Pat Crowley – RI Future

April 29, 2013April 29, 2013

Remember Seth Luther

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UPDATE April 29, 2013:

Today is the 150th anniversary of Seth Luther’s death. Since last year’s post, records have been found locating Luther possible final resting place in Brattleboro, Vermont. A WIKI page is in formation, and other plans to follow. Here is a great link to a 1974 essay by on Luther by Carl Gersuny called “Seth Luther – The Road From Chepachet.”

In the week we celebrate the signing of the marriage equality bill, let us remember this great organizer and agitator with what he said so many years ago:

“It is the first duty of an American citizen to hate injustice in all its forms.”

Original Post April 29, 2012:

Today is the anniversary of the death of Seth Luther. He died on April 29, 1863.

Who?

Seth Luther*: Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame inductee; Union Organizer; leader of the Dorr Rebellion and radical of the worst sort. On the weekend that we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence it also seems appropriate to look a little farther back to our roots here in Rhode Island. As the saying goes, the most radical idea in America today is a long memory.

“Peaceably if we can, Forcibly if we must!”

Luther was an itinerant organizer and agitator whose father fought in the American Revolution. He spent time on what was then the American Frontier and Deep South before coming home to try and establish roots and a career as a carpenter. His passion for justice and the rights of the oppressed led him to join the nascent labor movement as a speech maker and organizer.

In a speech he delivered in Boston in 1834, Luther said:

“It is true, a Rhode Island Nabob said, in a public document, ‘The poor must work or starve, and the rich will take care of themselves.’ But I venture to assert, that the rich never did take care of themselves or their property, in peace or war. It is protected by the laboring, the producing class. It is created by the laborer, drawn out of his hands by the means of bad laws and then forsooth he must protect it at the expense of his health, oftentimes of his life, for the benefit of those, who will have nothing to do with the creation of wealth or its protection after it’s created.”

Luther could just as easily be describing the conditions working people face today. In another parallel to the conditions organizers face, then and now. When Luther died, by then a broken man, this was the commentary The Providence Journal added to the notice of his death:

“He was natural radical, dissatisfied with all existing institutions about him, and labored under the not uncommon delusion that it was his special mission to set things right…His ideal of a pure democracy seemed to be that blessed state wherein the idle, the thriftless, and the profligate should enjoy all the fruits of the labor of the industrious, the frugal, and the virtuous. The possessors of property everywhere he looked upon as banded robbers, who he hated as born enemies of the human race. He had considerable talent for both writing and speaking; but he was too violent, willful, and headstrong to accomplish any good. Soon after the troubles of ’42, he became insane, and was sent to the Dexter Asylum, where he remained until 1848, when the Butler Hospital was opened for patients. He was then removed to that institution by the city, where he remained for ten years; thence to Brattleboro where he has just closed his worse than useless life.”

Would you expect anything less?

*Source: Peaceably if we can, Forcibly if we must! Writings by and about Seth Luther. Edited by Scott Molly, Carl Gersuny, and Robert Macieski and published by the Rhode Island Labor History Society, 1998.

December 21, 2012December 25, 2012

Some Year-End Reading for Progressive Policy Geeks

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This time of year folks compile their year-end reading lists; so as we head into the holiday week, with pension debates and fiscal cliffs waiting for us on the other side of the calendar, I wanted to offer some suggestions:

The first is a just released paper from Steven M. Teles, Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, called, Kludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy . In it he describes the highly dysfunctional, and intentionally confusing policy approach developed in the last 30 years. Here is a sample:

“The price paid by ordinary citizens to comply with programmatic complexity is the most obvious downside of kludgeocracy. One of the often overlooked benefits of Social Security, for example, is that recipients silently have taxes taken out of their paycheck and then, without any effort on their part, checks begin to magically appear upon retirement.

By contrast, 401(k)s, IRAs, 529 plans and the rest of our crazy quilt of savings incentives (for retirement as well as other purposes like higher education) require enormous investments of time, effort and stress. Just for a start, equity mutual funds charge an annual fee of around one percent of assets — compounded until retirement, this reduces savings by around twenty percent.2 Including items beyond the management fee (like transaction costs and the reduced returns that come from having to hold cash to deal with redemptions), can push that number up considerably.”

