the Community Budget Alliance (CBA), Invest in San Diego Families (ISDF) and Community Schools – as well as through CPI’s leadership development programs – the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI) and Leading a New Way, along with Students for Economic Justice discussed earlier. The Community Budget Alliance exemplifies the new paradigm of the community “making the city”35 as it pushes for a people’s budget. The CBA is a coalition of over a dozen community organizations that helps city residents understand the budget process, create their own inventory of needs and advocate for those priorities. Since CPI initiated the project in 2012, the CBA has brought an expanding number of community members into the process through educational workshops, speaker trainings, lobbying visits and coordinated attendance at City Council hearings. The CBA wins have meant the city is now actively engaging community residents in the budgeting process, something that did not happen prior to the CBA’s existence. The city now holds an evening budget hearing, so that working people can attend, presents its priorities to all communities and publishes a Citizen’s Guide to the Budget.

Transforming a conservative county 203 During the COVID-19 crisis and the 2020 racial reckoning over police brutality, this expanding democratization of resident priorities has been evident. Having an established coalition and activated community members allowed the CBA to quickly create a comprehensive list of demands, which included successful calls for an eviction moratorium, expanded sick leave protections and a right to recall for laid-off workers. An unprecedented 5,000 people participated in a city budget hearing in June, 2020, calling or sending comments into the virtual meeting. The City Council focused on austerity and budget cuts but did approve $15,000,000 in rent relief. While the flood of input demanding that City Council reduce funding for the police was unsuccessful, at the end of the 12-hour meeting the City Council did approve funding for a new office of Race and Equity. This office is designed to ensure that all city policy proposals are analyzed for racial impact, as they would be for budgetary impact. As its sponsor, Council member Monica Montgomery explained: “These requests have been coming from the community for years – this is a way to centralize that to say it is a priority, and a way to monitor it so that we can continue to get better.”36 The establishment of this new office represents more than a one-time budget adjustment because it institutionalizes a racial justice lens in city governance. CPI has also been working on the county level to bring the community into budgetary priority setting and decision-making. CPI had been drawing attention to the conservative county governance for years. In 2010, CPI helped push a ballot measure to finally limit the terms of supervisors, all of whom were conservatives serving for 15 years or more at the time the initiative passed. In 2011, CPI issued two reports on the county documenting how the county was stashing its revenue away in reserves rather than providing needed services (San Diego County Revenues and Reserves) and the ways in which restructuring had negatively impacted the delivery of government benefits (Overworked and Undermined). This second report led to meetings and joint advocacy between welfare recipient organizations, Caring Council and SPIN (Supportive Parents Information Network) and the union representing the welfare workers, SEIU Local 221. While the two groups had previously been at odds, they found common cause by “identifying structural problems as being driven by county leadership,” as the then CPI ED Clare Crawford described.37 The collaboration between advocate groups and the union, facilitated by CPI, laid the groundwork for the Invest in San Diego Families (ISDF) coalition.38 ISDF brought together labor, faith and community organizations to influence priority setting in the county budgeting process. In 2017, the ISDF pressured the county into holding its first evening budget hearing and 1,000 people showed up, with another 4,000 watching on Facebook Live.39 However, in this case, the coalition had an extra point of leverage to impact county spending, the union partner could work through their collective bargaining process. SEIU, the union that had spawned CPI, represented thousands of county employees, including the welfare workers, janitors, office staff, child protective services staff, nurses etc. Their national union was using a strategy of “Bargaining for the Common Good.”40 Unions could negotiate not only over wages and benefits but also other

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issues that affected their members as residents in the communities governed by their employers. Framing bargaining as an action taken on behalf of their members not just as workers but as whole people facilitated solidarity with community organizations that also had an interest in county programs. CPI was the logical anchor for the coalition as they had convened the CBA and had experience in bargaining around budgets for community priorities.41 The process resulted in stronger trust between the community organizations and labor. While the county denied allies direct participation, SEIU insisted that its ISDF partners be present during bargaining, albeit in a separate room that SEIU was forced to rent in the same building. SEIU consulted with their partners throughout the negotiations, shuttling back and forth between rooms. At one point they were forced to play a video of the ISDF partners for the county negotiators because they refused to meet with them in person, despite the fact that they were in the same building.42 The community negotiating points included expanded resources to ensure all eligible county residents received benefits, reforms in the criminal justice system and support for asylum seekers. While the first of these was achieved through the bargaining process, other priorities have been a focus of creating community budgeting demands, lobbying and testifying at the county supervisor meetings. The Community School Coalition, whose leaders also include the San Diego Education Association and Alliance San Diego, is the most recent project of CPI in the participatory democracy paradigm. The project, inspired by United Teachers of Los Angeles’s work, seeks to recognize and promote schools as centers of community decision-making, advocacy and service provision. By using facilities and structures that already exist in every community – public schools – resources are maximized to improve the well-being of the surrounding residents. Ideally, each school would have a community schools coordinator who would involve parents, teachers and community residents in determining community needs and collaborating on solutions. For example, schools might partner with food banks, community clinics or immigration legal offices to offer services at their site. They could provide space for adult education, community meetings or exercise programs. After several years of planning, organizing and lobbying, the coalition won a commitment from the San Diego Unified School District to fund a pilot program for the 2021–2022 school year. As ED Kyra Greene explains, this work exemplifies CPI’s new direction: Traditionally what we would do is pass a policy that would address each of the components, like ‘oh you have to offer health care’ and we would get money to address health care on each of the campuses and then we would walk away, or we would not know how to be involved in making sure that actually got implemented and was successful. With community schools we’re now talking about how to create structures that are enduring structures of governance at individual school sites and become part of how the school does its business, its everyday interactions. And while we will not specifically be

Transforming a conservative county 205 on every campus, we will continue to support … so each school site will be a supported organizing project. … It’s literally the idea that we are changing school site governance and decision-making.43 SDUSD’s decision is not a one-time policy victory, but an example of changing the control and purpose of community institutions. As these coalitions push from the outside, CPI also trains community activists and representatives of marginalized communities to assume decision-making positions and to keep them accountable once they are there. In 2013, CPI published an analysis of San Diego’s Leadership Development Landscape, which found that there were over 2,200 positions on boards and commissions in the county, many of them vacant. Although no city collected demographics on these governing bodies, it was clear that they were not representative in terms of class or race. A 2018 CPI report on community representation on boards and commissions documented this more directly: In terms of race and ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic background, the decision-making bodies we studied are significantly more homogeneous than the communities they are entrusted to represent. They are disproportionately white, male, and economically secure or advantaged.44 The report noted many barriers to inclusion, such as reliance on informal social networks to select members, recruiters’ preference for professionals, the unpaid nature of time-consuming service commitment and the exclusion of noncitizen residents.45 Another barrier was the lack of leadership development programs that specifically recruited from communities of color and low-income communities. BCLI set out to do just that. After receiving training from Urban Habitat’s BCLI replication project, CPI began an annual six-month program to train leaders to move an equity agenda on strategic boards and commissions that decide on budgets and policies.46 According to the Trihn Le, who staffed the program for many years, the recruits had to have a letter of recommendation from a community organization so that they would be accountable. With cohorts of 15, trainees came together one Saturday a month to deepen their knowledge on equity issues and prepare to serve in government. The sessions covered such topics as policy development, local indigenous communities, systemic and interpersonal racism, queer and trans rights, ethics in government, the Brown Act, power-mapping and the experiences and advice of others who had served in government.47 CPI realized that if building a pipeline of leadership – from students to activists to public servants – was going to result in more progressive governing, they also needed a leadership program for government officials. Leading a New Way, based on a model from Working Partnerships USA and 1000 Leaders (see chapter four), is a program run jointly by CPI and the Labor Council. In order to get progressives who have been appointed or elected to work together as partners with labor and community organizations, officials need to know what forms of

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collaboration are permitted and how to formulate, lobby for and pass progressive policies. As Clare Crawford, ED at the time the program began, put it, “We saw that elected leaders were heroes during their campaigns, and then became part of the power structure.”48 Leading a New Way gives them support to root their governing in the progressive values they ran on.

Conclusion CPI’s development reflects its changing context, which in turn is in part due to its own success. San Diego is a far more progressive city than when CPI was founded over two decades ago. Demographics have shifted, the narrative about inequality is mainstream, and the California progressive movement is more organized. Since CPI’s founding organized labor in San Diego has continued to grow its grassroots electoral program (originally staffed by CPI’s founder a quarter of a century ago) and are now able to produce a much more unified voting bloc for labor-friendly candidates. Moreover, both the city and the county now have significantly more registered Democrats.49 In fact, two registered Democrats faced off in the general election for mayor in 2020, with the more progressive candidate winning. Moreover, voters chose Democratic-registered candidates for a majority of the five-seat County Board of Supervisors, giving Democrats control for the first time in a generation. CPI is no longer struggling to chip away at the edges of a hegemonic pro-business narrative of how government should run, development should happen and workers should make gains. With their research and communications strategies, they have been a major force in breaking down that trickle-down pro-growth narrative in San Diego. CPI has been a prime mover in building this progressive movement, which now has significant clout as has been shown during the COVID-19 crisis. CPI is able to coordinate important coalitions because as Crystal Page, former communications director, puts it: Maintaining the relationships and delivering for and with partner groups is of huge value. I think that is what makes the difference in authenticity. The difference for me in CPI, compared to other non-profits I’ve seen, is that I’ve never seen CPI knowingly choose to throw away a relationship. CPI has ridden through a lot of hard times … they’ve stood the test of time and there is a reason for it, and I think it’s being willing to address difficult things. It’s the willingness to work through things that makes the difference in how an organization is perceived.50 While known by the general public for their research and narrative framing, their success is in no small part due to the growing importance of organizing and coalition building in their work. Operating in a more robust progressive environment has changed what is possible. As Quynh Nguyen, who has been with the organization throughout, from its first full-time staff member to its current Deputy Director, explains:

Transforming a conservative county 207 We had always called out privatization practices and giving away the store in terms of subsidies to developers and big corporations. But I think our solutions are different because before we had tried to find something that was mutually beneficial for the developer and workers. And I think we have gotten to the place now, as others have, where we are less willing to make some kind of compromise in terms of what solutions can be. We are looking at more structural and systematic solutions, which I think is funny to say because even from the beginning we were always talking about the root causes, we talked about it in those terms. But maybe because the reality was so bleak back then to have something that we could win, it was nowhere near the scale it needed to be, but that was all that was feasible. Now the possibility is greater to create broader change. The landscape has changed. There are way more community organizations doing organizing work, doing civic engagement work and advocacy work than before, now we have so many more partners.51 Those expanded possibilities were created by changes that CPI contributed to, and also allowed CPI to grow and develop. While CPI started as an offshoot of labor, bringing community support and policy wins to labor, they have become a truly independent organization. This independence has been accompanied by an expansion of CPI’s vision. CPI has pivoted toward a broader set of issues, including the community schools campaign, fiscally sponsoring a COVID-19 mutual aid organization and taking a strong stand around issues of racist police brutality. As Susan Duerksen, communications staff for 13 years, puts it, rather than looking at workers’ rights as being an issue between workers and employers, CPI shifted to looking at “justice in the workplace and the community.”52 Labor issues are still central to CPI’s work and unions are still critical partners, as is evident in their collaboration in moving forward emergency bills on right to recall and retention and COVID-19-related sick leave in September 2020. However, having a labor partner is no longer a prerequisite criterion for taking on work. Most significantly, through its participatory democracy work, CPI is helping to change the way that San Diego governmental bodies operate. This attempt to bring members of low-income communities and communities of color into decision-making, be it through engaging in the priority setting of what governments should do or actually being governors themselves, is still in its early stages. That said, we have only arrived at the potential for more participatory democracy because of the maturation of CPI and the larger movement it is part of.

Notes 1 Maharidge, Dale. “California Schemer: What You Need to Know about Pete Wilson,” Mother Jones, November/December, 1995. Available at https://www .motherjones.com/politics/1995/11/california-schemer-what-you-need-know -about-pete-wilson/

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2 Dean, Amy and David Reynolds. New, New Deal, Cornell University Press, 2009. 3 Ibid 4 Davis, Mike, Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller. Under the Perfect Sun, The New Press, 2003. 5 Interview with Mary Grillo, July 6, 2020. 6 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 7 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 8 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 9 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 10 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 11 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 12 By Gail Chatfield, February 4, 2008. 13 Interview with Quynh Nguyen, July 7, 2020. 14 Interview with Mary Grillo, July 6, 2020. 15 Dotinga, Randy. “The GOP Convention Debacle that Spawned San Diego’s ‘Finest City’ Motto,” The Voice of San Diego, July 20, 2016. Available at https:// www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/when-nixon-skedaddled-5-facts-about-s -d-s-gop-convention-debacle/ 16 Interview with Corinne Wilson, July 23, 2020. 17 Interview with Mary Grillo, July 6, 2020. 18 Interview with Trinh Le, July 14, 2020, and with Norma Rodriguez, July 17, 2020. 19 San Diego Workforce Partnership. December 2002. A Path to Prosperity: Preparing our Workforce: 93 and interview with Quynh Nguyen, July 7, 2020. 20 Cannot find date of first publication but internal CPI documents show that an updated version was published in 2003. 21 Interview with Murtaza Buxamusa, July 10, 2020. 22 Interview with Donald Cohen, June 29, 2020. 23 Rose, Craig. “A Voice for the Poor,” SD Union Tribune, July 5, 2005. 24 Vigil, Jennifer. “City Council Adopts Living Wage Ordinance,” SD Union Tribune, April 13, 2005. 25 Christensen, Kevin. The Daily Transcript, April 14, 2005 and April 18, 2005. 26 Interview with Murtaza Buxamusa, July 10, 2020. 27 Interview with Donald Cohen, September 11, 2020. 28 Interviews with Kyra Greene, July 13, 2020, and Corinne Wilson, July 23, 2020. 29 Interview with Quynh Nguyen, July 7, 2020. 30 See: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/citycouncil/cd3/ pdf/news/2014/newsrelease140714.pdf The estimate of affected workers from the minimum wage increase is the low estimate from UC Berkeley, with the high estimate being 214,000. See Reich, Michael, Ken Jacobs, Annette Bernhardt, and Ian Perry. “Fact Sheet: Estimated Impact of San Diego’s Minimum Wage Proposal,” UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, June 2014. Available at https://irle.berkeley.edu/ files/2014/Estimated-Impact-of-San-Diegos-Proposed-Minimum-Wage-Law .pdf. 31 Trageser, Clare. “Petition Drive to Put Minimum Wage Hike on Ballot Nears Deadline,” KPBS, September 11, 2014. 32 Interview with Clare Crawford, September 23, 2020. 33 Interview with Clare Crawford, September 23, 2020. The interview with current director, Kyra Greene, on September 23, 2020, indicated that the C4 is currently dormant due to a lack of reliable funding model. 34 Interview with Kyra Greene, July 13, 2020.

Transforming a conservative county 209 35 “We Make This City” is a nationwide campaign of Partnership for Working Families. 36 Keats, Andrew and Scott Lewis, “Politics Report: Police Reform Suddenly Advances,” Voice of San Diego, June 6, 2020. Available at https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/politics/politics-report-police-reforms-suddenly-advance/ 37 Interview with Clare Crawford, July 3, 2020. 38 Interview with Clare Crawford, July 3, 2020, and Trinh Le, July 14, 2020. 39 Interview with Quynh Nguyen, July 7, 2020. 40 For more on this novel strategy, visit https://www.bargainingforthecommongood.org/ 41 Interview with Kyra Greene, July 13, 2020. 42 Interview with Kyra Greene, July 13, 2020. 43 Interview with Kyra Greene, September 23, 2020. 44 CPI, Community Representation: Boards and Commissions in San Diego, 2018. 45 CPI, San Diego’s Leadership Development Landscape, 2013. 46 Interview with Trihn Le, July 14, 2020. 47 Interview with Ana Laura, July 10, 2020. 48 Interview with Clare Crawford, July 3, 2020. 49 Visit https://www.sdvote.com/content/dam/rov/en/reports/current_reg _report.pdf 50 Interview with Crystal Paige, July 9, 2020. 51 Interview with Quynh Nguyen, July 7, 2020. 52 Interview with Susan Duerksen, July 16, 2020.

12 OCCORD Organizing in conservative territory: if you can’t win the game, change the rules Clara Turner and Carolina S. Sarmiento

On July 24, 2012, several groups of local activists arrived at the Anaheim City Council meeting to talk about two proposed agenda items. The first item concerned Anaheim’s lucrative tourism district and a long-standing debate over whether to grant no-strings-attached tax subsidies to a private developer to incentivize the development of a luxury hotel. The second item concerned Anaheim’s method of electing council members, proposing a change from the existing system, in which the city’s four council members were elected at-large, to an elections-by-district system, in which council members would represent a district and be elected by voters in that district. Talking points had been prepared and residents were ready to address the Council in public comment, advocating against the tax giveaways and for the adoption of districts. But these two issues were overshadowed. Two young men, Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo, had been shot and killed by Anaheim police in two separate events over the past weekend. Diaz had been unarmed and was reportedly shot in the back of the head (Quick et al.; Medina “Anaheim Cracks Down”). Over 400 people attended the City Council meeting to demand a response, filling the chambers and the overflow space. Anaheim’s police were called up in full riot gear to stand between City Hall and the protesting crowd, and the council members ended the meeting early and left through the back door. Part of the crowd, which had reportedly grown to almost 1,000 people, later marched through Anaheim’s downtown, where some set fires and smashed storefront windows (Medina “Deep Rifts”). Around 9 pm, the Anaheim police used beanbag bullets and pepper balls to forcibly disperse the protesters. Anaheim made national news throughout the following week, with the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio and other major outlets carrying stories on the shootings and the resulting civil unrest. As content progressed from reporting the facts of the cases to asking why police brutality and protest were an ongoing problem in Anaheim, coverage began referencing socioeconomic divides in Anaheim, the tax subsidies granted to the tourism industry and activists’ efforts to change the city’s election system (Medina “Deep Rifts”; Brunell et al.; Kahn). Eric Altman, in an article in The Guardian (McVeigh), stated,

OCCORD 211 There’s a lot of soul searching and hard analysis that has to happen about how to move forward in terms of police community relations, but you can’t do that effectively if three council officials and the mayor live in Anaheim Hills and the other lives in the Colony. Altman was the executive director of Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD), a nonprofit organization representing a growing partnership between organized labor and community groups in Anaheim’s working-class neighborhoods, and his quote referred to the electionsby-district issue. Though OCCORD’s vision and mission were focused on economic justice, the organization was leading the advocacy for district elections in Anaheim. OCCORD’s leadership and constituents saw a clear connection between the issues of democratic representation, police violence and ongoing economic exclusion of communities of color and working families. In the following four years, OCCORD led a broad coalition campaign to win the adoption of district elections. OCCORD found that the existing recipes for progressive advocacy wouldn’t work in Orange County’s uniquely challenging political environment. The organization pivoted, focusing on systemic change that would allow progressive voices to be heard in local government. OCCORD’s district campaign and its aftermath highlights key strategies, as well as key challenges, for long-term progressive power building, especially in politically hostile regions.

The beginnings of OCCORD Altman, a former labor researcher and policy analyst, had served as the executive director of OCCORD since its foundation in 2005. At the time, affiliate organizations of the California Partnership for Working Families (PWF) in Los Angeles and the Bay Area had won significant victories on behalf of low-wage workers by organizing both unions and community interests to advocate for policy changes. Just to the north, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) had pioneered the use of community benefits agreements (CBAs) for public development projects. Key to the PWF model was the combination of policy research and coalition building. A community-labor nonprofit could provide the knowledge and expertise to initiate and develop campaigns, and the coalition organizing needed to leverage existing sources of power from community and labor to win these campaigns. Orange County in 2005 was confronted with many of the same challenges facing PWF affiliates elsewhere in California. Income inequality was rising. Wages for middle- and low-income workers were stagnating, while housing costs continued to rise even during mild recession. Job growth was concentrated in low-wage, service sector jobs, particularly those supporting the tourism industry centered around the county’s beaches and the Disneyland resort area (OCCORD “A Shared Challenge”). Three organizations collaborated to found OCCORD: UNITE HERE Local 681 (now part of UNITE HERE Local 11), which

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represented Orange County’s hotel workers, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West and the California Partnership for Working Families (now a national organization) (OCCORD “History”). LAANE’s successes were a major inspiration (personal interview, 1). Within two years of its establishment, OCCORD had added a community organizer and a policy analyst position, and secured funding to support education and outreach work from private foundations.

The challenges behind the “Orange Curtain” Though designed after the example of other California Partnership for Working Families organizations, OCCORD faced a unique environment. Orange County has a deep history of political and social conservatism that sets it apart from other California regions. Historian Lisa McGirr describes Orange County as “the cutting edge of the conservative movement in the 1960s,” pointing to the virulent anti-Communist, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment sentiments that germinated in the region and grew into powerful movements (McGirr 21). She credits Orange County’s grassroots organizing with Barry Goldwater’s nomination as the 1964 Republican presidential candidate and the swing to the right for the national Republican Party that still holds today. Orange County voted for a Republican presidential candidate in every election from 1936 to 2016 (Krishnakumar et al.). This conservatism was similarly reflected in local politics. As of the 2004 election, approximately 30.5 percent of Orange County voters were registered as Democrats, 48.5 percent as Republicans and 21 percent for other parties or with no party preference (California Secretary of State, “Registration Report”). Approximately a third of the population self-identified as Latino (US Census Bureau). Yet of the 14 California State Senate and Assembly representatives in office in 2005 with part of their districts lying in Orange County, only 3 were Democrats and only 2 were people of color (California Secretary of State, “Election Results”). Only one of Orange County’s five-person Board of Supervisors was a Democrat and Latino; his two years served were the only two served by a Democrat between 1987 and 2018 (Orange County Archives). Also unlike other California regions, Orange County’s local politics were highly fragmented. Orange County is made up of 34 municipalities. Unlike Los Angeles County, Santa Clara County, or Alameda County, where large cities comprise a greater portion of the population, the plurality made up by Orange County’s biggest city is small. In 2005, no single municipality made up more than 11 percent of the county’s total population. For an organization seeking to advocate for change at the municipal and regional level, these fragmented municipalities posed an extra challenge. Campaigns at the city level would need to be repeatedly fought in different cities, rather than fought first in the largest city with the hope that smaller cities would follow suit (US Census Bureau). Much like the political geography, Orange County’s progressive organizations were similarly fragmented. Nonprofit organizations that organized directly within communities tended to be most active within local geographies of one to three

OCCORD 213 cities. Labor unions representing low-wage and immigrant workers operated within their locals’ unique boundaries, which often spanned cities but were defined not by jurisdictions but by the geographies of hiring halls, or unionized hotels or stores. Unlike organized labor in other California regions, Orange County’s labor movement in the early 2000s was relatively disengaged from political activism and lacked strong centralized leadership (personal interview, 2; Grabelsky).

OCCORD’s frst steps and frst campaigns OCCORD’s first campaign attempted to follow the example set by other PWF affiliates, advocating for a community benefits agreement on a major development project and leveraging the land use planning process to pursue community priorities for growth. In the mid-2000s, development was booming in Orange County. The City of Anaheim, Orange County’s largest city, created a zoning overlay in 2004 to encourage high-density, mixed-use development in a largely industrial area located between three major freeways, forming the “Platinum Triangle.” The Platinum Triangle features two major sports venues and a regional transport hub then under development, expected to connect to high-speed rail, commuter rail and bus routes. Developers jumped on this opportunity, and more than a dozen projects were granted entitlements by the city in the following two years (OCCORD, “History”). In 2006, the city decided to explore developing a 50-acre parcel of publicly owned land next to Angel Stadium, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the Platinum Triangle. OCCORD began organizing a coalition of organizations and individuals to advocate for a community benefits agreement to cover development on the site. This coalition included nonprofits representing community groups, affordable housing advocacy, advocacy for the disabled, youth, faith congregations, community legal assistance and environmental advocates, in addition to labor unions and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods (personal interview, 3). The coalition began meeting regularly with four of Anaheim’s five City Council members who were open to discussing the Platinum Triangle with them, and developed a set of guiding principles and negotiating priorities. In 2007, the city proposed an expansion of the Platinum Triangle that would more than double the previous development densities, and in an attempt to fast-track its approval, they violated first the city’s Municipal Code and then the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) (Tully “Platinum Triangle”). Two lawsuits, one led by a citizen’s group and one by OCCORD, slowed the planning process and ensured that it met legal requirements and gave residents the opportunity to give input on the new Platinum Triangle (OCCORD, “History”). “They were trying to build a city within a city,” recalls Rob Nothoff, OCCORD’s policy analyst at the time. Residents took a look at [the plan]. They could immediately identify that they’d be priced out if this was built. They said we need child care, we need

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An additional campaign unexpectedly arose in Anaheim at the same time. A zoning change requested by the City Council in late 2006 would have allowed for nonhotel residential developments in the Resort District, a special planning area centered around the Disneyland Resort, if these developments included a 15 percent affordable housing component. Disney publicly opposed these amendments, funding a front group called “Save Our Anaheim Resort” (SOAR) and an associated political action committee (Bernstein). Disney’s contributions to SOAR to oppose the development of affordable housing eventually exceeded $1 million (Tully “Disney spends”). Regional and national media eagerly picked up this issue, largely through communications efforts from OCCORD, Kennedy Commission and Local 11. The New York Times and Washington Post covered the issue, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart did a segment mocking Disney’s opposition to affordable housing (Bernstein; Geis; Comedy Central). Within Anaheim, however, Disney and SOAR successfully reframed the issue from one of fair housing access for resort workers to one of protecting Anaheim’s economic engine. They also successfully played on anti-immigrant and racist sentiments held by some portions of Anaheim’s voters. As this issue became increasingly heated, a division widened between the building trades unions, who generally supported “pro-development” interests as they felt these protected construction jobs for their members, and other unions representing resort area workers who would benefit from more affordable housing (OCCORD, “History”).

Building a base Unlike other PWF organizations, OCCORD made direct organizing a significant part of its initial work. Having a base of engaged community leaders directly affiliated with OCCORD was part of the vision, in addition to building and working with a coalition of allies. “We didn’t just want to mobilize people, but to have a base of people involved in making the decisions,” said Alejandra Ponce de Leon, OCCORD’s community organizer from 2008 to 2012. “We wanted residents really having a say and taking leadership in the organization.” OCCORD’s base building was inspired by both union organizing and traditional community organizing techniques. Ponce de Leon had experience with labor organizing through work with UNITE HERE Local 11, and OCCORD’s other organizer at the time, Ana Urzua, had experience organizing through culture, art and music because of her work with Santa Ana organization El Centro Cultural de México. Urzua and Ponce de Leon developed an organizing structure based on union concepts, with individual leaders representing additional people – friends, neighbors or family – whom they would engage in activism and advocacy. The building of trust and relationships was essential, including organizers sharing their own stories and motivations for why they were involved in this

OCCORD 215 kind of work. In addition to building local communities of leaders in Anaheim neighborhoods, OCCORD also held monthly meetings at their office, building relationships among leaders from across the city. “We were having meetings in people’s houses, building that sense of community, that camaraderie, realizing that in the neighborhoods people felt isolated from one another, so we wanted to break that isolation also.” Building consciousness was an essential component as well. “Ana and I felt very strongly about popular education,” Ponce de Leon recalled. “It wasn’t just ‘come in and we’ll tell you what to do,’ it was ‘come in and we’ll build upon your existing experience, where is power, who makes decisions, what are the root causes for these things.’” Residents engaged in critical analysis of the issues they were facing.

Struggling against a system Despite the growth of engagement from both community leaders and coalition members, OCCORD’s coalition reached a dead end in policy advocacy. In 2008, the City Council voted to ban residential development in the Resort District without voter approval, adopting the initiative pushed by SOAR and Disney. In 2009, OCCORD presented the City Council with a community vision for Platinum Triangle development, created through a multiyear organizing effort with coalition members, neighborhood leaders and technical assistance from a team of urban planning master’s students from the University of California, Irvine. At a hearing for approval of the Platinum Triangle development plan, community speakers testified that the plan didn’t address their needs, and advocated for the inclusion of community priorities. They far outnumbered speakers in support of the plan, most of whom represented developers or the building trades unions (personal interview, 3). “For many, this was their first time ever going to City Council,” said Ponce de Leon. “Folks were inspired, but unfortunately the City Council didn’t give a damn. They had no inclination to accept any of our recommendations, or to take us seriously.” The City council approved the proposal with no amendments on a 3 to 1 vote, with one council member abstaining due to a conflict of interest. “It felt like every meeting we filled up the hall,” said Ada Briceño, OCCORD’s founding board chair and president of Local 11. It was our way of getting elected officials’ attention. We thought that if we brought the community to them, that they would have to listen. But that actually never happened. Even though people filled the chamber, were active and participating, it really didn’t matter to them. We tried everything: meetings, dialoging, all kinds of stuff. And I remember Eric was like, ‘this is ridiculous. We’ve got to think of something different.’ “Our early campaign work was premised on the strategic assumption that policymakers in Anaheim would be responsive to advocacy from a progressive

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labor-community coalition,” Altman said. “But this assumption ultimately proved false.”

Changing the rules of the game: district elections In the Platinum Triangle campaign, policymakers’ failure to respond to advocacy from a broad community coalition in Anaheim was a tacit expression that those policymakers didn’t think the coalition’s support or opposition could impact their reelection or their future political careers. Given the structure of Anaheim’s local democracy, they were correct. Anaheim is and was both socioeconomically diverse and socioeconomically segregated, mimicking the overall demographics of Orange County. West and Central Anaheim, sometimes referred to as the “flatlands,” were 78 percent people of color (60 percent Latino) and majority renter households. East Anaheim, self-branded and widely known as Anaheim Hills, was 59 percent white and 79 percent of its households were owner-occupied (US Census Bureau). Employment rates and median incomes were also starkly different, with Anaheim Hills residents much more affluent. Although a relatively small proportion of the total population (16 percent), Anaheim Hills voters were also more likely to vote, especially in down-ballot or off-cycle elections, given their older median age, relative conservatism and greater likelihood of being eligible. Because Anaheim Hills made up a significant plurality of Anaheim’s voting constituency, they were able to “carry” seats in the majority-take-all at-large system, giving them council representation disproportionate to their voter representation. In addition, Anaheim’s large size and lucrative industries made City Council campaigns extremely expensive. Under the at-large system, any candidate running for election to the City Council needed to reach a significant number of the city’s 143,000 voters. This kind of voter contact required significant financial backing. In the 2008 and 2010 City Council elections, the winning candidates spent more than $100,000 apiece on mailers, robocalls and paid canvassers (California Fair Political Practices Commission). Even more money was spent by political action committees, supporting or opposing candidates. Candidates hoping for success needed to be either independently wealthy or have donors and support from Anaheim’s business power players – both factors out of reach for grassroots candidates. After the defeat in the Platinum Triangle campaign, OCCORD regrouped. Given that the methods of advocacy and organizing that had been effective for other PWF organizations weren’t working in Orange County, OCCORD and its allies needed a new approach. On the suggestion of the PWF network, OCCORD convened a leadership institute for partner organizations and individuals engaged in progressive activism, dubbed OC RISE UP. In the institute, participants discussed the systemic barriers to progressive change in Orange County and brainstormed strategies to address them, with a focus on identifying “game-changing” campaigns that would improve outcomes for advocates working on topics from immigration to labor rights to affordable housing (personal interview, 4). Four

OCCORD 217 proposals for potential campaigns were developed. Among these was the idea of advocating for district-based City Council elections in Anaheim, combined with increasing the size of the City Council from four members to six (not including the mayor, who also voted with the City Council on legislative affairs and was elected at-large) (OCCORD, “History”). “Having an organization like OCCORD created a space for us to have strategic discussions,” said Dr. Jose Moreno, an Anaheim school board representative, professor at Cal State University, Long Beach, and community leader who participated in OC RISE UP. In those moments, I didn’t see people as the “labor people,” the “community people,” “staff.” I saw us all as people with a vision to bring power to the everyday people. We were all leveraging our social, economic, political, and institutional capital. District elections were initially proposed to OC RISE UP by Tefere Gebre, the then head of the Orange County Labor Federation (OCLF). The OCLF had undergone transformation in the early 2000s. Following a major defeat on a state ballot initiative in 2004, the California Federation of Labor strategically reinvested in its central labor committees (CLCs), pushing for the CLCs to engage in power-building work. Orange County’s CLC, the OCLF, was identified as a lagging CLC in need of intervention (Grabelsky). A reorganization of the OCLF led to a dramatic improvement in its ability to retain and engage its affiliate unions, conduct voter outreach and coordinate affiliates around shared goals. Gebre, formerly the state federation’s political director for southern California, stayed with OCLF as political director and then as executive director. He was instrumental in OCLF’s new leadership and power-building capacity, and its vision for longerterm, sustainable change in Orange County (personal interview 2; personal interview, 3). District elections had been discussed off and on by varying interests for decades. Community leaders, among them Amin David, leader of Anaheim’s informal “Los Amigos” community group, had advocated for districts in the 1980s and early 1990s, and affluent residents from both Central Anaheim and Anaheim Hills had argued over geographical representation following contentious land use and development decisions around the same time (Interview, EA; Woo; Riggs). But a number of emerging factors made district elections a newly viable and potentially impactful campaign in 2010. First, a campaign for district elections offered a legal angle under the California Voting Rights Act, approved in 2001. The CVRA prohibits the use of at-large systems for municipal elections if they impaired the ability of protected classes, which included racial and ethnic minorities to elect candidates of their choice (California Election Code). With only two Latino council members serving in the City’s history despite Latinos comprising just over half of the City’s population, Anaheim showed obvious indications of Latino voters being unable to influence election outcomes.

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Second, a campaign for district elections offered a voter engagement component, because even a court-mandated change to district elections would require a change to the City Charter, a change only possible via a popular vote. Both the legal case and voter engagement were areas in which OCCORD and its allies, and the assumed opposition, were on a relatively fair and level playing field (personal interview, 2). Third, the district election campaign was something that could be broadly supported, particularly by labor. Although the rejuvenated OCLF was progressive in its political orientation, its member unions ran a gamut from the very progressive hotel workers’ union to the very conservative building trades unions. The trades in particular were allied with developers and the tourism industry, seeing development as an opportunity for jobs for their members, and community benefits agreements as threats to development. District elections, however, didn’t directly affect any potential development agreements, so the OCLF could fully support it without being blocked by the trades. Finally, Anaheim was considered the most likely place for a victory to have a broader effect on Orange County, as the largest and most economically powerful of north Orange County cities. It was hoped that a win in Anaheim would have a “domino effect” on other cities (personal interview, 5). To begin the campaign, OCCORD found three Anaheim residents willing to file as plaintiffs in a CVRA lawsuit. The three plaintiffs represented three different political party registrations (Independent, Republican and Democrat), and were established community leaders (Jose Moreno and Amin David were joined by Consuelo Garcia, an Anaheim school administrator) (personal interview, 2). They were represented by ACLU of Southern California and two private attorneys. A lawsuit alleging a violation of the CVRA, Moreno v. City of Anaheim, was filed in early 2012 (Moreno v. City of Anaheim). The City of Anaheim declined to resolve the matter out of court. Based on this, OCCORD began to operate on the assumption that the city’s strategy was to stall the resolution of the lawsuit for as long as possible (OCCORD, “History”). It seemed highly unlikely that the city would have a winning case; not only did demographic research indicate a high likelihood of CVRA violation, but there had also been no successful cases of a municipality or school board winning a CVRA violation lawsuit in court in the CVRA’s history. However, OCCORD believed that the City Council majority and their supporters among tourism and business would benefit from any additional years of an at-large system. Additional tax rebate deals were in the pipeline, and an existing tax break deal with Disney was set to come up for renewal in 2016. The police shootings and resulting civil unrest in July of 2012 put an unexpected spotlight on the issue of district elections. Through interviews with media, OCCORD was able to tie district elections to the issue of police brutality, both emphasizing the intersectionality of these issues and raising the profile of the district elections campaign. The presence of violent protests less than a mile from the Disneyland Resort was an appealing hook for regional and national news, and headlines played off of the resort’s “Happiest Place on Earth” tagline, bringing

OCCORD 219 Disney into the fray (Medina “Fury Reveals”). Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz published a picture depicting a police officer with Mickey Mouse ears shooting a Latino child (Amidi). Shortly after the first wave of articles and reports, Disney issued a vaguely worded public statement in support of district elections (Kahn). An additional unexpected factor emerged in the form of Anaheim’s conservative mayor, Tom Tait. Upon his election as mayor in 2010, Tait’s Republican establishment credentials were impeccable. He had the endorsement of former Mayor Curt Pringle, the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, SOAR and the Anaheim Bureau of Tourism (Wood). Tait initially had little interest in district elections, discussing it willingly with community activists but disagreeing that representation in Anaheim was polarized (personal interview, 6). Following a rush of lobbying around tax subsidy deals, however, Tait broke ranks with his colleagues on the City Council and many of his donors and endorsers, considering the subsidies to be corporate welfare and fiscally irresponsible. He reengaged with the issue of district elections and supported the right of voters to decide how their representatives should be elected. Winning district elections involved a comprehensive and multifaceted campaign. OCCORD participated in the city’s public processes; despite believing that these were primarily a stalling tactic, it was important to build up a record of public testimony to support the lawsuit and any media coverage. Throughout 2013, OCCORD community leaders attended meetings of a “Citizens Advisory Committee,” successfully lobbying committee members to recommend putting district elections on the ballot, although the City Council then voted to ignore this recommendation. OCCORD produced research demonstrating that West and Central Anaheim had disproportionately fewer resident council members over the past decade than Anaheim Hills, and had less park space, fewer community centers and received less public investment per capita. OCCORD also engaged their base and allies around district elections, hosting a large community leadership forum in the summer of 2013 and beginning a door-knocking campaign focused on outreach and education around districts. When the lawsuit settled in early 2014, OCCORD was ready to transition into an electoral campaign phase. In the settlement, the city agreed to put two charter amendments on the November 2014 ballot: one to create City Council districts (Measure L) and one to expand the City Council to six seats (Measure M). Because a ballot campaign would exceed the amount of lobbying that OCCORD and its allied nonprofits were permitted to do as 501(c)3 organizations, they established a 501(c)4, Anaheim Neighborhoods Together (ANT). ANT’s board of directors included one representative from each of five partner organizations involved in nonprofit, nonpartisan voter engagement work in Orange County,1 as well as the ACLU and UNITE HERE Local 11 (OCCORD, “History”). Initial polling found that Measure L had majority support across Anaheim, regardless of political party, voter demographics or area of the city. However, polling also showed that more than half of likely voters hadn’t heard of the measure, and that it was vulnerable to counter-arguments from opponents. Messaging about having a council member live in your neighborhood was more effective

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than messaging that referred to social or racial justice. ANT designed campaign materials accordingly, and ran both a mail and ground campaign in support of Measure L and Measure M. The ground campaign, made up of both paid canvassers and volunteers, knocked on 27,000 doors and made 12,000 phone calls in the eight weeks leading up to the election. Former CVRA lawsuit plaintiff Moreno ran for City Council during the 2014 election as well, hoping to use the campaign platform to raise awareness of Measure L and Measure M. His experience highlighted the fundamental inequalities that the at-large election system perpetuated. “It was extraordinarily, ridiculously difficult to run a citywide campaign,” Moreno said. “If there’s 125,000 registered voters, you’re looking at 60,000 to 70,000 voters who will turn out. Each mailer costs a dollar.” Not only did this disadvantage grassroots candidates with little available campaign funding, but it also reinforced and exacerbated structural inequality of representation for constituencies in low-income communities and communities of color. We were told by consultants to target the high-propensity voter, and the high-propensity voter is white, upper class, and older. I was constantly advised not to target people who don’t vote, especially when you don’t have the money. You can see how, in this context, because of the need for money, you build on a system that is already racially polarized. Contrary to expectations, the opponents to district elections didn’t engage in a serious No campaign once the measure was on the ballot (personal interview, 2). Opposition was limited to a misleading website, a few late-appearing banners and some references in mailers from the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. Disney made a lukewarm in-kind contribution to the Yes on L campaign, specifically withholding support for Measure M, and the PACs and donors that were expected to come out against L and M focused their expenditures on supporting two incumbent members of the City Council majority and (successfully) opposing Moreno’s campaign (OCCORD, “History”). On election day, Measure L won with 68.8 percent of the votes, with Measure M getting 54.2 percent (OC Registrar of Voters).

Drawing the district lines Even after the victory of Measures L and M, drawing district lines that accurately reflected Anaheim’s neighborhoods was essential to achieving better representation for communities of color. The settlement of the lawsuit that had put L and M on the ballot had also decided the method for drawing the district boundaries. Lines would be drawn by a panel of retired OC Superior Court judges residing in Anaheim, a requirement subsequently amended to include judges living in Orange County as only one retired judge was an Anaheim resident. A panel of five judges was selected via lottery, and this panel held public hearings to solicit community input.

OCCORD 221 The process of drawing the district lines represented the peak of OCCORD’s district elections coalition and its capabilities for bringing diverse groups together around strategic, cross-cutting goals. When the mapping process began, OCCORD convened coalition members and Anaheim residents, and with the help of a demographer from ACLU Southern California created a proposed map with one Latino majority district and two Latino plurality districts. OCCORD and its allies turned out so many diverse speakers to support this map at the public hearings that the panel of judges dubbed it “the People’s Map” when they recommended it to the City Council for approval. The City Council majority, unchanged since the 2014 elections, did what they could to stall and undermine the adoption of the People’s Map. After initially approving the map at the first of three public hearings, they then attempted to withdraw their approval and restart the process when the public demanded that the Latino majority district be up for election in the 2016 cycle. OCCORD leveraged the full strength of the coalition to fight. Community members turned out to the next City Council meeting and chanted for the map until the meeting was shut down early (Marroquin). The Democratic Party of Orange County censured the lone Democrat on Anaheim’s City Council for his role in opposing the map (Wicksol). UNITE HERE Local 11 met with tourism leaders in Anaheim and threatened to occupy the streets during an upcoming major convention in the resort district if the map was not approved (personal interview, 1). Under this combined pressure, the Council relented. In February of 2016, the People’s Map was fully approved and its district lines adopted.

Life after districts 2016–2020 At the county level, the victory in Anaheim had the hoped-for “domino effect.” Between 2016 and 2018, an additional six Orange County cities (Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano) voted to make the change to district elections. Anaheim’s first district elections in November 2016 demonstrated the potential that districts hold for progressive change. The council majority shifted from one closely allied with Anaheim’s business establishment to one loosely allied with Mayor Tom Tait. Community candidate Moreno, now running in District 3, was elected by a narrow margin over incumbent Jordan Brandman, despite having less than a fourth of Brandman’s campaign financing and no endorsements from business interests. “The experience of running in a district was fundamentally different,” Moreno said, noting that his team of volunteers was able to knock on every door in the district three times during the campaign, lessening the relative impact of campaign financing. An additional candidate unaffiliated with major business interests was elected in West Anaheim. In the first City Council meeting of the 2016– 2018 legislative cycle, the new council majority revoked the tax subsidy program for luxury hotel developers, ended a sponsorship contract with the Anaheim

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Chamber of Commerce and removed Anaheim’s support for a controversial streetcar development project. Behind the scenes, however, the coalition that had won district elections was no longer working together with a cohesive progressive vision. There was no shared strategy; no working groups or leadership roundtables that engaged unions, community and nonprofits; and no unified or slate of progressive candidates in 2016 or 2018. In the 2018 local elections, Disney ramped up its spending, contributing over $1 million to influence council seats in various districts and to oppose a living wage initiative in Anaheim. A labor coalition with some community participation was able to win the living wage initiative, but the council majority shifted back to a pro-business one, with the expected policy repercussions for Anaheim’s working-class communities. The 2018–2020 council declined to protect mobile home park tenants from predatory rent hikes, and approved a COVID-19 recovery package in which nearly half – $6.5 million – goes to pay a contractor to advertise the resort district.

Lessons learned Winning district elections requires a comprehensive approach. While litigation under the California Voting Rights Act is an option for California cities, it should be connected with a community-based movement. Community power, both among coalitions and among leaders, is essential not only to win, but also to implement victories. OCCORD was able to win a favorable district map in Anaheim due to the support of the coalition and the base of community leaders that had been developed over years. Even as nonprofit organizations and unions in Orange County have waxed and waned in influence, people who were engaged in campaigns remain engaged in their neighborhoods. District elections have the potential to unlock political power for traditionally marginalized groups. Shifts in power on local elected boards like City Councils have immense consequences for municipal and regional politics, as demonstrated by Anaheim’s experiences in the past two election cycles. Even representatives who make up minority voting blocs are an improvement over having no representation, as council seats give these communities a mouthpiece from which to voice dissent. However, while district elections create the opportunity for long-term change, this opportunity needs to be capitalized upon in order to build sustainable progressive power. Orange County’s progressive movement began to struggle after 2014, and by 2018 much of the institutional power and coordination that had driven the district elections campaign was gone. A number of longtime leaders of community-based nonprofits and labor unions retired or left to take other roles, with the executive leaders of OCCORD, OCLF and two other significant allies departing between 2013 and 2015. These transitions left a gap in leadership capacity and in the strength of relationships among the progressive labor unions and nonprofits, and revealed new power imbalances. Whether facing external

OCCORD 223 threats or coping with the inherent challenges of building internal consensus, previous leaders had years of collaboration with one another to draw on. Now, new faces were trying to build new relationships, sometimes completely from scratch. Many of these departures, particularly those of Altman and Gebre, left power imbalances on boards and in coalitions where leaders had previously been able to mediate between coalitions members or affiliate unions (personal interview, 6). OCLF became unable to hold a unified Orange County labor movement together, with affiliates largely returning to their own independent programs. Labor and community partnerships became situations of lending temporary support to one another’s campaigns, rather than working together as partners in developing new campaigns. Many community members and neighborhood leaders felt alienated from labor issues and didn’t feel that unions genuinely supported community initiatives even when they asked for community support on labor initiatives. Some had felt exploited after past collaboration, and continued to distrust both labor and nonprofit organizations (Elmahrek). Some of these challenges can also be attributed to the fundamentally different incentive structures that drive and constrain different institutions. Labor unions’ first obligation is to their dues-paying members, and their immediate priority is to negotiate contracts that protect the job security, wages and benefits of these members. In the 2016 and 2018 elections, they were reluctant to support grassroots candidates who were running “long-shot” campaigns against incumbents, and in many cases chose to support candidates who had very little connection with the communities that they hoped would vote for them (personal interview, 6). Nonprofits have an obligation to the mission set out in their bylaws, to the direction of their boards of directors, and to their funders. The district elections campaign saw the emergence of transformative movement-building work, with community leaders, nonprofit organizations and labor unions working together for systemic change with a long-term, regional focus. In decision-making processes like the OC-RISE UP workshops, community leaders participated on equal footing with institutional leaders, and in some cases held board seats in institutions. Strong leadership kept both institutional and community participants focused on shared issues, systemic change and long-range work. All these factors enabled the nonprofit, labor and community coalition members to overcome barriers to cooperation and work together effectively. Without this, the progressive movement in Orange County became fragmented and coalition work became transactional, reciprocal and short term. While victories like the 2018 Anaheim living wage ordinance have huge effects on workers and community members, and were driven by functional coalitions of labor unions and community leaders, they represent short-term gains rather than long-term shifts in how power and representation are allocated in Orange County. Deep coalition work like that of the late 2000s and early 2010s is essential. While district elections make the playing field more even for community candidates, it still remains uneven. Business interests were largely able to cope with the impacts of districts in 2018 by increasing campaign expenditures on City Council

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seats. Nonprofits are prohibited from directly campaigning for individuals or political parties, while labor unions lack the bandwidth to train potential candidates and mobilize large groups of voters in addition to fulfilling their obligations to their members. Coalition work is essential to leveraging the opportunity created by district election to build progressive power and change. While district elections provide the structural basis for more tangible change, that alone is not enough to dramatically change a region’s political landscape. “It’s not like flipping a switch, and you shouldn’t walk into it thinking it’s like flipping a switch,” said Altman. “It’s incremental gains over a long period of time.” The existing establishment of business interests and conservative politics in Orange County likewise did not spring fully formed into existence, but rather was the result of decades of grassroots advocacy, networking and active leadership. Changing a conservative, anti-worker, anti-immigrant region into one with political power for working families and communities of color is a long-term undertaking. OCCORD has continued to work on issues at the nexus of community organizing and policy work, first leading and then supporting a campaign for community use of an open space proposed for development. The organization provides free naturalization assistance for lawful permanent residents in southern California in order to expand the electorate and improve democratic participation for immigrant communities, a program that has been ongoing for over a decade. At time of writing, OCCORD’s board of directors is embarking on a transformational justice process aimed at reorienting and rebalancing the organization as a bridge between community and institutionalized progressive interests. This transformation is essential for not only OCCORD, but also for any nonprofit seeking to build progressive coalitions that are sustainable in the long term.

Note 1 OCCORD, Orange County Community Congregation Organization (OCCCO), Korean Resource Center (KRC), Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (OCAPICA), and Orange County Labor Federation (OCLF).

Works Cited Amidi, Amid. Disney Critic Lalo Alcaraz Hired to Work on Pixar’s ‘Coco.’ Cartoonbrew.com, August 18, 2015. Bernstein, F. A Housing Plan Turns Disney Grumpy. The New York Times, May 20, 2007. Brunell, N., Hurtado, J. and Martinez, M. Latinos in California Seek Council Seat in Ongoing Tension with Anaheim Police. CNN Wire, August 10, 2012. California Election Code. CA ELEC § 14028. California Fair Political Practices Commission Forms 460, filed by candidates and retrieved from www.anaheim.net for General Elections in 2008 and 2010. California Secretary of State. Report of Registration as of September 3, 2004. https:// elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ror/ror-pages/60day-presgen-04/county.pdf

OCCORD 225 California Secretary of State. Statewide Election Results 2002, 2004. Comedy Central. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Callous in Wonderland. June 5, 2007. www.cc.com/video-clips/1k1idh/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-callous -in-wonderland Elmahrek, A. A Year Later, Many in Anaheim Still Feel Disenfranchised. Voice of OC, July 24, 2013. Geis, S. In Anaheim, the Mouse Finally Roars. The Washington Post, August 6, 2007. Grabelsky, J. Building Labor’s Power in California: Raising Standards and Expanding Capacity Among Central Labor Councils, the State Labor Federation, and Union Affiliates. Working USA 12(1): 17–44. 2009. Kahn, C. Shootings, Violent Protests Put Anaheim on Edge. NPR: Morning Edition, August 8, 2012. Krishnakumar, P., Schleuss, J. and Fox, J. For the First Time since Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Majority of Orange County Voted for a Democrat. Los Angeles Times, November 11, 2016. Marroquin, A. Anger Boils over after New Voting District Map Is Scrapped by Anaheim City Council. Orange County Register, December 16, 2015. McVeigh, K. Anaheim Mayor Meets with Latino community Amid Calls for City Reforms. The Guardian (guardian.co.uk), August 1, 2012. Medina, J. Anaheim Cracks Down as Police Shootings Set Off Protests. The New York Times, July 25, 2012. Medina, J. Police Shootings in Anaheim Highlight Deep Rifts in a Community. The New York Times, July 27, 2012. Medina, J. Fury Reveals Deep Rifts Near ‘Happiest Place on Earth.’ New York Times, August 2, 2012. Moreno v. City of Anaheim. 2012. Superior Court of the State of California, County of Orange. OCCORD (Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development). A Shared Challenge: Orange County’s Deepening Crisis of Working Poverty and the Movement to Change It. www.occord.org. OCCORD (Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development). History of OCCORD, 2005–2016. Internal document. Orange County Archives. Chronological History of Orange County Board of Supervisors. https://www.ocarchives.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx ?BlobID=25981 Personal interview 1. January 30, 2020. Personal interview 2. August 17, 2018. Personal interview 3. August 18, 2018. Personal interview 4. February 9, 2020. Personal interview 5. April 11, 2019. Personal interview 6. July 23, 2020. Quick, S., Martindale, S., Leal, F., Carpenter, E. and C. Carmano. Anaheim Shooting: 2 Cops on Leave, 1 Dead, 5 Arrested. Orange County Register, July 23, 2012. Riggs, V. Anaheim Hills Is Alive with the Sound of Anger. Orange County Register, December 24, 1992. Tully, S. Disney Spends $1.7 Million on Campaign. Orange County Register, October 31, 2007. Tully, S. Development Space More Than Doubled in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle. Orange County Register, December 10, 2007.

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US Census Bureau. Decennial Census 2000. Orange County, CA. socialexplorer.com. US Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 5 Year Estimates 2007–2011, ZCTAs: 92801, 92802, 92804, 92805, 92806, 92807, 92808. socialexplorer .com. Wicksol, M. Democrats Censure Anaheim Councilman Brandman. Orange County Register, November 24, 2015. Woo, L. Ousters Have Resident Groups Feeling Left out at City Hall. Orange County Register, December 17, 1992. Wood, T. Anaheim Mayoral Hopefuls Try the Personal Touch. Voice of OC, October 19, 2010. Orange County Registrar of Voters. Statement of Vote: 2014 General Election. ocvote .com.

13 Georgia STAND-UP Organizing for progressive power in the South Harold M. Barnette and Deborah Marshall Scott

In the final analysis, all power is local. Based in Atlanta, the Georgia Strategic Alliance for New Directions and Unified Policies (Georgia STAND-UP) provides research, strategy, technical support and resource development for grassroots community organizing and nonpartisan voter education throughout the South. Founded in 2004 as a labor-community partnership, STAND-UP has emerged as a champion of community empowerment and progressive advocacy, especially as Atlanta has shifted its approach to city building, reversing decades of suburban and exurban expansion to focus on high-density, mixed-use development linked to the city’s long underutilized rapid rail system. This historic shift in investment coincided with an ideological shift: a preference for business-oriented solutions to replace social safety nets, and a trend toward private control of public goods. Founded by Lorenzo Scott of the National AFL-CIO and Charlie Flemming of the North Atlanta Labor Council, STAND-UP emerged as a communitygrounded activist organization in post-Olympic Atlanta, during a period of intense urban investment, gentrification and tension over extending the city’s transit system into its mostly white suburbs. Relying on collaborative strategies, strategic partnerships and aggressive grassroots organizing, STAND-UP adopted transit-oriented development as its central cause, using the union/community strategy to win a crucial transit referendum, and setting the stage for its own continued growth as a vital, digitally savvy progressive force in the South.

Atlanta: from white fight to gentrifcation and suburban poverty In the mid-1990s, Congressman Jack Kemp, a Reagan Republican who eventually became housing secretary in the Bush administration, popularized the notion that unleashing the power of profit-seeking markets was the best way to satisfy all of America’s housing needs. He also proclaimed that subordinating housing policy to market prerogatives was a key to lifting disadvantaged urban groups out of poverty. This conservative ideological approach to anti-poverty policy was eagerly embraced in Atlanta, where HOPE VI grants from the Clinton administration initiated demolition of public housing, long a safety net providing shelter for tens of thousands of the city’s low-income, minority residents.

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Atlanta had drawn the eye of the world in 1996 as host of the Summer Olympic Games, an event that focused attention on the city’s hunger for growth and its pro-business environment, including the fact that locating the Games in Georgia, a right to work state, was favorable to corporate and ownership interests. The Games were a big success. By 2005, the city was well on its way to embracing a corporate friendly “smart growth” paradigm as its planning and regulatory framework. A burgeoning downtown loft scene, as well as a noticeable influx of new, mostly white residents aimed to create a southern urban experience comparable to other marquee big cities. That set the stage for a subsequent wave of ongoing “gentrification” that continues unabated. The disruptive impact of this development shift was especially harmful to longestablished minority neighborhoods, which over time found it impossible to compete with well-heeled corporate arrivals and a steady influx of new residents with the financial wherewithal to bid up property prices within the city’s transforming neighborhoods. The resulting mass displacement, initiated by the systematic eradication of public housing, triggered a disturbing realization. Atlanta’s newfound economic vigor was being generated at the expense of its poor and minority populations. That laid the groundwork for intensive resistance and advocacy, a campaign for economic inclusion and racial equity championed by Georgia STAND-UP.

The Atlanta way Atlanta, Georgia, the business center of the South, is a place so enamored of deal making that even at the height of the region’s racial conflicts more than 50 years ago it claimed the title, “the city too busy to hate.” From its inception as an obscure rail crossroads to its storied rise from ashes after the Civil War – forever memorialized in “Gone With The Wind” – Atlanta has sought validation through the relentless pursuit of wealth, primarily through land development. At one point in the 1990s the region was breathlessly described as “the fastest growing settlement in human history.”1 For three decades – the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – Atlanta did achieve explosive growth, but at a great cost in geographic disparity, racial inequity and economic inequality. During that period lax regulation and racial animus channeled massive investment to the city’s predominately white Northside and sprawling all white suburbs, while the Black urban core and Southside communities suffered disinvestment and neglect. In those three decades, as the suburbs flourished, white flight reduced Atlanta’s population by 100,000, from 500,000 to 400,000.

Transit: fulcrum of Atlanta’s revitalization Among traditional southern cities, Atlanta was the first to embrace a heavy rail and subway network. Adopted after an epic struggle that was lengthened by white suburban opposition, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) system came online in the mid-1970s, its range of service limited by racist resistance.2 Nevertheless, the rail system elevated Atlanta’s metropolitan

Georgia STAND-UP 229 profile and in the glow of post-Olympic fervor was envisioned as the backbone of a new approach to city building.3 As private investment pivoted from the suburbs, eager to exploit a new frontier of dense, mixed-use urban redevelopment, one major obstacle stood in the way: a large population of low-income Black people already occupied many of the spaces where dense, mixed-use redevelopment could be built. Atlanta was a pioneer in creating public housing, and at the time the city had some of the most extensive public housing in the South, most of it concentrated in and around the city core. Techwood Homes and Grady Homes were notorious by reputation, but they also supplied a powerful political constituency, supporting a Black political elite that from the 1970s dominated Atlanta’s City Hall and most of the public administrative apparatus. As private capital demonstrated its intent to return to the urban core, Black politicians were confronted with the challenge of creating space for that return. The lowest hanging fruit was high value, “underutilized” urban land occupied by poor minorities living in dilapidated projects often adjacent or accessible to transit hubs. The only question was how to move out people, demolish structures and clear land for resettlement.4 That answer was found in the Jack Kemp–inspired ideology that private investment and free markets were the solutions to poverty, an ideology embraced by Atlanta’s Black political elite and particularly by the Black managers of Atlanta’s public housing, including the then Executive Director Renee Glover. For Glover, the projects were clearly a “toxic environment” to be leveled – and she proceeded to do it. Starting with grants from the Clinton-era Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and then using private financing, she reduced the city’s 14,000 public-housing units to 2,000, most of them in complexes for the elderly. … Glover then leased the land to private developers, who built apartment and townhouse complexes there; in return, the developers agreed to dedicate 40 percent of the new units to tenants who qualified for public housing. Two-fifths of the projects’ residents relocated to these “mixed-income” complexes. The remaining three-fifths received housing vouchers and used them to move into other private apartment buildings.5 The decision to eradicate public housing along with its attributed scourges of poverty and violence set the city on a path of systematic dispossession and removal of many low-income residents. Like Atlanta’s pioneering foray into public housing, its effort at eradication was the first of its kind – radical and unique but quickly adopted across the nation. The involuntary removal of thousands of poor Black residents from Atlanta’s central city got underway. Where would they go? Enter an obscure but venerable federal subsidy: housing vouchers. The public relations argument went like this: it was “obvious” that jobs were concentrated in the suburbs, so it only made sense to move impoverished urban Blacks to where those jobs appeared to be. Housing vouchers allowed that to happen. This use of the subsidy became so routine that it produced a shorthand expression, “vouchering out.” Vouchers expeditiously facilitated the movement of low-income Blacks from inner city projects (already near jobs and/or accessible to transit) to subsidized privately owned apartments in suburban locations

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precisely when market capital was reversing its course – leaving the suburbs and returning to the city. It was a deft reenactment of the brutal “urban renewal” programs of the 1960s, campaigns bitterly renamed “Negro removal” programs by those affected. That was Atlanta’s regional scenario as Georgia STAND-UP was founded by labor leaders shortly after the turn of the millennium: a massive shift of private investment that forced relocation of low-income Black residents from centrally located public housing, only to be re-concentrated in publicly subsidized privately owned developments on the city’s mostly Black southern edge, or more distant suburban areas like Clayton County – away from economic momentum, emerging job growth and in the case of Clayton, transit access. Historically the American South has been the nation’s most difficult region for achieving two important progressive goals: racial equality and providing protection to workers and their families. Although organized labor played an important role in supporting civil rights activism during the 1960s, relations between the southern Black community and labor have not always been sanguine. There has historically been an undercurrent of tension, a lack of trust in the relationship. As Atlanta turned toward a new future of disruptive and inequitable redevelopment in its city core, Georgia STAND-UP symbolized a reversal of that history. It emerged as a powerful labor/community response to an ominous and rapidly growing imbalance of power in Atlanta’s urban neighborhoods.

Georgia STAND-UP’s goal: to build permanent community infrastructure A typical social change scenario is this: skilled, well-informed activists, motivated to challenge injustice, tap into the righteous indignation of marginalized communities, promoting initiatives that promise to bring relief from their myriad types of suffering. The activists have all the skill sets required to undertake initiatives. They only need to cultivate an aura of legitimacy and attract a following to build a popular movement. Whether the initiative succeeds or fails, when the activists move on, the movement-building skills move on with them. In the aftermath, community residents are back where they started: bereft of basic skills needed to continuously advance and protect their interests. The STAND-UP concept originated at FRESC in Denver, Colorado, where Lorenzo Scott, a national AFL labor official was impressed by the success of labor-community partnerships there. In conversations with regional leaders of the Atlanta North Georgia Labor Council, he proposed importing the community-labor coalition model idea to Atlanta. Deborah Scott, an African American woman and labor council political consultant was tapped after a national search as the organization’s executive director in September 2005. As a former labor and community organizer and consultant to political campaigns, she already had deep ties to community activism. She understood the role of professionals was to support grassroots activism, nurture its leadership and amplify its authentic voice by providing platforms and opportunities for victims of oppression to

Georgia STAND-UP 231 speak for themselves. She realized a Black, female labor activist leading a regionally focused community movement was paradigm changing in the South. For 15 years STAND-UP was housed in the IBEW building, headquarters of the Atlanta North Georgia Labor Council and the Georgia State Federation of Labor, where in the late 1980s and early 1990s Stewart Acuff took the lead in developing relationships with local Black leaders, particularly the clergy. Charlie Flemming, who succeeded Stewart as leader of that council, expanded and deepened labor’s community bond. STAND-UP operates on the principle of seeding communities with movement-building skills. Its goal is to identify and elevate grassroots leadership, an investment in people that creates durable capacity, human infrastructure tailored to the community in which it operates. An infrastructure of sinewy capacity grounded in issue development, organizing principles, political savvy, networking ability and communications know-how enables marginalized communities to effectively confront policies and trends inimical to their well-being. It creates the ability to permanently defend community interests, challenging a wide range of threats through the ability to employ a diverse toolbox of strategies and tactics. Conversely, it supports the aggressive pursuit of solutions to problems that perennially frustrate neglected populations, through the ballot, through regulatory intervention or through direct action and civil disobedience. STAND-UP executes this multilayered program with a core of eight full-time staff plus four professional consultants who handle all program management, administrative and communications functions. Part-time support ranges from 25 to 70 people with a mix of skills depending on contract volume, project funding and demand for call center services.

The STAND-UP Alliance STAND-UP is founded on the principle of continuous engagement through ongoing community organizing and civic education with Black women as a primary target. The goal is to provide the research, technical support and communications expertise that communities need to create and sustain self-directed initiatives and transformative change. The STAND-UP Alliance, a community leadership forum, is a highly regarded venue for discussing authentic community concerns. Alliance monthly meetings attract 70–120 from a base of about 300 active participants who form a “coalition of the willing.” The format is a 2-hour “lunch and learn” that features guest speakers, including the city’s past three mayors, congressional representatives, statewide politicians and local officials. The Alliance annual candidates’ forum is famous for giving ordinary community residents the opportunity to grill elective leaders, making them more accountable and responsive. Labor seeks Alliance input when making candidate endorsements. The skills and know-how associated with deeply rooted community engagement as exemplified by participatory forums like the Alliance are easily transferable, providing instant momentum for other progressive issues. For example,

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STAND-UP is involved in helping to ensure an accurate tally of hard-to-count residents in low-wealth and minority communities for the 2020 census. The 2020 census is the first to require that respondents complete surveys online. A disproportionate number of older citizens, low-wealth households and minorities lack access to high-speed WIFI connections, or hardware, or computer skills, or all the above. Though Alliance STAND-UP recruited neighborhood-based nonprofits and faith organizations to make their computer systems available for use by local residents to complete census surveys, STAND-UP was able to identify residents needing these resources, match them with a local support center and coach them through the process of census compliance. The decennial census is a monumental event as it determines the economic and political configuration of society for an entire decade. While Atlanta has organizing unions such as UNITE HERE, thin labor density in the South prevents union issues from taking the lead in campaigns as they do in places where unions are strong. Therefore, in the South community issues take the lead in most activist initiatives, “chicken frying” labor strategies from other areas, to advance progressive politics in the South that benefit worker causes and facilitate labor activism. In this work STAND-UP has won operating support from many progressive foundations, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock Veatch Program. Its research efforts have been bolstered by relationships with Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Technical Institute and Georgia State University.

Policy institute for civic leadership If the Alliance represents the solid core of STAND-UP’s movement-building strength, the Policy Institute for Civic Leadership represents its tendrils. More than 400 community leaders have been trained through STAND-UP’s Policy Institute, an eight week, twice-yearly series of workshops that accommodate about 25 persons, providing basic instruction and guidance on public policy as well as the mechanics of government – its structure, processes, checks and balances. In close collaboration with community residents, university partners and other supporters, the Policy Institute identifies emerging issues and helps develop new strategies to address perennial challenges such as race discrimination, housing affordability, access to transit and mobility, environmental justice and food insecurity, through techniques such as systems analysis and power mapping. Workshops are offered during Spring and Fall. Instructors are drawn from a wide range of experts, including professionals and specialists from a variety of fields, and professors from area colleges and universities who teach on subjects such as race and class in politics, and how development decisions are made. Labor sends organizers to the sessions. They interact with community members similarly engaged, building a foundation for future joint campaigns. One impact of the Policy Institute can be measured in the fact that several graduates have gone on to become elected representatives, government officials and heads of nonprofit service organizations.

Georgia STAND-UP 233 The Policy Institute has produced a large network of trained, embedded community activists – the architecture on which much of STAND-UP’s movement-building activity is based. This is especially true of STAND-UP’s work in nonpartisan voter education, registration and mobilization. In recent years STAND-UP has registered more than 15,000 new voters, worked to restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated citizens and fought voter suppression efforts throughout the South. These investments have proven invaluable on many highprofile policy issues, such as STAND-UP’s successful advocacy for the T-SPLOST referendum explored below.

Atlanta’s community/labor dynamic In decades leading up to the 2000s, labor had experienced protracted and steep declines in membership across the country and in the South. Cofounded in 2004 by union officials Lorenzo Scott and Charlie Flemming as a “think and act tank,” STAND-UP was designed to strengthen community support for workercentered campaigns – specifically reaching out to the African American community in and around the Atlanta region. As a Black woman, the organization’s executive director, Deborah Scott, gave the initiative a strong, authentic face, corresponding to the dictum that the best organizers look like the people they are trying to organize. The bottom line is this: communities want tangible benefits. They want deliverables. Good intentions count for something, but concrete results count for more. In Atlanta’s disenfranchised African American communities frustrated by political impotence and broken promises a perennial demand is for economic opportunity – access to better jobs. STAND-UP’s ability to create strategic partnerships with labor, community, major funders, educational institutions and national activist networks helped meet that expectation.

Trade-Up: a game changer STAND-UP’s trade union relationship delivered in a big way through the creation of Georgia Trade-Up, a prep-apprenticeship program targeting those on the margins of the workforce: the unskilled and chronically unemployed. Offering certification in ten trade skills, Trade-Up addressed the deep pools of underutilized labor in Atlanta’s distressed urban neighborhoods. Trade-Up promised quality training and a pipeline to jobs in skilled, high-wage union shops. It delivered. Alliance members and other community groups referred residents who were screened for aptitude and job readiness, and then provided the support and remediation needed to meet program standards. Once enrolled, trainees received a stipend, tools, work gear, safety instruction, soft skills for navigating workplace relationships and life skills. Trade-Up enjoyed almost immediate success and has been recognized as a national model for apprenticeship training by the US Department of Labor. The program continues to be force in Atlanta’s job training circles.

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The success of Trade-Up did not just impress as a national model; it offered an example that could be further replicated at the local level. The union bench is long, and apprentices must wait their turn to be called up to an open slot. Atlanta is a construction boomtown. There is great demand for capable labor throughout the region. A surplus of trainees from Trade-UP spawned “Build Up,” a subsidiary construction services organization providing workers skilled in the basics of painting, carpentry, glazing, machine operating and other trades. Whereas Trade-Up is specifically designed to be a pipeline to apprenticeship and trade union membership, Build-Up responds to general market demand for job ready, disciplined construction workers. Both receive excellent training support from the Georgia Building Trades Council. By responding to both union and nonunion demand in a right-towork environment that limits union density, STAND-UP maximizes employment opportunities for its constituents. Similarly, as Georgia began to attract elements of the entertainment industry, including global music producers and film and video production, Trade-Up and Build-Up served as ready models for “We Show Up,” a source of trained talent for set design and other off-screen, technical personnel. STAND-UP, in partnership with union specialists, created We Show Up in response to shortages of trained associates to fill support roles associated with film and television production. All three technical training programs are housed in STAND-UP’s multifunction Action Center where instruction, dispatching and logistics are coordinated. This ability to pivot toward opportunity, drawing on union expertise and resources to create timely programs that transform lives and elevate communities, illustrates the tremendous impact of STAND-UP’s labor/community dynamic. It is a dynamic forged at the beginning of STAND-UP’s existence and remains a pillar of its programmatic structure. President Obama declared STAND-UP Executive Director Deborah Scott a “White House Champion of Change” in 2012 based largely on founding Trade-Up and the fostering the prep-apprenticeship concept. The labor-community partnership exemplified by Trade-Up’s success emerged from years of painstaking organizing, persuasion, negotiating and relationship building. Two historically suspicious interests – organized labor and the African American community – marginalized within a region inimical to both found common ground and mutual interests around which to forge a functional partnership. Labor, cognizant of demographic changes and the browning of future generations, reached out to a source of youthful bodies to replace its rapidly aging, overwhelmingly white workforce. The community, eager for opportunities to improve its economic fortunes, responded to that overture. The bridge between them was trust. That trust evolved out of the specific way STAND-UP enabled, nurtured and empowered community leadership. In turn its programs achieved legitimacy, buy-in and a sense of community ownership. This frame of grassroots legitimacy undergirds every Georgia STAND-UP initiative.

Transformative issue: transit-oriented development Every aspect of STAND-UP’s change philosophy, grassroots credibility, organizing capability and collaborative strategy converged around the issue

Georgia STAND-UP 235 of transit-oriented development. By the early 2000s Atlanta’s city building practices had come full circle. The entire half-century after World War II was defined by relentless suburban expansion – including the building of expressways through downtown Black neighborhoods to facilitate white flight from the city, and resistance to transit – viewed by suburban whites as a way to prevent Blacks trapped in the city from following them. But in time physical and cultural constraints on suburban growth combined with the removal of a critical mass of impoverished minorities from the city core created ideal conditions for rapid, ruthless, market-driven urban redevelopment. At the center of this turnaround, ironically, was the MARTA rail system, once ridiculed and mocked, but now praised as a vital asset – a far cry from the days when its acronym was derided by suburban whites as “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.” Despite racist opposition over the entire course of its existence, the MARTA system offered the Atlanta region a speedy transit backbone to support high-density, vertical, mixed commercial and residential development at scale. The emergence of carbon-conscious environmentalism and younger generations’ weariness with monochromatic suburban culture gave rise to an urbanist tide, ascribing cache and verve to downtown living. Transit-focused development would later be complemented by a plan to encircle downtown with a multiuse trail built on obsolete railroad right of way. This project, the Atlanta BeltLine, was designed to support additional high-density development with a ring of mixed-use nodes feeding the MARTA system where the trail intersected rail lines at key transit hubs. STAND-UP recognized two truths about the massive shift in private investment from the suburbs back to the urban core. First, the trend did represent an opportunity for growth and jobs in areas of the city long neglected and disinvested. So, it was important not to be branded “anti-development.” Second, it also represented a threat to existing residents of the city – particularly low-income and minority populations – who faced the absolute prospect of unrelenting economic pressure and displacement. The part of downtown Atlanta next to Centennial Homes (formerly the Techwood Homes housing project), for example, has become a thriving nightlife hub. The Atlanta Development Authority reports that in and around areas redeveloped through the AHA, the assessed value of property has increased by some $1.1 billion since 1998.6 The removal of Atlanta’s public housing residents and their resettlement either in other segregated areas on the city’s southern edge or across far-flung suburban areas barren of transit infrastructure and accessible employment was a red flag. The issue was not one of being opposed to urban revitalization but of favoring revitalization that was equitable and inclusive, and that provided a fair economic return to all the city’s residents.

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T-SPLOST: regional victory for transit expansion By the second decade of the Millennium transit had emerged as a proxy for race and a defining metric for political power across the Atlanta region. The region was at a crossroads. Resistance to transit expansion continued to echo the atavistic racism of the old segregationist order. Expansion of transit represented implicit support for a new geo-economic future with its own threats of displacement and exclusion, but also with the possibility of discarding old fetters by creating a new template for growth. Clayton County, a landing spot for many Atlanta public housing residents displaced by inner-city redevelopment, was desperate for transit. Even farther south of Atlanta’s neglected, mostly Black southern edge, Clayton sat on the backside of Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest. Many of Clayton’s substantially Black, blue-collar workers were employed there. But many of those same residents had no way to get to work at the airport because Clayton County had a high rate of poverty, a high percentage of households without cars and no mass transit. C-Tran, its woeful three-route local bus system, had been eliminated in 2010 as nonviable. The relatively undeveloped landscape lacked basic pedestrian amenities, especially sidewalks. “It’s not uncommon to see young people, old people, moms with babies, people with groceries walking in a ditch,” said Colleen Kiernan, director of the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club. “In hot weather, in cold weather, in rain – in all conditions, at all times of the day and night.”7 Clayton residents had tried valiantly to secure transit on multiple occasions, the first just a few months after C-Tran ceased to exist. Nearly 70 percent voted to join the MARTA system, but that vote brought no action. In time, a larger plan to fund transit eventually emerged: a sales tax proposal to expand and improve the MARTA system. The T-SPLOST referendum vote, scheduled for 2016, offered the potential to fund significant public investments in transit, including expansion of MARTA buses and trains into Clayton County, as well as making badly needed improvements to bus service and transit stations serving other African American communities. Numerous earlier efforts to expand funding for the MARTA system had failed due to fierce opposition. For STAND-UP, the T-SPLOST referendum represented a challenge to defend the right of Black citizens to enjoy the benefit of quality public goods and other infrastructure investments essential to life, liberty and economic opportunity. STAND-UP set about helping to develop a collaborative campaign to ensure the passage of T-SPLOST in Atlanta, Clayton County, and surrounding jurisdictions. Emphasis was put on building a foundation of local transit expertise and an activist network to ensure that Clayton residents as well as other African American communities would not only be beneficiaries of the public investments planned, but also that Clayton communities would have the capacity and policy tools to monitor program implementation and to intervene effectively if their community interests were undermined or ignored. STAND-UP’s T-SPLOST campaign was conducted in 2014–2015 through its “We Vote, We Win” C-4 affiliate and consisted of a broad coalition of activist

Georgia STAND-UP 237 and community groups, as well as some powerful institutional influencers. Branded under the banner “Friends of Clayton Transit,” an initiative founded in 2010 by a pair of local elected officials, the campaign included partners such as the Atlanta Regional Commission, Citizens for Progressive Transit, Clayton County Association of Christian Ministers and the Sierra Club. STAND-UP took a leading role in civic education, voter registration and voter mobilization, coordinating these activities with other activist groups as well as neighborhood and faith organizations. On election day, November 2016, the T-SPLOST ballot initiative passed decisively. The vote was overwhelming in multiple jurisdictions. Fulton County, DeKalb County and Atlanta approved the TSPLOST referendum by 53 percent, 68 percent and 76 percent, respectively. MARTA expansion was approved by 71 percent in Atlanta and 79 percent in DeKalb County. The Clayton County referendum passed by 74 percent. From TSPLOST revenues Clayton received ten bus routes to replace the miserly three that existed under C-Tran. It was also slated to receive rail service, or comparable conveyance, such as bus rapid transit, with construction scheduled to be completed within 6 years. In addition, numerous other infrastructure improvements were slated for implementation, including badly needed sidewalks to serve Clayton pedestrians. The ability of STAND-UP to join forces with a broad coalition of allies then bring to the table its strengths in organizing mass mobilization, voter education, voter registration and voter motivation had paid off.

The transformation alliance The realization that Atlanta’s MARTA transit system would become the backbone for a new development paradigm with the potential to reshape economic and spatial relations throughout the metro region motivated STAND-UP to participate in founding a permanent regional transit initiative. The Transformation Alliance emerged in 2014 as a collaboration of community advocates, policy experts, transit providers, nonprofit and for-profit developers. It represented the institutionalization of efforts to reform regional development practices including imposing broader community oversight in matters related to the control and disposal of public assets, scrutiny of development incentives and subsidies and improving responsiveness to constituent needs. The collaborative pledged itself to the concept of equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD). With support from the Ford Foundation, the alliance committed to policy goals such as: • • • •

Pursuing TOD projects in which immediate equity goals were achievable, as longer-term strategies and funding were developed Promoting inclusionary zoning as an affordable housing tool Developing criteria for evaluating the equity structure of TOD projects Developing financial tools to support ETOD feasibility

The Transformation Alliance and ETOD represented a significant advance in the character of Atlanta’s approach to developments of regional impact, for the first

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time providing a platform where community and allied interests could anticipate and engage massive new injections of private capital targeted at publicly owned assets with the potential to completely alter the region’s physical landscape and population demographics. As the lead community organizer among the Transformation Alliance’s members, STAND-UP positioned itself to play an aggressive role in addressing some of the region’s glaring inequities, particularly the preference for luxury and market-rate housing in a city where public housing had been eradicated with no formal commitment to affordable housing production. STAND-UP works to ensure genuine community engagement as RFPs for improving publicly owned land around station facilities are let by the transit authority – using its regional network to mobilize participation in public hearings, and leveraging forums such as Neighborhood Planning Units (NPUs), Atlanta’s citizen review process, to deploy the regulatory force of land use and zoning codes. Through its Policy Institute, STAND-UP continuously educates community leaders on proposed and ongoing transit-related development projects, enlisting a wide range of experts from its university partners and other sources to break down complex development proposals and financing schemes. In its regular Alliance meetings, STAND-UP engages elected officials, administrators and regulators, demanding accountability for promised transit access, safety and affordability, as well as jobs and business opportunities generated by construction activity. As with every other effort to reduce inequality, expand opportunity and eliminate racial disparities, activating and mobilizing the citizenry is crucial to achieving successful ETOD. Through the Transformation Alliance STAND-UP is able to flex its organizing, education and mobilization skills – perfected in neighborhood and community settings – on a regional, trans-jurisdictional scale.

The South: a different context In the movement to build community-labor partnerships that expand the horizon of a national progressive vision, the South is a unique and problematic region. Heartland of American slavery, landscape of the long, terror-filled era of post-Reconstruction peonage and bloody caldron of the struggle against racial segregation, the South has a deeply encoded aversion to both Black liberty and empowered labor. As a relatively young, aggressive organizer for minority rights and social equity, Georgia STAND-UP has been fortunate to build an enduring, mutually supportive bond with organized labor in this inherently antagonistic environment. That bond has led STAND-UP to national networks such as becoming a founding member of the Partnership for Working Families, a move that has lifted its ability to tap resources and expertise. But organized labor’s presence in the right-to-work South is much more circumscribed than in other regions of the country. Whereas union penetration of labor markets may average double digits in much of the Northeast, Upper Mid-west and parts of the West, in Georgia union penetration of the workforce is less than 4 percent. Here the definition of

Georgia STAND-UP 239 “progressive” is relative expectations are scaled appropriately to match the nature of local economic and cultural conditions. While in New York, for example, communities unite to successfully reject a massive Amazon project offering thousands of jobs, fearing its low-wage business model, monopoly effect on smaller enterprises, outsized carbon footprint and other factors. But in the South Amazon jobs paying $17 per hour are coveted. For a southern organizer, it is foolhardy to oppose an Amazon development proposal. People will be lined up for those jobs. It is more practical to focus on more incremental targets such as improving work conditions; higher wages; securing benefits such as medical coverage and paid family leave; demanding greater workplace safety. Organizing around tactical goals can build traction toward bigger targets, such as the right to organize for union representation. Similarly, in many metropolitan areas of the country, municipalities have some measure of autonomy in setting progressive local policies. Southern states often preempt such powers, forcing liberal urban centers to conform to conservative political dictates. That is the case in Georgia, where Atlanta is a blue region in a red state. Some of the city’s progressive impulses, such as requiring community benefit agreements, or requiring city contractors to pay livable wages, are circumscribed by state hegemony. Without losing sight of more ambitious progressive goals, STAND-UP has successfully focused on winnable targets, such as equitable transit investments, building a track record, harnessing momentum and setting the stage for more expansive progressive efforts to come. Yet there are areas in which the South has excelled. One such area is in the election of Black officials. Civil rights agitation and intensive voting rights advocacy have produced these highly visible electoral gains. Despite this, the South remains resistant to progressive advancement. Regions that lag in diversity among their elected officials often do not get that electing Black officials alone is not sufficient. Like other politicians, they must be held accountable. That is why even in a region well populated with Black elected officials STAND-UP pursues an unrelenting activist agenda – grassroots community organizing; civic engagement; leadership development; voter education and registration; voter motivation and turnout. Through key affiliations such as the Partnership for Working Families, STAND-UP engages progressive allies across the country in coalition building and grassroots action through multiracial and feminist coalitions as well as sharing collaborative power-building strategies and spreading best practice models. These practices form the lens through which STAND-UP visualizes the future of its work.

Innovations for the future Devastation wrought by the novel coronavirus has determined one aspect of STAND-UP’s future path: its operations will be much more digitally focused. For an organization steeped in high-touch, face-to-face activities, the proscription on interpersonal interactions imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 posed an urgent challenge. STAND-UP was able to respond to that challenge

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within a few weeks, shifting to online platforms for administrative and programmatic purposes. However, it quickly realized that most of its community partners, especially small nonprofits, and community residents, lacked the capacity, equipment and sometimes access to high-speed WI-FI such a transition demanded. So STAND-UP began to build this capacity among its members, providing equipment, training and other technical support, becoming much more aware of the “technology deserts” that exist among low-wealth residents of minority communities, even within densely wired and fiber-saturated metropolitan areas. The expansion of this now rudimentary digital infrastructure in coming years will enable STAND-UP to efficiently link to minority activists and social justice nonprofits in other major cities throughout Georgia – Macon, Savannah, Albany, Columbus – evolving a state-wide network to further drive progressive momentum. This will be a boon to sharing intelligence and coordinating initiatives in program areas such as voting rights, affordable housing, environmental justice and health and nutrition strategies. Building a state-wide C4 association or “table” to strengthen local elective efforts and share best practices will make gains in the electoral realm more efficient and cost-effective. A point of emphasis will be working to increase and diversify representation on obscure elective and appointive bodies such as boards and commissions that make day-to-day-decisions that directly shape the quality of life. STAND-UP is also looking much farther ahead. To that end it has acquired a 9,200 ft2 warehouse it describes as an Action Center. The facility is designed to serve as a hub for progressive activism throughout the Atlanta region and the state. The Center is a “safe place” for social change activists to work, meet and collaborate. It provides a dynamic ecosystem for progressive activism in Georgia, offering affordable meeting and conference facilities, a fully equipped business center, a digital production studio and a kitchen in addition to a 70-station call center that is capable of generating millions of targeted calls, texts and emails. The Action Center is an important physical asset, boosting STAND-UP’s ability to enhance programming, such as its Policy Institute for Leadership Development, which it plans to expand. The expansion will result in “STAND-UP U,” a curriculum of live and online workshops/tutorials intended to create new avenues for citizen participation in local government. It will offer practical guidance on matters such as how to register to vote; how to contact your City Council member or county commission; how to make a code enforcement request; and so on. The call center is both a job generator (up to 70 part-time employees will be needed) and a revenue source for the organization – part of its strategy to diversify financially into a mix of grants, fee for service consulting and earned income. Over its 15-year history, Georgia STAND-UP has endured as a matrix of labor-community engagement in the trenches of grassroots progressive organizing in the South. Through its neighborhood Alliance and activist programming STAND-UP has taken the long view of advancing the progressive agenda, investing in the creation of real quotidian capacity by lifting up authentic community leaders through an emphasis on civic education while also registering and motivating voters to effect electoral change by generating power at the polls. Leveraging

Georgia STAND-UP 241 the resources and national networks of its labor partners, STAND-UP has brought the unique flavor of southern progressivism to national tables through linkages with the Partnership for Working Families and other collaborative forums. Recognizing shifting patterns of capital investment and corresponding changes in city-building practices, STAND-UP drew on a deep understanding southern race relations, disenfranchisement and discrimination to anticipate emerging forms of twenty-first-century inequity. A trend toward pouring public subsidies into privately owned residential developments as a replacement for safety net shelter vital to so many low-wealth communities, combined with efforts to cede public transit assets to the control of private interests, indicated the arrival of a new development template that could further intensify inequality, accelerate urban displacement and expand geographic disparities in the Atlanta region. Adopting equitable transitoriented development as a development frame to counter these neoliberal trends, STAND-UP has proceeded to build diverse and expansive regional coalitions that rest on its foundation of local activism and community-driven initiatives. Victory in the T-SPLOST transit referendum of 2016 validated STAND-UP’s regional strategy. Breaking with decades of resistance to transit funding largely due to ancient racial animus, Atlanta took a decisive step toward a future that could rebalance its geographic and racial disparities. At the same time, many former residents of the city, displaced to a distant jurisdiction, denuded of transit, sidewalks and other basic services, flexed their voting strength to win those benefits and begin a new era of confident political empowerment. STAND-UP looks ahead to more, similar victories, building a multifunction Action Center – brick-and-mortar infrastructure to complement its established community base. A nurturing, supportive place for social start-ups and nonprofit activism, the Action Center also embraces social entrepreneurship, creating jobs and diversifying STAND-UP’s resource stream, generating economic opportunities and enhancing its financial stability for years to come.

Notes 1 This description is attributed to urban planner Chris Leinberger in “Report: Walkable urban Areas in Atlanta Gaining Market Share over Suburbs,” Saporta Report, June 24, 2019. 2 Doug Moore, “Where It All Went Wrong,” Atlanta Magazine, August 1, 2012. 3 This essay benefitted greatly from a critical reading by Michael Dobbins, former Commissioner of Planning for the City of Atlanta, and Professor of Practice at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, School of City and Regional Planning. Professor Dobbins, a longtime instructor in STAND-UP’s Policy Institute also coauthored the award-winning Fort McPherson Community Action Plan, a pathbreaking study in community-led transformation of a decommissioned military base. 4 Stephanie Garlock, “By 2011 Atlanta Had Demolished All of Its Public Housing Projects. Where Did All Those People Go?” City Lab, May 8, 2014. 5 Howard Husock, “Atlanta’s Public Housing Revolution,” City Journal, Autumn 2010. 6 Ibid, City Journal. 7 Tanya Snyder, “How Clayton County Turned Its Zero-Transit Nightmare Around,” Streets Blog USA, November 7, 2014.

14 Stand Up Nashville Shaping a narrative of equity and inclusion in the “It City” boom Terrie Spetalnick

“Coalition Calls for Equity from Boom,” declared the headline on page 3A of the Tennessean.1 The coalition was the newly minted Stand Up Nashville, and it was calling for economic equity in a city that indeed was booming by just about any measure. Largely fueled by expensive publicly financed projects and generous subsidies to private developers,2 the local economy had surged 27 percent in only five years.3 New residents numbered more than a hundred a day,4 Nashville was topping lists from “#1 Place for New Businesses” to “Best City to Spend a Weekend,” and a New York Times article had recently anointed Nashville the latest “It City.”5 But concern was growing among this group of local community organizations and labor unions, who could see that the It City’s prosperity was eluding too many of its residents, putting at risk the rich diversity so essential to Nashville’s authentic character. Convinced that the time had come for a new model of doing business, the groups came together to form Stand Up Nashville, a Partnership for Working Families affiliate. A feature article on October 26, 2016, in Nashville’s primary daily newspaper marked the initial media coverage of SUN. The story introduced not only the coalition, but also a solution SUN intended to pioneer in Nashville – legally binding contracts between private developers and neighborhoods designed to help ensure inclusiveness and accountability in publicly funded development, known as community benefits agreements. In August 2018, less than two years later, Tennessee’s first-ever community benefits agreement became reality when Stand Up Nashville successfully negotiated a deal with developers of a $275 million Major League Soccer stadium. This win required the newcomer organization to establish its own credibility and power, to successfully champion the priority of equity, inclusion and accountability in decisions regarding public funds, and to marshal public and political support for an unfamiliar approach. In this study I investigate how Stand Up Nashville in its first 40 months framed socioeconomic inequities faced by the city’s residents and communities as its most pressing issue, community benefits agreements as a constructive solution and the nature and efficacy of SUN itself as an organization. I then compare SUN’s framing to explicit and implicit framing in contemporaneous local news coverage. Findings suggest that, in addition to the promise of material

Stand Up Nashville 243 benefits through its signature agreement with Nashville Soccer Holdings, Stand Up Nashville achieved important nonmaterial benefits by reshaping the discursive space within which the city’s economic calculus is framed. During the October 2016 through February 2020 study period, news reports and opinion pieces increasingly reflected the coalition’s narrative of community benefits agreements as an indispensable tool for achieving greater socioeconomic equity and inclusion. Notably, the centrality of SUN’s community benefits agreement with MLS team owners became so solidified that, when the stadium project hit a snag in early 2020, protecting the agreement was a matter of course. Findings indicate a growing regard for the coalition as a voice for those who felt left out of the It City boom, and as an effective force for change.

Movements, the media and discursive opportunities Advocacy work typically involves central organizing ideas known as frames. Framing is used to focus attention on a particular issue, and on a particular way of viewing the issue. The metaphor of frame implies both a delineated composition that highlights some aspects of an issue while “cropping out” others, and an underlying structure on which to construct claims. Collective action frames have three components: diagnostic, which identifies the troubling situation and its causes; motivational, which justifies taking action, often by evoking a threat to a cherished value; and prognostic, which specifies how to remedy the troubling situation with policy change, often but not necessarily legislative.6 Those who organize for social change seek to employ frames that maximize acceptance of their claims by policymakers and the public. The path from activists’ claims to policymakers’ attention is sometimes direct, but most often requires media coverage. Likewise, integrating activist framing into the relevant discursive space – the set of “ideas in the broader political culture believed to be ‘sensible,’ ‘realistic,’ and ‘legitimate’”7 – often needs an assist from news and other media coverage, which as part of the discursive space itself both reflects and contributes to creation of the larger issue culture. Gaining news coverage affords activists wider audience for claims and possible entry to public discursive space, but activists’ preferred frames are unlikely to be transmitted intact for two reasons. First, in order to gain coverage, activists need to gear claims to fit news media principles of selection, such as drama, novelty, saturation, widely shared cultural understandings, political viewpoints and journalistic norms for deciding what counts as news.8 Second, once coverage is gained, journalists tend to add a layer of interpretation that often re-frames the claims. Norms and conventions of news work, past coverage, events in the news cycle and the standpoint and style of individual journalists, all shape how news is presented. For any given social issue, a familiar media narrative might already exist that specifies causes, motivations and solutions, and that has well-known rhetoric and condensing symbols – shorthand names, slogans, catch-phrases, visual images, historical exemplars, public figures and the like – as reminders of the established narrative. Any of these might be at odds with activist framing. In

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addition, the journalistic convention of “balance” can open the way for counterclaims and competing narratives.9 Collective action framing takes place within a broader political and cultural environment. The discursive context within which activists construct frames – the discursive opportunity structure – affects how those frames are received by policymakers and the public.10 Discursive opportunity structures encompass both political and cultural opportunity structures. Change is both enabled and constrained by what the political structure allows, and by elements of the broader culture – widely held values, beliefs, symbols, and the like – that can shape public reception of activist claims and impart a collective sense of what is possible.11 Understanding the discursive opportunity structure within which Stand Up Nashville constructed its frames is instructive in investigating whether and how those frames were integrated by local news coverage into the city’s discursive space. Nashville-Davidson County is home to almost 700,000 residents – 56 percent white, 28 percent Black, 10 percent Latinx and 4 percent of Asian ancestry – and is projected to be majority-minority population by 2040.12 With a current median age of 34.2, the average Nashvillian is almost 4 years younger than the average American.13 About one in eight residents is foreign-born, including the largest Kurdish population in the United States.14 According to one study, Nashville topped the list of metropolitan areas experiencing change from 2010 to 2018, with a population growth of 15 percent, a jump from 32 percent to 40 percent of workforce with college degrees, and a jump from 19 percent to 30 percent of households earning six-figure incomes.15 During the same period, Nashville’s poverty rate fell almost 5 percent, yet still exceeded 15 percent16 and stood 4 percent above the national rate in 2108.17 Nashville’s political opportunity structure overlays its distinctive form of government. In 1962, city and county residents voted to merge, forming the first fully unified local government in the United States.18 Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee forms a single jurisdiction with coincident city and county borders, governed by a mayor, a vice mayor and a legislative council. This consolidated government structure affords a single mayor and a single legislative body for activists to target, and obviates many of the complications inherent in cities composed of multiple jurisdictions. The size of the metro council can prove unwieldy, with 35 district and 5 at-large representatives to wrangle, plus the potentially tie-breaking vice mayor. Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act19 applies to all meetings, affording opportunities for observing, for demonstrating strength of numbers, for speaking out and for direct action. Also covered by the state’s open meetings law are some 80 boards and commissions chartered by Metro to advise the councilors. These advisory roles of theses bodies, whose members typically are selected by the mayor with council approval, often amounts to de facto decision-making power. As well, advocates must be mindful that the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and other private entities in certain circumstances control information or might even have de facto decision-making power but are unaccountable to the public. At the state level, “right

Stand Up Nashville 245 to work” laws hostile to organized labor and prohibitions against rent controls or wage floors limit what can be done legislatively; the Republican-controlled state legislature has likewise shown little reluctance to exercise preemption to nullify local ordinances and even results of voter referenda.20 “On a Venn diagram, the place where conservative Christians and hipsters overlap would be today’s Nashville.”21 So said the New York Times author taking a shot at encapsulating the culture of the place just pronounced the latest It City. There is more to it than that, but the author does capture a pattern of seemingly contradictory yet coexisting facets that come together as Nashville’s pluralist cultural identity. The story of the city’s most famous moniker evokes much of what gives Nashville its unique character. “Music City USA” gained popularity in the 1920s with the rise of the Grand Ole Opry (née Barn Dance) radio show but is said to have originated half a century prior with the renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, organized in 1871 to raise funds for the university. As the story goes, Queen Victoria caught a performance of their European tour and was so enamored of the African American a cappella ensemble that she declared they must come from a “city of music.”22 For generations, the Jubilee Singers and the Opry have continued to impart two distinct genres in America's rich musical heritage, making them emblematic of Nashville’s eclectic music identity. County music predominates, but just about any genre can be heard in the city’s abundant venues, and the home of the Country Music Hall of Fame will also soon be home to the National Museum of African American Music. Another nickname, “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” evokes the role of religion in Nashville’s cultural opportunity structure. In a city that has also been called the “City of Churches” and the “Protestant Vatican,” 60 percent of Nashvillians belonged to an organized religion in 2018 (compared to about 50 percent of the US urban population overall) with all but 3 percent adhering to a Christian denomination.23 This religiosity is reflected in the local architectural landscape: Nashville’s places of worship reportedly number the highest per capita among US cities.24 As a cultural resource for activism, faith is the “fuel that has fed the passionate flame in the fight for freedom.”25 Religious institutions furnish a source of shared values and a vocabulary for expressing them, moral authority, leaders, organized congregations and material resources. Nashville’s faith communities have long been instrumental in engendering social justice activism, such as the temperance movement roots of suffragist activism that culminated in 1920 with the Tennessee legislature’s decisive successful vote needed for ratification of the 19th Amendment enfranchising American women,26 and the role of Black clergy and churches in the nonviolent direct action campaign that led in 1960 to Nashville becoming the first major southern city to desegregate public facilities.27 Nashville’s legacy of organized activism is itself a cultural resource. With a decades-long collective history of social justice and labor organizing, the member organizations of Stand Up Nashville figure prominently this legacy. With achievements like the “Welcoming Nashville” campaign that resoundingly defeated a ballot initiative for a proposed English-only charter amendment, establishment and dedicated funding of the Barnes Fund for Affordable Housing, the

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citizen-led Community Oversight Board to review actions of Nashville police and many accomplishments before, since and in between the organizations that came together in permanent coalition to form Stand Up Nashville have helped shape the city’s discursive space. Each accomplishment, large or small, has helped build the foundation for future accomplishments by reshaping policy structures, by bringing more people into the movement and by expanding the city’s discursive space to incorporate new condensing symbols – for example, shorthand terms like affordable housing, cost burden, schools to prison pipeline, living wage – and by expanding the collective sense of what is possible.

Examining coalition framing and news coverage In this qualitative case study, I explored how Stand Up Nashville’s diagnostic, motivational and prognostic frames and the organization’s self-presentation were reflected, or not, in local news media coverage of its community benefits agreement with Nashville Soccer Holdings. My investigation covered two time periods: SUN’s campaign to achieve a community benefits agreement with Nashville Soccer Holdings, beginning with coverage of community meetings in March 2018 and continuing through coverage of metro council votes in September 2018 that cleared the way for construction, and a subsequent dispute between Nashville’s mayor and Nashville Soccer Holdings that threatened to derail soccer stadium development in January and February 2020. I identified the coalition’s framing through participant observation at meetings and actions, unstructured interviews with Stand Up Nashville leaders, content analysis of postings to the standupnashville.org website and content analysis of guest columns and direct quotes by SUN members in the articles specified below. I identified framing in local news coverage through content analysis of news stories, feature articles and opinion pieces made available online as text by local outlets whose primary mission encompassed production of Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County news and that operated in Nashville for the duration of the study period. Inclusion criteria were met by five news periodicals and five broadcast outlets. News periodicals were the Tennessean, Nashville’s primary daily newspaper, established in 1907 and owned since 1979 by Gannett; Nashville Business Journal, a newsweekly founded in 1985 to cover news pertinent to the local business community, owned by American City Business Journals; Tennessee Tribune, a statewide weekly African American newspaper owned since its 1991 founding by Rosetta Irvin Miller-Perry, recipient of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association for her contributions to the Black press of America; Nashville Scene, founded in 1989 as a local alternative newsweekly and owned since 2018 by the local company Freeman Webb Publishing; and Nashville Post, founded in 2000 to cover local business, political and sports news and acquired in 2018 (separately from the Scene) by Freeman Webb. Broadcast outlets were the local news divisions of network television affiliates WKRN (ABC, local channel 2), WSMV (NBC, local channel 4), WTVF

Stand Up Nashville 247 (CBS, local channel 5) and WZTV (Fox, local channel 17), and of WPLN FM 90.3, a 1970 charter member of National Public Radio.28 I searched these local news outlets for articles containing one or more occurrences of the string “Stand Up Nashville.” From 107 articles in the search results, I identified articles published during the two periods described above, then excluded any articles covering a topic other than the soccer stadium development. For the first period, March through September 2018, I identified 40 articles; and for the second period, January and February 2020, I identified 23 articles. I then conducted content analysis of these 68 articles.

Sun advocates a new model of doing business The coalition known as Stand Up Nashville, an affiliate of the Partnership for Working Families, was founded in October 2016 by eight community organizations and labor unions: Central Labor Council (CLC) of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, Democracy Nashville, Ironworkers International Union, LiUNA Southeast Laborers District Council, NOAH (Nashville Organized for Action and Hope), SEIU Local 205, TIRRC (Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition) and Workers’ Dignity–Dignidad Obrera. The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 91 and the Equity Alliance later joined the coalition. Convinced that the time had come to transform the city’s development trajectory, coalition members aimed to create unified campaigns that would leverage complementary skills and strengths of the organizations: robust civic engagement, community organizing, relationships with elected leaders and community leaders, strategic policy research and advocacy and contract negotiation. SUN’s launch announcement characterized its membership as a diversity of hardworking Nashvillians who, although indispensable to the It City’s boom, were not benefiting from the prosperity, and who had no say in how their city was deciding to grow: Together, the Stand Up Nashville coalition represents tens of thousands of working families. From construction workers building the skyscrapers, to housekeepers cleaning new downtown hotel rooms, coalition members fuel the rapid growth of Nashville. Our members – immigrants, refugees, and native Nashvillians alike … vote and pay taxes, yet are left out of decisions that determine how our city grows and consequently, have been left behind.29 The coalition sought to amplify the voices of its “large and diverse membership base” comprising the collective memberships of its member organizations: multiethnic and multigenerational, interdenominational people of faith, racialized people, diverse immigrant communities, working people of all stripes. The coalition’s collective membership crucially embodied numbers and diversity, as well as a singular strength: regardless of specific mission, these organizations had in common the firm underpinning of everyday people organized in common purpose.

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“We don’t just speak on behalf of people,” explained one founding member, “we are those people.” SUN framed Nashville’s most pressing problem as an economic development boom that was eluding too many of its communities, not only compromising widely held values of equity and inclusion, but also putting at risk Nashville’s rich diversity and authentic character – its very heart and soul. SUN’s diagnostic frames centered on three aspects of socioeconomic opportunity: equitable and inclusive distribution of the city’s economic prosperity; paths out of poverty through opportunities for quality middle-class jobs and entrepreneurship; and access to requisites for a decent standard of living, such as affordable housing and quality childcare. SUN’s initial website post in October 2016 used examples of big-ticket economic development and paradoxical statistics to frame lack of shared prosperity from a booming local economy: From the Old Convention Center deal to $15 million in public financing for the Westin Hotel, our city gives millions of local tax dollars to largely private development. With every project, Nashvillians hear promises of an improved economy for all, but after several years most still haven’t seen the benefits. Despite an unemployment rate of only 3.6%, rates of poverty are soaring – almost one out of every five people in Nashville lives in poverty … [P]ublic investments in development [are failing to] create economic opportunities for all Nashvillians, pathways to quality middle-class jobs, and affordable housing.30 The coalition pointed out another paradox: high demand for workers was not necessarily raising job standards. For example, many construction workers in Nashville – those literally building the boom – had the opposite experience, as increasingly they were forced to find construction jobs through temporary staffing firms, essentially as day workers This worrisome trend was producing not only unstable, dead-end jobs with low wages and no benefits, but also an upsurge in labor rights violations ranging from wage theft to discrimination to unsafe working conditions. Moreover, the houses and apartments they were building, even those considered middle-class homes, were out of economic reach for the workers and other working-class residents of the city. Stagnant wages, housing prices pushed up by the economic boom and intensifying displacement in one of the country’s fastest-gentrifying cities31 were worsening what was already an affordable housing crisis. Housing costs were outpacing income; for example, from 2013 to 2014 average rents went up 5.1 percent but average wages rose only 2.4 percent.32 Figuring prominently in Stand Up Nashville’s prognostic framing was the remedy of community benefits agreements, legally binding contracts between communities and developers for benefits based on priorities defined by the community itself. A CBA could include provisions for affordable housing that accommodates families, and for high-road construction contractors committed

Stand Up Nashville 249 to prioritizing safety, paying a living wage, and providing health insurance, disability insurance and opportunities for construction careers through registered apprenticeship programs. CBAs could also include affordable quality childcare facilities, youth programs, worker protections, targeted hiring of people residing in underinvested neighborhoods and many more. Months of preparation preceded the coalition’s launch, facilitated by invaluable education and guidance from the Partnership for Working Families on community benefits agreements, best practices and available resources. Through the PWF, the emergent coalition applied for and received a two-year grant of $200,000 from the Open Societies Foundation. With their decades of collective experience advocating for economic equity now augmented by seed funding and expertise gained from PWF, Stand Up Nashville’s member organizations were ready to begin work as a coalition. The coalition’s first order of business was community engagement. Members canvassed underinvested neighborhoods and met with groups of residents to better understand their priorities. Posing the question, “Do you feel like you have no control over development in your community?” SUN held its first open community meeting at Watson Grove Baptist Church in Edgehill, one of six areas in Nashville’s federally designated Promise Zone, where 37.6 percent of the residents lived below the poverty threshold and unemployment of 14 percent more than quadrupled the city’s overall rate.33 After learning about community benefits agreements from Partnership for Working Families experts, attendees worked in small groups to produce lists of community needs. As expected, themes included opportunities for good jobs in all communities and decent affordable housing in diverse mixed-income neighborhoods. Residents also prioritized protected public spaces with amenities like safe spaces for at-risk teens and community centers with extended operating hours, as well as quality, affordable and proximate services ranging from transit to health and wellness to childcare to youth programming and vocational training to grocery, pharmacy and banking.34 By late summer of 2017, SUN had chosen an initial target for a community benefits agreement: Nashville International Airport, the nation’s fastest growing and an anchor of the local economy, where a $1.2 billion overhaul was set to commence in early 2019. In the end, however, results were disappointing. “We got some soft agreements,” judged one coalition leader. “Some of our language made it into [bidding document]. But we lacked leverage.” Other explanations were variously cited for the outcome, including the coalition’s late entry into the process, lack of clarity on what they were asking, the difficulty of cracking many layers of federal, state and local funding and control – and not yet realizing the power they already possessed as a coalition. Nonetheless, all agreed that beyond some modest gains the effort yielded valuable lessons for going forward.

CBA rewrites the rules of development As Stand Up Nashville was entering its second year, local soccer boosters received an early Christmas gift: the city was awarded a Major League Soccer expansion

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franchise on December 20, 2017. Key to the MLS decision was the planned construction of a 27,500-seat soccer-specific stadium with funding already in place. A fast-tracked funding proposal had been introduced by the then Mayor Megan Barry only two months prior and on November 7 had won metro council approval on a 36-6 vote. The plan called for $225 million in revenue bonds toward the cost of a $275 million stadium at the Fairgrounds Nashville, a 117-acre metroowned property less than a mile south of downtown was home to the annual state fair, a monthly flea market and the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway.35 All three uses were protected by a 2011 voter referendum requiring two-thirds majority approval by the metro council for any proposed change that would impede those uses.36 Barry’s plan additionally included a long-term lease of ten acres adjacent to the stadium for mixed-use private development. Sentiment in favor of the stadium deal predominated the November 7 meeting, but not all present were on board. At-large, Councilor John Cooper, long critical of the mayor’s proposals involving city-owned land, proposed an amendment ahead of the vote to cut the 10-acre development from the project. His amendment was tabled after Councilor Colby Sledge, whose district includes the fairgrounds property, countered that the parcel consisted of “underused, and many times unused, asphalt parking lots”37 that could be put to use helping alleviate the city’s affordable housing shortage. A few spectators in the overflow crowd indicated their opposition to the stadium siting with stickers reading “No Free Land” and red “Save My Fairgrounds” t-shirts. Stadium proponents were galvanized by the prospect of adding a third major league sports team and by what Barry framed as a more fully realized vision for the Fairgrounds Nashville. Conversely, the red t-shirted “Save My Fairgrounds” development opponents from the council meeting soon tweaked the pronoun to rebrand as Save Our Fairgrounds and filed suit to stop a project they claimed would “negatively affect and violate”38 the property’s protected uses. SUN leaders, however, saw an opportunity to pioneer a third path, one that would make stadium construction contingent on a legally binding agreement for the project to benefit the community in ways the community itself would determine. They resolved to fight for a community benefits agreement. SUN leaders elected not to pursue the CBA legislatively. State laws prohibiting living wage and affordable housing mandates were already on the books, and the specter loomed of preemption by a Republican-dominated legislature that in recent years had nullified Nashville nondiscrimination, inclusive zoning and gun control ordinances, and had overturned a local hire amendment passed by voter referendum.39 But the Tennessee General Assembly had no power to stymie a contract between private parties, so the coalition chose to negotiate directly with Nashville Soccer Holdings LLC, the team’s ownership group led by prominent local businessman John Ingram, for a legally binding agreement for communitydefined benefits in stadium operations and development of the 10-acre parcel. For many months Stand Up Nashville had been listening and learning about community needs and priorities in their open community meetings and outreach to neighborhoods, congregations and community groups. In March 2018,

Stand Up Nashville 251 the coalition returned to the Edgehill neighborhood’s Watson Grove Baptist Church to host a meeting they called “Rewrite the Rules of Development.” Three representatives of Nashville Soccer Holdings were in attendance. “The Ingram group is willing to negotiate because they care about the community,” said co-chair Odessa Kelly, “They want them to have an impact on how this goes.”40 After learning how a community benefits agreement with NSH might work, some 200 community stakeholders broke into moderated groups to discuss priorities. Stand Up Nashville’s members worked to expand support for the CBA, framing it as a way to “create pathways out of poverty for residents currently being excluded from Nashville’s growth and prosperity.”41 Conversely, they framed development without the CBA as a pathway to “more dead-end jobs, displacement of vulnerable residents, and debt that jeopardizes vital public services like schools.”42 In addition to canvasing neighborhoods, they courted the favor of flea market vendors and soccer fans, bringing the latter together with people in the neighborhood to help head off polarization. Through face-to-face contact and social media, SUN framed the CBA as a means to “fold the neighborhood into the beautiful game.” Seeking to gain leverage from a trio of ordinances required for the project to move forward, coalition members worked with district councilor Colby Sledge and others to win over policymakers. Meanwhile, negotiating a community benefits agreement with the ownership group was proving an uphill battle. With only a month to go until the metro council’s decisive votes, SUN’s cochair expressed the negotiators’ frustration: “They’ve objected to everything,” Odessa Kelly said. “The only thing they've agreed to is a daycare. Yes, a daycare is nice. We know we can’t solve all of Nashville's problems, but we can start setting standards on how we do development.”43 Almost as Kelly was lamenting scant progress, however, SUN’s efforts with metro council members paid off. Just hours ahead of a procedural first vote at the August 7 metro council meeting, 30 of the 40 council members signed and delivered a letter to the ownership group, seeking a “strong, inclusive, equitable” community benefits agreement for the stadium project. The councilors set forth three tenets for the agreement, which echoed community-identified priorities: affordable housing, living wage jobs and inclusive spaces and community services.44 As anticipated, the council letter afforded vital leverage to SUN negotiators. On August 7, the council voted to advance all three ordinances to the next council meeting on August 21, at which two were advanced for final vote on September 4 and a special meeting with public comment was scheduled on August 27 to consider the third. Ahead of the special meeting a crucial margin of councilors made it clear that, while they had voted to move the bills forward so far, their final votes would be contingent on a strong community benefits agreement. On August 27, with just two hours to spare before the special meeting, the coalition and the ownership group jointly announced preliminary agreement, in alignment with SUN’s demands, on most terms for stadium operations and development of the 10-acre parcel adjacent to the stadium.

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Numerous public comments drove the length of the special meeting to fourand-a-half hours. At the end, the council voted to advance the third ordinance, and all three were headed for a final vote at the September 4 council meeting. But with make-or-break votes now only a week away, SUN and the ownership group remained deadlocked over provisions for minority contractors and standards for some 3,500 anticipated construction jobs. SUN negotiators held firm on both terms. Barely a year had passed since their vigil to honor the lives of three construction workers killed on the job in separate preventable accidents,45 and a recent report placing construction atop the statewide list of workplace deaths46 reinforced the 2015 “Build a Better South” report’s findings of “alarmingly high” injury rates on Nashville’s construction sites.47 Negotiators likewise underscored the city’s thorny struggle to reflect its prized diversity through socioeconomic inclusion.48 The impasse broke on the eve of the key votes with Nashville Soccer Holdings agreeing to SUN’s demands for mandatory safety training for workers and supervisors, responsible high-road contractors who would provide safe and thriving careers for their employees and a commitment to award 25 percent of private development contracts to minority- or women-owned construction firms. In the joint letter announcing the signed agreement and urging the council to approve ordinances for MLS stadium development, the two parties wrote, “Nashville’s soccer fans are not just supporting the team, with our CBA, we are also supporting their neighbors.”49 On September 4, 2018, affirmative votes of the metro council secured the stadium deal. It was a defining moment for Stand Up Nashville. The coalition secured a legally binding agreement with developers of a high-profile project, an agreement based on priorities defined by the community itself that would be of meaningful benefit to working people in Nashville, especially those most directly impacted by the development. And not only did SUN’s signature community benefits agreement break ground as the first in the state of Tennessee, the agreement also was reportedly one of the country’s strongest. It included provisions for affordable housing, including three-bedroom units, directly hired stadium workers paid at least $15.50 an hour with first hiring priority to Promise Zone residents and then to Davidson County residents, assistance for individuals with barriers to employment, a childcare facility with sliding scale fees, reduced-rate retail microunits for artisans and local small business merchants who are Promise Zone residents, need-based youth club soccer scholarships for Promise Zone residents, elementary school visits to promote good sportsmanship and character development, program outreach like youth soccer coaches clinics and equipment donations and community representation on a committee to oversee implementation and provide accountability for the CBA.50

Intense news coverage frames CBA as benefcial, SUN as infuential The campaign for a community benefits agreement with Nashville Soccer Holdings occasioned Stand Up Nashville’s most intense period of local news

Stand Up Nashville 253 coverage to date. The proposed stadium development was high-cost, high-profile and controversial. Journalists were eager to cover the story of a “third way” of approaching the project, especially one that promised to broaden the reach of Nashville’s economic boom. From March through September 2018, local news outlets collectively published 40 articles that met study criteria, with 36 of the articles – a little over half of the study’s total – appearing in a five-week period covering final negotiations and the council’s decisive votes, and 27 of those appearing in the final ten days. Intensity of coverage was consistent with news media selection principles:51 the political rhythm of bills voted along (or not) at predictably scheduled metro council meetings that were already defined as newsworthy events, the cultural symbolism of “new Nashville” stadium supporters pitted against “old Nashville” stadium opponents; a novel “third way” to broaden the reach of Nashville’s economic boom with what would be the state’s first-ever community benefits agreement; and the enticing drama of a make-or-break vote on a contentious development project that increasingly appeared dependent on the outcome of an upstart coalition’s face-off against a well-resourced corporate group headed by a billionaire businessman hailing from one of Nashville's most prominent families. The coalition and its community benefits agreement were the primary subject of 19 of the 40 local news articles in this period of the study. Three of these SUN-focused articles covered the coalition’s March 2018 community meeting at Watson Grove Baptist Church, helping reinforce the coalition’s self-presented priority of inclusive neighborhood and community engagement. Coverage paused for about four months during initial negotiation period, and then resumed as negotiations grew more intense with a handful of articles in the first part of August. One of these articles, a 1,500-word in-depth feature story by the Nashville Scene, extolled the CBA as “a plan that would advance equity and benefit the neighborhoods surrounding the [fairgrounds] site” and “set a new precedent for future developments in the city.”52 An uptick in coverage began with the councilors’ August 7 letter urging the ownership group to finalize a strong community benefits agreement and peaked at the end of the month with a dozen articles covering announcement of the preliminary agreement and the special council meeting on August 27. These articles uniformly framed SUN’s negotiation of the community benefits agreement as instrumental in securing council votes. Several articles quoted law-makers like the following representative, whose constituents included Promise Zone residents: “[M]y take on this is, absent a CBA, it’s harder for me to discern the entirety of the public benefit,” says District 19 Councilmember Freddie O’Connell. “Then we’re back to sort of this notion of, ‘Hey, we’re going to assert that there’s a lot of public benefit here, but we’re not engaged with a group of the stakeholders who would love to participate in this.’ I think the deal is considerably harder to negotiate through a formal public process absent a CBA.”53

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A week later, the announcement of a signed CBA and decisive votes at the September 4 council meeting brought an even more pronounced spike in news coverage. Most articles credited the CBA with sealing the stadium deal, with remarks such as “Most Metro Council members had said they required a CBA prior to voting for the stadium,”54 and “[the CBA] proved key in bringing many undecided voters over, particularly African American council members and others in the council's Minority Caucus.”55 One article judging that “in the end, the right side won” framed the CBA as having “helped make this a better deal for everyone”: [The] group has been negotiating with Ingram since March and, voila, late on the eve of the key voting day a deal came together that tilted Metro Council back toward soccer. The signed contract assures that 20 percent of housing at the hotly contested mixed-use development at the fairgrounds will be affordable; that stadium workers will make a livable wage, $15.50 at minimum; that 25 percent of contracts for the private development go to minority- or women-owned companies, with an additional 25 percent diversity commitment for contractors of stadium operations.56 In the three dozen or so articles that listed specific CBA provisions, the most frequently highlighted were long-standing priorities of SUN’s member organizations: affordable housing, which appeared across the board in the articles, and job quality provisions like the $15.50 wage floor, which appeared in all but three. Business opportunities for minority- or woman-owned firms, a negotiation sticking point won by the coalition, had 16 mentions; the childcare facility had a dozen mentions; and provisions for youth programs, elementary school programs and cultural and community spaces were mentioned a handful of times each. Priority for Promise Zone residents, however, got short shrift in coverage. Of five articles that listed hiring preference for Metro residents, only one reported that Promise Zone residents would be at the very head of the line, and of five articles listing microunit incubators for artisans and small business merchants, only one reported below-market rental rates, specifically for Promise Zone residents. Developer-provided club soccer scholarships for youth living in Promise Zone neighborhoods received no mention at all. Counterframing was present in only a handful of articles, coming mostly from a few council members opposed to the planned 10-acre private development adjacent to the stadium, which the CBA would govern. Council Members John Cooper and Steve Glover complained CBA was unenforceable by Metro Cooper later modified his complaint but continued to assert that Metro ought to have a central role. “We’re trying to do privately what government should be doing,” he remarked in an August 28 interview. “Is this standard practice going forward? If it is, that’s a pretty big indictment on our capabilities as a government.”57 However, mischaracterizations of the CBA in these counterclaims were almost always rebutted immediately: “It's a legally binding contract. We have the ability, if they breach the contract, to take whatever legal action we need to take.” 58

Stand Up Nashville 255 Stand Up Nashville’s self-presentation as a “coalition of community organizations and labor unions” was used verbatim as a label for the coalition in several of these articles. Other articles described the coalition as an advocacy, community, neighborhood or working people’s coalition or group, or else used no label. Tennessean coverage was an exception. In nine of ten articles during this period, the city’s primary daily newspaper framed the coalition as “labordominated,” a constraining label for a coalition counting its broad base as a key strength. Articles in this period of the study bear out SUN’s self-presentation as a voice for all Nashvillians. In particular, the Scene’s feature article described the collaborative and thorough process by which the coalition “drafted its proposal after months of community meetings in the neighborhoods that surround the fairgrounds and with workers groups across the city,” and having gathered feedback from “congregations, community groups and workers about their priorities for the site,” and then coalition then “sorted through hundreds of index cards filled out by participants to craft a proposal.”59

CBA holds together development deal In September 2019, shortly after the community benefits agreement’s first anniversary, metro council member-at-large John Cooper became mayor of Metropolitan Nashville–Davidson County. Even though as a councilor he railed against the soccer stadium deal – especially the private mixed-use development that the CBA would govern – and had voted against every ordinance to move the project forward, as a candidate Cooper appeared to accept the council’s decision on the stadium deal when he declared it to be finished business.60 But once elected mayor, Cooper reverted to his original stance, on his very first day in office announcing his intent to reevaluate specifics of the deal. A month later, the new mayor thwarted a supermajority council decision by refusing to sign a demolition order necessary for the project to proceed.61 Out of the public eye, Cooper battled with Nashville Soccer Holdings for more than three months over financial considerations and a “unified site plan” to encompass potential revitalization of Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway to lure NASCAR Cup Series racing back to the city.62 When asked on January 27, 2020, at a Nashville Rotary Club luncheon when the project would move forward, Cooper offered a cliché-filled nonanswer, saying only that “[on] the other side of this you need a rockin’ plan where the costs are anticipated and covered and (Fairgrounds Nashville) ends up being one of the greatest sites in the country … not a half-baked solution.”63 His dispute with Nashville Soccer Holdings became public three days later on January 30 when lead owner John Ingram and MLS head Don Garber released a joint statement just hours after a failed meeting with Cooper in New York, decrying the mayor’s “continued refusal to proceed.”64 The following day, Ingram followed up with an open letter to the mayor, laying out the ownership group’s concessions and urging Cooper to honor commitments to the team, the league and “ultimately to the citizens and fans in Nashville.”65

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Ingram’s letter detailed the ownership group’s willingness to relieve Metro of $35 million in guarantees for ticket tax revenue, take responsibility for $85 million in stadium construction cost overruns and any future overruns and pay an additional $19 million in infrastructure costs. The remaining sticking point was a 2.4-acre subset of the area governed by the community benefits agreement. The contested area known as parcel 8C comprised the southernmost triangular portion of the area leased for private development, nestled between the speedway and the planned soccer stadium. Cooper was adamant on removing the contested area from the agreement, claiming parcel 8C to be “one of the important components of the unified site plan at the Fairgrounds.”66 Stand Up Nashville expressed concern to learn that the CBA was at the center of stalled negotiations and dismay at being excluded even as Cooper invited racing advocates to discuss the deal. In a statement the coalition called for protection of the CBA, framing it as an antidote to opaque, undemocratic decision-making that benefited only unresponsive elites: Despite asking for planning documents for months, this debate over specific parcels of land has suddenly spilled into the public view. Meanwhile, our hard work to build a pipeline of [construction] workers has been frustrated by unexplained delays to Metro contracts. … Stand Up Nashville fought for the Community Benefits Agreement to show a new vision for transparency, inclusive development in the public interest, free of backroom deals between the wealthy and connected.67 In a January 30 community town hall meeting prompted by the Ingram-Garber statement, SUN’s Odessa Kelly, newly named as the coalition’s executive director, touted the CBA as a source of hope and an opportunity for community selfdetermination. She spoke of the public mood as the stadium deal was announced in 2017, a time when many Nashvillians were feeling left out of both the city’s growth and its decision-making, and of how spirits were subsequently lifted by the prospect of a legally binding agreement with community-determined needs at the forefront. “The community benefits agreement was that thing that got the city excited about what was to come. It became an opportunity where we [turn] something … problematic into opportunity for us to build Nashville in the way that we want to see it grow.”68 The following week Kelly’s guest editorial in the city’s primary daily newspaper framed the still-ongoing back-and-forth between Cooper and Ingram as two powerful men who were “treating Nashville workers like pawns.” Expressing a deepening concern for the identity of her beloved hometown, she called on Nashvillians to demand public participation in any decision that would affect the CBA: The Community Benefits Agreement our community fought for, and the Metro Council approved, represents the fabric of what we say we value as a

Stand Up Nashville 257 city. It’s a promise to our residents that everyone, no matter their stature, will be included in the growth of this city. … Together, we’ve fought too hard to have a seat at the table just to jeopardize the fate of the one development project in Nashville that was sculpted and crafted by the community and the good stewardship of our Metro Council.69 Cooper and Ingram resisted the coalition’s call to engage in public dialogue, but both men stressed the importance of the community benefits agreement. Indeed, the CBA was safe, because protecting it suited the needs of both sides. Valorizing the agreement enabled the ownership group to resist Cooper’s efforts to claw back any of the promised development area by countering that “keeping parcel 8C out of this plan would mean we could not fulfill our commitments under the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). … We intend to honor our commitments to the community.”70 For his part, the mayor could ill afford to undermine his pledge of prioritizing neighborhoods and residents with anything less than full-throated endorsement of the CBA. “Throughout the process, I’ve remained fully supportive of the community benefits agreement between Stand Up Nashville and Nashville Soccer Holdings,” penned Cooper in a Tennessean guest column. “I am working to support its enforcement by including reference to the CBA in the lease agreement.”71 On February 13, 2020, Cooper and Ingram reached agreement and jointly announced an amended deal. Funding concessions as outlined in Ingram’s January 31 letter stood, and so did the original boundaries of the 10 acres slated for private development. Cooper allowed demolition to proceed and waived a lease condition that would have reverted the development to Metro if the team failed to play at least one game during any two-year period of the 30-year lease. The two sides agreed on a set of principles for a portion of parcel 8C to be used as public space between the two stadiums, but specified no details.72 Both Cooper and Ingram could claim victories in the revised agreement. The mayor secured a better deal for Metro taxpayers and kept alive efforts for a NASCAR-ready speedway. The ownership group held onto the full 10 acres for mixed-use development and eliminated a lease clause that was holding up financing. But unequivocal winners were the constituents of Stand Up Nashville and the organization itself. The coalition’s signature achievement proved sacrosanct with backing from all quarters, thus preserving the CBA’s gains, boosting prospects for similar developer agreements in the future, and elevating the profile and credibility of Stand Up Nashville.

News coverage frames CBA as unquestioned good, helps solidify SUN’s infuence Local news outlets covered the threatened derailment of the MLS stadium development deal in 23 articles over a 16-day period that began January 29, 2020. The coalition was the main subject in four of the articles, for a total of about 2,700 words, comprising a guest column by Odessa Kelly, Ingram’s reply to

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Kelly’s column and two articles on SUN’s community meeting. In other coverage during this period, Mayor Cooper had his say in an 835-word guest column, and the ownership group’s viewpoint was represented in Ingram’s open letter to the mayor and two other articles for a total of 3,200 words. Another four articles in three outlets provided timelines or other broader context, and the remaining half-dozen in various outlets reported on the Cooper-Ingram dispute as it progressed. Almost all of these articles treated the community benefits agreement as influential – a “key factor in securing Metro Council's support for the stadium deal in 2018”73 – and as an unquestioned good, worthy of protection. Most articles took seriously Stand Up Nashville’s concern at being excluded from discussions and praised the coalition for having “worked hard to forge a community benefits agreement with the club over issues like fair pay for workers.”74 A notable exception to this positive coverage came the day before the dispute was resolved and the CBA protected, in a Tennessee Tribune article that dismissed the CBA as a publicity stunt and opined that Stand Up Nashville “never really had a seat at the table.”75 Beyond the newsweekly’s consistent opposition to the stadium project, it is not evident what else, if anything, was behind this dismissal of both the agreement and the coalition’s efficacy. This negative portrayal by Black-owned newsweekly contrasted sharply with contemporaneous portrayal by the Nashville Business Journal, which in various articles characterized SUN as a “key coalition,”76 an “influential community group”77 and the “driving force”78 behind the successful community benefits agreement. Stand Up Nashville’s self-presentation as a “coalition of community organizations and labor unions” was used verbatim as a label for the coalition in several of these articles, others characterized the coalition as a group of community stakeholders, and as noted above, NBJ characterized SUN as influential. No label was used in 14 of the 23 articles. In this last batch of articles, the Tennessean’s “labordominated” label gave way to “community stakeholders.” Articles in this period of the study bear out SUN’s self-presentation as a voice for all Nashvillians. Multiple articles included a quote by SUN co-chair Odessa Kelly framing of the coalition’s process as groundbreaking, inclusive and unifying: “Stand Up Nashville took the voice of the community and brought it into the development process for the first time in Nashville’s history … This is a testament to how a coalition can bring a city together.”79

Sun reshapes Nashville’s discursive space When Nashville’s largest community-based and labor organizations came together in coalition to form Stand Up Nashville in October 2016, they ambitiously set out to pioneer a new approach to growth, one that would help ensure inclusiveness and accountability in publicly funded development and a more holistic valuation of public resources: legally binding contracts between private developers and neighborhoods known as community benefits agreements. When Metro financing was approved in late 2017 for a proposed MLS stadium to be built

Stand Up Nashville 259 on publicly owned land along with an adjacent mixed-use development, SUN leaders saw the opportunity to pursue their new model of doing development in Nashville. In August 2018, SUN won a strong, favorable CBA with the stadium developers, and then when the stadium deal was renegotiated in February 2020, the CBA held firm. Relevant coverage in these two periods consisted of 63 news stories and opinion pieces published by five local news outlets and the news divisions of five local broadcast outlets. Content analysis of these articles indicates no meaningful addition to diagnostic framing in the discursive space of local news media. These articles tended to incorporate diagnostic frames that were already established, but were less likely to incorporate novel diagnostic framing. For example, the majority of coverage included the crisis in affordable housing, a diagnostic frame already in the discursive space, but almost never mentioned residents of the city’s high-poverty, high-unemployment Promise Zone neighborhoods – even after this SUN priority was reflected in several important CBA provisions. The prognostic frame of community benefits agreements had more success. A pattern of increasing regard for Stand Up Nashville’s CBA is evident in the coverage, with its set of provisions uniformly presented as an unquestioned good. The CBA was portrayed as influential in metro council approvals to move the soccer stadium project forward, and coverage as the stadium deal was subsequently renegotiated highlighted the CBA’s resilience – indeed, its ability to hold the deal together. Elements of the coalition’s self-presentation were increasingly evident in this local news coverage. Stand Up Nashville’s priority of inclusive, collaborative community engagement was affirmed across all three periods of coverage. The coalition was presented as broad based, with the exception for awhile of the Tennessean, which initially characterized the coalition as “labor-dominated.” Once SUN won the CBA, however, the Tennessean label changed to “community stakeholders.” As SUN engaged with the community and negotiated the CBA, articles more and more framed the coalition as giving voice to the working families of Nashville, and as an effective force for change. As the study period came to a close, the coalition had begun shoring up organizational capacity. SUN added its first paid employee with the hire of Odessa Kelly as executive director on January 6, 2020. To that point Kelly had served as volunteer cochair with Anne Barnett, who remained the 501(c)(3) organization’s board chair. Soon after, Michael Callahan-Kapoor, another founding member, was hired as organizing director. A few months into its fourth year, the coalition was poised to take on priorities beyond economic development and to fulfill its expanded mission to “fight to shift power to make sure our city is prioritizing its people and our dignity.”80

Notes 1 Joey Garrison. “Coalition calls for equity from boom.” Tennessean, October 26, 2016. https://www.newspapers.com/image/237572391/?terms=%22stand%2 Bup%2BNashville%22

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2 Kim Severson. “Nashville’s latest big hit could be the city itself.” New York Times, January 8, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/nashville-takes -its-turn-in-the-spotlight.html 3 De Lombaerde 2018. 4 Joey Garrison. “New data: Nashville region still growing by 100 people a day.” Tennessean, March 28, 2017. https://www.Tennessean,.com/story/ news/2017/03/28/new-data-nashville-region-still-growing-100-people-day /99733098/ 5 Severson, “Nashville’s latest big hit.” 6 Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow. “Framing processes and social movements: an overview and assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26 (2000), pp. 611–639. 7 Holly J. McCammon. “Discursive opportunity structure.” The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, 2013. https://onlinelibrary.wiley .com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm073 8 Stephen Hilgartner and Charles L. Bosk. “The rise and fall of social problems: a public arenas model.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94 (1988), p. 56. 9 William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani. “Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: a constructionist approach.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 95 (1988), pp. 1–37; Joel Best. Social Problems, 3rd ed. (W.W. Norton & Co., 2017). 10 Holly J. McCammon, Courtney S. Muse, Harmony D. Newman, and Teresa M. Terrell. “Movement framing and discursive opportunity structures: the political successes of the US Women’s Jury movements.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 72 (2008), p. 732. 11 McCammon, “Discursive opportunity structure.” 12 QuickFacts: Nashville-Davidson, U.S. Census Bureau, (2019). https://www .census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/nashvilledavidsonbalancetennessee,TN/ PST045219 13 TennesseeNashville. “World Population Review.” https://worldpopulationreview .com/us-cities/nashville-tn-population 14 Mary Hance. “11 things you should know about Nashville's diversity: Nashville is more culturally rich than you might think.” Tennessean, August 30, 2017. https://www.tennessean.com/story/life/shopping/ms-cheap/2017/09/30 /11-things-you-should-know-nashvilles-diversity/699228001/ 15 Chris Salviati. “2010s in Review: which metros changed the most?” Apartment List, December 11, 2019. https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/most -changed-metros-of-the-2010s 16 “2019 State of Economic and Social Wellbeing Community Needs Evaluation, Nashville & Davidson County.” Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. https://www.nashville.gov/Portals/0/SiteContent/Planning /docs/NashvilleNext/FactSheets/next-report-Poverty-flyer.pdf 17 Jessica Semega, Melissa Kollar, John Creamer, and Abinash Mohant. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018.” Current Population Reports, Issued September 2019, Revised June 2020, P60-266(RV), p. 12. https://www.census .gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.pdf 18 Carole Bucy. “A short history of the creation of Metropolitan Government for Nashville-Davidson County.” Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. https://www.nashville.gov/Portals/0/SiteContent /Government/docs/MetroHistoryBucy.pdf 19 T.C.A. § 8-44-102 20 Brandon Thomas. “Tennessee's preemption of local laws discourages civic engagement.” Tennessean, August 14, 2019. https://www.Tennessean,.com

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/story/opinion/2019/08/14/tennessee-preemption-local-laws-lgbtq-rights -police-oversight/1968237001/ Severson, “Nashville’s latest big hit.” “Why is Nashville called Music City? The Fisk Jubilee Singers and Queen Victoria get the credit.” Tennessean, August 2019. https://www.tennessean.com/story/ life/2019/02/19/why-nashville-called-music-city/2906635002/ Association of Religion Data Archives, County Membership Report, 2010, Davidson County (Tennessee) https://www.thearda.com/rcms2010/rcms2010 .asp?U=47037&T=county&Y=2010&S=Name Paul Griffith. “A different kind of church.” Nashville Scene, March 27, 2003. https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/article/13008367/a-different-kind-of -church Bernard LaFayette. “The role of religion in the Civil Rights movements, presented at the faith and progressive policy: proud past.” Promising Future Conference, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, June 9, 2004. https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/kf/rel_Bernard_Lafayette.kpdf The Tennessee woman suffrage heritage trail. https://tnwomansuffrageheri tagetrail.com/ Samuel Momodu. “Nashville Sit-Ins (1960).” Black Past, August 3, 2016. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/nashville-sit-ins-1960/ Information taken from each respective outlet’s webpage. “Equitable development coalition launched.” Stand Up Nashville, October 12, 2016. https://standupnashville.org/equitable-development-coalition -launched/ “Equitable development coalition launched.” Stand Up Nashville. “Build a Better South.” Partnership for Working Families, May 2017. pp. 2, 11, 38. Jeffrey Sparshott. “Rising Rents Outpace Wages in Wide Swaths of the U.S.” Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2018. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-rents -outpace-wages-in-wide-swaths-of-the-u-s-1438117026 Michael Collins. “Nashville neighborhoods included in federal ‘Promise Zone’.” Tennessean, June 6, 2016. https://www.Tennessean,.com/story/news/2016 /06/06/nashville-neighborhoods-included-federal-promise-zone/85495736/ “Buzz for Community Benefits Agreements.” Stand Up Nashville, February 6, 2017. https://standupnashville.org/buzz-for-community-benefits-agreements/ Joey Garrison and Mike Organ. “MLS grants Nashville expansion club, propelling Music City from underdog to ‘soccer city’.” Tennessean, December 12, 2017. https://www.Tennessean,.com/story/sports/nashvillesc/2017/12/20/mls -expansion-nashville-announcement-live-stream/947951001/ Greg Pogue. “Fairgrounds Speedway primed for 55th season.” Fox Sports, April 13, 2013. https://www.foxsports.com/tennessee/story/fairgrounds-speedway -primed-for-55th-season-040413 quoted in Joey Garrison. “Nashville Metro Council approves financing for $275M MLS stadium project.” Tennessean, November 7, 2017. https://www .tennessean.com/story/news/2017/11/07/nashville-metro-council-approves -financing-275-m-nashville-mls-stadium/835596001/ Lawsuit language quoted in Joey Garrison. “Nashville sued over Major League Soccer stadium plans for fairgrounds.” Tennessean, November 29, 2017/11/29. https://www.Tennessean,.com/story/news/2017/11/29/mls-soccer-nashville -stadium-expansion-team-lawsuit/907120001/ Joel Ebert. “Bill to nullify Nashville local-hire plan goes to Haslam.” Tennessean, February 25, 2016. https://www.Tennessean,.com/story/news/politics/2016 /02/25/haslam-gets-bill-nullify-nashville-local-hire-plan/80927640/

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40 quoted in Katie Grunik. “Nashville neighbors meet to give input on MLS stadium plans.” WZTV Nashville, March 22, 2018. https://fox17.com/news/local /nashville-neighbors-meet-to-give-input-on-mls-stadium-plans 41 “A stadium that’s good for us all.” Stand Up Nashville, March 8, 2018. https:// standupnashville.org/a-stadium-thats-good-for-us-all/ 42 Stand Up Nashville. “Stadium good for us all.” 43 quoted in Joey Garrison. “Nashville council majority seeks community benefits agreement for MLS stadium.” Tennessean, August 8, 2018. https://www .Tennessean,.com/story/news/2018/08/08/nashville-council-majority-seeks -community-benefits-agreement-mls-stadium/923946002/ 44 Garrison, “Nashville council majority seeks CBA.” 45 “Vigil for workers killed on the job.” Stand Up Nashville, August 16, 2017. https://standupnashville.org/vigil-for-workers-killed-on-the-job/ 46 Jim Gaines. “Construction tops Tennessee workplace deaths — housing construction boom to blame.” Knox News, July 16, 2018. https://www.knoxnews.com /story/money/business/2018/07/13/construction-tops-tennessee-workplace -deaths-housing-boom-blame/778946002/ 47 “Build a Better South,” p. 38. 48 “Close, but not there yet.” Stand Up Nashville, August 29, 2018. https:// standupnashville.org/close-but-not-there-yet/ 49 Stephen Elliot. “Soccer owners, community group reach benefits agreement.” Nashville Scene, August 27, 2018. https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith -in-the-wind/article/21019746/soccer-owners-community-group-reach-benefits-agreement 50 “Nashville MLS Soccer Community Benefits Agreement.” executed version, posted by WSMV Nashville. https://www.wsmv.com/signed-community-benefits-agreement/pdf_dc1f827c-b06a-11e8-9095-cb391a78332f.html 51 Hilgartner and Bosk, “Public Arenas Model.” 52 Erica Ciccarone. “With MLS stadium, workers and activists aim for a new development standard.” Nashville Scene, August 1, 2018. https://www.nashvillescene .com/news/features/article/21016096/with-nashvilles-mls-stadium-workers -and-activists-try-to-set-a-new-standard-for-development 53 Ciccarone, “Workers and activists aim.” 54 Stephen Elliott. “Council votes to approve soccer stadium bills.” Nashville Post, September 4, 2018. https://www.nashvillepost .com /politics /metro -government /article /21020862/council-votes-to-approve-soccer-stadium-bills 55 Larry McCormack. “Nashville MLS stadium project wins final Metro Council approval.” Tennessean, September 4, 2018. https://www.tennessean.com /stor y /news /2018 /09 /04 /nashville -mls -stadium -soccer-council -vote /1162074002/ 56 Joe Rexrode. “MLS to Nashville stands — and in the end, the right side won.” Tennessean, September 4, 2018. https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports /nashvillesc/2018/09/05/nashville-mls-stadium-city-council-vote-rexrode -nashvillesc-john-ingram-fairgrounds/1196046002/ 57 Forrest Sanders. “Community benefits agreement in talks ahead of MLS vote.” WSMV Nashville, August 28, 2018. https://www.wsmv.com/news/community -benefits-agreement-in-talks-ahead-of-mls-vote/article_7bcd0464-ab13-11e8 -a750-a3f1eda42c40.html 58 Sanders, “CBA in talks.” 59 Ciccarone, “Workers and activists aim.” 60 Yihyun Jeong. “Fix sought to Nashville's MLS stadium deal due to financing obstacle.” Tennessean, October 10, 2019. https://www.tennessean.com/story

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/news/2019/10/10/nashville-mls-stadium-deal-change-sought-due-financing -obstacle/3921769002/ Yihyun Jeong. “What John Cooper said about Nashville’s MLS stadium as councilman, candidate and mayor.” Tennessean, January 31, 2020, https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/31/john-cooper-stance-nashville -mls-stadium-council/4156985002/ Geert De Lombaerde and Michael Gallagher. “Nashville SC, MLS pressure Cooper over soccer stadium.” Nashville Post, January 30, 2020. https://www .nashvillepost.com/sports/nashville-sc/article/21113321/nashville-sc-mls -pressure-cooper-over-stadium Yihyun Jeong. “As Mayor Cooper says MLS stadium infrastructure costs are 'doubling,' the path forward remains unclear.” Tennessean, January 29, 2020. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/28/nashville -mls-stadium-costs-running-over-mayor/4592265002/ Yihyun Jeong. “MLS, Nashville SC express ‘deep disappointment’ in lack of progress on fairgrounds soccer stadium.” Tennessean, January 31, 2020. https:// www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/30/mls-nashville-sc-disappointed-soccer-stadium-progress/2854791001/ “Letter from John Ingram to Mayor John Cooper.” Nashville Soccer Club, January 31, 2020. https://www.nashvillesc.com/post/2020/01/31/letters -john-ingram-and-ian-ayre Yihyun Jeong. “What is ‘parcel 8C’? The sticking point at the center of Nashville’s MLS stadium delays.” Tennessean, February 4, 1010. https://www.tennessean .com/story/news/politics/2020/02/04/parcel-8-c-land-nashville-mls-stadium -delays/4647162002/ quoted in Yihyun Jeong. “Stand Up Nashville left ‘in the dark’ on MLS stadium talks, calls on officials to answer questions.” Tennessean, February 2, 2020. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/02/stand-up -nashville-charges-officials-answer-mls-sc-stadium-questions-public-transparency /2854346001/ quoted in Jeong, “SUN left ‘in the dark’.” Odessa Kelly. “Mayor John Cooper and billionaire John Ingram are treating Nashville workers like pawns.” Tennessean, February 5, 2020. https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/02/03/nashville-mayor-john-cooper-and -john-ingram-mls-soccer/4644636002/ “Letter from John Ingram to Mayor John Cooper.” John Cooper. “I want a stadium deal that works for all.” Tennessean, February 9, 2020. https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/02/09/nashville -mayor-john-cooper-mls-soccer-stadium/4685303002/ Peter White. “Pressure-Cooked Mayor Cooper Okays MLS Stadium.” Tennessee Tribune, February 16, 2020. https://tntribune.com/pressure-cooked-cooper -okays-mls-stadium/ Meg Garner. “Key group calls out Cooper, Ingram over MLS stadium deal.” Nashville Business Journal, February 3, 2020. https://www.bizjournals.com/ nashville/news/2020/02/03/key-group-calls-out-cooper-ingram-over-mls-stadium.html Steve Cavendish. “What we know about the soccer stadium negotiations — and what we don’t.” Nashville Scene, January 31, 2020. https://www.nashvillescene .com/news/columns/article/21113485/what-we-know-about-the-soccer-stadium-negotiations-and-what-we-dont White, “Pressure-Cooked Mayor.” Meg Garner. “MLS team owners respond to key questions around stadium talks.” Nashville Business Journal, February 5, 2020. https://www.bizjournals.com

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/nashville/news/2020/02/05/mls-team-owners-respond-to-key-questions -around.html Meg Garner. “Influential Nashville community group names executive director.” January 6, 2020, https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2020/01/06/ influential-nashvillecommunity-group-names.html Garner, “Key group calls out.” Adam Snider. “Community Benefits Agreement nears completion.” WKRN Nashville, August 30, 2108. https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/community-benefits-agreement-nears-completion/ “Our mission.” Stand Up Nashville, 2020. https://standupnashville.org/about/

15 Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy in Phoenix David B. Reynolds

Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) offers a story of empowering the people who are the most disempowered by our nation’s current power structure. It also provides a tale of creativity as CASE significantly evolved from its origins. Its work today illustrates the power and potential of intensive and lasting voter mobilization. CASE is also a core part of the progressive infrastructure that is transforming Arizona from a bastion of conservatism into a clearly contested terrain. It has done this by building power in one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas of the country.

Organizing at the center of America’s twenty-frst-century political economy CASE’s work centers on the Phoenix metropolitan area. This region lies at the front lines of the nation’s population and economic growth. According to the US Census, the city’s population grew from 1.4 million in 2010 to close to 1.7 million by 2018. This 14.7 percent growth rate made it the fifth largest city in the United States. The overall metropolitan area went from 4.1 million residents in 2010 to over 4.8 million in 2018. Although the area was hit hard by the 2008 recession (and a 2010 boycott of Arizona following the passage of the antiimmigrant law SB1070, explored more below), since 2011 Phoenix has seen a steady recovery and spectacular job growth. The Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler MSA ranked 16th in the nation among metropolitan area Gross Domestic Produce estimates.1 Between May 2018 and May 2019 it topped the nation in overall job growth.2 The region’s economy reflects national trends with the fastest-growing employment occurring in health care, education and business and private services. Phoenix also has seen significant growth in transportation, tourism and recreation, utilities and warehousing. Just as it reflects US economic growth, the region mirrors the nation’s economic contradictions. During its early years, CASE conducted an annual analysis of the metropolitan area’s poverty and underemployment experience. In 2011, for example, CASE researchers found that 16.2 percent of the region’s population lived below the federal poverty threshold, with the numbers increasing over previous years. The rate was 25 percent and 28 percent among African Americans

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and Latinos, respectively, compared to 10 percent for whites. Far from being a sign of regional economic decline, this increase in poverty took place specifically amid significant economic growth. At least four out of ten adults living in poverty in metro Phoenix held full-time or part-time jobs.3 In 2010, nearly a quarter of working-age adults had no health insurance. Almost half of the region’s children either relied on public assistance for health insurance or had none at all.4 Phoenix’s economy, it seems, has produced wealth for some and poverty for many.

Origins and early model Like many PWF affiliates, CASE was founded in 2008 to tackle this central economic contradiction. It grew out of extensive conversations among labor and community activists. Labor leaders played a key role. Phoenix is traditionally known for union weakness, not strength. Arizona is a right-to-work state with no public sector collective bargaining law. In 2018, 156,000 Arizonans were union members, with another 35,000 workers covered by collective bargaining, but not members. That year’s union density of 5.3 percent represented a significant uptick from 4 percent in 2017 and reversed a long-term trend of decline. With more than 23,000 members, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 99 is the largest private sector union in the state and a key supporter of CASE since its founding. It represents a significant number of workers of color and is continuously seeking to organize new members. CASE was originally housed at the UFCW building. UNITE-HERE has also been a key labor partner. With over 2,000 members in hotels, restaurants, airport concessions and in-flight catering, the union’s importance comes not from raw numbers but from its commitment to organizing workers both at work and, politically, at home. The union was just beginning to win a presence in the local hotel industry around the time of CASE’s founding. The parent UNITE HERE has made significant strategic commitments of staff and resource to work in metro Phoenix as CASE has evolved. Following a merger of locals, the Arizona members today are part of the 30,000 strong Local 11 – a very successful organizing local which played a key role in developing regional-power building in southern California. Other labor partners important to CASE’s early development and activities include SEIU, the laborers and firefighters. CASE began as the kind of “think-and-act” tank represented by organizations like the Los Angles Alliance for New Economy and the Center for Policy Studies in San Diego. Such nonprofits use research on the regional economy to bring together diverse labor and community groups to pursue policy and organize campaigns that build a fairer economy. Between 2008 and 2011, for example, CASE released a series of annual reports documenting the expansion of poverty-wage jobs, racial disparities and poverty. The basic problem CASE labeled as underemployment – “the massive number of Phoenicians who have jobs but who do not earn enough to provide food, shelter, and health insurance for themselves or their families.” In 2009, CASE also highlighted the differences in wages, retirement

CASE in Phoenix 267 and health benefits between the unionized Safeway and Fry’s stores and nonunion grocery chains. Since its early years, CASE has helped maintain an active effort to empower workers at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the nation’s eighth largest. With 46,633 workers in 2010, the airport represented the single largest public-owned economic driver in the region. The airport continued to expand throughout the recession. When the city privatized airport jobs, it added to the ranks of the low-wage force in retail, passenger services, security, parking, ramp operations, car rental and food and beverage occupations. Many of these jobs have been filled by workers of color, including a significant population of East African refugees. Both the UFCW and UNITE-HERE have active campaigns to organize airport workers. Bargaining gains, however, could easily be lost if concession contracts changed hands. In 2009, CASE helped lead a coalition which secured a “Worker Retention” requirement that protected the jobs of 1,200 food service workers when the City of Phoenix reissued the $100,000,000 food service concessions for Sky Harbor Airport’s Terminal. Today, this same worker retention language is standard for contracts issued by the City of Phoenix. City contracting can also lead to poor quality jobs when the default is to take the lowest qualifying bid. Public policy, however, can set higher standards for what constitutes a qualifying bid. A 2012 campaign secured a “Best Value Bidding” process for the Sky Harbor Airport Terminal 4 custodial contracts which guaranteed paid sick and vacation days as well as a higher minimum wage for 200 mostly immigrant and refugee custodians. The new policy set a precedent for seeking similar Best Value Bidding policies elsewhere.

Sparks of transition Organizers founded CASE around the traditional PWF model of a think-and-act tank focused on building policy and coalitions, and organizing around economic development. In the last decade, however, CASE has taken a quite different path. The change in strategy reflected several factors. First, in CASE’s early years the composition of the Phoenix City Council was not conducive to progressive change. Phoenix has a city-manager/weak mayor form of government with the manager taking overall direction from the City Council. While Phoenix council races are officially nonpartisan, both candidates and officeholders typically have clear partisan ties. In 2008, for example, the eight-member council plus mayor had a 5–4 split between those with Republican and those with Democratic Party backgrounds. Furthermore, not all Democrats were sympathetic to a CASE reform agenda. Second, in 2010, the Republican-controlled state government threw down a gauntlet when it enacted SB1070. The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act was the broadest and strictest state anti-immigration measure passed in the United States at that time. The law required noncitizens to carry registration documents at all times, punishable as a misdemeanor crime. It required enforcement officers to determine an individual’s immigration status

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during a law stop, detention or arrest. Those picked up without documents had to be held until their legal immigration status could be verified by the federal government. The law also outlawed “sanctuary cities’ by banning state and local officials from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws. It also included penalties for anyone sheltering, hiring or transporting “unregistered aliens.” In 2012, the US Supreme Court upheld the required immigration status checks, while striking down such provisions as the state misdemeanor for lack of documentation. Understanding the significance of SB1070 requires a look at Arizona’s changing demographics. By 2027, Arizona is projected to become a “minority majority” state. In 2012, the US Census listed the population at 57 percent white (non-Hispanic), 30 percent Latino and 13 percent African American, Native America, Asian American or multiracial. That same year, however, 45 percent of those under 5 were Latino compared to 39 percent white. 5 Arizona had seen previous attempts at immigration restricting laws: in 2006 and 2008 measures passed the Republican majority legislature only to be vetoed by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano. In 2004, 56 percent of voters passed the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act – a ballot measure that required proof of citizenship to register to vote, required a photo ID to cast a ballot and required state and local agencies to verify immigration status of applicants for non-federally mandated public benefits. A month following SB1070, the legislature passed a bill banning ethnic studies in state schools. In a state whose population majority was becoming brown and Black, antiimmigrant polices can be seen as serving twin purposes. They rally the Republican base of white voters. A politics of pitting Anglo-Americans against Latinos goes back as far as 1848 when the United States annexed what became Arizona following the Mexican American War. Polling of likely voters after the passage of SB1070 showed it had majority support and that Governor Jan Brewer’s approval ratings had gone up.6 SB 1070 also built upon a century-and-a-half long tradition of intimidating Latinos. For example, in 1992 Maricopa County voters, which includes Phoenix, elected Joe Arpaio sheriff. He would accumulate a long list of accusations that included abusive jail conditions, abuse of power, misuse of funds, failure to investigate sex crimes, criminal negligence, improper clearance of cases and denunciations of his tent city jail and reinstitution of chain gangs, among other issues. In 2017, he was convicted for contempt of court only to be pardoned by President Trump. In 2005, Arpaio started making national headlines when he decided to take up immigration and began “loudly promoting his department’s aggressive practices to target suspected undocumented immigrants, as well as his extreme, and TV-ready, punishments for suspects and convicts alike.7” To give a sense of the atmosphere created, one person interviewed for this study remembers people receiving calls tipping them off that “Arpaio is out on such and such street, avoid that part of town.” SB1070 thus further fueled the climate of fear that discouraged immigrant communities from participating in the civic life of the state.

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Building toward a political revolution Realizing the political potential of the growing Latino population required a systematic effort. As one labor leader who moved to Phoenix in the early 1990s argued, “I had been hearing about the “coming Latino vote’ for years without seeing anything happening.” SB1070 galvanized the state’s Latino and progressive community to a new level of coordination and action. CASE helped found One Arizona – a 501©3 supporting a coalition of originally ten community organizations collaborating to “improve the lives of Arizonans, especially people of color and young people, by building a culture of civic participation.” Today One Arizona encompasses 20 organizations. At the same time, Arizona Wins offers a related statewide 501©4 table capable of partisan political work that also focuses on building immigrant and Latino power. One Arizona deploys three focused strategies to engage voters and increase turnout: 1. They target low-propensity Latinos – those who are eligible but haven’t registered, or who have registered but don’t vote. 2. They sign up low-propensity Latinos for the states Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) so that they can easily vote by mail each election. 3. They use door-to-door canvasing and phone banks to drive voter engagement. The 2012 general elections numbers illustrate the promise and challenge of this work. Sixty-two percent of voting-age white Arizonans went to the polls compared to only 40 percent of Latinos. Arizona’s Latino population is overrepresented among those groups that are harder to get to vote: the young, poor and less formally educated. In 2012, nearly 600,000 eligible Latinos did not turn out to vote.8 Successfully engaging such voters to create lasting power requires strategies that reach well beyond the typical single-shot candidate or election-based GetOut-the-Vote efforts. One Arizona focuses on nonpartisan year-round engagement work that includes registration, early voting, turnout and protecting voters from suppression efforts. During the odd years between state and national elections the coalition mobilizes voters to participate in municipal primary and general elections. Overtime, One Arizona has come to rely primarily on door knocking as the primary method of contact, as opposed to such methods as Robo calls and mail. Partners supplement this work with live phone calls. The door knocking is intensive, with organizers aiming for three to four passes at each door even before the final get-out-the-vote push. Fundraising needs can foster competition among nonprofit groups that may otherwise share overarching goals and values. One Arizona provided a unique neutral space that brought together diverse groups in a way that moved away from “a toxic culture of in-fighting, competition, and stepping on each other’s toes” to a more collaborative and united movement.9 The Four Freedoms Fund, and Unbound Philanthropy in particular, played a critical role in establishing a successful coalition table. They provided consistent durable funds that allowed

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One Arizona to take on work – such as communications, organizing and voter engagement training – that eased the burden on coalition partners. At the same time, they brought in technical service providers to aid One Arizona partners in the specialized work of cutting turf, Spanish-language messaging, training, tracking and data management. In turn, the sophisticated use of systems such as the Voter Activation Network (VAN) allowed for data-driven strategies. Support and the new culture of trust and transparency allowed One Arizona members to hold each other accountable for delivering results and making commitments that realistically reflected each group’s actual capacity. One Arizona hit the ground running for the 2010 elections with a funding level of roughly $1 million. Overall, the coalition made 279,283 door knocking attempts, with 79,260 actual contacts – a rate of 28.4 percent. It engaged 53,423 unique voters. That same year the partner organizations made 352,833 phone attempts with 46,087 actual contacts. The election figures showed a 10.1 percent point increase overall in targeted voters. However, the results among One Arizona’s primary population of Latinos showed an increase nearly in 20 percent points. In other words, while 21.2 percent of low-propensity Latinos in targeted counties overall voted during the 2010 general election, 41.4 percent of low-propensity Latinos successfully engaged by One Arizona voted. With more modest direct C3 funding, between 2011 and 2015 One Arizona members still delivered results between 5 percent and 19.6 percent point increases in odd and even-year elections.10 Overall, from 2010 to 2015 the coalition knocked over 1 million doors leading to 214,698 successful voter engagements with 125,949 unique voters.11

CASE’s transformation As a core player in One Arizona, CASE evolved its work to focus on long-term voter engagement and empowerment. During its early years especially, One Arizona focused its engagement work on Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Pima County (Tucson), with the former the much larger urban area. Thus, CASE’s new efforts developed in core communities in the key metro area for the state. Over time, the work has taken diverse forms as both nonprofit C3 voter engagement efforts and more partisan C4 voter mobilization. CASE itself has developed a C4 partner called CASE Action Fund. The 2012 election mobilization well illustrates the adaptability of the leaders of CASE who began learning how to use other voter contact vehicles to advance the interests of their communities. That year the “Adios Arpaio” campaign was an Independent Expenditure Campaign conducted jointly by staff from CASE, PAZ en Accion and UNITE HERE Local 631 (the pre-Local 11 merger UNITE HERE local). The allies combined the reaction to SB1070 with Sheriff Arpaio’s running for reelection that year to build a voter participation effort. The national UNITE-HERE provided a crucial $1.5 million grant. The Adios Arpaio campaign recruited 4,000 high school students to train them in voter engagement and have them work in 25 school-based teams in their communities. One staffer painted the following image of the work:

CASE in Phoenix 271 We would hop into a van and drive to a Latino supermarket. Some of the young activists would go inside, while others talked to folks in the parking lot. We would ask “hey, what do you think of Arpaio?” People’s response would be the motivation for them to register and vote. Eventually we would be asked to leave and so we would all pile into the van to hit the next location.12 The overall 2012 election season effort proved quite defining even though Arpaio won reelection, albeit by a narrower margin than previously.13 Adios Arpaio volunteers registered over 34,000 new voters through face-to-face contact. This achievement proved dead wrong the long-held wisdom among Democratic Party circles that mobilizing Latinos was a waste of time. The Adios Arpaio campaign also invested in the regional progressive infrastructure by deliberately cultivating the outreach and leaderships skills of thousands of young, primarily Latino activists. This new activist generation is now visible in the staff and leadership of progressive organizations throughout the metro area. The emphasis and resources that CASE and its allies put into leadership development reflect a core part of its strategy and theory of change. While CASE’s model engages voters on a yearly basis, it cannot maintain peak election season staffing levels year-round. Key funding, especially C4 funding for the CASE Action Fund, cycles with the elections.14 Nevertheless, CASE has creatively managed to grow a diverse and stable network of experienced and highly skilled door knockers, coordinators and technical workers able to go on and off the payroll, ready for the next election. Some of these are young people with flexibility in their work lives. However, CASE’s partnership with UNITE-HERE also provides a major source of cyclical staff. UNITE-HERE brings to Phoenix an approach to organizing workers holistically in the community as well as the workplace. It secures in its contracts a right of members to go on union leave for months at a time and return to their jobs afterward. CASE can then draw on UNITE-HERE members during to election season. At the same time, the experience in voter mobilization builds the skills of UNITE-HERE members to lead in their workplace and organize new members. The story of a woman we will call Juanita illustrates the kind of personal transformation this experience entails. Working at a nonunion company that caters to the airlines, she came to an organizing meeting skeptical of joining a union, but was convinced otherwise. She has spent time working as an organizer for the union. She also goes on leave to work for CASE. As a middle-aged Latina, Juanita can directly relate to the women she typically encounters at the doors. She is from Mexico and had to go through the lengthy process of achieving documented status. As a woman she has had to overcome deference to men. As a worker she has directly experienced discrimination. She has also witnessed the anti-immigrant hatred cultivated by the likes of Sherriff Arpaio. She used to believe that politics was a waste of time. Now she “loves it.” At the doors she might say “it’s not just about ‘politics’, it’s about your kids’ school. Do you think that the schools need less money? Do you know the Governor is about to sign a bill cutting funds to education?” She has seen how her presence gets people thinking when they see

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this obviously self-assured, friendly, confident woman at the door and learn that she was just like them. And she can share how her own kids, seeing her active in CASE, got inspired – with the youngest himself becoming a canvasser. For people who cannot register to vote, Juanita’s and her son’s example also demonstrates how they can still make an impact by influencing others. The experience of CASE and others also illustrates the important role that undocumented activists can play in building the movement for change. Some canvassers may not be able to vote themselves, but can be effective advocates and leaders at the doors and in their neighborhoods. The sense of fear that the deportation machine causes in the Latino and immigrant community cannot be understated, even among those with legal status. As part of its organizing, CASE has conducted Know Your Rights trainings. It also helped young people participate in the federal DACA program. In 2015, it inaugurated an Immigration and Worker Center. As detailed in the CASE website, the Center helps immigrant and refugee workers participate more fully in the economic and social life of our community. Programs offered by the Center have included: • • •

Assistance applying for health insurance and expanded Medicaid offered through the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Assistance applying for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Naturalization services, including application assistance, help securing fee waivers and no-interest loans to pay the application fee, and civics and ESL classes to aid aspiring citizens in preparing for the Citizenship exam.

Unions have been partners in these efforts. With management using immigration as a weapon to fight unionization, helping people achieve legal status builds power in the workplace. Engaging working people to vote while developing new leaders and organizations operates as core elements of CASE’s theory of change. Yes, when more people vote, they can elect politicians who better speak to their interests. Some of the new office holders may even be real champions cultivated from the grassroots. Lasting change, however, comes from permanent engagement: the ability of people to act on their own behalf, speak with their own voice and demand real change from the institutions of government.

Toward a New Arizona Nonpartisan voter engagement work in Arizona has shown clear results that are especially high among the targeted population of Latinos. For example, in 2014, overall turnout among low-propensity voters in Pima and Maricopa counties was just 16.4 percent. However, 22.5 percent of low-propensity voters successfully engaged by One Arizona partners voted. Among Latinos the contrast was even greater. Only 9.4 percent of low-propensity Latino voters went to the polls, while 22.6 percent of those successfully engaged voted in the general elections. These

CASE in Phoenix 273 results reflect the growing sophistication of groups like CASE to use detailed data tracking to carefully target which doors to knock. The expanded voting population contributed to the success of a 2016 ballot initiative which raised the state’s minimum wage from $8.05 to $12 an hour by 2020. The measure also created a right to 1 hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. It passed 58 percent to 42 percent. Engaging new voters can also encourage movement activists to run for office. An example is Athena Salman who, in 2016, became a state-house representative for the district that includes the Phoenix suburban cities of Tempe and Mesa. Of partial Palestinian ancestry, Salman experienced discrimination firsthand, including the death of an uncle shot after September 11 while wearing a turban. She has worked as an organizer for UNITE HERE and as a student activist helping CASE recruit student canvassers. Her election touches two progressive legacies from past Arizona popular ballot initiatives. One is the state’s independent redistricting commission. Made up of two Democrats, two Republicans and one independent – and with the state still overseen by Voting Rights Act provisions – the commission drew relatively fair districts out of the 2010 census.15 Salman also has used the state’s weakened but still active voter-enacted CLEAN election law to run public-funded campaigns.16 Salman shares CASE’s approach that effective governing comes when people drive change by speaking with their own collective voices and pushing those in offices to represent them. Not only does she come out of popular movements, but because Arizona has a part-time legislature, she also has to return to her roots to make an adequate yearly living. During various legislative breaks, for example, she has worked for CASE and for the girl scouts (the later involved touring northern Arizona where she experienced the state’s underfunding of schools firsthand). With eight-year term limits in the state house, she has been able to rise to the number 2 position in that chamber, minority whip. Such movement-based politicians go beyond simply being liberal- or progressive-minded individuals. They are rooted in a movement support network that not only deeply roots their values and but also provides backing when the full-time professional industry lobbyists apply pressures of money and influence.17 The 2018 election season proved a big year for both CASE and One Arizona. The results put Arizona on the map as a key battleground state. The now mature C3 voter engagement programs plus significant C4 efforts helped deliver the highest voter turnout rate in 36 years. Nearly 65 percent of registered voters went to the polls in 2018 compared to only 48 percent four years earlier. Arizona made national headlines when Democrat Krysten Sinema defeated Republican Martha Sally (50 percent to 47.6 percent) to replace former Republican Senator Jeff Flake. A Democrat has not won a US Senate seat since Dennis DeConcini achieved reelection in 1988. Democrats also gained two other statewide offices when Katie Hobbs won Secretary of State and Kathy Hoffman Superintendent of Public Instruction. Equally significant were Democratic gains within the legislature. While Republican Governor Doug Ducey won reelection and the Senate remained at 17 Republicans to 13 Democrats, Democrats gained 4 seats in state

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House making the balance 31 Republicans to 29 Democrats. By comparison, the 2010 election, just after the passage of SB1070, delivered a decisive 21 Republican to 9 Democrat Senate and a 36 to 24 House. Arizona’s distinct district system links power in the House and Senate. The state divides into 30 election districts that each elect one senator and two house representatives. Voters can cast two votes for two different candidates for the house – with the top two vote getters winning the seats. Some Democratic gains have come through “single shot” strategies in which only one Democrat runs in the district hoping to gain more votes than at least one of the two Republicans. The Democratic gains in house districts that otherwise include elected state Republicans are thus all the more significant because each district will naturally tend to consolidate toward one party. The prospect of the Democrats taking control of one or both chambers of the legislature in the early 2020s elections marks a historic transformation. The party has not held a majority in either body since the 1970s. Making this shift real, however, challenges the partners of both One Arizona and Arizona Promise. Two of the three legislative districts most in play lie in the greater Phoenix metropolitan region. However, they are outside the heavily Latino areas. The third district spans the central part of the state running east to west with Flagstaff roughly in the middle. The nonpartisan year-round voter engagement work thus has to balance a continued focus on increasing Latino voting and empowerment while also expanding to include the “New American Majority.” A “Latino Plus” strategy maintains the importance of Latinos while also mobilizing categories of pro-immigrant, change-oriented voters who are well reflected in the Latino community but which also reach beyond to include other people of color, unmarried women and new young voters. The One Arizona coalition has also grown its membership, including newer youth- and people-of-color-led organizations such as MiAZ and Our Voices, Our Vote. CASE’s own engagement work has long emphasized building activists and leadership among young Latinos and other people of color. A Democratic-majority state legislature could significantly impact CASE’s work. It would likely stop and even reverse the enactment of voter suppression laws. We have already mentioned the history of state actions that serve to scare the Latino population away from public life. Efforts to suppress voting, especially among communities of color, has had a long tradition in the state. The 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder removed the requirement that Arizona and other states covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act secure federal approval before changing its voting laws and regulations. Since the decision, Maricopa County has steadily reduced the number of polling places from roughly 400 in 2008 to 200 in 2012 to 60 in 2016.18 In January 2020, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Democratic National Committee v. Hobbs invalidated two Arizona voting regulations as discriminatory against Native American, Hispanic and Black voters. One measure had banned out-of-precinct voting. With mass poll closures it comes as no surprise that some voters, disproportionately people of color, would go to a precinct location different from the new one at which they

CASE in Phoenix 275 are official registered. The ban would have prevented authorities from allowing a voter to cast a provisional ballot that could then be counted once authorities confirmed their registration elsewhere and a lack of vote at the official precinct. The decision also ruled against H.B 2023, which forbid nonrelated individuals from submitting legal absentee ballots on behalf of voters. Minority voters, especially Latinos, as well as those elderly or disabled, have disproportionately relied on third parties to collect their ballots.19 In 2019, the state purged 200,000 people from the Permanent Early Voting List following the passage of SB 1188. The new law cancelled the “permanent” list registration for those who had not voted in either a primary or general election twice consecutively for federal, statewide or legislative seats. The year 2019 ended with a suit moving forward by Voto Latino and Priorities USA challenging a 2016 law that changed the timeline for absentee ballots from having to be post marked by 7 pm on the day of the election to actually being received by election authorities by 7 pm on the election day.20 Having to struggle just to survive, the working populations targeted by CASE and others particularly depend on the flexibility of early voting to participate. State laws have also restricted the ability of local units of government to regulate companies – part of CASE’s original focus. For example, the state has banned local laws regulating short-term rentals, such as through Airbnb. The legislature has prohibited cities from regulating retail bags, boxes and bottles after Bisbee banned single-use bags. Amid a growing shortage of affordable housing, the state also does not allow municipalities to enact inclusionary zoning laws. In 2015, the legislature gave the state government sole authority to determine wage and benefit requirements.21

Back to the city Despite such restrictions, CASE’s voter engagement work has opened up new possibilities to move change in metro Phoenix through local government. While the even-year state and federal election seasons may get the headlines, a central part of CASE’s strategy is to maintain voter engagement every year through the odd-year municipal elections. This work has changed Phoenix city politics. Until 2007, the city had no Latino member of City Council, despite four out of ten residents being Latino. This situation changed that year when some of the same partners that were forming CASE successfully backed Michael Nowakowksi in District 7, a council member with a Latino background. Increased voter participation has reshaped the council. In 2011, Daniel Valenzuela won the seat from the heavily Latino District 5. He went on to run unsuccessfully for Mayor in 2018. Voter engagement has also proven key in local ballot initiatives. For example, in 2015, the City Council approved and the mayor supported the successful Proposition 104 to increase the city’s sales tax from 8.3 percent to 8.6 percent to maintain and grow public transportation over the next 35 years. Most controversial, the plan included a significant expansion of the city’s light rail system to bring it into new parts of the city, especially low-income neighborhoods. The battle for transportation equity did

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not end in 2015, however. Having opposed Prop 104, the Koch-brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity placed Proposition 105 on the August 2019 city ballot. Proposition 105 would have amended the city charter to end construction of light rail extensions; redirect funds from light rail projects to other transportation infrastructure improvements; and prohibit funding of other light rail development, with the exception for city airport train. Following an active campaign by CASE Action and its labor and community partners, the measure lost 37 percent for to 63 percent against. As of 2019, the Phoenix City Council consists of three Republican-affiliated, and six Democrat-affiliated (including the mayor) members. The recent election of two of the Democrats has proven pathbreaking because they are both from the activist communities involved with CASE and the broader movement. Born in Mexico, Councilmember Carlos Garcia, District 8, immigrated to the United States when he was 5. A cofounder of One Arizona, Garcia has spent most of his adult life working as an activist in migrant communities – founding the immigrant-rights organization Puente Arizona in 2007. Symbolic of the change he represents, Garcia began wearing a black “End Police Violence” T-shirt to City Council meetings. Also of immigrant background, Vice Mayor Betty Guardado, who had worked as a hotel housekeeper, became active in UNITE-HERE – becoming as an organizer and eventually vice president of Local 11. Guardado has been a core CASE leader and board member. As an organizer she knows how to work with people who disagree with her and find common ground. She quickly became vice mayor. The difference between electing sympathetic politicians and getting movement leaders into office is illustrated by Guardado’s approach as a City Council member. She is still organizing. Feelings of having been abandoned by the city are common in her district of west Phoenix. Once elected, she persuaded the mayor and department heads to tour her district to attend meetings organized for residents to talk about their reality and needs from city government. Similarly, when the city sought public input for the new light expansion, it did what public officials often do: set up a time and place, held the meetings and was done. As a movement-politician, Guardado fostered door-knocking efforts to get the word out about the meetings and engage residents in thinking about what they wanted. While her three staff have different official titles and responsibilities, they also work as organizers. Each one is responsible for a part of her district – going into the district to reach out to community organizations, neighborhood groups and block clubs to connect them with the city government, connect them with each other and foster new groups that allow residents to have a voice. Having worked to get people engaged and voting, Guardado is well aware that they need to see concrete results in their lives. While “repairing the potholes” can be a metaphor for addressing the diverse needs of city residents, it can also literally prove transformational when residents whose streets have deteriorated for years then see, after voting for change, the repair crews out in their neighborhood. Action does not flow one-way, however. While residents identify their needs and

CASE in Phoenix 277 opportunities for city action, Guardado also challenges them to be an active part of making solutions. Instead of “I elected you, now take care of it while I get back to my life,” Guardado invites residents to think about what they can do and what time and energy they are willing to put into solutions. Progressive governance thus becomes a dynamic partnership between the local government and organized residents. CASE now has at least two champions on the City Council and is part of a network of activist organizations and mobilized communities that can begin to change the way the city thinks about development. Guardado, for instance, has not been opposed to the development wave that has helped Phoenix grow into the fifth largest city in the county. However, she feels it is now time for the city to focus on sharing the benefits of that development with everyone in the city, especially those most in need. As in many parts of the country, development in Phoenix has witnessed the growth of too many low-paying, poor-quality jobs and new housing stock focused mainly on up-scale renters and buyers. Traditionally, developers have not had to take underserved communities into consideration. Rather they have been able to approach City Hall unchallenged with their own carefully cultivated community allies in tow. However, more recently, development decisions by the City Councils have seen labor and community groups showing up to raise important questions and to push their own independent priorities. Community mobilization also feeds into other core issues. In 2018, for example, Phoenix experienced record levels of police shootings – with an average of one every five days statewide.22 A growing climate of permanent Latino empowerment also feeds back into Latino and worker power in the workplace. Through years of engagement work, CASE and CASE Action have provided an important link for connecting organized labor and community groups. In recent years, UNITE HERE had a major victory when workers successfully organized at Tempe’s flagship hotel, the Mission Palms. This was a very big public labor battle that combined worker mobilizing with visible community support. It included such dramatic actions as marches and public fasting. The UFCW also maintains active organizing work among such heavily Latino and immigrant worker local industries as groceries, food processing, packing and cannibus-related companies.

The path ahead Reflecting its bold ambitions, CASE and its allies face many challenges. How do they maintain the growing engagement of Latino voters while also mobilizing other populations needed for the New American Majority? How does CASE take advantage of new opportunities to pursue real policy changes in local government while also maintaining the resources for maintaining and expanding voter engagement? How does it continue to evolve its leadership development to support new leaders, grow new organizations and produce values-based leaders willing to run for elected or appointed public positions? And how does CASE and

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its allies sustain and expand the resource base, especially by raising more funds locally? Despite these challenges, over a decade of organizing work has put metro Phoenix and Arizona on the cusp of major political change. The C4 Arizona Wins, which included CASE Action and 19 other partner organizations, points to 2 million doors knocked, 4.2 million phone calls and $22 million in coordinated programs as among its accomplishments from 2018. Its 2020 priorities were to elect a Democrat to Arizona’s other US Senate seat, deliver the state’s 11 electoral college votes for the Democratic candidate, flip at least two state house seats and three Senate seats to change the political balance in the state legislature and support local candidates for Maricopa and Pima County offices and Phoenix City level races. The plan included knocking on over 3 million doors and reaching every door in the canvas universe at least four times between June and the election day.23 As we write in mid-November 2020, it appears the plan was partially successful. The Democrats did pick up Arizona’s second Senate seat and the state did go for Joe Biden for US president. Democrats did not, however, win control of either state legislative chamber – gaining no seats in the house and picking up only one Senate seat, with the victory of teacher Christine Marsh in District 28. Across the country Democrats generally failed to alter state balances of power, despite hopes to do so. Yet, politics in Arizona and metro Phoenix has clearly changed. The lessons for leaders and activists elsewhere in the country seem clear. The current political balance in our nation has been built on the political disengagement of substantial parts of the American population. Rather than focusing on trying to lure away engaged largely white conservative voters who are a distinct minority of the population, and a proportionally shrinking one, CASE’s experience underlines the importance of engaging the unengaged. Even in the most conservative states the cities are “blue.” Organizing in metro areas provides the terrain where most Americans live, can in many cases provide the key to state power, and offers the level of government which can most directly connect to people. True democracy involves people having the ability to speak and act with their own voice. CASE has helped build that vision.

Notes 1 Data is Bureau of Economic Analysis 2018 data. 2 Bureau of Labor Statistics Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment (Monthly) News Release, January 3, 2020. 3 “Labor Day 2011: Underemployment and Poverty in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area” by CASE, September 5, 2011. 4 “Jobs at Sy Harbor Airport” by CASE March 24, 2010. 5 Projected by the Arizona Office of Employment and Population Statistics, December 2012. See Jim Nintzel, “Hispanics Leading Minority Growth in Arizona” Tuscon Weekly, June 14, 2013. 6 For example, three months after its passage, a Rasmussen poll of likely Arizona voters conducted on June 29, 2010, found Arizonans favored SB1070 66 percent to 24 percent.

CASE in Phoenix 279 7 Principle Evaluation Team Shiree Teng and Tom Wong, “One Arizona Evaluation Report” June 2016, p. 9. 8 One Arizona Evaluation Report p. 41. 9 Quoted in “One Arizona Evaluation Executive Brief,” p. 3. 10 A complete picture of election mobilization funding also has to include the growing and diverse C4 efforts. 11 All figures come from the One Arizona Evaluation Report. 12 Interview with Michael Angulo January 10, 2020. 13 In 2012, Arpaio beat his Democratic challenger Paul Penzone 51 percent to 45 percent. Penzone received roughly 32,000 more votes than the Democrat in 2008. In 2016, Penzone defeated Arpaio 56 percent by 43 percent. In 2020, Joe Arpaio has announced that he will run again to become Sherriff. 14 To give a sense of the fluctuation. Between CASE and CASE Action, the high point of staffing may reach 100 and then fall to only a couple during the deepest lulls. 15 The post-2020 redistricting may be different since the Supreme Court has eliminated federal oversight and the process for selecting commissioners may prove open to manipulation. 16 The CLEAN law provides a base amount to any candidate who forgoes further private donations after receiving a qualifying number of small contributions. Originally, the law also provided CLEAN candidates who faced private-funded opponents a certain level of matching grants to keep pace with their opponents. This later provision was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2011. 17 Lobbyists, for example, can threat to fund opponent’s campaigns – the prospects of which can be quite intimidating to a politician not rooted in a mobilized grassroots. 18 Griselda Nevarez, “Arizona: At Hearing, Latinos Demand Answers to Primary Voting Problems” NBC News, March 29, 2016. 19 “Appeals Court Finds Arizona Intended to Supress Nonwhite Votes” by Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, January 28, 2020. 20 See “Will a federal court suppress Arizona’s latest voter suppression low?” EJ Montini azcentral, December 3, 2019, and “Voter Suppression for Dummies, or, when Arizona’s Permanent Early Voting List … isn’t” EJ Montini azcentral, March 27, 2019. 21 “5 Things Arizona Cities Can’t Do: Thanks to State Pre-emption Laws” by Steven Hsieh, Phoenix Times, January 17, 2020. However, a successful 2006 minimum wage ballot initiative recognized the authority of municipalities to set a minimum wage. 22 “Every 5 days, an Arizona officer shoots someone, a Republic analysis finds” Uriel J. Garcia, and Bree Burkitt, The Republic and azcentral.com January 30, 2020. 23 “2020 Arizona Wins – The Plan to Win!” a brochure by Arizona Wins.

Interview list Interviews were conducted in person in January 2020

Maggie Acosta, Airline Catering Worker, UNITE HERE Local 11 Shop Steward and CASE activist. Michael Angulo, staff person to Betty Guardado. Aubrey Barnwell Pastor, First New Life Missionary Baptist Church Ian Danley, Director Arizona Wins, former One Arizona Director Councilwoman & Vice Mayor Betty Guardado, CASE Board Member

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Jim McLaughlin, President UFCW Local 99, CASE Board Member State Representative Athena Salman, Minority Whip Rachel Sulkes, Communication Director UNITE HERE Local 11, former CASE Executive Director Brendan Walsh, Executive Director CASE

Part 5

Further Adaptions and Innovations

16 Adapting the model for a purple state United for a New Economy in metro Denver Marc Doussard and David B. Reynolds The PWF affiliate in Colorado, which is today called United for a New Economy (UNE), began as a scaled-down version of the model established by such pioneers as Working Partnerships USA and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Today, however, UNE looks very different – having extended its policy efforts to the state level while simultaneously building a suburban community-organizing, membership-driven chapter structure. At first glance, going broader to the state level while also moving deeper through chapter organizing may seem like contradictory directions. Yet, as we shall explore in this article, this evolution makes perfect sense given the conditions that UNE faces in metro Denver and Colorado.1

Origins In 2002, several unions, the Denver Area Labor Federation (DALF) and foundations helped found the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC) as a small research and advocacy organization charged with initiating and coordinating campaigns around economic issues. According to DALF, FRESC was intended as a “coalition-building, research, and policy-development enterprise to build and sustain a long-term strategic partnership between area unions and the region’s policy, community, and accountable development organizations.”2 Under the rubric of the Campaign for Responsible Development (CRD), FRESC operated with under half a dozen organizations. After a campaign that spanned several years, the CRD work culminated in 2008 when it won a sweeping community benefits agreement (CBA) covering the Gates rubber factory redevelopment in South Denver. The CBA required living wages and union contractors, as well as provisions that mandated affordable housing, banned Big Box retail construction and required the contractor to cooperate with a neighborhood environmental organization dedicated to remediating the site.3 However, the 2008 financial crisis and recession halted the Gates redevelopment – and development more generally – effectively killing both the CBA and the coalition’s investment in setting up a pathbreaking reform. The recession made coalition members question the wisdom of devoting years of work to a single negotiated deal. It also undercut FRESC’s financial support. Around this time FRESC, DALF and other key partners also all experienced

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leadership turnover that created disruptions in the short term and which would foster change in the long term.

Adapting to regional conditions In the 2010s, the FRESC reconstituted itself as United for a New Economy (UNE) and began expanding its efforts to the regional and state political scales, to public policy and most recently to transform itself into a membership-driven grassroots organization. UNE’s evolution reflects several key aspects of the terrain in which it has had to operate. Politically, it organizes in a state that has been traditionally red, but which is now purple and becoming ever more blue. Between 1962 and 2000 Republicans controlled the Colorado Senate and, for all but two sessions, the State House as well. FRESC was founded at a time when DALF began leading a transformation of labor’s political action in metro Denver – building a more unified and more grassroots-oriented electoral program among the house of labor and fostering alliances with community groups. Subsequently, alliances have grown at the state level among the Colorado State AFL-CIO and diverse advocacy groups. While this work has helped shift the state’s politics, the results of four decades of Republican dominance included state laws preempting many progressive municipal policies, including bans on local minimum wage and rent control laws. The rise of Democratic fortunes in Colorado did not automatically translate into lifting these restrictions or leadership in progressive policymaking. The state Democratic Party is dominated by “business-friendly,” corporate-oriented policymakers. Colorado currently has Democratic legislative majorities in both chambers and an openly gay, politically liberal governor. Yet this leftward drift focuses more on so-called lifestyle issues than material ones. As one interviewee described: We’re a fascinating choose-your-own-adventure progressive state. We legalized marijuana and we're not even trying to ban abortion, but our education policy looks a lot like red states. … Colorado is dead last in kindergartener vaccinations, and the coalition on the bill [to preserve vaccination exemptions] was conservative legislators, a swath of religious folks, and then a large number of Boulder liberals who Jenny McCarthy told vaccinations are bad.4 Thus, the ban on local minimum wage laws was repealed by the legislature only in 2019. That same year a legislative effort to lift restrictions on municipal rent control died on the floor of the state Senate. Advocates were not able to legislatively pass a paid family and medical leave law, but instead successfully won 12 weeks of paid leave through a November 2020 ballot initiative that drew 58 percent of the votes. Former Denver mayor John Hickenlooper served as the state’s Governor between 2010 and 2018 as a self-described centrist who was “socially progressive, fiscally conservative and very business-friendly.”5

Adapting the model for a purple state 285 Colorado state politics has meant that to effectively pursue economic and racial justice issues UNE needed to target state-level impact and be part of statelevel coalitions. This broader focus, however, was not as much of a geographic reach as may seem since metro Denver plays a predominant role in state politics. According to 2019 US Census Bureau estimates, the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area is just under 3 million residents out of a state population of 5.75 million. The staunchly Democratic City of Denver, however, comprises only a fifth of the metropolitan population, making organizing in the suburbs key to the political balance of power. The metro region has experienced explosive growth, adding 388,000 new residents from 2010 through 2018.6 This growth has seen a steady gentrification of Denver, with low-income residents and residents of color first driven out to suburbs and now feeling similar pressures developing there as well. Thus, we will see that when UNE transformed itself by building grassrootsmembership chapters, these chapters and the campaigns which build them are in suburban metro Denver. UNE has also had to adapt to a thin presence of community organizing in the region. After 2010, UNE and its allies expanded to the regional scale via advocacy focused on the Denver Regional Transportation authority, which won the legal ability to develop affordable housing supported by UNE research, and later committed to targeted hiring goals. More state-level advocacy followed, including support for successful legislation on renewable energy portfolio standards and wage theft. The network of organizations in UNE’s orbit has thickened considerably as the work has progressed. Signatory organizations involved in campaigns increased from a handful under FRESC to dozens under UNE. These organizations are many and diverse. However, this organizational density effectively masks limited organizing capacity. As one organizer explained: I wonder how many of these organizations are doing organizing the way you and I think about it, in terms of building movement to rally around issues and identity politics. I don’t see a lot of accountability necessarily with all of them. … People are less institutionally inclined here. There are some Denver churches that are pretty involved in peoples’ communities. But they worship on Sunday nights! I asked why, and the answer was “well, Sunday mornings they're in the mountains. They want to be doing something else.” With limited member engagement capacity many area community organizations are not able to pursue the kinds of transformational politics that undergirds longterm labor-community partnerships elsewhere.7 “You can't get anyone together for anything that’s not an immediate issue,” observed one long-time labor activist. At the same time, the labor movement, which could provide a different source for organizations with membership engagement, has been traditionally weak. Progressives did not win public sector collective bargaining until 2020. Historically, roughly half of DALF’s affiliates have no full-time staff. Traditionally,

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the state has had low union density. However, reflecting progressive labor and community activism union membership has grown with density increasing from 7 percent in 2009 to 9 percent in 2019, with a peak of 11 percent in 2018. This thin progressive grassroots infrastructure led UNE to evolve from the more traditional PWF model of fostering coalitions of groups, especially those focused on grassroots membership, to focusing on growing a community-based membership directly. These political and institutional dynamics of low union density, limited community organizing capacity, state preemption, gentrification and a lack of low-income housing and a nonmaterial political liberalism have combined to evolve UNE into very distinct directions that we will explore by examing two main institutional innovations: the incorporation of state campaigns and the transformation of UNE into chapter organizations. We should note that UNE’s evolution did not take place in one sudden moment but involved an extensive period of several years during which the organization experimented with new approaches. At the same time, we should identify that one key element has not changed in the evolution. In the form of both FRESC and UNE the organization has served as a bridge connecting organized labor with community activism. UNE’s current five-member board includes the former president of DALF, the president of SEIU Local 105 and the business manager for the Colorado Building and Construction Trades Council.

Expanding the reach to state-level campaigns Beginning in 2006, UNE partnered with El Centro Humanitario and Rights for All People to support workers in taking direct action to recover their wages while also pushing policy change strategies at the municipal and state levels. To generate solutions, UNE convened a wage theft task force, made up of state officials, local advocates and wage theft victims. Galvanized by support from the task force, in 2012, UNE convened a coalition of organizational partners to push wage theft legislation at the state house. After two failed attempts, the coalition successfully advocated for the 2014 passage of the Wage Protection Act, which allowed the state of Colorado to hire 17 wage claim investigators. These staff received over 4,000 complaints in the first half of 2017 alone, resulting in the payment of over $793,000 in back wages to workers and over $1 million in penalties. A state law preempting local minimum wages combined with difficulties within the state legislature – even during a 2013–2014 Democratic majority – ruled out municipal and state legislative action on the minimum wage. In response, UNE joined a coalition of nonprofits, labor unions, national partners and affiliates, think tanks, legislators and community members to pass a 2016 ballot measure to increase the minimum wage in Colorado from $8.31 to $12 by 2020. The campaign was sparked when national funding sources became interested in supporting such an effort. Interestingly, it was headed by a community organizer rather than a labor representative. With few full-time staff members, the campaign deliberately set out to leave a greater organizing infrastructure behind than is normal for such ballot campaigns. As one political activist explained:

Adapting the model for a purple state 287 In general, state policy’s an organizing trap. It draws national funding for ballot work, which is useful, but not a way to build a movement. … [The State Federation] agreed to have a campaign of color, designed to transform. … Our goal was not just to win, but to “win forward.” Community organizations did much of the groundwork of engaging and turning out voters. However, rather than focusing all campaign funding on voter turnout and through larger participating organizations, the effort regranted a significant portion of resources “to organizations that wanted to learn, that had never done signature collection before. They were funded through the campaign to do signature collection, and then the organizations with the institutional memory taught that kind of experience.”8 In November 2016, the minimum wage passed handily, 55 percent to 45 percent. Just as significant, in the subsequent years several organizations involved in the campaign grew – adding staff members and organizers. More recently, reflecting the needs of its growing grassroots membership, UNE partnered with 9 to 5 Colorado to anchor a bold and innovative grassroots housing coalition called Colorado Homes for All (COHFA). UNE’s website describes the founding as follows: We came together at the end of Spring 2016 for the first time to plan an action for the National Renter’s Day of Action, which took place on September 22, 2016. Over 150 residents and staff of organizations showed up at the Denver and County building and marched to the capitol where resident leaders shared their stories of displacement, eviction, and homelessness. We declared a housing state of emergency and put forward our collective demand for rent control. That event laid the groundwork for what is now Colorado Homes for All. A 2019 effort to repeal the ban on rent control failed. However, COHFA did win that same year a Residential Tenants Health and Safety Act to strengthen tenant protections under the state’s warranty of habitability laws. The new law expands the definition of “not habitable” to include mold, nonfunctioning appliances and other common housing problems. The new law also strengthens tenants’ rights for notifying landlords of issues, getting a prompt response and requiring landlords to pay for alternative housing until the premises is made habitable. As we will see, UNE has also taken action around housing locally. Partnering with the Colorado People’s Alliance, UNE helped lead a coalition that won state legislation to allow municipalities to enact local minimum wage laws beginning January 1, 2020. In November 2019, the City of Denver enacted a local ordinance requiring $12.85 an hour in 2020, climbing to $15.87 in 2022. The repeal of state preemption also provided an opportunity for UNE’s Aurora

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chapter to organize around a minimum wage law with sympathetic city councilors. In 2020, UNE also worked with partners on the successful paid family leave ballot initiative. Prior to COVID-19, UNE made a strategic decision to experiment with digital organizing. The goal is to engage with people in a deep way similar to doorto-door community organizing. UNE may, for example, run a Facebook ad that asks people click on a petition or attend an online event. The organizer then follows up with those who respond via text or private Facebook messaging. The aim is to end up with one-on-one conversations via zoom or similar technology to develop people as active members and as leaders. The outreach can be targeted based on issues, people of color, low income, young people, and so forth. To get initial outreach pools large enough to draw a meaningful number of responses requires operating at a state level rather than more locally. At the same time, even though UNE is building a chapter base in metro Denver, having active members across the state helps UNE campaigns at this level – be they state legislative efforts or ballot initiatives.

Going deep through community organizing chapters Establishing lasting change at the state level requires building the capacity to engage and mobilize working-class people in Denver’s suburbs. In recent years, UNE has transformed itself by building three grassroots chapters located in the suburbs to the immediate north and east of Denver. Of UNE’s six programmatic staff, three work as community organizers, each tasked with developing a specific chapter. In turn this change has made UNE a membership-driven organization as door-knocking contacts define the focal issues and the membership decides on which campaign chapters pursue. All three chapters are located in north suburban Adams County, which is economically and socially divided between historical populations of color who experience environmental racism on the one hand, and proximity to wealthy Boulder on the other. The county’s historical population of color has grown over the past two decades as gentrification pushes low-income residents out of Denver. Suburban poverty offers an opportunity to have an impact among populations that currently show low voter turnout and engagement rates. The county government has tended to have a fairly pro-labor board. While its commissioners are full time, all of the cities in Adams County are run by part-time legislators with typically no staff and a big reliance on volunteers. Thus, the county offered appealing prospects for a high return on investment for UNE organizing among populations that represent its core constituency and supporting grassroots campaigns with solid research and policy development. At the same time, a progressive transformation within Adams county can impact the state balance of power while also establishing policy innovations that can be in turn taken to Denver. We will examine each chapter in turn, starting with the oldest.

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Westminster At the same time as the minimum wage campaign, UNE began to organize tenants in the northwest suburb of Westminster. Westminster has a relatively high population of over 113,000 (in 2018) with a large and growing portion of immigrants. Residents include those pushed out of a gentrifying Denver. Yet, organizing conversations revealed that Westminster is experiencing rising rents due to its proximity to pricey Boulder. At the same time, the city’s part-time City Council offered possibilities to move policy change through grassroots organizing. Reflecting that housing emerged as the top priority of low-income residents, We Organize Westminster established itself as a housing organizing and advocacy group. It began with few immediate policy demands but focused on building a regional discussion and movement around housing. In January 2019, We Organize Westminster joined the Colorado Homes for All coalition, which brought bills covering housing conditions, apartment application fees and mobile home tenants’ rights to the newly receptive state legislature. In pursing affordable housing UNE and We Organize Westminster committed to a long-term project that would have to build capacity over time to ultimately make a strong impact. As one community organizer explained: The housing sector is dominated by developers and their associates. Getting into that game requires a lot more power, it requires a whole other level of sophistication around organizing, to get a slice of that: figuring out who you're going to have on your side, who you’re going to negotiate with, compromise with. The work involves growing support for the Colorado Homes for All coalition’s efforts to repeal the state’s ban on local rent control. At the same time, We Organize Westminster has sought to engage residents in local efforts that can bring real results while pointing toward larger policy changes. By establishing its first chapter in Westminster & South Adams county, UNE committed to the patient, labor-intensive organizing work required to build real power. Today the Westminster chapter operates with one UNE staff organizer, roughly 15 core leaders, and a hundred people who will show up for rallies, make phone calls, attend council meetings and engage in other basic organizing actions. In a suburban community with little to no grassroots progressive infrastructure such a growing capacity is significant. Following two years of organizing, in late 2018 a coalition led by the Westminster chapter won a free legal clinic for renters facing evictions, funded through $200,000 of public funds provided primarily by the City of Westminster and Adams County. The idea is simple. Although the systems are often seriously underfunded, in criminal matters our nation practices the right of every individual to a public-funded attorney. Not so for renters facing evictions who almost always have to confront lawyer-represented landlords in court by themselves. With evictions remaining on a former tenant’s public record for seven years, these

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court proceedings can have a major impact on a family’s future quality of housing or potential homelessness. At the same time, Colorado law allows landlords to quickly take eviction measures against low-income tenants struggling to pay.9 The clinic also provides services for tenants in Aurora and Commerce City, which encompasses UNE’s two other chapters.

Aurora Aurora is a highly diverse growing suburban community. According to US Census estimates in 2019, it had a population of 379,289, a growth of 16.8 percent over 2010. Over that time period the community went from majority white to 45 percent white, 28 percent Hispanic, 16 percent Black and 11 percent Asian or multiracial. Aurora is one of a handful of Colorado communities to officially support refugee resettlement. City government has made a deliberate effort to welcome and integrate families from other parts of the world, including establishing an active Immigrant and Refugee Commission. According to the city government, a fifth of its population is foreign-born, including those born in Mexico, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Korea and Nepal. UNE has addressed the organizing challenge of simple communication by, for example, having its power points in four different languages. Officially launched in 2019, UNE’s Aurora chapter uniquely benefits by the city having several progressives already on the City Council. Still in the building stage, the chapter focuses on housing, although the state repeal of minimum wage preemption has opened the possibility for Aurora to follow Denver in establishing its own wage law.

Commerce City Commerce City is an industrial suburb. Its economy includes oil refining, which makes pollution a recurrent problem. Although its population is smaller than the other communities with UNE chapters, at 60,336 according to US Census estimates, it has grown by 31 percent since 2010. Over 47 percent of the city’s population is Hispanic, 43 percent is white. Today, UNE’s office is located in this community. UNE officially launched its Commerce City chapter right before the onset of COVID-19, making the community front-and-center in UNE’s adaptation to organizing virtually. Building on a handful of members, UNE has done phone banking to talk to residents using its own database of contacts as well as tapping into the VAN (Voter Action Network) commonly used by election campaigns. It has also gotten members to text or call their own contacts.

Women of color in the lead As with many PWF affiliates over time, UNE has cultivated a staff that is mostly people of color and mostly female. Current Executive Director Carmen

Adapting the model for a purple state 291 Medrano and former Executive Director Felicia Griffin (now Deputy Director of Partnership for Working Families) are both women of color. This has helped transform UNE’s organizing approaches and internal culture in ways similar to the five key elements discussed in more detail by Amy Dean and David Reynolds in their contribution earlier in this volume. In particular, UNE has maintained its focus on economic justice while at the same time centering that struggle on communities of color and the lens of racial justice. It has promoted honest, authentic conversations about systems of power and encouraged personal reflection and healing. Its theory of change seeks not just transactional interactions (we all win our specific issues together) but also transformational relationships (we gain by changing each other while we transform the world). UNE has also helped foster other women-of-color-led organizations. Until recently it was the fiscal sponsor of the Globeville, Elyria-Swansea Coalition Organizing for Health and Housing Justice. The Globeville and ElyriaSwansea Denver neighborhoods typify the problems of environmental racism. With many small, low-cost dwellings, over the past several decades they have attracted low-income and heavily Latino residents locked out of many other parts of Denver. A strip of highly polluting industries defined part of the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea borders while railways and interstate 70 cut off the remaining borders with the rest of the city. As a result, both communities avoided gentrification pressures until housing values began to rise in the 2000s when a city-led effort fostered the River North arts district. In its own words, the GES Coalition seeks to align community health and the well-being of our neighbors through advocacy campaigns to prevent displacement of our neighbors, activate residentdriven leadership, protect historically marginalized neighborhoods, preserve affordability in housing, and promote a culture that welcomes neighbors who value our long-standing culture, interconnectedness, and commitment to equity. In addition to fiscal sponsorship, UNE supported the coalition with research and through connections to other coalition partners, in particular to the building trades unions. In 2018, the Globeville, Elyria-Swansea Coalition for Health and Housing Justice successfully established permanent pool of affordable housing through a community land trust which began with a $2 million grant from the Colorado Department of Transportation. UNE is also the fiscal sponsor of Transformative Leadership for Change in Colorado. Former UNE Director Felecia Griffin helped found the group to foster and support leaders of color in the state. Through annual cohort fellowships, Transformative Leadership for Change fosters leadership development, relationship-building, coaching and other forms of support. It also works to identify and address the culture and conditions within Colorado’s progressive eco system that supports or inhibits leaders of color.

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Challenges and opportunities COVID-19 challenged UNE to be creative about its work. The crisis underlined the importance of UNE’s organizing around housing and wages. At the same time UNE has had to plunge into new territory, such as municipal budgets, as the pandemic tears apart local financing. In particular, UNE has pushed for state and federal housing funds to be used to keep people in their residences amid a looming eviction crisis. As mentioned in the state program and in Commerce City, UNE had adopted online organizing before the pandemic hit. Today, it has moved chapter meetings and other works online. The capability of cell phones to access online meetings has helped to offset the more general digital divide among low-income communities. UNE, however, has treated the move online as an organizing project with staff and activists walking people one-on-one through the technology. When City Council meetings in one community moved to Facebook Live, UNE not only had to confront helping members access the new platform, but also had to struggle with how to do translations for non-English speakers. As UNE has built its chapter structures it has had to think about what membership means. Originally membership was defined by paying modest dues. However, since chapter campaigns and priorities are set by the membership, is simply paying dues a sufficient level of engagement to make such decisions fully informed? Today UNE’s definition of membership is more defined by participation in leadership development training opportunities and in active engagement in the work. Some PWF affiliates and other groups have experimented with dues paying membership as part of a larger strategy to foster sources of funding outside of reliance on foundations. UNE has created a C4 and the state ballot campaigns that it has helped lead have tapped into national funders. Still, UNE has experienced funding challenges common throughout the country. Funders are far more interested in supporting state-level policy campaigns than they are the patient, labor-intensive and long-term work of building grassroots chapters. COVID-19 has also posed a challenge as groups like UNE have to restructure their work to pursue immediate priorities that were not necessarily what they were originally funded to do. The impact of the pandemic and the protest movement that sprung up in the wake of the death of George Floyd, however, has revealed enormous opportunities. UNE has found and tapped into growing energy and interest in changing the conversation about corporate power, inequality and government responsibility. The challenge is to translate this energy into a long-term movement for change. Through its current and past work UNE is indeed a core part of efforts to transform metro Denver and the state of Colorado.

Notes 1 This article is based on research conducted by Marc Doussard with UNE staff and allied organizations in 2018–2019 and by David Reynolds through inter-

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views with Executive Director Carmen Medrano and Deputy Director Desiree Westland Cindric in August 2020. Doussard published an earlier version of some of his research findings in “The frontier of equity politics: Denver and the future of community-labor coalitions after organized labor” in Cities, 96, 2020. Luce, S. and Nelson, M. “Starting Down the Road to Power: The Denver Area Labor Federation” Working USA Volume 8, Number 2, 2004, pp. 183–207. Revisions by David Reynolds, February 2006. Available at https://uale.org/ document-table/working-groups/clc/455-denvernew/file. Gates-Cherokee Community Benefits Agreement. 2008. http:// communitybenefits. Available at blogspot.com/2008/01/gates-cherokee-redevelopment-cba.html. Interview with a senior labor activists. Quote from Zach Patton. “John Hickenlooper: The Man in the Middle” in Governing.com August 2014. Available at https://www.governing.com/topics/ politics/gov-colorado-hickenlooper.html Michael Roberts. “Metro Denver's Population Is Up More Than 388,000 in Eight Years” Westworld April 19, 2019. Available at https://www.westword .com/news/denver-metros-population-is-up-more-than-388000-in-eight-years -11316402 Ruth Milkman Ed Ott. New labor in New York: Precarious workers and the future of the labor movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). Stephanie Luce. Fighting for a Living Wage (Ithaca Cornell ILR Press, 2004). Minimum wage campaign organizer. For coverage of the new law, see Donna Bryson. “New legal clinic for renters facing eviction celebrated in Westminster” Denvertite Oct. 01, 2018. Available at https://denverite.com/2018/10/01/new-legal-clinic-for-renters-facing-eviction-celebrated-in-westminster/

17 The Warehouse Workers Resource Center in Southern California Ellen Reese and Rudolph Bielitz

The Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) is a nonprofit worker’s center that provides advocacy, education, resources and services to warehouse workers and their families. Although its main office is located in Ontario, California, the organization serves warehouse workers and their families in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Most blue-collar, nonsupervisory warehouse workers in this region, like the labor force more generally, are working class and Latinx. Many of these workers are also immigrants and/or employed through temporary agencies. Although mostly men, women make up at least one-third of the region’s warehouse workers,1 and women’s share of these warehouse occupations is even greater in the fast-growing e-commerce industry.2 WWRC was originally an offshoot of Change to Win’s Warehouse Workers United (WWU) campaign. Established in 2008, WWU sought to organize warehouse workers and their allies and engage in collective action to improve their working and employment conditions. WWRC was initially formed in 2011 to provide additional resources and services to WWU members and their families but only operated a few discrete projects. When the WWU campaign failed to produce immediate gains in union membership, Change to Win withdrew nearly all of its funding for the project in 2013, after which WWRC began operations in earnest. Since then, staff from WWU and WWRC successfully raised new revenues and partnered with unions and community organizations in the region, enabling it to improve the lives of warehouse workers. Since its formation, WWRC has educated and organized warehouse workers, providing free workshops about their rights as workers and immigrants. They have also educated them about the warehouse industry and global economy, as well as provided workers, many of whom are Latino immigrants, with classes on US citizenship and the English language. They also provided warehouse workers with goods and services, including periodic health fairs, emergency relief during the COVID-19 pandemic and free legal services. WWRC and its legal partners helped hundreds of warehouse workers to file a series of successful formal complaints against labor law violations and to win millions of dollars of settlement fees and back wages from employers. In doing so, they sent a strong message to employers in the warehouse industry to comply with existing labor laws. WWRC members and their allies also won

The WWRC in Southern California 295 improvements in working and employment conditions for warehouse workers by putting pressure on major corporations, including Walmart, Cal Cartage and Amazon, through collective action by warehouse workers and their allies. They did so by combining legal complaints, research, collective action and coalition building at the regional, state, national and sometimes even transnational levels. By combining these activities, WWRC and its allies also won the attention of California legislators and obtained new state regulatory laws, such as new indoor heat regulations, to further protect warehouse workers. In this chapter, we trace the development of WWRC, beginning with how it emerged from the WWU campaign. Our research is based on our personal observations of various activities of WWRC and WWU between 2008 and 2020, a personal interview with the Executive and Deputy Director of WWRC3 and personal communications and earlier interviews with WWU and WWRC staff.4

Origins and early years of Warehouse Workers United (2008–2010) WWRC emerged from Change to Win’s WWU campaign. Begun in 2008, WWU used collective action by a “militant minority” of workers and allies and policy change to improve conditions in Southern California’s warehouse industry. WWU organizers pursued this strategy rather than a more traditional unionization campaign for multiple reasons. First, warehouse workers, most of whom are Latinx workers without college degrees, were highly vulnerable to employer retaliation. Many of these workers were employed through temporary agencies or seasonal contracts and highly disposable, while undocumented Latino immigrant workers employed in the industry faced the further threat of deportation. Moreover, there were daunting practical and legal challenges for organizing temporary workers (or temps) into unions; temps have high turnover rates and their employer of record is decided on a case-by-case basis.5 To protect warehouse workers from potential employer retaliation and to organize industry-wide, WWU organizers, student interns and other allies identified and recruited warehouse workers through neighborhood canvassing and other community organizing techniques. House visits with workers identified potential worker leaders who helped to recruit additional workers through personal networks. Eventually, small house meetings led to larger mass meetings of workers and allies. Additional new members were gained through a brief organizing blitz in 2009 carried out with temporary union staff and community volunteers. WWU staff built broad-based regional alliances and partnerships with a variety of local labor and community organizations and academic researchers in this early period, many of which are still intact today. Among early labor allies, the most important were other Change to Win affiliated unions, especially the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. WWU’s community partner organizations included environmental justice organizations, immigrant rights organizations, voter mobilization organizations and faith-based organizations.

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WWU and their allies engaged in a series of collective actions in 2009. The direct targets of these early actions were the owners and managers of warehouses, third-party logistics companies and temporary hiring agencies. But protesters drew attention to the role of Big Box retailers in setting the terms of their contracts. These actions drew public and media attention to the plight of warehouse workers, especially temps, and their need for more secure employment, better pay and benefits and national labor law reform. The most dramatic of these early actions occurred in May 2009; surrounded by several hundred rallying supporters, ten protesters were arrested after handcuffing themselves to a forklift in the middle of a major intersection that was a common delivery truck route near a hub of warehouses in Mira Loma.6 One of the most important, and long-lasting partnerships forged in this early period were with environmental justice organizations, especially the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ). CCAEJ organized local residents for clean air and demanded increased environmental regulation of the goods movement industry. Tensions and distrust in environment-labor (or bluegreen) alliances are common given different priorities of the member organizations to environmental justice and workers’ rights and demands for employment.7 To build trusting and good working relationships, staff at WWU, CCAEJ and other local environmental justice organizations engaged in deep conversation and concern about the regional economy. They also worked together for several years on small organizing projects, such as “toxic tours” and other public events that raised public awareness about environmental and labor concerns with warehousing and the larger goods movement industry as well as “know your rights” workshops for immigrants.8 This growing partnership between WWU/WWRC and CCAEJ and other environmental organizations in the region, such local chapters of the Sierra Club, eventually became transformed into deeper, more transformative partnerships for more expansive joint projects, including joint civic participation initiatives that sought to shift the local balance of political power in the region, and a joint campaign for a community benefit agreement for an airport expansion project for Amazon in San Bernardino (discussed more fully below). WWU/WWRC also participated in the immigrant rights movement through the Justice for Immigrants Coalition in Inland Southern California (JFIC). JFIC, formed in 2008 and renamed the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ) in 2015, pushed for immigrant rights both at the statewide and federal levels. Locally, the JFIC worked to protect immigrants by organizing public pressure and direct action to successfully close the Border Patrol office in Riverside, and by passing policies against the expansion of immigrant detention facilities in Adelanto and the coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies. They also educated immigrants about their rights and alerted them through a grassroots communication network about community raids and roadside checkpoints. WWU also cultivated allies among local politicians and universities. In 2009, for example, it drew 250 people for a public meeting where Congressman Joe Baca and San Bernardino County Supervisor Josie Gonzales signed a pledge to

The WWRC in Southern California 297 support WWU members’ demands. Those demands included more stable employment, living wages, affordable health insurance plans, better working conditions and the right to choose a union. In addition, WWU promoted Congressional passage of the Employee Free Choice Act through petitions, letters and by highlighting the need for it through its protest actions. WWU also built relationships with faculty and students at various local colleges and universities, which led to research partnerships, student internships and faculty and student participation in WWU activities. WWU’s early protest actions broadened and solidified community support for the campaign and garnered considerable media attention on the plight of warehouse workers and need for national labor law reform. Yet, because the WWU campaign failed to produce dues-paying union members in the short run, the Teamsters and CTW reduced funding for it in 2010, and then further withdrew their funding in 2013.9 While this reduction of union financial support reduced staffing and slowed down efforts to organize warehouse workers in the short run, it inspired the formation of new organizing partnerships and strategies as well as the eventual formation of WWRC in 2011. WWU staff formed WWRC in order to provide additional services, including legal assistance, for warehouse workers who were experiencing many labor law violations. Given the volatility and limits of union support and the difficulties in immediately unionizing warehouse workers, WWU staff, which soon became only a few staff members temporarily working at home or at a cubicle within CCAEJ’s building, also sought to sustain and expand their activities through a nonprofit worker center.

Making change at Walmart campaign (2010–2014) In 2010, WWU organizers shifted their strategy, believing that they would be more effective if they targeted the corporations with the most power and resources in the warehouse industry rather than the logistics companies, warehouse operators and temporary agencies that directly employed workers. This strategy was informed by successful labor organizing in the garment and janitorial industries, which made gains by targeting brand name labels or building owners and tenants rather than the labor contractors or companies who directly employed workers. The first major target for WWU and WWRC was Walmart, a highly visible transnational retail corporation popularly known for its cheap goods and questionable labor practices, and which had become the target of a new transnational campaign, Making Change at Walmart. The Making Change at Walmart campaign was launched in 2010 by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union with support from UniGlobal, a global union representing workers from over 150 countries, the Change to Win union federation and other labor unions and organizations whose members worked for Walmart or produced or handled its goods through its suppliers and contractors. Although this campaign was carried out by a transnational alliance of organizations, the UFCW, that sought to unionize Walmart’s retail employees, provided most of the funding for the

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Making Change at Walmart campaign and tended to dominate the decisionmaking. WWU and other partner organizations supported the campaign, but mostly did so on UFCW’s terms. Besides WWU, the Making Change at Walmart campaign included several other warehouse worker organizations in the United States, Warehouse Workers for Justice in Chicago and New Labor in New Jersey. Other partner organizations included the Teamsters, who were organizing port truckers, and the National Guestworkers Alliance, whose members produced goods sold by Walmart. Organizing workers across Walmart’s transnational supply chain, the campaign also included labor organizations in other nations, such as Bangladesh and Chile.10 The Making Change at Walmart campaign helped to bring additional media attention and political support for the plight of warehouse workers, especially temporary and subcontracted warehouse workers, in the Inland Empire, who commonly faced dangerous working conditions, wage theft and other labor law violations. Located in a region where Republicans had long dominated, WWU and WWRC strategically focused on appealing to state regulatory agencies and California legislators to improve conditions in the warehouse industry through labor law enforcement and new protective legislation. Using a combination of negative publicity, legal complaints and direct action, WWU, WWRC and their allies pressured Walmart, its contractors and their temporary agencies to improve labor conditions in the Walmart supply chain. WWRC helped warehouse workers to put legal pressure on Walmart, its contractors and temporary agencies by filing a series of successful complaints about labor law violations. WWRC did so by forming new partnerships with law firms, labor lawyers such as Janet Herold (a staff attorney for Service Employees International Union) and other labor experts and advocates. Both the California Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the California Labor Commission ruled in their favor for various complaints filed by warehouse workers regarding health and safety violations and violations in wage and hour laws. WWRC members also won a $4.7 million dollar legal settlement from Schneider Logistics, a Walmart contractor, for a case involving nearly 600 workers. Another case, filed in a US District Court, that involved Schneider Logistics settled for $21 million dollars in 2014 before a formal ruling was made. This case was significant not only in terms of the large size of its settlement but also because it named Walmart as a codefendant, suggesting that retailers could potentially be held liable for the practices of their contractors.11 Legal cases such as these, coupled with media attention and collective action, also led Walmart warehouses to improve the wages, benefits and employment security for thousands of warehouse workers in the region. In another notable case, the California Occupational Safety and Health Appeals (Cal-OSHA) Board ruled in favor of a complaint that a warehouse operator (National Distribution Center) and its temporary staffing agency (Tri-State Staffing) that served Walmart and other Big Box retailers failed to adequately protect the health of Domingo Blancas and his coworkers. After working inside a metal freight container at 110 degrees, Blancas was hospitalized for three days for heat stroke and required emergency surgery in 2011. Four years later, this

The WWRC in Southern California 299 ruling helped to establish multiemployer responsibility for preventing workers’ illness when there are known health hazards.12 This case, and the media publicity surrounding it also helped to gain support for passage of a new state law in 2016, which required Cal-OSHA to propose new regulations by 2019 to better prevent heat illness and injuries among indoor workers. Over the next few years, WWRC helped to develop the new indoor heat regulations for California, the first state to develop such regulations in the nation. Along with Santa Clara University’s Alexander Community Law Center, a key ally that helped to develop this case and the new indoor heat regulations was Worksafe, a California-based organization made up of community and labor activists and occupational safety experts that focused on protecting workers’ right to a safe and healthy workplace. The Los Angeles Central Labor Council also supported the development of new indoor heat regulations for workers.13 WWU, meanwhile, engaged warehouse workers and their supporters through various collective actions, many of which were related to legal complaints and court cases involving warehouse operators and temporary agencies that served Walmart. These included rallies, civil disobedience, Unfair Labor Practice strikes, petitions and press conferences. Along with the legal complaints, these dramatic actions garnered additional media on the plight of warehouse workers who handled goods for Walmart, and in some cases protected workers involved in these complaints against employer retaliation. These actions not only increased pressure on warehouse operators to improve their treatment of warehouse workers but also solidified and broadened community support for warehouse workers among local labor activists, students, faith-based activists and other community activists. In addition to generating media attention on the plight of warehouse workers through legal and direct action, WWU also appealed to policymakers to better regulate the warehouse industry through research. WWU staff researchers expanded their research capacity by gaining support from academic researchers in the region. With help from Deogracia Cornelio from UCLA’s Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) program, WWU documented the prevalence of health and safety violations in the warehouse industry through a survey administered by its members, many of whom were temporary workers. The report, “Shattered Dreams and Broken Bodies,” was released at a public event in 2011.14 Researchers summarized the survey findings, while warehouse workers testified about their abusive, unsafe and illegal working conditions for a Workers Right Board composed of community leaders and an audience of community supporters and family members. Other reports, produced by researchers at University of Southern California and University of California-Riverside, documented the heavy reliance on temporary workers and low wages in the warehouse industry.15 Even greater media attention on the plight of warehouse workers was gained through “Walmarch,” a 50-mile, public march from the WWU office in Ontario to City Hall in downtown Los Angeles in 2012. Warehouse workers and their supporters, including community and labor activists and members of various unions,

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such as the United Farm Workers, marched and rallied in various cities during this march, which lasted for days. This action occurred along with a 15-day Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike by warehouse workers, lasting 15 days, targeting two Walmart contractors, Swift Transportation and Warestaff, a temp agency used by that company.16 The Walmarch galvanized greater media attention and political support for warehouse workers’ demands for greater regulation of the industry. By the end of the march, Governor Brown announced that he was willing to sign a WWU-sponsored bill that aimed to better protect warehouse workers. This bill required firms and temp agencies to guarantee that they had sufficient funds for workers’ wages and to comply with existing labor laws. Along with media stories about warehouse workers’ concerns highlighted through the Walmarch, negative publicity surrounding Walmart’s lack of regard for workers’ health and safety also spiked after a building in Bangladesh caught fire, killing 112 workers, which then collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers who produced garments for Walmart. WWRC, along with other organizations in the “Making Change at Walmart” coalition, circulated an international petition supporting greater protections for Walmart’s contracted workers. Although Walmart refused to sign onto a major workplace safety agreement between labor organizations and European retailers, it announced plans to randomly search its contractors’ facilities to better monitor their compliance with health and safety laws and standards.17 Together, WWU and WWRC helped to win new regulatory legislation in California, and its legal victories in court and regulatory agencies put pressure on warehouse employers to comply with labor laws and to improve their treatment of warehouse workers. In the course of this campaign, thousands of workers in eight major Walmart warehouses in the region were converted from temporary to direct employees, attaining living wages and benefits at warehouses in addition to greater employment security. Yet, because the WWU campaign failed to unionize warehouse workers, the UFCW, then the main funder for the WWU campaign, withdrew funding from it as well as from the Our Walmart campaign, which had not yet unionized Walmart associates. With support from foundations, governmental grants and private and union donations and in-kind support, WWRC was nevertheless able to sustain its activities.

California Cartage/NFI campaign (2014–2018) The next major campaign by WWRC targeted a major warehouse facility at the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach in Wilmington owned by California Cartage, a major goods movement company that was eventually acquired by National Freight Industries (hereafter, Cal Cartage and NFI). This organizing campaign involved both Teamsters-affiliated port truckers and temporary and directly hired warehouse workers affiliated with both WWRC and the Teamsters. Similar to the Walmart campaign, workers protested against unfair and illegal labor practices by the company and its staffing agency by filing a series of formal legal complaints and engaging in direct action. Along with other protest activities, warehouse

The WWRC in Southern California 301 workers and port truckers participated in a series of seven labor strikes targeting the company’s Wilmington facility between 2014 and 2018. Warehouse workers charged the company and its staffing agency with racial discrimination, wage theft and unfair labor practices in which the company retaliated against pro-union temporary and directly hired warehouse workers seeking to form a joint union with the Teamsters.18 To build public support for Cal Cartage workers’ organizing campaign, which involved port truckers and both temporary and directly hired warehouse workers, many of whom were Black and Latinx, WWRC and Teamsters Local 848 and Teamsters’ International Port Division jointly convened a “Truth Commission to End Abuse at LA’s Port” in 2017. Held at a church with a large Black membership in south Los Angeles, this event included testimonies from port truckers and warehouse workers, including formerly incarcerated Black workers, Latinx immigrant workers and women of color as well as a panel of local faith-based, community and political leaders. The multiracial event drew participation of more than 100 faith-based, community and labor activists, many of whom had also supported port truckers and warehouse workers on the picket lines. A national report, released in 2017, helped to further publicize temporary warehouse workers’ concerns regarding their bad treatment within Cal Cartage and other major corporations in the United States.19 This report, produced through a research partnership with the National Staff Workers Alliance20 and the National Economic Social Rights Initiative, documented the concerns of temporary workers, including those employed by Cal Cartage; it highlighted their concerns about their bad working conditions, including high levels of employment security, low wages and lack of benefits, harassment, discrimination, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, as well as employer retaliation for labor complaints and organizing. The report also called upon policymakers to do more to hold corporations accountable for their poor treatment of warehouse workers.21 Over the next few years, California Cartage/NFI workers involved in this campaign won an impressive series of legal victories as did port truckers who successfully complained to the California Labor Commission about being misclassified as independent contractors.22 In 2018, the US Department of Labor ruled in favor of a wage theft complaint covering about 1,500 warehouse workers employed by Cal Cartage between 2014 and 2016 who were not paid according to federal wage; it required the company to pay $3.5 million in back pay owed to the workers.23 Two other lawsuits against wage and hour violations, including violations of a city living wage ordinance, by Cal Cartage, filed in 2014, led to $1.875 million and $800,000 settlements in 2018, respectively.24 Cal-OSHA meanwhile cited the company for numerous and serious health and safety violations.25 Other legal charges against Cal Cartage/NFI, including unfair labor practice charges and complaints of racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, are still under review.26 Together, these various legal complaints and victories helped to generate negative publicity about Cal Cartage/NFI as did workers’ protest actions, which also led to small improvements in working

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conditions, such as health and safety improvements and reimbursement for steeltoed boots. Eventually, WWRC and its allies persuaded Los Angeles City Council in 2018 to veto a Free Trade Zone operating agreement between the LA Harbor Commission and California Cartage/NFI due to its repeated labor law violations.27 Due to a worker retention ordinance, the new tenant for the warehouse on the port, the Toll Group, employed the warehouse workers previously employed by NFI/Cal Cartage. This allowed these workers to keep their jobs and also provided them an opportunity to join the Teamsters since the Toll Group employees were already represented through that union. The Los Angeles City Council also passed a resolution urging Big Box retailers and other corporations doing business on port property to comply with all local, state and federal labor laws and ensure that their contractors do the same.28

Other policy campaigns, coalitions and legal victories (2014–2020) Throughout the years, WWRC and its legal partners have also helped warehouse workers to pursue and win various formal complaints of labor law violations by various companies not linked to its main organizing campaigns. For example, in 2017, WWRC members won a successful administrative case against wage and hour violations by Waitex that occurred in 2015. They did so with legal and research assistance from a new partnership between WWRC with faculty and students at UCI’s School of Law. Waitex workers were not paid overtime or given their legal work breaks. The ten warehouse workers who filed this complaint with the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement won more than $80,000 in back wages.29 Throughout the years, WWU, and later WWRC, worked in partnership with other organizations to empower and politically engage workers, people of color and immigrants in the Inland Empire region and California. WWU/WWRC worked with other allied community organizations in the Inland Empire, most recently with Inland Resistance and Inland Empowerment, to engage and register nonfrequent voters, including immigrant families, the working poor and communities of color around shared concerns about immigrant rights, racial justice, environmental justice, economic justice and workers’ rights. In doing so, they seek to transform the balance of political power away from real estate and warehouse developer interests that have long dominated politics in the region, and to build support for a shared, holistic and intersectional political agenda that will better serve community groups, that both work and live in the region and that have been historically neglected. As part of this effort, WWRC and its allies have organized public forums to educate the public as well as engage electoral candidates and elected officials on warehousing issues. As an individual, WWRC’s executive director Sheheryar Kaoosji serves on the board of IE United, a 501c4, that supports progressive politicians’ campaigns in local and county elections in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.

The WWRC in Southern California 303 WWRC members have also participated in other regional coalitions of labor and immigrant rights activists. These include Socal-OSH, the Coalition to End Wage Theft and the Los Angeles Workers Center Network, which educate and engage workers and policymakers in the region, as well as immigrant rights coalitions such as Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. For many years, WWRC has also shared office space with and engaged in joint meetings and activities with other local immigrant rights, community and labor organizations, most recently at its Ontario office known as “The Justice Hub.” Through such formal and informal coalitions, and with the support of key allies within state and local labor federations and government, WWU/WWRC has participated in various successful state and local policy campaigns, including the statewide campaign for drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants, restrictions on local collaborations between police departments and ICE, as well as state and local efforts (in Los Angeles and Long Beach) to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. At the state level, WWRC helped to build the California Alliance for Secure Employment (CASE). Formed in 2017, CASE is an alliance of over 20 organizations, including unions, worker centers, legal aid organizations and researchers focusing on addressing problems facing insecure workers, including temporary workers, independent contractors, subcontracted and other contingent workers. At its first major meeting in 2017, CASE drew together several hundred labor and community activists, researchers, advocates and policymakers, including the California Labor Commissioner, to exchange information and discuss policy priorities. Since then, CASE and its member organizations have engaged in state and local policy campaigns to better protect workers’ rights, including a new state law to better regulate work schedules, and a Los Angeles law expanding workers’ rights to paid sick leave. During the pandemic in 2020, CASE has provided advocacy for warehouse workers and other “essential workers” with workplace health and safety concerns. CASE’s member organizations have also provided emergency relief through a campaign for unemployment coverage for undocumented workers and their families affected by COVID-19. The Safety Net for All project is led by a steering committee that includes WWRC, Worksafe, Working partnerships USA, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, the Center for Policy Initiatives in San Diego, SOCAL Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health and the National Employment Law Project, which is now staffed in part by Partnership for Working Families (PWF).

The Amazon campaign (2019–present) In 2019, WWRC pivoted its attention to Amazon, which had quickly become the largest private warehousing employer in the region. It helped to build the San Bernardino Airport Communities (SBAC), a broad-based coalition of organizations and activists in the region concerned about the labor and community impacts of the rise of Amazon and other goods movement employers in the region. SBAC includes members of the CCAEJ, a local chapter of the Sierra Club,

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Teamsters Local 1932, Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC, a local PICO affiliate) and the ICIJ. It also gained support from the Inland Empire Labor Council (IELC), which since 2018 has been led by a progressive group of labor activists seeking to further mobilize and unite unions in the region. Many of these organizations and activists had already been working together for years through various regional coalitions and joint policy and civic engagement activities, including those described above. SBAC united around a vision of a more just and sustainable economic development for the region, which they commonly referred to as the demand for “clean air and good jobs.” Specifically, SBAC demanded a legally binding community benefits agreement (CBA) for the “Eastgate” project, a project by the Hillwood Enterprises development agency to expand the San Bernardino Airport to create a large air cargo logistics center for Amazon. SBAC’s proposed CBA seeks to protect local residents from the negative environmental and health impacts of the project while improving the quality of jobs being created through the Eastgate project. First, the proposed CBA would require Hillwood and Amazon to reinvest in the community by creating living wage jobs and job training funds, prioritizing the hiring of local residents and limiting the use of temporary jobs. Second, the CBA would help to mitigate air pollution by requiring the Eastgate developer and Amazon to use zero emission technology and to provide funds for air filters for local schools and residents in order to better protect the health and well-being of the residents and the environment. As a major logistics hub, problems of traffic and air pollution from diesel trucks and trains are important issues in the Inland Empire. Among US cities, San Bernardino has the fifth-worst level of year-round particle pollution, which contributes to public health problems, including high rates of lung disease and asthma in the region.30 Finally, the CBA would require the developer and Amazon to set aside funds for soundproofing against noise pollution and help to improve local roads in order to mitigate problems associated with increased traffic congestion. The demands included in the proposed CBA reflect the distinct, but increasingly shared, priorities of SBAC’s member organizations as well as common concerns about the lack of community input on regional economic development. While CCAEJ and the Sierra Club primarily focus on environmental justice, Teamsters Local 1932 and WWRC are primarily concerned with workers’ rights and the development of good-paying jobs with benefits and employment security for local residents. ICIJ and ICUC are primarily concerned with empowering immigrants and faith-based communities of color who are disproportionately employed in warehousing and other low-wage jobs in the region, and who are vulnerable to employer discrimination and exploitation due to racism, nativism and/or their immigration status. SBAC members have educated each other about the importance of, and interconnections between, these various issues so that they share a common vision of racial, immigrant, environmental and economic justice. To educate community residents about the proposed Eastgate project and build support for a CBA for this project, and develop a shared progressive vision

The WWRC in Southern California 305 for the region, SBAC engaged in canvassing and house visits in the spring of 2019. SBAC members went into communities, including knocking on doors in neighborhoods surrounding the San Bernardino Airport facility, and visiting various community spaces and meetings, to listen to residents’ concerns and encourage them to attend an educational workshop in order to learn more about Eastgate and to discuss their concerns about this project. Altogether, about 70 people, including former and current Amazon warehouse workers, attended SBAC’s first community workshop where additional pledge cards were collected. Although multiracial, most attendees, like the residents of the San Bernardino community, were working-class Latinos and a slight majority of them were women. Event organizers provided simultaneous translation for Spanish-speaking residents so that they could participate in the meeting. During the workshop, SBAC emphasized the importance of an inclusive vision of social justice and community solidarity around supporting both environmental justice and good jobs. Several months later, and after collecting about 600 pledge cards, several hundred community members, mostly affiliated with SBAC, attended a public hearing to discuss the Eastgate project in August 2019. At the hearing, members of SBAC’s partner organizations, including community residents and warehouse workers, spoke in favor of a CBA for the Eastgate project while members of a construction union, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, who wanted to help build the air cargo facility, and saw it as a way to generate jobs in the region, spoke in favor of it. Those tensions reflected larger debates within the national and regional labor movement over economic development, environmental sustainability and job quality. Despite community demands for both a CBA and a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Report for the Eastgate project plan, it was approved without these by the Federal Aviation Administration as well as the San Bernardino International Airport Authority in December 2019; the approval provided Hillwood Enterprises a 35-year lease for the project as well as up to 14 years of extensions on the lease.31 Hundreds of community residents protested the Eastgate project through protests and rallies organized by SBAC, one held during Cyber Monday outside an Amazon warehouse and the other held inside Hillwood Enterprise’s office. Three SBAC-affiliated organizations – CCAEJ, the Sierra Club and Teamsters Local 1932 – also filed a legal complaint, claiming that the approved project violated the Environmental Protection Act.32 Despite this initial setback in its CBA campaign, SBAC continues to organize broad-based support for a campaign to change Amazon, which they view as key to changing the larger regional economy, and to building a more vibrant movement infrastructure in the region. To increase the influence of its regional organizing, WWRC joined the PWF in 2018 and helped to build the Athena coalition in 2019. Athena is a broad and growing national alliance of nearly 50 labor and community organizations concerned about the impacts of Amazon’s rising influence in communities. The coalition includes other labor organizations, including the Awood Center in Minnesota and Warehouse Workers for Justice in Illinois that are also organizing

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Amazon warehouse workers, as well as organizations focused on environmental justice, local democracy, immigrant rights, racial justice and opposing monopoly practices that hurt small businesses. This broad and diverse alliance of organizations distributes power and resources across its various member organizations, which helps to give them considerable autonomy in their activities, even as they share some resources and coordinate some actions at the national level. In 2019, WWRC engaged in nationally coordinated days of action with other member organizations of the Athena coalition. In addition to the “Cyber Monday” protest described above, WWRC, immigrant rights organizations and other allies held a demonstration protesting against Amazon’s role in providing technology to ICE on “Prime Day.”33 Like other Athena members and activists across the nation, WWRC and other SBAC members also participated in the Global Climate Strike through a march and rally involving close to a 100 community activists and residents; many of those participating were working-class Latinx high school students and other youth. Activists, including youth activists, criticized local politicians for favoring logistics and warehouse corporations, such as Amazon, at the expense of the environment as well as community’s residents’ health and well-being. WWRC’s efforts to pressure Amazon to improve its working conditions for warehouse workers and gain support for a new state law to regulate work pace, a demand resonating with many Amazon workers, have been supported through research reports produced by Athena and other allies. These reports document how Amazon’s high productivity standards, monitored electronically among its warehouse workforce, create a “high churn” model that produces higher than average worker turnover rates and rates of serious injuries in its warehouses.34 The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor also underwrote another report highlighting various problems associated with the rise of Amazon in Southern California, including the expansion of low-wage jobs and air pollution.35 Amazon warehouse workers’ health and safety concerns increased even further during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 when Amazon employment surged to meet the growing demand for home-delivered e-commerce products and the corporation failed to adopt adequate protective measures for its workforce. WWRC filed health and safety complaints with Cal-OSHA and their County Departments of Public Health on behalf of Amazon warehouse workers at several California facilities. The complaint letters highlighted workers’ likely risk of exposure to COVID-19 due to lack of measures to prevent the spread of the disease, including proper sanitation and shutting down facilities where there is a confirmed case of COVID-19 and failure to provide several weeks of paid leave for workers who may have been exposed to the virus. The Eastvale complaint letter, filed in April, supported workers’ demands that managers at that facility do more to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, which were expressed in a petition signed by over 500 Amazon employees.36 On May Day, WWRC members and supporters engaged in a car caravan action outside of Amazon’s warehouse in Hawthorne to raise awareness about the Hawthorne legal complaint, filed that same day, and similar types of health and safety concerns among other “essential” retail

The WWRC in Southern California 307 and e-commerce workers; they did so as part of a national day of protest actions, including walkouts by workers and consumer boycotts, targeting Amazon, Whole Foods, Shipt, Instacart and Target.37

Conclusion Since 2011, WWRC, a nonprofit workers center, has empowered warehouse workers in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, most of whom are Latinx, through a combination of organizing, research, advocacy and action. WWRC initially grew out of Change to Win’s Warehouse Workers United campaign and it has since expanded WWU activities beyond CTW’s initial organizing campaign, which ended in 2013. WWRC has educated and empowered new worker and community leaders, some of which eventually gained employment as labor and community organizers in the region. With help from WWRC and its legal allies, warehouse workers filed a series of successful legal complaints against wage and hour and health and safety violations in the industry. These legal victories set important legal precedents, won millions of dollars of employer penalties and back wages for workers and reminded warehouse operators, temporary agencies and even Big Box retailers that they could be held liable for illegal labor practices within warehouses. Along with dramatic protest actions, these legal complaints also put pressure on warehouse operators and temporary agencies to improve wages, benefits, employment security, workplace safety and other working conditions for thousands of warehouse workers in the region; they also paved the way for the unionization of about 500 warehouse workers by the Teamsters, now employed by the Toll Group at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port. Working with its allies and partners, WWRC has also helped to document and publicize – through research reports, legal complaints, workers’ testimonies and collective action – the plight of Southern California’s warehouse workers who are often paid low wages, lack benefits and employment security, are frequently pushed to work at dangerously high work paces and suffer high rates of workplace injury. In doing so, WWRC and its allies gained support for new state laws to better protect warehouse workers, including state-level indoor heat regulations, the first of their kind in the country. These organizing, legal and policy victories are impressive, especially given the challenges associated with organizing within a high turnover industry that relies heavily upon temporary, subcontracted and immigrant workers, and within the Inland Empire which has long been politically dominated by real estate and developer interests. The formation of movement and power building relationships with allied organizations, support from funders and institutions that understood the challenges of the region and committed and ambitious leaders and staff has helped WWRC to grow despite temporary funding setbacks, initial defeats and employer retaliation against workers. Over the years, WWRC has helped to forge and expand new grassroots alliances among organized workers, immigrants, communities of color and environmental justice activists, and their allies in Southern California and beyond. Realizing that high turnover within the warehouse

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industry contributed to turnover in worker leadership, WWRC leaders and staff have learned that long-lasting change in the Inland Empire and the warehouse industry more generally requires building a broad-based and inclusive movement that engages both former and current warehouse workers as well as their family, friends, neighbors and allies. The formation of various strategic as well as longterm and transformational partnerships and alliances at multiple geographic scales has also helped to sustain WWRC financially over time and provided it with additional resources, skills, expertise and people power necessary to carry out its core organizing campaigns and the legal, research and policy work related to them. In the years to come, WWRC staff hopes to further expand their political education and activities so that their Ontario-based office, the “Justice Hub,” can become a vibrant political, cultural and recreational center for the entire community, including more youth. They also hope to further expand both regional and national organizing and coalition building among workers and community groups around common concerns about Amazon. By challenging one of the most visible and powerful players in the goods movement industry in one of the largest warehousing hubs in the nation, they hope that this campaign will not only empower and improve the lives of tens of thousands of warehouse workers and their families in Southern California, but also build a growing movement for more sustainable models of economic development.

Notes 1 De Lara, Juan, Ellen Reese and Jason Struna. “Organizing Temporary, Subcontracted, and Immigrant Workers: Lessons from Change to Win's Warehouse Worker United Campaign.” Labor Studies vol. 41, no. 4, 2016, pp. 309–332. 2 Gutelis, Beth and Nik Theodore. “The Future of Warehouse Work: Technological Change in the U.S. Logistics Industry.” UC Berkeley Labor Center and Working Partnerships USA, 2019. http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2019/Future-of -Warehouse-Work.pdf. Accessed 28, 2020. 3 Alvarado, Veronica and Sheheryar Kaoosji. Personal Interview by coauthors at Warehouse Worker Resource Center office in Ontario, California on March 11, 2020. 4 Beginning in 2008, the first author participated in various WWU and WWRC activities that are described in this chapter and has served on the board of WWRC since its formation in 2011. During 2019, the second author participated and observed meetings and events of the San Bernardino Airport Communities coalition, which included WWRC staff and members. He also collected oral histories and other materials on the impacts of the goods movement industry in Southern California for his Sociology Master’s Thesis and Dr. Catherine Gudis (Associate Professor of History, UC-Riverside) and the Human Action Lab’s “Climates of Inequality,” a travelling public history exhibit (http://climatesofinequality.org). 5 De Lara et al. 2016. 6 De Lara et al. 2016. 7 Rose, Fred. Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 8 De Lara et al. 2016. 9 De Lara et al. 2016.

The WWRC in Southern California 309 10 De Lara et al. 2016. 11 De Lara et al. 2016. 12 Worksafe, Inc. “Decision: Employers Found in Violation of Law for Indoor Heat Hazards.” October 8, 2015, https://worksafe.org/campaigns/heat-hazards .html/article/2015/10/08/decision-employers-found-in-violation-of-law-for -indoor-heat-hazards 13 Alvarado and Kaoosji 2020. 14 Warehouse Workers United and Deogracia Cornelio. Shattered Dreams and Broken Bodies: A Brief Review of the Inland Empire Warehouse Industry. Fontana, CA: Warehouse Workers United, 2011, http://www.warehouseworkersunited .org/fileadmin/userfiles/Uploads/Shattered_Dreams_and_Broken_Bodies718 .pdf. Accessed July 6, 2020. 15 Allison, Juliann, Jason Struna and Ellen Reese. Underpaid and Temporary: Key Findings on Warehouse Workers in the Inland Valley. Center for Sustainable Suburban Development Working Paper, UC Riverside, 2013. Bonacich, Edna and Juan David De Lara. Economic Crisis and the Logistics Industry: Financial Insecurity for Warehouse Workers in the Inland Empire. University of California, Los Angeles: The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Working Paper, 2009-13, 2009, http://escholarship.org/uc/item /8rn2h9ch. Accessed July 6, 2020. De Lara, Juan. “Warehouse Work: Path to the Middle Class or Road to Economic Insecurity?” University of Southern California Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, September 2013, https://dornsifecms.usc .edu/assets/sites/242/docs/WarehouseWorkerPay_web.pdf. Accessed July 6, 2020. Struna, Jason, Kevin Curwin, Edwin Elias, Ellen Reese, Tony Roberts and Elizabeth Bingle. “Unsafe and Unfair: Labor Conditions in the Warehouse Industry.” Policy Matters vol. 5, no. 2, 2012, pp. 1–12, http://www.policymatters.ucr.edu/pmatters-vol5-2-warehouse.pdf. Accessed July 6, 2020. 16 De Lara et al. 2016. 17 De Lara et al. 2016. Mosk, Matthew. “Wal-mart Fires Supplier After Bangladesh Revelation.” Abcnews.go.com, May 15, 2013, https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter /wal-mart-fires-supplier-bangladesh-revelation/story?id=19188673. Accessed July 7, 2020. 18 Justice for Port Truckers. “Justice for Port Drivers: Leading Logistics Company of Ports of LA/Long Beach with Long Track Record of Breaking Labor and Safety Laws Resulting in 7 Disruptive Labor Strikes Chooses to Abandon Workers Rather than Reach Agreement to End Labor Disruptions.” PRNewsWire.com, January 16, 2019, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/justice-for-port -drivers-leading-logistics-company-at-ports-of-lalong-beach-with-long-track -record-of-breaking-labor-and-safety-laws-resulting-in-7-disruptive-labor-strikes -chooses-to-abandon-workers-rather-than-reach-agreement--300779963.html. Accessed July 6, 2020. 19 Scott, Brittany, National Staffing Workers Alliance and the National Economic Social Rights Initiative. “Temporary Work, Permanent Abuse: How Big Business Destroys Good Jobs.” National Staffng Workers Alliance, and the National Economic Social Rights Initiative. 2017. https://nationalstaffingworkersalliance .files.wordpress.com/2017/02/temp_work_final_email.pdf. Accessed July 8, 2020. 20 Active between 2012 and 2017, the NWSA focused on empowering temporary workers and increasing their opportunities for permanent work; along with WWRC, it included Warehouse Workers for Justice in Chicago, the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, the national Immigrant Worker Center Collaborative in

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based in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and New Labor in New Jersey (National Staff Workers Alliance. “About NWSA.” https://nationalstaffingworkersalliance .wordpress.com/about/. Accessed July 8, 2020). Scott 2017. https://nationalstaffingworkersalliance.files.wordpress.com/2017 /02/temp_work_final_email.pdf. Accessed July 8, 2020. Transport Topics. “NFI/Cal Cartage to Close Port of L.A. Facility After Union Battle, Controversies.” January 23, 2019, https://www.ttnews.com/articles /nfical-cartage-close-port-la-facility-after-union-battle-controversies. Accessed July 6, 2020. Khouri, Andrew. “Long Beach Cargo Logistics Firm to Pay $3.5 Million in Back Wages and Benefits.” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2018, https:// www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-cartage-wages-20180918-story.html. Accessed July 6, 2020. Warehouse Worker Resource Center, “Cal Cartage NFI and Workers Settle Living Wage Law Suit for $1.875 Million.” 2018, http://www.warehouseworkers.org /cal-cartage-nfi-and-workers-settle-living-wage-lawsuit-for-1-875-million/. Accessed July 6, 2020. Warehouse Workers United. “Cal/OSHA Issues Serious Citations Against California Cartage.” 2015, http://www.warehouseworkers.org/osha-issues-serious-citations-against-california-cartage/. Accessed August 30, 2020. Transport Topics 2019. Teamsters Local 848. “L.A. City Unanimously Vetoes Preferential Agreement for Lawbreaking Trucking Company.” Press Release, May 8, 2018, https:// teamsters848.org/la-city-council-unanimously-vetoes-preferential-agreement/. Accessed July 6, 2020. Teamsters.org Teamsters.org. “Port Workers Victorious in L.A. City Council Decision.” October 24, 2019, https://teamster.org/2019/10/port-workers -victorious-la-city-council-decision/. Accessed July 7, 2020. Warehouse Worker Resource Center. “Waitex Warehouse Workers Win $80,000 in Back Wages.” 2017, http://www.warehouseworkers.org/waitexdlse/. Accessed July 6, 2020. American Lung Association. “State of the Air 2020,”Page 24. http://www.stateoftheair.org/assets/SOTA-2020.pdf. Accessed July 14, 2020. Whitehead, Brian. “FAA Approves Eastgate Logistics Center Bound for San Bernardino Airport.” San Bernardino Sun, December 30, https://www.sbsun .com/2019/12/30/faa-approves-eastgate-logistics-center-bound-for-san-bernardino-airport/. Accessed July 14, 2020. Whitehead, Brian. “Critics Seek Court’s Help to Stop Eastgate Project Bound for San Bernardino Airport.” San Bernardino Sun, January 30, https://www.sbsun .com/2020/01/30/critics-seek-courts-help-to-stop-eastgate-project-bound-for -san-bernardino-airport/. Accessed July 14, 2020. Warehouse Worker Resource Center. “#NoTechForICE, WWRC Demands at Amazon Warehouse in San Bernardino.”Warehouseworkers.org, July 24, 2019, http://www.warehouseworkers.org/notechforice-wwrc-protests-at-amazon -warehouse-in-san-bernardino/. Accessed July 7, 2020. Athena Coalition. “Packaging Pain: Workplace Injuries in Amazon’s Empire.” December 2019, https://www.amazonpackagingpain.org/the-report. Accessed July 7, 2020. Tung, Irene and Deborah Berkowitz. “Disposable Workers: High Injury and Turnover Rates at Fulfillment Centers in California.” National Employment Law Project, March 6, 2020, https://www.nelp.org/publication/ amazons-disposable-workers-high-injury-turnover-rates-fulfillment-centers-california/. Accessed July 14, 2020.

The WWRC in Southern California 311 35 Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns. Too Big to Govern: Public Balance Sheet for the World’s Largest Store. Los Angeles: Economic Roundtable, November 26, 2019, https://economicrt.org/publication/too-big-to-govern/. Accessed July 6, 2020. 36 Shadix, Timothy, Esq., Legal Director, Warehouse Worker Resource Center. 2020. Letter to Dr. Cameron Kaiser, Riverside County Health Officer and the Riverside Department of Public Health. April 8. https://drive .google .com /file /d /1aR d7Q7 5THx PnLO rYKL3v _tr -6rc7avEp/view. Accessed October 4, 2020. Ibid. 2020. Letter to Robert Salgado and Ayman Shiblak, Acting District Managers, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. April 8. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-nJOH6bphI9O2EcdEw4f-F_cijSxlNt/ view Ibid. 2020. Accessed October 4, 2020. Letter to Victor Copeland, District Manager, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. May 1, 2020, https://drive.google.com/file/d /1HReSmLIHrl3wey5UAzkBvnktPiEz-mca/view. Accessed July 6, 2020. Ibid. 2020. Letter to Dr. Mantu Davis, County Health Officer, and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. May 1, 2020, https://drive .google.com/file/d/1QYP1VWDgP6MMbVE0ToAu7X-S5moZZGUW/view. Accessed July 6, 2020. 37 Wired.com. Essential Workers Unite for a May Day Strike. Is it Enough? May 1, 2020. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-instacart-target-coronavirus-may -day-strike/ Accessed August 25, 2020.

18 Organizing in rural towns and suburbs Central Coast Alliance United for a sustainable economy Lucas Zucker The Partnership for Working Families (PWF) grew from a theory of change based on the power of cities: that working people can build power at the municipal level to bargain for a greater share of the benefits of their land, labor and capital that drive the engines of urban economies. However, one PWF affiliate, the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), stands out in its birth and development in a rural, rather than urban economy. Due to this unique context, CAUSE grew in a different direction, with an earlier and larger emphasis on direct base building, electoral politics and intersectional issues.

Rural California: factories in the felds Rural California is far more densely populated than other rural regions of the United States due to its heavily industrialized and labor-intensive agriculture, what historian Carrie McWilliams referred to as its “factories in the fields.” Its racially diverse population and long history of organizing among immigrant farmworkers have built progressive community and labor power in rural regions that have historically been dominated by deep conservative politics and oligarchies of agriculture, oil and other major landowners. Compared to the inland Central Valley, progressive organizing in the Central Coast of California also benefitted from the greater influence of liberal enclaves, university towns and environmental activists. CAUSE operates in the counties of Ventura and Santa Barbara, stretching along the 101 freeway through the agricultural valleys north of Los Angeles. As of 2020, the Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties are slight majority people of color, with populations roughly equally distributed between white and Latino residents. Despite their quasi-rural economies dominated by industries like agriculture, tourism, energy and the military, the region has well over 1 million residents. CAUSE currently has chapters, each with their own grassroots leadership, offices and staff, in five cities throughout the two counties. Communities like Oxnard, Santa Paula and Santa Maria are predominantly Latino agricultural communities, while others like Ventura and Santa Barbara are majority white but have significant shares of Latino service workers, primarily in hospitality and domestic work. Like most suburban and rural communities,

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 313 they have extremely low union density, and they have only recently shifted from majority Republican to Democratic voter registration due to demographic shifts, particularly the growth of immigrant families and youth of color. Like other parts of rural California, the Central Coast is defined by high levels of economic inequality, a modern-day racial caste system of labor and stark disparities in land ownership. This is rooted in historical forces dating back to the end of the Spanish Mission system, which broke up collective land into vast feudal ranchos granted to former Spanish military offices, many of which were later sold to American investors who introduced industrial agriculture. The fields of California’s Central Coast today are often harvested by indigenous workers from Southern Mexico, overseen by mestizo crew foremen from Central Mexico, working lands owned by white farm owners and agricultural company executives. However, this inequity has been marked by resistance from its beginning. The Chumash people led the largest armed revolution against the Mission system in California history in 1824 in three missions near Santa Barbara.1 The sugarbeet “factories in the fields” brought to the Central Coast to replace sugar plantations in Louisiana after the end of slavery fueled the first multiracial farmworker union in the United States, the Japanese Mexican Labor Alliance in 1903.2 In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez spent some of his earliest days organizing farmworkers in Oxnard, a hotspot of the notoriously abusive Bracero Program, which he worked to end as a critical precursor to organizing farmworkers throughout California.3 At the same time, Ventura County helped to sow the seeds of the modern conservative movement, with Sunkist President Charles Teague organizing business interests across the state to crush the surging popularity of socialist gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair in the 1930s.4 The oil industry and military bases in the Central Coast built a strong conservative voter base in white suburban neighborhoods, while Mexican-American communities remained socially, economically and politically marginalized for generations. Santa Barbara became a liberal bubble amidst a red-leaning region, with its postwar conversion of a military base into a research university, which became a hotbed of Chicano activism, as well as the environmental movement after the disastrous oil spill of 1969. Yet, Santa Barbara’s liberal politics remained dominated by the white middle class, with its working-class Latino communities seeing little long-term political power. In the 1980s and 1990s, a resurgent conservative movement fueled by anti-immigrant and anti-union sentiment swept through the Central Coast, decimating the political gains of the United Farm Workers and Chicano movement era.5 It was in this conservative political context that the living wage movement that was the predecessor to the Partnership for Working Families reached the Central Coast. Organized labor in the region’s biggest industry of agriculture had been all but defeated, and public sector employees made up much of the local union workforce. Chicano-organized political power had significantly declined from its height, even as a new generation of immigration from Mexico changed the demographics of the region. The footholds of political left power were mostly limited to environmentalists in Santa Barbara, and outside of Santa Barbara city

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the Democratic Party and labor unions were conservative, fragmented and disinterested in organizing in much of the region.

The Santa Barbara Living Wage Movement builds an electoral force called PUEBLO In the late 1990s, living wage coalitions emerged in both Ventura County and the city of Santa Barbara. Like other living wage coalitions across the country, both efforts sought to build multiracial coalitions of local progressive activists and push an economic justice issue intended to tangibly benefit low-wage, predominantly Latino workers while advancing a broader narrative and ideological shift around the concept of a basic rights-based approach to workers’ wages. By the mid-2000s, the living wage coalitions had successfully passed ordinances in the County of Ventura, City of Oxnard, City of Port Hueneme, City of Ventura and City of Santa Barbara. But as these living wage coalitions solidified in the Central Coast and faced the question of how they would sustain themselves organizationally into the future, they took different paths. In Santa Barbara, the effort was led by Harley Augustino, a dynamic young organizer inspired by his student activism at UC Santa Barbara and early efforts organizing both students and immigrant families as tenants near the university. Augustino raised seed money from local public employee union SEIU 620 to begin organizing Latino immigrants in Santa Barbara around the issue of living wage. Augustino was described by many during those days as having a powerful magnetism, with an unassuming charisma and tireless work ethic that allowed him to win trust and respect from a quickly growing grassroots base, even as a young white man organizing in Latino neighborhoods. He worked with new immigrants outside of the long-standing circles of Chicano activists in Santa Barbara, working-class people who were ready to knock on doors and build a membership at the grassroots level.6 Augustino built the Santa Barbara Living Wage Coalition into a 501c4 organization called PUEBLO. He and the other early founders of PUEBLO believed that although Santa Barbara’s city politics was led by white liberal Democrats, they needed to be held accountable by institutions to pull them left on economic and racial justice issues. The strategy was to align electoral power from PUEBLO, labor and the Democratic Party behind electing a new generation of progressive candidates who were not afraid to take on issues like living wage and renters’ rights.7 PUEBLO’s early efforts were aided by the uniquely left-leaning SEIU 620 leadership of Walt Hamilton in an otherwise conservative Central Coast labor landscape. Hamilton deeply believed in the living wage movement and was willing to invest heavily in progressive movement building and partner closely with community organizing in the Latino community.8 They were also boosted by a shift happening simultaneously within the Santa Barbara Democratic Party, with new activists during the Bush era pulling the party to the left, particularly fueled by young activists from the university.9 This alignment of a strongly

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 315 progressive labor movement in the city, an increasingly active and left-leaning Democratic Party and the new organizing powerhouse of PUEBLO within the immigrant community built a force that pushed Santa Barbara city politics into a new alignment. PUEBLO’s bolder agenda was contentious. The Santa Barbara Democratic Party was in open conflict with Democratic politicians who refused to stand up for racial and economic justice issues and SEIU 620 often butted heads with the relatively conservative Tri-Counties Central Labor Council. But through the late 2000s, this electoral alignment won battle after battle for working people and immigrant families.10 Augustino forged a connection with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and adopted their house meeting organizing model derived from the United Farm Workers. The house meeting model used the existing social networks of unorganized people, asking them to invite friends, coworkers, neighbors and family into their homes to listen to a pitch from the organizer and ask them to get involved and host house meetings of their own. Augustino noted that the DHF organizing model was particularly effective at building the leadership of immigrant women.11 Using this model, PUEBLO organized bus drivers to stop fare increases, parents to save a childcare center on the verge of closing and quickly expanded into the small towns surrounding Santa Barbara like Goleta and Carpinteria.12 PUEBLO was relatively unique as an organization that began as a 501c4 electoral strategy and opened a 501c3 for nonelectoral organizing afterward. Many 501c3 social justice organizations in California and across the nation today are now starting 501c4’s in order to hold elected officials accountable and win elections, but PUEBLO held this vision from its earliest days.

Ventura County’s Living Wage Movement creates CAUSE as a policy center During the same period, the Ventura County Living Wage Coalition formed in a different direction as CAUSE. The coalition was led by Dr. Marcos Vargas, a recent Ph.D. graduate from UCLA in urban planning and an experienced leader of Latino/Chicano serving nonprofits in Ventura County who had been shaped by his youth in the Chicano movement. Vargas had been steeped in the intellectual frameworks of the powerful community and labor coalitions that were coalescing in Los Angeles in the 1990s, and sought to emulate the thriving organization LAANE had built there.13 Ventura County sat just next door to Los Angeles but was politically a world away, in the shadow of the Ronald Reagan library and the Rodney King trial. Vargas sought the advice and guidance of Los Angeles leaders like Madeline Janis of LAANE, as well as academics like Paul Ong and Manuel Pastor. But CAUSE faced fundamentally different conditions. Labor leadership in Ventura County was less interested in directly supporting progressive community organizing and movement building than SEIU 620’s Hamilton in Santa Barbara, and the Ventura County Democratic Party was much weaker and more centrist in a

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county that was still majority Republican.14 CAUSE would be forced to forge its own path. Vargas had strong relationships in the foundation world from his years of nonprofit leadership and was a prolific fundraiser, which was critically necessary as Ventura County barely registered on the radar of most statewide and national funders. He used the data, policy analysis and economic justice and movementbuilding frameworks he had gained from his studies in Los Angeles to build CAUSE as a policy and planning research center 501c3 in the community-labor coalition model of LAANE.15 CAUSE aligned a coalition of local organizations and activists that was vital as both the living wage issue and CAUSE as a new organization were both significant to the left of anything familiar to Ventura County’s conservative political environment and required the validation of existing leadership and institutions to survive. In that context, the number of living wage ordinances passed in Ventura County was stunning, and a testament to Vargas’ ability to bring a wide array of players to the table, including more conservative elements like business interests.16 CAUSE’s first living wage victory at the County of Ventura in 2001 was marred by the 11th-hour compromise from the board of supervisors to exclude In-Home Support Service workers, a predominantly immigrant women workforce. This highlighted the race and gender implications underlying the living wage movement. Nationally, most PWF organizations had a class-based lens, with largely white leadership. CAUSE was a rare organization for its time among the groups that would eventually form the partnership as it was led by MexicanAmerican leaders like Marcos Vargas and his deputy Maricela Morales. Early on, the organization had a race and gender lens internally to its work, although never framed itself publicly as a Latino organization. At the time it was politically damaging to put racial justice front and center in Ventura County, a region steeped in anti-immigrant politics. As a result, although CAUSE was internally led by an early intersectional feminist analysis, the organization often publicly used class language as a code for race.17 After its first living wage victory, CAUSE began a Women’s Economic Justice project, focused on mobilizing immigrant low-wage women workers. It began with a campaign to support the unionization of the IHSS workers in Ventura County who had been left out of the living wage ordinance. This was followed by working to pass a Children’s Health Initiative, modeled after the victory of Working Partnerships USA in Santa Clara County. Although the policy primarily benefitted immigrant children left out of health coverage due to their undocumented status, this detail was kept low profile due to the anti-immigrant environment of Ventura County at the time. For years, CAUSE organized an annual immigrant women’s leadership development conference at UCSB, mobilizing grassroots leaders from coalition partners across the region.18 However, CAUSE quickly found that following the LAANE model was much more challenging in the rural/suburban context of Ventura County, with its conservative politics, low union density and thin network of movement organizations than in urban Los Angeles. Critical elements of the coalition that had been

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 317 so successful to the south were missing. As Vargas put it, “if it didn’t exist, we needed to create it.” CAUSE became an incubator for local organizations like the Social Justice Fund for Ventura County, Arts for Action and Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (VC-CLUE), attempting to grow the ecosystem for social movements.19 This period as a social movement incubator had mixed success in its long-term sustainability, but its most important legacy was CAUSE’s collaborative mindset toward movement building rather than empire building. Vargas held the perspective that CAUSE could not do everything alone, and that it would need to form strong and mutually beneficial partnerships in building up other organizations.20 In later years, CAUSE would more successfully focus on capacity building of existing partner organizations in the region rather than the heavier lift of starting new groups from the ground up.21 Collaboration between CAUSE and PUEBLO helped lay the groundwork for their later merger. CAUSE often helped PUEBLO raise funds, with Vargas seeing it as passing forward the help that CAUSE had received from LAANE and other movement leaders in Los Angeles.22 It established goodwill between the two organizations even as they grew in different directions. PUEBLO leaders described seeing CAUSE as an organization that had the deep policy analysis and could bring together thought leaders to shape the understanding of the regional economy and long-term policy agenda.23 CAUSE saw PUEBLO as a force of grassroots organizing, with its dynamic power derived from its deep and broad base of working-class immigrant leaders.24

CAUSE evolves into grassroots organizing In the mid-2000s, the initial living wage fights behind them and settling into a level of established clout in the local political scene and organizational stability and strength, both CAUSE and PUEBLO entered a phase of maturation. This period involved moving into new issue areas and geographic territories and broadening their bases and public recognition in the community. For CAUSE, this meant a deeper dive into organizing. Until then, CAUSE had largely organized existing groups and established activists into coalition work like many of the organizations who would go on to form the Partnership for Working Families. While CAUSE could mobilize through its relationships and coalitions the low-wage workers and immigrants that the organization represented in Ventura County politics, they were not a long-term membership base of the organization. CAUSE had hit limitations with this model in Ventura County without the same rich environment for visionary community-labor agenda setting occurring in Los Angeles and other progressive urban areas. The living wage fights had taught CAUSE that they needed a base of their own they could mobilize, and Vargas was impressed with PUEBLO’s grassroots organizing capabilities and what they had been able to accomplish in Santa Barbara County.25 After an analysis of different approaches to organizing, what impressed CAUSE leadership most was a visit to San Diego to see a community mobilization led

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by the Gamaliel affiliate there, Justice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB). Beatriz Garcia, an organizer there, had grown up in Oxnard and connected with the CAUSE team.26 CAUSE leadership saw an opportunity to bring on a seasoned and talented organizer in Garcia. CAUSE became a Gamaliel affiliate and trained its staff and leaders in their model. Gamaliel had come out of the Alinsky organizing tradition in Chicago and spread across the country, with a heavy focus on one-on-ones for relationship building, bringing together multiracial and interfaith coalitions of congregations, and a style that uplifted agitation, both externally and internally. The network gained major visibility with the meteoric political rise of one of their former organizers, Barack Obama. As Beatriz Garcia implemented the Gamaliel organizing model upon her return to her hometown, the issue catching fire in the community was a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal being proposed on the coast of Oxnard by BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company. It seemed like a political inevitability, with Governor Schwarzenegger putting his political weight behind the project. But it had also attracted the fierce opposition of environmental groups for its coastal impact and the potential emissions of what was projected to be the largest source of air pollution in Ventura County. At the time, environmental justice was a relatively new idea, and the mainstream environmental movement was often seen as the home of affluent white liberals who had little consciousness of race and class. But Oxnard had long been a textbook environmental justice community, taking much of the polluting heavy industry that its wealthier and whiter neighbors pushed away, from power plants to freight shipping to pesticide-intensive agriculture.27 CAUSE’s mission until that time had been to advance “social and economic justice,” and several on the board felt that environmental justice fights were well outside of the organization’s mission, role and expertise. But others felt that the LNG terminal was a critical issue to the community. They noted that the organization had been working to expand health insurance, but health equity was driven by more than just access to insurance coverage, including exposure to environmental toxins common in communities of color. The legacy of farmworker organizing in the region and the intersection of environmental justice and labor issues in farmworkers’ exposure to toxic pesticides also helped to bridge the gap. To take on this issue, CAUSE changed its mission to add “environmental justice” alongside “social and economic justice.”28 Ultimately, CAUSE played a critical role leading grassroots organizing on the ground in Oxnard, where some of the white-led environmental organizations coming from nearby Santa Barbara and Malibu lacked a local base. Together, the coalition mobilized around 3,000 people to a hearing of the State Lands Commission, tipping the balance in a stunning victory of the working-class immigrant community over a corporate behemoth.29 The LNG fight proved CAUSE’s newfound organizing prowess and set the stage for expanding organizing efforts into other neighborhoods like the Westside

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 319 of Ventura and the rural town of Santa Paula in the years ahead. It also forged lasting ties between CAUSE and the environmental movement. During this time, CAUSE opened its second office in the heart of South Oxnard, calling it Centro Mujer. This building, adorned with a mural depicting Latina women leading grassroots organizing for environmental justice, farmworker rights, voter mobilization and health access, became a physical representation of the women of color leadership in the organization, particularly at the grassroots level. This era also marked the beginning of an organizational shift from issue-based to place-based organizing. The organization saw that neighborhoods like South Oxnard faced long-term structural challenges: lack of investment and resources, lack of political representation, toxic living and working conditions. These required long-term leadership development to build power within the community.30 The new office was on Saviers Road, the main drag of South Oxnard, far more accessible to community members than the original CAUSE headquarters in the sanitized office parks of Ventura. It was around the corner from Hueneme High School, which became a hotbed of CAUSE youth organizing as the group began to expand its youth outreach after seeing the explosive power of young leaders in the LNG campaign. Centro Mujer became a place where immigrant women leaders and youth of color gathered in community, developed politically consciousness and trained in organizing skills for the long run.31

PUEBLO enters conservative terrain In Santa Barbara County, PUEBLO was going through its own evolution. The county had long been starkly divided in race, economics and politics between north and south. The affluent south, around the city of Santa Barbara, had been developed for over a century as a destination for luxury tourism and real estate, and had grown liberal politics through the influence of the university. The north was rural and working class, with an economy heavily rooted in oil, agriculture and the military much like Ventura County. Northern Santa Barbara County was even further isolated from the growing leftward tilt of California cities like Los Angeles and had virtually no progressive movement infrastructure or investment. In the mid-2000s, PUEBLO expanded to North County by opening a chapter in Santa Maria, becoming a much more regional organization but having to contend with true conservative politics for the first time in a region where racial conflict was sharp and overt rather than the polite white liberalism of Santa Barbara. The city of Santa Maria had followed a similar historical trajectory to Oxnard. It had been one of the towns developed by the sugar industry around the turn of the century that became heavily reliant on immigrant farm labor for backbreaking harvests of the labor-intensive sugarbeet crop. It was also heavily influenced by the discovery of oil there around that time, bringing a conservative population of oilfield workers to join the farmers who had originally settled in the valley. Like Oxnard, Santa Maria boomed with early suburban development due to its proximity to World War II military bases, but saw a sudden white flight as the

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Civil Rights era desegregated housing and schools, and the end of the Bracero program led Mexican farmworker families to settle permanently into neighborhoods that had once been predominantly white. Unlike Oxnard, Santa Maria had never become a stronghold of the United Farm Workers, with the vegetable growers of the valley signing sweetheart deals with the grower-friendly Teamsters instead. The city never built the kind of Chicano political power in the 1970s that had proliferated social service and advocacy organizations throughout Oxnard. Instead, the grower elite had maintained power and the city was governed by a Republican coalition of oil, agribusiness and law enforcement similar to many rural California towns. As this power structure became increasingly unrepresentative of the demographically changing population through the 1980s and 1990s, racial tensions continued to rise, from a mayor’s assertion that the town had a “Mexican problem” to a protracted legal battle over voting rights in town. The conservative establishment of Santa Maria adapted by recruiting Latino Republicans to run for office who could court enough Latino voters to maintain the political order. Across California, Latino political power had been building organized strength as a countermovement to the anti-immigrant wave of the 1990s. In urban Los Angeles, immigrant rights organizing was closely tied with labor organizing and fueled successful multiracial coalitions. But in the state’s rural hinterlands, progress was slower.32 PUEBLO entered Santa Maria in 2006, at the height of the May Day immigrant rights movement centered in Southern California that showed an explosive demonstration of the newfound power of immigrant activism. While hundreds of thousands marched in Los Angeles to demonstrate against anti-immigrant legislation in Washington and demand progressive immigration reform, equally stunning were the immigrant-led marches in the rural Central Coast. Santa Barbara had been the regional epicenter, with PUEBLO organizing thousands to demonstrate in the street on May Day. But PUEBLO also helped organize an unprecedented march in conservative Santa Maria. In both cities, the immense public mobilization of immigrants who were often made invisible in day-to-day work and life was a stunning spectacle and testament to the organizing muscle of PUEBLO.33 But PUEBLO didn’t just have plans to march in the streets of Santa Maria. The organization was backing Hilda Zacarias, a progressive Latina for City Council, using the slogan “¡hoy marchamos, mañana votamos!” (Today we march, tomorrow we vote!). The goal was to begin to break open the long-standing conservative power structure and begin building in North County the progressive coalitions that had been so effective in South County. PUEBLO devoted serious resources to its expansion in North County, with Executive Director Harley Augustino temporarily moving there for the election year and doing extensive base building on the ground. The energy of Zacarias’s victory was electric and it seemed that Santa Maria was on the precipice of massive political change. But generations of political marginalization and disinvestment of progressive movement infrastructure takes time to reverse. PUEBLO’s launch in Santa Maria

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 321 began a long effort of movement building in a community which was only seeing its first seeds of change begin to sprout.34 After its expansions into Goleta and Carpinteria, PUEBLO had become overextended in South County, and pulled back some of its work there to focus on the fruitful new turf in Santa Maria. With the county’s largest Latino population, there was much work to do there using the house meeting model organizers had learned from the Dolores Huerta Foundation, perfectly suited to the rural towns of central California. PUEBLO built both an adult and youth committee in Santa Maria and made increasingly large investments in year-round organizing around issues like tenants’ rights, transportation and immigrant rights. PUEBLO incorporated a 501c3 to raise more grant funding for nonpartisan community organizing, building beyond the smaller labor and grassroots fundraising that had fueled the 501c4 it began with.35 In 2007, PUEBLO made its most consequential change, when Harley Augustino stepped down as executive director. Augustino had long seen immigrant women as the key to PUEBLO’s grassroots leadership and believed the organization had reached the point where it needed to be run by someone who better reflected its base rather than himself as a white male. He left PUEBLO to continue organizing in the labor movement, and the board hired Belen Seara, an Argentinean woman who had organized with the United Farm Workers in Bakersfield.36

Strains and opportunities in the Great Recession and beyond By the late 2000s, both CAUSE and PUEBLO had matured as regional organizations with powerful organizing models and a track record of victories that had earned the respect of elected officials, media and other community leaders. They had diverged in different directions. PUEBLO had moved toward immigrant rights and housing, while CAUSE had moved toward environmental justice and health equity. PUEBLO had gone deeper into UFW-style house-meeting organizing to build its committees, while CAUSE was using the Gamaliel model to build neighborhood-based coalitions of organizations and leaders. But both organizations were expanding and thriving and moving beyond the model of urban living wage coalitions to adapt to their unique circumstances as social justice movement organizations in the rural and conservative Central Coast. The late 2000s challenged both CAUSE and PUEBLO, through internal organizational struggles for sustainability and the financial and political challenges of the Great Recession, in ways that would ultimately lead to the merger of the two organizations. After initially struggling in the financial crisis, CAUSE’s Vargas decided to take a risky approach to make it through, doubling down the organization’s work rather than cutting back. Vargas believed that raising CAUSE’s profile to the statewide and even national level would bring access to funders that had previously been out of the organization’s reach. Key to the strategy was joining newly

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formed statewide and national coalitions, including the Partnership for Working Families and California Calls.37 In the aftermath of its victory against the LNG project in Oxnard, CAUSE was emboldened to expand its place-based organizing work. CAUSE began a youth organizing program with a summer organizing internship for high school students and an Organizer in Training program to develop promising new leaders into skilled community organizers bringing CAUSE’s work to new communities in Ventura County like Santa Paula and Ventura’s Westside. CAUSE took on localized organizing campaigns around public transit, healthy food access and access to parks and green space, bringing in new funding for environmental justice and health equity work. In particular, CAUSE won a successful campaign to convert an abandoned lot in Ventura’s Westside into a communitydesigned park.38 Vargas’ efforts to project statewide influence at CAUSE reached its climax with a project to hold a 2010 gubernatorial candidate forum in Oxnard. CAUSE hosted the Shared Prosperity Forum, bringing hundreds of people from dozens of progressive organizations across the state to push against the dominant politics of cuts and austerity during the state’s recession-fueled fiscal crisis. While organizers were talking to future Governor Jerry Brown about possible attendance up until three days before the event, ultimately the gubernatorial candidates as well as most other candidates for statewide offices didn’t show.39 While the efforts to bring statewide elections to Ventura County were largely unsuccessful, this turning point in CAUSE’s history would plant the seeds of building real grassroots voter power. During the gubernatorial forum, Vargas was in conversations with Anthony Thigpenn, of an emerging network called California Calls. This new visionary alliance had been built by Los Angeles-based organizers toward a long-term strategic project to reform California’s tortured tax system and reinvest in schools and community services to reverse decades of white flight, declining tax bases and neoliberal austerity in communities of color by making corporations pay their fair share of taxes. This would become a tenyear project aimed at placing a reform of California’s notorious anti-tax movement Proposition 13 on the ballot. In the short run it meant building electoral capacity among organizing groups throughout the state to mobilize communities of color to vote.40 California Calls saw Ventura County as a strategic population center that had historically voted conservative but was experiencing demographic change with untapped electoral promise. As a California Calls affiliate, CAUSE would be able to build the funding, electoral experience and technical capacity to reach tens of thousands of voters and coordinate closely with peer organizations across California on statewide ballot initiative campaigns. However, the stretching of CAUSE’s capacity had taken a toll on the founding director. After the nerve-wracking Shared Prosperity Forum, where Vargas recalls having an “out of body experience on stage,” the executive director was approaching burnout. Expanding the organization’s program while struggling internally with the financial challenges of the recessions had only been possible

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 323 through a growing organizational debt, and CAUSE was barely surviving paycheck to paycheck.41 Both Vargas and Morales credit researcher Cameron Yee, who played a critical role in helping to bring financial sustainability to the organization through expertise that has too often been the Achilles’ Heel of underfunded grassroots organizations led by people of color. This moment of reckoning began a long period of efforts by CAUSE to bring the organization back from the brink financially and begin a years-long path toward financial security and careful organizational management.42 In the end, the efforts to build CAUSE’s statewide visibility and funding base did succeed in bringing more funding and allowing the organization to weather the storm of the recession. The survival of CAUSE is a testament to the organization’s shared approach to leadership, never focused on a singular charismatic leader and drawing many strengths from its senior team. PUEBLO entered the same period having just transitioned from its founding executive director of Harley Augustino to Belen Seara, who continued PUEBLO’s bare-knuckle workaholic organizing style in the UFW tradition. Through the recession, PUEBLO continued its heavy focus on grassroots organizing, fighting evictions in the gentrifying immigrant neighborhoods near UC Santa Barbara and car confiscations of immigrant drivers by police in Santa Maria. In particular, PUEBLO won a 2009 county-level ordinance requiring developers to pay displacement assistance for tenants pushed out of their homes when apartments were converted into condominiums. PUEBLO also won a major victory in the 2010 election of (future state senator) Monique Limón to Santa Barbara Unified School District Board, marking a shift from coalition election efforts where PUEBLO mobilized Latino voters to win influence within a progressive coalition to an era where PUEBLO had the clout to push forward its own candidates and build support around them.43 However, after Seara, the organization began an open search for a new executive director in 2011 that precipitated a period of chaos that spelled the end of PUEBLO. Turnover in leadership is challenging to the survival of any organization, and especially in troubling economic times. Organizations in small towns and rural communities often struggle to recruit and retain leaders, as many of their most talented homegrown organizers and advocates leave for larger cities and never return. CAUSE had more continuity of leadership in part because it was led by locally raised activists like Vargas and Morales, who were deeply rooted in the community of Ventura County as Mexican-American children of immigrants from working-class families.44 While Augustino was much less rooted in the local community, during his time as executive director he had recruited Hazel Davalos, a high school student in PUEBLO’s youth committee who later went on to carry the organization through the depths of crisis. PUEBLO had also never been as successful in fundraising from the foundation world as CAUSE, but had similarly extended itself. As the organization tried to survive the lingering economic troubles of the time, it shifted to find a new executive director who the board felt would project a more polished and professional image to attract major funders. Yet in retrospect, many PUEBLO leaders

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reflected that this period was one where the organization turned its back on its own greatest strengths of grassroots organizing. With less and less focused leadership on PUEBLO’s organizing work, it became disjointed and marred by internal conflict, especially in Santa Barbara where the progressive coalition was beginning to fracture. As the sense of organizational decline grew, many who were emotionally invested in PUEBLO’s long legacy of positive work in Santa Barbara felt that others were jeopardizing it, pitting friends against each other.45 Meanwhile, under Davalos’ leadership, the Santa Maria office increasingly operated as its own autonomous unit, fighting the anti-immigrant city leadership in a string of stunning organizing campaigns. The conservative political establishment of Santa Maria reeled with the power of PUEBLO to turn out shocking numbers of grassroots people to outorganize and outmaneuver the agenda of city leaders again and again. Struggling from a year of financial mismanagement and firing of PUEBLO’s recently hired executive director, by 2012 it had become increasingly clear that PUEBLO needed to make major budget cuts, in particular shutting down the Santa Barbara office where the program work had already disintegrated despite a successful 2011 Santa Barbara city election. For over a year, PUEBLO had no operations in Santa Barbara. 46 However, the Santa Maria chapter carried on PUEBLO’s work, and in particular returned to what PUEBLO had always done best: raising funds from organized labor to mobilize Latino voters in elections. The 2012 election was a crucial moment in California, where Proposition 30 offered the potential to raise taxes on the wealthy to finally end the state’s years of budget misery, while Proposition 32 threatened to dramatically hamstring the political power of labor. PUEBLO joined the successful statewide coalition effort for Yes on 30 and No on 32, while also mobilizing support for a local Santa Maria City Council candidate Terri Zuniga.47

2012 electoral change The 2012 election not only brought California back from the fiscal brink, it also began to forge the bonds that would preserve PUEBLO’s work and lead to the merger with CAUSE. Most visibly, CAUSE and PUEBLO demonstrated their alignment in core values and strategies for change by both working on the statewide effort of the Yes on 30 and No on 32 campaign. CAUSE had just boasted its greatest field effort yet using its newfound electoral strength with California Calls, phonebanking and canvassing over 30,000 voters in Ventura County for Yes on Prop 30 and No on Prop 32. Although at the time CAUSE only had a 501c3, enabling it to support ballot measures but not candidates, the congressional campaign of Julia Brownley, which successfully flipped Ventura County blue for the first time in 70 years, credited some of their victory to CAUSE’s impressive mobilization of voters in Oxnard, an untapped progressive power base in the county that had always struggled with low voter turnout.48

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 325 Another key to this progressive wave election in the Central Coast was the Citizen’s Redistricting Commission, which had redrawn voting districts to end long-standing racial gerrymandering in the region that had protected the seats of fiercely anti-immigrant incumbent politicians like Elton Gallegly. A Citizen’s Redistricting Commission had initially been opposed by Democratic leaders, who feared the loss of control among the Democratic-controlled state legislature in drawing the lines, but California voters had passed a ballot initiative to create a nonpartisan commission to draw lines based on demographics, geography and social ties among communities. Initially afraid that the Central Coast would have no representation on the Commission and that it would be dominated by the major urban areas, CAUSE worked extensively to recruit people to apply from the Central Coast. Led by Morales, CAUSE submitted maps and worked with partners up and down the Central Coast to advocate for an end to the gerrymandering that had long robbed Latino voters of representation. In particular, the State Senate districts that had formerly cut out Oxnard and Santa Maria were changed by the Commission to create the majority-Latino 19th Senate District, and the congressional districts were shifted from the notorious “ribbon of shame” district that split coastal and inland areas of Central California to become much more competitive swing districts largely aligned with county boundaries.49 After partnering closely on both the redistricting efforts of 2011 and the successful proposition campaigns of 2012, CAUSE and PUEBLO shared in the exuberant aftermath of the 2012 election victories, setting the stage for the two organizations to join forces on a much deeper level.

PUEBLO–CAUSE merger In some ways, CAUSE and PUEBLO were like long-lost sisters. They had worked together and learned from each other during the living wage movement and continued to be aligned in major priorities. Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties shared many overlapping political districts, economic ties and organizational landscapes. Conversations about merging had happened as early as 2007 when CAUSE’s Vargas extended an invitation to consider a merger after Harley Augustino left PUEBLO but had been rebuffed by PUEBLO’s leadership, who worried that CAUSE was trying to absorb their organization during a delicate time of transition. By 2012, the tables had turned and PUEBLO was reaching out to CAUSE about merging.50 Cruz Phillips, the UFW veteran who had trained PUEBLO in the house meeting model, had taken a prominent role as a board member in shepherding PUEBLO through the difficult times, particularly maintaining its organizing work in Santa Maria. Phillips reached out on behalf of PUEBLO to Vargas, proposing the merger. The CAUSE board was initially reluctant, worrying that PUEBLO primarily brought financial liabilities, internal division and organizational instability. But Vargas saw that despite its smaller size and recent troubles, PUEBLO contained something invaluable, which was its highly successful

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community organizing methodology. He had seen with Beatriz Garcia how an accomplished and experienced organizer can make all the difference in building a winning organization and saw the same in Hazel Davalos, the then PUEBLO’s Director of Organizing and Grassroots Fundraising in Santa Maria.51 Davalos was a Santa Maria native fiercely committed to PUEBLO, having started as a youth leader during PUEBLO’s early heyday in Santa Maria in 2006, who continued working for the organization as an administrative assistant and organizer through the worst of its internal strife. Despite PUEBLO’s dire straits, Davalos showed PUEBLO’s greatest asset: a powerful organized base in Santa Maria that had won a string of unlikely victories in a place long seen as barren terrain for progressive politics. PUEBLO youth had stopped the city’s attempt to cut the main bus route through the low-income Latino west side of town during the recession and blocked a hazardous metal scrapyard proposed for the residential area. PUEBLO’s organizing had blocked the city’s plans to kick out the mobile immigration services provided by the Mexican Consulate and ousted a chief of police known for his anti-immigrant views and car confiscations of immigrant drivers. They had organized immigrant parents in the school district to end a policy that required fingerprinting at the police station to volunteer in class, creating a barrier to parent involvement in education.52 When CAUSE leadership visited Santa Maria to see PUEBLO’s organizing model, Phillips felt PUEBLO needed to flex its strength to ensure the organization wasn’t swallowed up whole. Phillips was insistent that if a merger were to happen, that the regional organization would continue with PUEBLO’s organizing model, not CAUSE’s. CAUSE was astonished by the hundreds of grassroots leaders in an intergenerational chapter, from high school youth to farmworkers to immigrant mothers and saw they had much to gain from PUEBLO’s expertise in grassroots organizing. It was undeniable that CAUSE was the stronger organization in the merger. The final organization would be named CAUSE, with PUEBLO’s staff, grants, board members and offices being absorbed into the CAUSE 501c3 organization, while PUEBLO’s 501c3 closed. The executive director would be Marcos Vargas, although Davalos would develop the organizing program. However, by absorbing PUEBLO, CAUSE took on some of its shape. CAUSE gained the priceless asset of PUEBLO’s 501c4 organization, renaming it CAUSE Action Fund and making candidate endorsements for the first time in Ventura County. CAUSE agreed that the organizing model moving forward would be primarily based on PUEBLO’s house meeting model, with city-based chapters in five cities (Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard and Santa Paula) with both youth and adult committees. CAUSE also would continue PUEBLO’s leadership on the issues of immigrant rights and renter’s rights regionally, which had not been explicit focuses of CAUSE before the merger. The year 2013 saw a process of gradually bringing the organizations together, smoothing out differences and learning new models.53 With its share of bumps along the way, the organization that emerged was more than the sum of its parts. The two engines of PUEBLO’s organizing and

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 327 leadership development model and CAUSE’s policy and research knowledge drove campaigns on a wide range of issues, from immigrant rights and workers’ rights to affordable housing and environmental justice. Electoral muscle at unprecedented scale with PUEBLO’s experience and CAUSE’s resources allowed the organization to hold elected officials accountable and advance a new generation of progressive candidates. A regional approach to the work meant much greater impact in statewide coalition efforts and an ability to learn and share best practices between the small cities throughout the Central Coast. A strategic planning process solidified consensus around CAUSE’s model and structure as a regional organization, but also set a new ambitious vision for the organization moving forward. CAUSE would return to its roots around economic justice, seeing the growing strength of movements taking on economic inequality like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for 15. CAUSE would also dive deeper into voting rights, after its successful work on redistricting, pushing local cities to move to district elections and engaging in a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the voice of the long-underrepresented Latino community in the region. Finally, CAUSE would build its capacity in communications and youth organizing to adapt to a modern digital world with a rising progressive Millennial generation.

Together, CAUSE evolves and grows After the merger, CAUSE began a period of growth in statewide and even national recognition as it built its own organizational capacity and won landmark victories for social, economic and environmental justice.

Youth organizing and environmental justice CAUSE’s youth organizing had begun with the LNG environmental justice battle in Oxnard and the beginning of PUEBLO’s Santa Maria organizing. By the time of the merger, youth organizing was more than just a side project – it was on the forefront of CAUSE’s work. In 2010, Latino Millennials were growing into their own political consciousness. These youth were bilingual and bicultural, shaped by experiences with racism and inequality growing up in the United States, and tapped into an era of progressive political change. They often not just supported adult organizing but also led CAUSE campaigns around public transit, environmental justice and education reform. Many had been energized by the Prop 30 victory, turning the tide from budget cuts to their schools into new investment in educational equity.54 In Ventura County, CAUSE had built an annual fellowship program where local youth spent their summers in a paid internship learning community organizing skills and campaigning for CAUSE’s organizing goals. This built a highly trained cadre of youth leaders for year-round organizing. Students fought to end the privatization of food services to improve nutritional health standards in Oxnard schools. They worked to improve bus service from Oxnard to nearby

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Camarillo, where many students worked in retail jobs despite the conservative town’s resistance to public transit.55 Above all, ten years after the historic defeat of the LNG project, another youth-centered campaign once again helped make CAUSE’s name in the environmental justice world. All of the region’s power plants had historically been built in Oxnard, lining the city’s beaches with smokestacks. When NRG, the nation’s largest power plant operator, proposed a new plant on the Oxnard coast in 2014 to continue this legacy, Oxnard residents organized quickly in response. Young Latina women organized by CAUSE led the fight, turning out hundreds of residents to hearing after hearing held by state agencies on the proposed Puente power plant. The Oxnard fight became a symbol of California’s turning points toward clean energy, with some saying it could be the last fossil fuel power plant built in the state. During this campaign, CAUSE joined the California Environmental Justice Alliance, who provided crucial legal capacity and stronger relationships with national environmental groups. When CAUSE youth led a civil disobedience, shutting down a California Energy Commission meeting in 2016, it brought statewide and even national media attention to the struggle, leading the Commission to reassess the project, ultimately finding the plant could be replaced by clean energy. Once again, Oxnard had defeated a corporate giant pushing polluting industry on its working-class and immigrant population in a David v. Goliath victory few thought possible.56

Immigrant rights and representation Meanwhile, in Santa Maria, CAUSE was fighting another giant on a seemingly unstoppable project. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planned to build a new transfer center there to hold undocumented immigrants seized in raids before moving them to a long-term detention center. CAUSE used its mastery of local Spanish-language media in Santa Maria to mobilize thousands to oppose the project in a community that had never seen its immigrant population rise up on such a scale before. At its peak, 3,000 people packed the Santa Maria fairgrounds, where the city’s planning commission had to move their meeting to accommodate the historic crowds. Yet, despite overwhelming community opposition, Santa Maria’s planning commission and City Council approved the ICE facility. While the ICE facility was built, the campaign built CAUSE’s organized base and drew the clearest picture yet of the disconnect between the city’s white political elite and its Latino majority population. Santa Maria had long maintained resistance to voting rights reforms like district elections to give fair representation to the city’s immigrant neighborhoods, including an epic legal battle with MALDEF in the 1990s.57 During the heat of the ICE controversy in 2014, CAUSE began collecting signatures to place a measure on the ballot that would move the city from at-large to district-based elections. It generated overwhelming support, with thousands signing the petition in a massive volunteer-led effort. However, the city was able

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 329 to stall the petition in court on a technicality and ultimately run out the clock for the 2014 election.58 Santa Maria finally moved to district elections in 2018, when they were faced with a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit as a wave of cities shifted to district elections under legal threat. In CAUSE’s region, this began with Santa Barbara City Council, who moved to districts in 2015. CAUSE used its long-standing expertise in redistricting and voter data analysis to submit the winning district map design, ensuring not just two strong Latino districts in Santa Barbara’s Eastside and Westside but also a renter-dominated district downtown that would help represent the city’s multiracial tenant working-class in the housing battles to come. CAUSE worked on district mapping over the next few years in Oxnard, Ventura and Santa Maria, as well as achieving success in Oxnard with securing its desired district maps, but not in the more conservative City Councils.59

Fighting for farmworker justice Although CAUSE had long organized farmworkers around issues from immigrant rights to environmental justice, the organization had been reluctant to take on explicit worker organizing, viewing that as the realm of legacy farmworker organizations like the UFW and CRLA. But after 14 years of CAUSE’s existence, the last UFW organizing drive in the region, unionizing the Pictsweet Mushroom workers, had been the year of CAUSE’s founding in 2001.60 By 2015, CAUSE leadership increasingly felt that the old farmworker movement was not coming back, and the organization needed to more directly take on issues of farmworker justice, even if it stumbled at first in unfamiliar and challenging terrain. CAUSE conducted a survey of 600 farmworkers in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, highlighting broad trends in wage theft, extreme overwork and health and safety risks and exposing the culture of fear and retaliation that too often kept farmworkers from speaking up about conditions. This launched a coalition campaign for a Farmworker Bill of Rights, a set of policies that would crack down on wage theft through enhanced enforcement and penalties, curb extreme overwork through equal rights to overtime and better definition of breaks and address health risks from pesticides and lack of field sanitation. Ultimately, it was a bold vision that met stiff resistance from the powerful agriculture industry in the region and county governments that were loath to challenge the Central Coast’s most influential economic sector. However, the organizing in support of the Farmworker Bill of Rights mobilized hundreds of Ventura and Santa Barbara County farmworkers to share their stories and speak out at public meetings.61 Most notably, it succeeded in creating the Ventura County Farmworker Resource Program, which was negotiated between CAUSE alongside its local ally MICOP (the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project) and a set of Ventura County agriculture industry leaders, who broke ranks with the Ventura County Farm Bureau and Ventura County Agriculture Association to support the creation of the program. This “Miracle Group” collaborated across the lines of

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conflict to create an agreement for a program with trilingual staff members fluent in English, Language and Mixteco to help farmworkers learn about their rights and address labor disputes with employers. The program was not only the first of its kind, it was designed through the input of farmworkers who participated in a series of lengthy evening hearings to build it step by step. This campaign developed a growing expertise in farmworker labor issues that built CAUSE’s influence statewide and won a seat at the table in regional agriculture issues, contesting for power with agriculture industry representatives.62

Growing under fre CAUSE’s growing organizing strength in environmental justice, immigrant rights and farmworker labor issues became vital as CAUSE’s region was hit by the massive wildfires of the late 2010s in California. The Thomas Fire of 2017 was at the time the largest recorded wildfire in California history (although it was quickly surpassed by other mega-fires as California’s climate crisis continued). As the Thomas Fire raged through the Ventura and Santa Barbara County region, thousands of farmworkers continued to work in the fields, often without protections such as respirator masks. Crucial emergency information about evacuations, health hazards and resources was not translated, leaving many families struggling to understand how to protect their loved ones. As the fire raged on and was followed by a devastating mudslide in wealthy Montecito where many immigrant domestic workers cleaned mansions and manicured gardens, thousands of immigrant families lost weeks of work or their jobs entirely without access to disaster aid or unemployment benefits.63 CAUSE worked with two of its closest local partners to respond to the disaster for the community that had been left behind by the official response. The Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) and Future Leaders of America (FLA) were the largest base-building organizations rooted in the region’s immigrant community, and the three organizations had become increasingly close partners. Together, the three organizations worked to distribute 15,000 N95 respirator masks, despite angry resistance from growers at volunteers trespassing on their property to hand masks to farmworkers. They also founded the 805 Undocufund (modeled on the Undocufund that had formed months earlier in Sonoma County) which raised over $2 million in disaster aid for families excluded from the safety net due to immigration status. They leveraged national media coverage of the fire to change the narrative from the destruction of hillside mansions to the safety of immigrant workers and survival of their families. They also worked to advocate for systemic change, including state legislation pushing counties to translate disaster information and include diverse communities in disaster planning, and state regulations providing safety standards for outdoor workers in wildfire smoke.64 Since the merger, CAUSE had often been challenged by its sprawling and expansive mission. With chapters in five different communities covering a wide swath of issue areas that would have been divided between half a dozen different organizations

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 331 in a more urban area, CAUSE frequently found itself stretched thin. Yet, with few other advocacy organizations in this rural region, CAUSE leaders felt no choice but to take on issues as community members raised them from all directions. Yet disaster reveals the false silos between the narrow issue areas that categorize the nonprofit advocacy sector. The people CAUSE organized face struggles that were inextricably and inevitably tied, despite being put into separate buckets by grant applications. Climate change was driving devastating natural disasters, made more deadly by systems that viewed immigrants as excluded outsiders and farmworkers as disposable labor. In this moment, there was no separation between CAUSE’s issues as its people lived at the intersection of all of them. This would be replicated again in the COVID-19 pandemic which struck the nation just two years later, elevating many of the same lessons learned during California’s wildfires about immigrant exclusion from the safety net and the dangerous working conditions of farmworkers.

Lessons for organizing in rural and suburban communities The organization grew rapidly in the years after merging, first building its organizing team, and then its policy and communications capacity. As it developed in political sophistication, grassroots base and ability to take on complex issues to impact local and statewide policymaking, CAUSE stood as a rare example of a social justice organization in a rural region that had successfully reached scale and sustainability. The factors in this success should be examined, as more and more communities of color are shifting from urban cores to suburbs and smaller cities due to gentrification, economic shifts and transitions away from traditional immigrant “gateway cities.” Organizations throughout the Partnership for Working Families are increasingly looking to smaller outlying cities as major focuses of their work, and particularly as grounds ripe for experimentation in base building. CAUSE once felt its rural region as a weakness, a struggle to be recognized and funded, going against the grain in a conservative terrain with few allies. Yet as time went on, the strategies CAUSE used to adapt and survive proved themselves to be strengths. CAUSE found early on that the traditional PWF model needed to be adapted to its regional context. It could not be a coalition intermediary, driving policy research and coalition strategy while relying on organized labor or other community organizations to provide a grassroots base. CAUSE had no choice but to build its own base. This meant investing heavily in organizing capacity, with grassroots chapters, staff and offices in small towns to establish an authentic and deeply rooted presence in rural communities. This strong grassroots base also allowed CAUSE to be nimble and independent, working on the issues its own membership prioritized. CAUSE’s focus on organizing immigrant women workers also led the organization early on to develop an intersectional analysis to its work, even in a place

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and time when explicit conversations of racial justice were outside of political norms and immigrants were stigmatized. While over the years the Partnership for Working Families grappled with how to develop a racially diverse leadership and center class and gender issues beyond a solely class-based labor analysis, CAUSE since its inception was led by people of color, and increasingly Latina women who made up the core of the organization’s grassroots base and the bulk of the political leaders it elected to public office. In a time when social movements are coming to a deeper understanding of their intersections, CAUSE has thrived in those intersections and embraced the multi-issue lives of its grassroots base. In a more conservative political environment, CAUSE early on found the importance of engaging in electoral politics to shift the landscape. This played a critical role in translating the demographic change of the region and its growing young and Latino populations into political change, power and representation. It also built the political clout to directly hold elected officials accountable and make up for a lack of robust progressive community-labor coalitions. As social movements are reconnecting with the will to fight for political and governing power, CAUSE had no choice but to claw its way to a seat at the table against the entrenched conservative power structures of a rural community. With a far smaller pool of experienced organizers and researchers in its region, CAUSE also heavily depended on developing its own leaders. This was key to maintaining organizational stability despite the “brain drain” of talent from rural to urban areas. CAUSE’s senior staff often came through the ranks of the organization, sometimes beginning as grassroots leaders themselves. Recruiting staff from within its own community built a team that demographically and culturally reflected its base and was rooted in its communities’ struggles. With small teams of junior staff operating in each city, CAUSE organizers and advocates trained to be generalists, learning a broad range of policy areas and building relationships with local elected officials, grassroots leaders, media and coalition allies. This created a culture of flexibility and nimbleness, and an ability to adapt quickly to changing times. CAUSE began on the margins of the Partnership, learning from organizations like LAANE who seemed to be in another political universe. It eventually strayed from that model, exploring its own strengths and the needs of its own community, before reconnecting with the Partnership as an evolved and developed organization. Yet, as the Partnership for Working Families grows into the next phase of its existence, more than ever its affiliates are beginning to converge toward a similar path: committed to grassroots base building, with regional rather than urban perspectives, investing in electoral political power and embracing the intersections in the lives of workers.

Notes 1 James A. Sandos, LEVANTAMIENTO!: The 1824 Chumash Uprising Reconsidered. Southern California Quarterly 67, no. 2 (1985): 109–133. doi:10.2307/41171145.

Organizing in rural towns and suburbs 333 2 Almaguer Tomás, Racial Fault Lines: the Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009). 3 Frank P. Barajas, Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). 4 Sackman, Douglas Cazaux. Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (United Kingdom: University of California Press, 2007). 5 Richard Flacks (former PUEBLO/CAUSE board member), interview with author, October 2020. 6 Flacks 7 Daraka Larimore-Hall (former PUEBLO/CAUSE board member), interview with author, September 2020. 8 Flacks 9 Larimore-Hall 10 Ibid. 11 Martha Sadler. “Along Came Harley.” Santa Barbara Independent, April 6, 2006. 12 Hazel Davalos (CAUSE Organizing Director), interview with the author, August 2020. 13 Vargas—cite dissertation 14 Maricela Morales (CAUSE Executive Director), interview with the author, November 2020. 15 Marcos Vargas (former CAUSE Executive Director), interview with the author, August 2020. 16 Morales 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Vargas 20 Ibid. 21 Morales 22 Vargas 23 Davalos 24 Vargas 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Freeland, Gregory. International Environmental Justice: Competing Claims and Perspectives (United Kingdom: ILM Publications, 2012). 28 Vargas 29 Cameron Yee (CAUSE Operations Director), interview with the author, November 2020. 30 Yee 31 Morales 32 Davalos 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Flacks 37 Vargas 38 Yee 39 Vargas 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Morales 43 Davalos

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Morales Davalos Vargas Davalos Timm Herdt, “Brownley says her victory was built from grassroots efforts,” Ventura County Star, November 7, 2012. Morales Vargas Ibid. Davalos Vargas Based on author’s personal experience as CAUSE Policy Director Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Author’s personal experience Morales. Author’s personal experience. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

Part 6

Conclusion

19 Conclusion The challenges and opportunities to change regions, states and the nation David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

In assembling the chapters for this volume we have been struck by how each case study tells a distinct story. The power building model has demonstrated its robustness and versatility through the ability of each PWF affiliate to adapt it to their regional conditions and challenges. In this conclusion, we will step back and identify common themes that can be drawn from these diverse experiences. At the general level what do the PWF affiliates share in their approach to progressive movement building in America? How do they differ? What are some of the most common challenges faced for building lasting power? Finally, what do the PWF affiliates’ successes tell us about how to make a historical transformation of America by changing states and ultimately the nation. We will take up each of these questions in turn.

A shared approach to building lasting power In September 2020, the University of Southern California Dornsife’s Equity Research Institute released a two-year study of what it took to build lasting community power in America. The research team included Manuel Pastor, one of our authors. Researchers conducted extensive interviews with organizations in 16 places across the country, including four PWF affiliates. The project grew out of a growing realization among foundations and organizations concerned with human health that creating healthy communities involved far more than simply access to quality health care, nutritious food and so forth, but ultimately involved the question of community power. Communities that reveal the worst health measures are typically those most disenfranchised and disempowered by local and state power structures. In identifying what it takes for such communities to build power the project developed an excellent framework which captures the core shared aspects of PWF affiliate work. We will summarize it briefly.1 The researchers define community power as the ability of communities most impacted by structural inequity to develop, sustain, and grow an organized base of people who act together through democratic structures to set agendas, shift public discourse, influence decision-makers, and cultivate ongoing relationships of mutual accountability

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Rooted in this definition is an understanding that ordinary people are experts of their own reality and needs. The definition also draws attention to the importance of people’s internal transformation from disempowered victim to empowered citizen. The report identifies three broad categories for action that when combined encompass the project of long-term power building. Power builders Catalyze by setting an agenda for change. This means bringing attention to issues typically ignored or downplayed by the power structure, developing a shared analysis of the root causes of problems in ways which inform solutions and building momentum through collective action and catalytic campaigns. Power builders Create by leveraging momentum to develop and win legislation and policies. They secure and protect funding, programs and services. They also reach beyond the status quo to establish alternative models for how government works and democratically interacts with the community. Finally, power builders Sustain by establishing a governing agenda that is far more than the sum of individual policy wins. They develop leaders for key decision-making positions – both elected and appointed. They foster mutual accountability between decisionmakers and communities. The former must be accountable to the people that helped get them in office, while at the same time the community needs to back up and support decision-making champions who can often feel isolated. Sustaining power also involves shifting the public discourse to change the cultural norms about where problems come from and how they are solved. Most specifically, a new narrative has to restore people’s faith in democratic government and redefine how they interact with it. The case studies found in this book well illustrate the above framework in action and the dynamic and cyclical relationships among its various elements. Despite the wide diversity in their particulars and the differing strategic emphasis at any given time, all of the PWF affiliates combine the above elements to strive for new progressive governance in America. We need to keep in mind that true governance is multi-dimensional. Today when we talk about neoliberal “governance” we are pointing to the power to determine and define: • • • • • •

Who sits in decision-making positions What questions and issues get considered paramount What solutions are deemed in the realm of the possible Who is considered important to have “at the table” What resources are available What defines success

Adapting to regional conditions We intended that this volume would provide illustrations of how communitylabor coalitions in a variety of cities are responding to aspects of the neoliberal

Conclusion 339 urban agenda and how unions and community forces can gain power. We hope that the examples in this volume show that labor gains strength by considering the totality of workers’ lives in their communities. One of the most important aspects of this work is how conditions vary depending on local factors in each affiliate’s city. In some cities, the affiliate focuses on issues of low-wage workers and in other places community-focused issues dominate the affiliate’s agenda while bringing in labor to help shape the issues. Neoliberalism does not necessarily mean identical agendas for cities, but depends on prominent issues in the various locales. Thus, there are different lessons from the work of affiliates in these very different settings. Additionally, the authors brought up a variety of the factors in local campaigns. The authors represent different academic disciplines and thus their analyses reflect those disciplines. As difficult as it may be to respond to neoliberal schemes within cities, the affiliates of PWF find ways to amass the power to hold developers and employers accountable, to impact the public discourse on social and economic issues, to participate in struggles for immigrant rights or the Fight for $15 and to break down barriers in order to build large and effective winning campaigns. The array of organizations, unions and other forces involved in each city varies – in some places the Teamsters play a role, in other places Building Trades unions are involved, in many either SEIU or UNITE-HERE are active. On the community side there are religious organizations, local neighborhood or community groups, immigrant advocates, environmental justice organizations and many more. All of this points to the reality that progressive organizing is not dead. It takes a variety of forms and faces both within and beyond the core cities.

Common challenges There are, of course, numerous challenges that many affiliates face. Each affiliate is itself a type of coalition as it takes on issues and struggles. Coalitions are difficult to construct and sometimes even more difficult to maintain. Some partners may leave, some issues are not important to all the partners, and then there is the issue of funding. One affiliate that was not detailed in this volume is that of the Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE), which enjoyed some important successes in the 2000s, particularly in New Haven, Connecticut, in struggles around Yale University’s plans to expand its hospital for a new cancer center. This has been documented by several accounts.3 Exemplary community organizing and involvement took place, union organizing of the university’s hospital workers was undertaken, politicians signed on to a Community Benefits Agreement and implored Yale to do agree to the demands. As well, graduate students at Yale organized into a union and struggled for recognition. It was an exciting time and CCNE helped form a group specifically in New Haven, New Haven Rising to take on politics and education struggles. Yet, once the flurry of activity died down and CCNE started to take on other projects, particularly around education equity in the Hartford area, it ran into difficulties working with various funders, unions

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and other participants. Foundations that had funded CCNE in its earlier years were interested in new projects elsewhere, and newly approached foundations told CCNE staff that they weren’t interested in Hartford, but would rather fund projects in the south or elsewhere to take on conservative regimes. Additionally, internal and external union politics made some unions who had been supportive bow out due to their own priorities and relationships with other partners in CCNE. However, it is possible that in the future some issues may be so important that CCNE is resurrected, or it may rest in peace. Though CCNE is inactive, people in New Haven say things like the ongoing “New Haven Rising feels no different (than CCNE)” in terms of the amount of organizing and mobilizing that is going on. And many relationships were built or strengthened during its 15-year existence, which begs the question, what are some of the most important elements in making for successful affiliates? One of the first things that any kind of organizer – labor or community – will tell others is that it’s all about relationship-building. That can mean an individual level and an organizational level. Relationships take time, patience, work and skill to build. One of the most important elements is trust: trust that each part of the relationship is truthful and that there can be space to work out disagreements. Sometimes organizations “agree to disagree” on some specific issue, but also agree to continue to work together, and sometimes disagreements can be worked out. Partners in these types of alliances also should not be competing over funding or find ways to collaborate in funding proposals such that there is a division of funds. Funders can foster cooperation by supporting shared tables that bring new collective resources that enhance each group’s work. Very critical as well is that within these affiliates of PWF, labor and community meet as equals in decision-making, regardless of who has more resources. Equally important is that the affiliates stay proactive and creative and avoid merely reacting to problems. A final area to discuss in terms of challenges is funding. It is important to have independent means of generating resources. Most affiliates of PWF rely on funding from various foundations, as well as seed money and election-related resources from organized labor. However, there have to be other sources of income as well – fundraisers, annual events and awards, large individual contributions and any other way that resources can be created. Sometimes successful campaigns can translate into projects that help support the affiliates, such as job training, citizenship orientation classes or other things that can serve communities. Depending upon local conditions, local organizations and unions, the relationships among all of these forces securing funding can be daunting. Some affiliates have to exist with minimal staff until big projects fund more staff. Relationships with colleges and universities can sometimes be useful and provide technical assistance as well as student interns. As for all nonprofits, even the social change groups have to continually be concerned with fundraising, and if they have staff to concentrate on this aspect of work, then that can be very important in organizational survival. According to the Center for Responsible Politics, the 2020 election cycle witnessed a record $14 billion in campaign spending, with $6.6 billion for the

Conclusion 341 presidential race alone.4 Much of this money went to advertising. Yet, especially among the liberal donor and labor movement contributors’ large sums also went to Get Out the Vote (GOTV) work. Yet, campaign GOTV is not the same thing as the Integrated Voter Engagement strategies shown by PWF affiliates in this book. Yes, GOTV can contribute to the record turnout witness by the November 2020 election. However, GOTV done as a single campaign season does not, by itself, lead to lasting voter participation and thus does not translate into enduring power. The PWF experience challenges donors to rethink cost-effectiveness and consider that at least some portion of one-shot electoral money might be better spent investing in patient long-term, grassroots-based work to engage people in participant-based efforts to improve their lives democratically in the communities they live. We should also note the internet fundraising revolution signified by Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns. For 2020, Sanders raised $212 million, close to $115 million in small contributions under $200.5 Overall, Democrats raised nearly $1.7 billion in small contributions for the 2020 elections. Is there a potential to tap progressive internet fundraising to support lasting progressive political movement building?

Lessons for state and national power While PWF affiliates start with regional power building, their progressive ambitions do not end within the metropolitan area. Ultimately, regional power building seeks a path to state and national power. We begin our discussion of this potential by reviewing the lessons we can draw from the right’s successful strategy to capture so many state governments over the past four decades. Republican success at the state level has been stark. During the Clinton presidency, Democrats lost 612 state legislative seats. They gained 108 during the years of the Bush, Jr. presidency only to lose 816 under Obama. In 2009, Democrats controlled both legislative chambers in 27 states compared to 14 for Republicans. In 2017, the balance of power had changed to only 13 for Democrats, but 32 for Republicans. Following the 2020 elections Republicans had a trifecta (control both legislative chambers and the governorship) in 23 states compared to only 15 for Democrats.6 Part of this transformation comes as the result of the famous “Southern Strategy” through which Republicans displaced the conservative Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party in the former Confederate states. However, Republicans’ gains also came in throughout the West and Midwest. This success comes as a result of the new-right realizing, well before more federalfocused liberal and progressive forces did, the importance of state governments and developing a systematic strategy to capture them. Because the US Constitution states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively,” state governments have wide-ranging policy powers. For example, they have extensive regulatory and spending powers, they set the basic rules for school funding, they exercise major police powers and they administer and make rules for many federal programs, such as Medicaid. Some state attorneys

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general have taken the Affordable Care Act to court while, by contrast, others have sued major American corporations. States can be a laboratory for new policies – be it restrictions on abortion and budget-crippling tax reform or a $15 minimum wage and mandatory paid sick days. The new right also realized that state governments run and set the rules for our nation’s elections. As we have seen with conservative secretaries of states purging millions of voters and conservative legislatures gerrymandering state and US Congressional districts to maximize Republican seats, the rules set and implemented by state governments shape power not just in each state but also the nation. Finally, as PWF affiliates have had to face, conservative controlled legislatures can pass preemption laws, blocking local regulations around wages, working conditions, rent control, plastic bag bans and so forth. In his detailed study, published as State Capture, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez lays out the key elements of the new-rights’ state strategy.7 At the general level, much of the conservative strategy for state governance parallels PWF affiliate work at regional governance – suggesting that these progressive strategies can “level up.” Hertel-Fernandez focuses on what he calls the Troika: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the State Policy Network and its affiliates, and conservative “grassroots” networks, especially Americans for Prosperity. This Troika includes a substantial “think and act” capacity dedicated to changing the narrative about the role of government, the problems that need to be addressed and the possible solutions that state governments should pursue. ALEC maintains a large database of over a thousand template bills. It invests heavily in developing the skills and perspectives of conservative state officeholders and candidates. It also networks these individuals with each other and with their base of supporters – the corporations that pay ALEC dues. ALEC’s design comes out of a key insight about the nature of state governments – most state (and we can add local) legislators bear great responsibilities with very little resources. Currently, only ten states have full-time legislatures. This means that in most states individual legislators need either independent wealth or a “day job” to make ends meet. Depending on the year and state, legislative sessions can be as short as one or two months.8 Typically, individual legislators have very little staff – and the staff that is available is often shared. Every year thousands of bills get introduced into individual legislatures. While most do not make it past the first stage, it is impossible for the average legislator to fully read each piece of legislation that they will asked to act upon. While state legislative races involve a much lower scale of campaign funding, like their federal counterparts, the cost of such election efforts has increased over time. Thus, state legislators have to cultivate relationships with those individuals and groups that are going to help put and keep them in office. In short, groups that build longterm relationships of trust and mutual support with state legislators are going to prove far more successful in enacting and implementing their agenda than those who do not. Most importantly, coordinated movements that collectively build these relationships are going to be far more successful than those that are fragmented. Since the situation of most metropolitan legislators in the United States

Conclusion 343 parallels the challenges faced by their state counterparts, many PWF affiliates have developed strategic relationships with their electoral champions and “think and act” capacity that has parallels to the work of ALEC and which progressives need in order to capture state power. We do not want to overstate the similarities, however. The right-wing Troika is built around organized money, not organized people. As a result, these conservative structures tend to operate top-down, rather than bottom-up. They do not emphasize transparency. Indeed, ALEC has tried to keep its list of corporate dues-paying membership secret. Much of the Troika’s “think” research tends to all too often fit the data into the policy aims, rather than developing the policies out of what the research reveals. Ultimately, conservative strategies are designed to subvert democracy by pushing a corporate-defined agenda, while progressives seek to enhance democracy as a counter to corporate power. Despite the differences, the lesson of the right-wing capture of states is that many of the core strategies developed by PWF affiliates can translate into efforts to seek state power. Indeed, our chapters have revealed affiliates directly involved in battles over state policy and in seeking state legislative majorities. Depending upon the state, the major metropolitan regions may encompass the majority of the state’s population, and hence state legislative districts. Even for those that do not, the metropolitan areas provide a substantial portion of legislative power and can provide a base for launching efforts to organize in more rural areas. The double transformation of California’s state politics – the founding home of regional power building – well illustrates how growing regional power provides the building blocks for contesting state power. As detailed by Manuel Pastor in State of Resistance, the Democratic and liberal dominance seen in California today was not a given, but built through organizing and struggle – with regional power building a core part of the story.9 While the state has a liberal reputation, as Pastor argues, conservatives mounted a powerful challenge to this orientation – one that pointed to the strategies that Republicans would later use successfully to contest for national power. California conservatives tapped into two key aspects of the state’s evolution. Its deindustrialized and post-industrial economy fostered rampant inequality, while its changing demographics meant a shrinking white share of the population and an eventual people of color majority. The right tapped into these forces by mobilizing an anti-tax, anti-government revolt fueled by racist appeals. Beginning with the infamous Prop 13 in 1978, the state rolled back property taxes and placed a straightjacket on the state budget by requiring legislative super majorities – and hence Republican support – to raise taxes. Among other things, the state’s K–12 and university systems have struggle financially ever since. Voters elected Republican Governors Pete Wilson in 1990, and later Arnold Schwarzenegger, amid such draconian policies, many enacted via ballot initiative, as the three-strikes sentencing laws and an exploding prison population, restricting bilingual education, stripping access for undocumented immigrants to virtually all state public benefits, and a ban on affirmative action. By 2012, however, the New York Times could run the headline that the California “Republican Party is Caught in Cycle of Decline.”10 What had

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happened? As Pastor details, essentially the state’s social movements came together over the course of two decades to organize and amplify the voice of the state’s new majority around policies to tackle inequality and establish a new social compact. This involved deliberate and long-term efforts to build an alternative agenda complete with concrete policies and a new vision, mobilize new voters through integrated voter engagement, push progressive ballot proposals and demonstrate that government could stand for economic and racial justice. As the chapters on the California PWF affiliates make clear, they were at the center of these efforts, which has turned the state’s political situation around. The progressive and liberal left in California moved from defense to offence. As a result of long-term power building, progressives have managed to strip away the tax stranglehold over the state’s budget, raise taxes on the wealthy, enact policies which welcome and support immigrant communities, reduce sentencing and shrink the state’s prison population and pursue leadership over climate change and environmental racism policy. While progressives have redefined the battleground and power balance in California, the struggle also continues. For example, in 2019, they won a pathbreaking “gig worker” bill that required companies that hire workers as independent contractors to reclassify them as employees. A year later, Uber and Lyft carved out a major exception for themselves by spending over $200 million on a misleading ballot campaign that won over 58 percent of voters.11 That same election voters rejected attempts to repeal the state’s ban on affirmative action and to remove its prohibition on rent control. Progressives came within striking distance, but ultimately failed to raise funds for education and local government by closing a “third rail” state tax loophole on commercial and industrial properties.12 In recent years, several serious efforts to pass a single-payer health insurance system in the California have built momentum, but come up short within the state government. Efforts to enact such pathbreaking health care reform continue, however. Yet, progressives in most states would love if debate over single-payer health care became a newsworthy feature of their state’s official political debate. The lesson of California’s descent and resurgence is clear. You don’t transform a state’s politics by focusing on the next election or even the next couple of elections. Nor do you do it by passing this and that isolated policy. Transformation requires a long-term investment in the kind of patient movement building that the PWF affiliates have pursued over the past two decades. Long-term investments in regional power building are required to establish lasting state power. State power then leads to national change. A look at those traditional red states that have flipped blue (such as Colorado and Nevada) or which are most moving in that direction (such as Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Florida) reveals important parallels to the California story. As with the nation as a whole, these states have seen growing inequality amid “economic success.” Demographic change has enhanced the possibilities of a new majority, centered around communities of color. None, of this, however, results in change by itself. It has to be organized. It comes as no surprise that these states have PWF affiliates and/or equally power building-oriented initiatives that have sunk long-term roots. Similarly, we

Conclusion 345 can see the link to regional power building in traditionally liberal states that are beginning to show signs of greater progressive and less neoliberal leadership. In November 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the US presidency by an electoral college margin that needed the states of Arizona and Pennsylvania, and which benefited from a win in Georgia – three states with PWF affiliates that are a clear part of their state’s story. In January 2021, partisan control of the U.S. Senate was determined by the two runoffs in Georgia. Earlier in November, at least two media sources looking to cover the progressive voter mobilization gearing up in this state interviewed Deborah Scott, Director of Georgia Stand Up, as an important part of the story.13 As the chapters in this book have shown, the collective work of the PWF affiliates is indeed a core part of the building a future progressive America.

Notes 1 See USC Equity Research Institute, “Leading Locally: A Community PowerBuilding Approach to Structural Change, September 2020.” A summary is provided by USC Equity Research Institute “Story of Place: Community Power and Healthy Communities,” September 2020. Both are available at www.lead-local .org. 2 Story of Place, p. 10. 3 Simmons, Louise and Luce, Stephanie, 2009. Community Benefits Agreements: Lessons from New Haven Working USA, Vol.12 (1), pp. 97–111. 4 OpenSecrets.org. “2020 election to cost $14 billion, blowing away spending records,” October 28, 2020. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/ cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update/ 5 OpenSecrets.org. https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/bernie -sanders/candidate?id=N00000528 6 National Conference of State Legislatures, “State Vote 2016.” https://www.ncsl .org/Portals/1/Statevote/StateVote_Combined%20Presentation.pdf. For state trifectas see https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_State_government _trifectas. Note Nebraska’s unicameral and nonpartisan legislature is not included in the figures. 7 Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. State Capture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 8 For example, Oregon’s legislature meets for 160 days in odd numbered years, but only 35 in even years. Nebraska’s unicameral legislature has 90-day sessions in odd years and 60-day sessions in even years. 9 Manuel Pastor State of Resistance, What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future (New York: The New Press, 2018). 10 By Adam Nagaurney, July 22, 2012. 11 According to Derecka Mehrens, Executive Director Working Partnerships USA, exit polls showed a full 40 percent of those who supported Prop 22 thought their yes vote meant livable wages for drivers. 12 For information on all of these initiatives, see Ballotpedia.org. 13 “6 Black Women Organizers on What Happened in Georgia — And What Comes Next” by Anna North, Vox, November 11, 2020. https://www.vox.com /21556742/georgia-votes-election-organizers-stacey-abrams. “‘Democracy Is at Stake in This Election’: Voter Mobilization Efforts in Georgia Ramp up ahead of Senate Runoff Elections”, Yahoo News Video, November 11, 2020.

Index

ACCORD (A Community Coalition for Responsible Development) 200 Acevedo, Joel 210 Acuff, Stewart 231 Adios Arpaio campaign 271 affiliate organizations 4, 26, 211 affiliates 5, 6, 11, 18, 19, 22, 24–26, 28, 29, 59, 62, 339, 340 Affordable Care Act 342 affordable housing, Pittsburgh 168–170 AFL-CIO 124–127 agenda development 62 Alcaraz, Lalo 219 Alinsky, Saul 179 Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN) 139–153; campaigns of choice 144–148; campaigns of necessity 148–150; organizational form and operations 141–142; organizing in crisis 148–150; origins 140–141; putting alliance, test 150– 152; strategic strengths 142–144; Transform Don’t Trash New York City (TDT-NYC) 144–148 Alliance for Just Rebuilding (AJR) 142, 143, 149 allied organizations 19, 307 Altman, Eric 210, 211, 216, 223, 224 American Labor Movement 51 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 55, 65, 342–343 American Trucking Ass’ns v. City of Los Angeles 84 Anaheim 210, 211, 213–223 Arizona 41–43, 265, 266, 268–270, 272–274, 276, 278, 344, 345 Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act 268 Atlanta 227–230, 232–237, 239, 241

Atlanta BeltLine 235 authentic inclusive democracy 29 Baker, Charlie 133 Barcelona 27 Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) 9 Barnes Fund for Affordable Housing 245 Barnett, Anne 259 BComu 27 Ben Field 116 Biden, Joe 345 Bini, David 106 Black Lives Matter movement 3, 4 Bluestone, Barry 155 board member organizations 145, 152 Bracero Program 313 Bradley, Tom 73 Brenner, Neil 139 Brewer, Jan 268 Briceño, Ada 215 Brown, Jerry 322 Brown Act 205 Brownstein, Bob 109, 110, 118 Brownstein, Ronald 172 Bruenig, Matt 3 Buchanan, Jeffrey 114, 115 build capacity 47–48 Burkle, Ron 160 Buxamusa, Murtaza 200 California 14, 15 California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) 93 California labor movement 15, 16 California Voting Rights Act 217, 222, 329 Callahan-Kapoor, Michael 259

348

Index

Cartage, Cal 301 Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI) 195–209; changing the process 201–206; conception, conservative context 195–196; development, setting the stage 197–198; inception of 196–197; winning policy victories 198–201 Center for Responsible Politics 340 Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) 66, 265, 266; America’s twenty-first-century political economy 265–266; City Council 276, 277; city politics 275; New Arizona and 272–275; origins and early model 266–267; path ahead 277–278; in Phoenix 265– 279; political revolution 269–270; transformation 270–272; transition, sparks 267–268 Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) 312–334; electoral change, 2012 324–325; evolves and grows 327–331; factories in fields, Rural California 312–314; farmworker justice and 329–330; grassroots organizing 317–319; growing under fire 330–331; immigrant rights and representation 328–329; PUEBLO, conservative terrain 319–321; PUEBLO, electoral force 314–315; PUEBLO–CAUSE merger 325–327; rural and suburban communities 331–332; Santa Barbara living wage movement 314–315; strains and opportunities, Great Recession 321– 324; Ventura County’s living wage movement, policy center 315–317; youth organizing and environmental justice 327–328 Central Labor Councils (CLCs) 124 certification programs 63 Chavez, Cesar 313 Chavez, Cindy 110, 118 Chicago Teachers Union 183, 185, 190; strike 179, 183 cities 31–50; city-based organizations 35; direct spending 35; equitable economy and sustainable environment 32; impact of action 34; leadership and governance, policymakers 33; leadership capacity 34; national policy advancements 32; popularity and

effectiveness, progressive policies 33; power of 32; rebuilding trust, government 33; rebuild new America 32; scale of potential power 34; seven powers of 35–42; state and federal preemption 33–34; strength and capacity, powerful regional capacity 33; sustained investment 34 City Council 76, 85, 88, 91, 146, 147, 162, 168, 181, 198, 199, 201–203, 215, 216, 219, 275, 277 city government 5, 72, 88, 146, 156, 157, 276, 290 Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) program 61 civic organizations 29 Clauson, Lisa 126, 127, 129 Clayton County 230, 236, 237 Clean Air/Clean Construction legislation 170 Clean Rivers Campaign 165 Clean Truck Program 83, 84, 89, 90, 92 climate change 28, 54, 331 Clinton, Bill 51, 195 coalition 10, 44, 57, 77, 103, 142, 146–148, 159, 169, 173, 203, 222, 247, 249, 255, 258, 259, 286, 339; building 43, 45, 52, 57, 58, 62, 110, 115, 197–199, 206, 211; campaigns 11, 58, 211, 329; members 45, 147, 215, 223, 247, 251; work 93, 107, 108, 117, 135, 149, 223–224, 317 Cohen, Donald 196, 197, 199, 201 collective liberation 29 Colorado 41, 43, 46, 126, 230, 283, 284, 286, 287, 291, 292 community base-building organizations (CBBOs) 124, 128, 131, 134–136, 138 community benefits, Pittsburgh: first community benefits agreement 158–161; Hill District 157; Northside development, public policy 161–164 Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) 58, 62, 77, 156, 199, 254, 259, 283, 304, 339 community-labor coalitions 8, 338 Community Labor United (CLU) 123–138; building trust and hard conversations 128–129; pivoting movement, 2014–present 132–135; proving model, 2006–2014 129– 132; reflections 135–138; startup 126–128 community power 156, 174, 222, 337

Index community power, building: building power and leadership, Pittsburgh 173–174; Pittsburgh 154–176; shared approach 337–338 Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE) 339–340 Connolly, John 132 conservative county, transforming 195–209 Cooper, John 250, 254, 255, 257, 258 core cities 4, 5, 14, 19, 339 Cortese, David 110 Covert, Bryce 40 COVID-19 4, 22, 23, 28, 42, 46, 56, 72, 92, 94, 110, 116, 138, 148, 150, 168, 187, 189, 201, 203, 206, 207, 239, 290, 292, 294, 306 Crawford, Clare 201, 203, 206 The Daily Transcript 200 Daley, Richard M. 180 David, Amin 217 Dean, Amy 9, 102, 127, 291 DeBlasio, Bill 145, 149 DeConcini, Dennis 273 deep equity 58, 59 de facto decision-making power 244 democracy 31–50; civic engagement, investing 42–43; faith in government, restoring 42 Democratic National Convention 123 Denver Area Labor Federation (DALF) 283, 284, 286 Diaz, Manuel 210 direct spending 35; education 36; good jobs 35–36; public services 36; safety net 36 disadvantaged workers 106 discursive opportunity structures 244 district elections 211, 216–224, 327– 329; campaign 218, 222, 223 Dolores Huerta Foundation 321 Ducey, Doug 273 Duerksen, Susan 207 Duncan, Arne 184 Duong, Betty 110 Durazo, Maria Elena 75, 93 Eastgate project 304, 305 Eckstein, Enid 126, 128, 134, 136 econ 101 22 economic development 25, 26, 37–38, 53, 54, 154, 155, 259, 267, 305, 308 economic inequality 35

349

economic theory 200 Emanuel, Rahm 183 Environmental Protection Agency 34 Esparza, Maya 108 essential workers 117, 150, 303 Evans, George 157 Ewen, Orrett 145 Fair Workplace Collaborative program 56, 105, 117 Fair Work Week Ordinance 89 faith communities 25 Family Needs Calculator 104 farmworker labor issues 330 Fascione, Secky 9 Feingold, Danny 82 Felder, Sandy 126 Fernandez, Maria Noel 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116 field vendors 63 Filippini, Rachel 163, 164 Flake, Jeff 273 Flemming, Charlie 227, 231 Fletcher, Leo 125 Floyd, George 4, 93, 152 Fontanilla, Camille 107 Foster, Bob 90 framing educational funding 184 Frank, Lisa 166, 171, 174 Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC) 230, 283–286 full-time staff members 180, 206, 286 Ganz, Marshall 78 garbage transfer stations 145 Garber, Don 255 Garcetti, Eric 87 Garcia, Beatriz 318 Garcia, Kathryn 146 Gebre, Tefere 217, 223 gender gap 29 General Motors 52 gentrification 228 Georgia Strategic Alliance for New Directions and Unified Policies (Georgia STAND-UP) 26, 227–241; Atlanta, Georgia 228; Atlanta’s community/labor dynamic 233; Atlanta’s revitalization, transit 228–230; innovations 239–241; permanent community infrastructure, build 230–231; policy institute, civic leadership 232–233; regional victory for transit expansion 236–237; South

350 Index region 238–239; STAND-UP alliance 231–232; suburban poverty, Atlanta 227–230; Trade-Up, game changer 233–234; transformation alliance 237–238; transformative issue 234– 238; transit-oriented development 234–238; T-SPLOST 236–237; white flight to gentrification, Atlanta 227–230 get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign 13, 341 Giant Eagle campaign 171 gifts of public land 38 Girard, Leo 165 global pandemic 22–25; see also COVID-19 Glover, Renee 229 Glover, Steve 254 Goldberg, Jackie 77 Good, Greg 87 Google 26, 111–115, 118, 169; and Diridon project 112–115 governing power 31; pursue 47 Grassroots Collaborative, Chicago 17, 179–191; class to race 181–183; community-labor organizing 183–185; crossing scales and communities of color 187–189; gentrification, alternatives 185–187; Illinois people’s agenda 187–189; justice, expanding 189–191; living wages to racial justice 180–189; racial justice, tax increment financing 185–187; staff and objectives 181–183; teachers union strikes 183–185 Greater Boston: building bridges 123–138; Greater Boston Labor Council 125 Great Recession 181, 183, 185, 187, 321 Greenberg, Miriam 7 Green Communities Act 131 Greene, Kyra 201, 202 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 34 “Green Jobs” initiatives 145 Green Justice Coalition (GJC) 131, 132 Green New Deal 3 Griffi, Ken 189 Grillo, Mary 196, 197 Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) 163, 164 Grove, Watson 251, 253 Guardado, Betty 276

Hahn, James 78 Hamilton, Walt 314 Hanson, Alex Wallach 168, 172 Hanson, Wallach 172–174 Harrison, Bennett 155 Harvey, David 156 healthy communities 90, 166 Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander 342 Hill Coalition 159, 161 Hill District 157–162 Hinz, Greg 187 hired warehouse workers 300, 301 Hobbs, Katie 273 Hoffman, Kathy 273 Hoffman, Tom 159 Homes, Grady 229 hotel workers 75, 85, 90, 91, 125, 128 Hurd, Richard 10 Hurricane Sandy 148 Hytrek, Gary 90 immigrant communities 54, 60, 224, 272, 315 immigrant workforce 74, 75 income inequality 211 incredible wins, Pittsburgh 170–171 Independent Expenditure Campaign 65, 270 Independent Resource Generation (IRG) 63, 64 Ingram, John 250, 257 Inter-faith Coalition for Worker Justice (ICWJ) 198 International Service Systems (ISS) 75 Jacobs, Lauren 128 Janis, Madeline 75, 78 Japanese Mexican Labor Alliance 313 Jimenez, Sarah 134 Justice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB) 318 Kaoosji, Sheheryar 302 Katz, H. 10 Katznelson, Ira 8 Kelly, Odessa 251, 256 Kemp, Jack 227 Kennedy, Jennifer Rafanan 154, 162, 165, 171 Kiernan, Colleen 236 Kraig, Robert 28

Index labor: coalitions 222, 315; laws 294, 300; leadership 315; movement 8, 10, 59, 60, 71, 78, 79, 124, 126, 135, 136, 141, 143, 154, 155; organizations 86, 127, 140, 149, 189, 200, 258, 300, 303, 305; unions 37, 44, 127, 134, 213, 222, 223, 242, 247, 255, 258; vote 196 labor-community coalitions 5, 6, 8, 10, 57, 76, 103, 216 Laing, Bonnie Young 161 land use 39 largest public investment, Pittsburgh: clean rivers and green infrastructure 164–165 leadership development 22, 25, 28, 45, 47, 48, 109, 110, 115, 174, 239, 240, 271 learning network 27 Leon, Rosa de 107 Leroy, Greg 159 Letona, Elena 128, 137 Lewis, Penny 7 Liccardo, Sam 113 limited liability corporations 65 Lind, Diana 42 living wage campaigns 37, 54, 76, 82, 179, 180, 190 local unions 124, 125, 198 Lombos, Darlene 129, 137 Long Beach 72, 84, 89–93, 217, 303 long-term agenda, actualizing 29 Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) 5, 15, 16, 71–72, 75, 77–79, 81, 82, 84–94; campaigns 85–89; don’t waste LA 85–87; emerges 73–79; impact on movements and politics 92–93; initial core narrative 94; leaning into Long Beach 89–92; Los Angeles uprising 73–77; model 79–83; model and future 71–101; model in action, Ports Campaign 83–84; new efforts 87–89; racial justice 94; raise LA and fight for 15 85; rising 78–79; setbacks and losses 92 Los Angeles Central Labor Council 299 Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) 76 Louisiana 46 Lowe, Lydia 129, 132, 136, 137 low-income communities 28, 54, 57, 83, 173, 174, 182, 183, 189, 205, 207

351

Marcelli, Enrico 197 Margeritte Casey Foundation 13 market-based approaches 63 Massachusetts, 10-year agenda 133–134 Matsueda, Lee 135, 137 McGirr, Lisa 212 Measure N victory 91 Medicaid 13 Medicare 13 Mehrens, Derecka 103, 104, 111 Menino, Tom 127 Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) 228 Miller-Perry, Rosetta Irvin 246 Monica, Santa 92 Montgomery, Monica 203 Morales, Ari 109 Morales, Maricela 316, 323 Moreno, Jose 217, 221 Morgan, Gabe 158–160, 163 multiracial authentic democracy 27 municipal budgets 28 Murphy, Tom 158 national power 341–345 Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts (N2N), 131 neoliberal city: rise and potential fall of 6–10 neoliberalism 55, 56, 156, 174, 339 New Democrats 52 A New Neighbour Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement 51 New York City’s Job with Justice (NY JWJ) 140 Nguyen, Quynh 197, 201, 206 Nixon, Richard 195 nonmarket methods 64 nonprofit organizations 56, 65, 211, 212, 222, 223 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 51–52 Northside Coalition 158–160 Nothoff, Rob 214 Nowakowksi, Michael 275 O’Connor, Corey 168 O’Donnell, Kerry 158 Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD) 210–224; beginnings of 211–212; building base 214–215; challenges 212–213;

352 Index district elections 216–220; district lines, drawing 220–221; first steps and campaigns 213–214; life after districts, 2016–2020 221–222; struggling against system 215–216 Orange County Labor Federation (OCLF) 217, 223 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 37 Oursler, Barney 158, 162, 164, 167 ownership group 251–253, 257 Oxnard 318–320, 328 partisan political action, financing: legal structures 65–66 partner organizations 58, 109, 116, 164, 216, 270, 278, 298, 317 Pastor, Manuel 15, 343, 344 Patel, Amisha 179–181, 185, 189 Pearce, Jeannine 91 Peduto, Bill 167 permanent coalition 170, 173, 246 persistent obstacles, Pittsburgh 170–171 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 7 Phillips, Cruz 325 Phoenix 18, 19, 265–271, 273, 275, 277 Pittsburgh 17, 46, 154–155, 157–163, 165–174 Platinum Triangle campaign 216 Platinum Triangle development plan 215 Political Action Committees (PACs) 65 political economy, Pittsburgh 155–157 Pollin, Robert 76 Ponce de Leon, Alejandra 214, 215 Ports campaign 83–84, 89, 92 poverty 35 power-building: is team sport 25; projects 62, 63; regions of 25–27; work 63, 199, 217 PowerSwitch 4, 30 private sanitation workers 145 privatization 6, 32, 207 procurement and contracting 36–37; contracting for services 37; infrastructure spending 37 Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) 48 progressive coalitions 224, 320, 323, 324 progressive governance 62 progressive power, capacities 43; civic engagement 45; coalition building 43–44; grassroots organizing 43;

leadership development 45; legal support 44–45; research and analysis 44 proprietary power 38–39 public finance 38 public housing 227–229, 238 public land sales 39 public sector workers 9, 125 PUEBLO 19, 314, 315, 317, 319–321, 323–326; conservative terrain 319–321; electoral force 314–315; PUEBLO–CAUSE merger 325–327 Purinton, Anna 159 racial inequities 139 racial justice, economic justice 179–191 racial justice work 179, 180, 189 racial wealth gap 29 Ramos, Mimi 128, 133, 136 rampant racism 29 Rauner, Bruce 188 Ravenstahl, Luke 158, 159 Reagan, Ronald 73, 195 Rebuild LA program 74 RecycLA 87 Redwood, Carl 159, 161, 174 regional coalitions 303, 304 regional conditions, adapting 338–339 regional economy 44, 61, 109, 266, 296, 317 regional movement, transform America 3–21; broad tent coalitions 10–11; California and 14–16; cities, regions and states 13–14; communities of color, centrality 11–12; elections and legislative advocacy matter 12–13; uniting strategic focus 10–11 regional policy agenda 53–57 regional power 9, 19, 27, 57, 58, 89, 110 regional power-building 14–17, 51–67, 341, 343; access to governance 60– 62; building politics 60–62; emerged in 1990s 51–53; model 15, 16; projects 26, 60, 61; regional policy agenda 53–57; resource challenge 62–64; strategies 16, 53 regulatory powers 39–40; bail reform 40–41; civil rights protections 40; sanctuary cities 40; sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination 41 Rekindling the movement: Labor’s quest for relevance in the 21st century 10 Reynolds, David 9, 291 Riordan, Richard 76

Index Rogers, Rich 126, 127, 129, 135–137 Romoff, Jeffrey 166 rural regions 312, 331 Rushing, Byron 128 Ryan, Matt 143, 149 San Bernardino Airport Communities (SBAC) 303–305 Sanchez, Victor 91, 92 sanctuary cities 40, 268 Sanders, Bernie 3 San Jose: San Jose Fair Elections Initiative 115; working partnerships USA 102–120 Santa Barbara living wage movement 314–315 Schneider Logistics 298 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 343 Scott, Deborah 230, 233, 234, 345 Scott, Lorenzo 227, 230 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 74 Silicon Valley 14–15, 53, 56, 102, 104, 105, 108, 111–112, 114–115 Silicon Valley Rising (SVR) 114, 115, 117 Silva-Farrell, Maritza 140, 144, 148, 151 Sinema, Krysten 273 Sledge, Colby 250, 251 Smith, Brenda 164 Sneiderman, Marilyn 9 Snow, Jim 129, 130 South Bay Labor Council 102 South Oxnard 319 Stand Up Nashville (SUN) 27, 46, 242–264; CBA, rules of development 249–255; coalition framing and news coverage 246–247; development deal, CBA 255–258; discursive space 258–259; intense news coverage, CBA 252–255; movements, media and discursive opportunities 243– 246; new model of doing business 247–249; news coverage frames, CBA 257–258 State Capture 342 state governments 13, 14, 19, 35, 37, 42, 81, 156, 341, 342, 344 state interference, overcoming 45–47 state laws 13, 47, 66, 250, 275 State of Resistance 343 state population 43, 285 state power 14, 278, 341–345 state preemption 25, 34, 46, 286, 287

353

statewide campaign 26, 106, 202, 303 statewide coalition 123, 131, 142 statewide power 26, 47, 131 strategic campaigns 140, 146, 152 strategic opportunism 109, 110 strategies, action 28–29 subsidies 38 suburban communities 58, 289, 331 Sweeney, John 8, 52, 124 Tait, Tom 219, 221 tax abatements 38 taxation 41–42 Tax Increment Financing (TIF) 38, 182, 184–187, 190, 191 Teague, Charles 313 team model 80 tech corporations 26 Techwood Homes 229 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) 7 temporary workers 198, 299, 301, 303 Terry, Kellie 147 Thigpenn, Anthony 43, 127, 322 Tourism Industry Development Council (TIDC) 75, 76 Trades Orientation Program (TOP) 106 Transformation Alliance 237, 238 Trihn Le 205 Trump, Donald 3, 4, 15, 23, 42, 171 T-SPLOST ballot initiative 237 Turner, Lowell 10 Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike 300 union members 102, 123, 140, 162, 183, 184, 266 United for a New Economy (UNE): Aurora 290; challenges and opportunities 292; Commerce City 290; community organizing 288–290; in metro Denver 283–293; origins, Denver 283–284; regional conditions, adapting 284–286; state-level campaigns 286–288; Westminster 289–290; women of color, lead 290–291 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) 165; new U.S. Steel 165–168 urban redevelopment 157, 235 Valenzuela, Daniel 275 Vargas, Marcos 316, 322, 323 vengeance 90 Ventura, Sal 102

354

Index

Ventura County 313–319, 322–324, 326, 327, 329 Ventura County’s living wage movement 315–317 Voter Activation Network (VAN) 270 voter engagement 218, 270, 275 Walker, Scott 188 Walmart 52; campaign 297, 298, 300 Walsh, Marty 132 warehouses 151, 296, 300, 302, 306, 307 Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC): Amazon campaign 303–307; California cartage/NFI campaign 300–302; origins and early years 295–297; policy campaigns, coalitions and legal victories 302–303; in Southern California 294–311; Walmart campaign 297–300 warehouse workers 294–303, 305–308; plight of 296–299 Warehouse Workers United (WWU) campaign 294, 295, 297, 300 Watts rebellion 73 Western Pennsylvania 171–173 whole foods, Pittsburgh 168–170 Williamson, Sam 160, 170 Wilson, Pete 15, 196, 197, 343 Worker Organizing Table 168 workers 8, 76, 81, 85, 86, 89, 145, 146, 150, 154, 166, 199, 207, 267,

294, 295, 300–302, 307; activism 3; centers 8, 56, 127, 149, 272, 303; power 6, 74, 277 “workfarist” social policies 6 working-class communities 25, 26, 55, 222 working conditions 6, 84, 86, 88, 89, 182, 184, 185, 306, 307, 319 Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA) 15, 56, 102–120; building deep relationships 106–108; building power, pandemic 116–117; coalition work, conflict 117; early years 103– 104; effective research and policy development 105–106; Gig Workers Rising 116; Google and Diridon project 112–115; governance and inside-outside strategy 110–111; leadership development 109–110; narrative, changing 108; San Jose Fair Elections Initiative 115–116; Silicon Valley Rising (SVR) 111–112; statewide measure 116; strategic opportunism 109; strong coalitions 106–108; strong leadership 118; today 104–105; work at regional and statewide levels 116 working poverty 17, 35, 197 Yorty, Sam 73