One of the books mentioned by Teles is the phenomenal “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy, by Suzanne Mettler. Released at the end of 2011, Mettler details how ( in my words) we are giving up on democracy because it is too damn hard. We are using the tax code instead of policy and programs, the buy off various interest groups. She writes:

“As a result, this large portion of the submerged state, which not many Americans realize is subsidized by Government, showers benefits for more generously on the haves than on the have-nots.…

From 1980 until the current recession, the core sector that it nurtures – finance, insurance, and real estate- outpaced growth in other sectors of the American economy. The fortunes of these industries emanated not from “market forces” alone but rather from their interplay with the hidden policies that promoted their growth and heaped extra benefits on them.”

And speaking of taxes, the report that the Republicans tried to kill is finally out! The Congressional Research Service report : Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 looks at just that, tax rates on the elite to see how they affected the economy and guess what?

“The results of the analysis in this report suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top statutory tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. But as a small proportion of taxpayers are affected by changes in the top statutory tax rates, this finding is not unexpected.

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be correlated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. The statistical analysis in this report suggests that tax policy could be related to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.”

So how does all this happen? How does our policy making get stolen and turned into a transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1% ? How does the consulting class take over? How do the “trickle down theorists” keep getting any media air time despite report after report proving their theory is as credible as dinosaurs still walking the Earth? How do so many people in media and the so called “liberal class” fall for such bad ideas like “pension reform” or “education reform” ?

“Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion From Its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus” is a wonderful social science study from Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen M. Garcia and Norbert Schwarz, and Dale T. Miller. They write:

Despite the importance of doing so, people do not always correctly estimate the distribution of opinions within their group. One important mechanism underlying such misjudgments is people’s tendency to infer that a familiar opinion is a prevalent one, even when its familiarity derives solely from the repeated expression of 1 group member.…

…..the present studies convey an important message about how people construct estimates of group opinion, namely that observers appear to infer information about extensity, or the range of group members supporting an issue, from their subjective experiences of familiarity for an opinion position. To the degree that our impressions of what others think influence our own perceptions of reality, the present studies can help inform us about the repetition effect and its consequences.

There are lessons to be learned here. See you in 2013. Don’t forget to sign up for Leadership for a Future.

December 9, 2012December 9, 2012

Register for ‘Leadership For A Future’ Class of 2013

The 2013 Leadership for a Future class is now accepting applications. The premier organizer training program in the Rhode Island, Leadership for a Future is a great opportunity for people to learn how Rhode Island REALLY works and but also how to make it work better. You can register for the program ONLINE or download a brochure HERE.

Sponsored by the Rhode Island Institute for Labor Studies, Working Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, Leadership for a Future has trained hundreds of people over the last 12 years to work in their union, their community group, or their church, on how to use organizing and communication skills to further the cause of social and economic justice. You can register for the program ONLINE or download a brochure HERE. As one of the faculty members for the program, I am really excited for the next year. I think we are going to have a great year and would encourage you to sign up early. We have already seen an uptick in interest this year.

The program begins with a full-day retreat followed by an evening leadership orientation. Sessions are held every other Monday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Throughout the program, participants examine the process and impact of social influence and leadership on the many issues facing Rhode Island’s communities while focusing on relationship building, institutional reflection, power analysis and initial studies on a variety of societal topics.

History of Communities and Labor in Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s Issues of the Day
Rhode Island Government
Grass Roots Organizing / Lobbying
Using the Media / On-line Organizing
Changes in Public Education in Rhode Island
Public Speaking for Organizers

September 17, 2012September 17, 2012

Carcieri Is Still Selling Rhode Island Snake Oil

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Former Governor Don Carcieri, finally came back to Rhode Island to answer questions about 38 studios. Unfortunately, Carcieri is still selling snake oil to Rhode Islanders, this time about his role in this fiasco and how the state should try to recover from it.

For those folks that don’t remember the way Disaster Don used to operate, and are thus “shocked… shocked” at the way his non mea culpa played on Sunday, watch this clip below from testimony he gave at the State House during his time as Governor. The words are even more poignant now:

September 13, 2012September 14, 2012

RIP, NEA-RI’s Jerry Egan: Working Class Hero

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The Rhode Island Labor movement lost a legend early Wednesday morning with the passing of Jerome “Jerry” Egan. Brother Egan was

a teacher at Cumberland High School, a past President of the Cumberland Teachers Association, former State Representative for the Edgewood and Pawtuxtet neighborhoods in Cranston, and for the last 23 years a staff organizer at NEARI, where I got to work with him for the last 7 years.

In every single meaning of the phrase, Jerry Egan is a working class hero. Hundreds…thousands of people across the state, without even knowing it, benefitted from the work that he did, both as a legislator and more importantly as a Union organizer. As we learned of Jerry’s passing from lymphoma at the age 68 yesterday morning, the NEARI office began to reflect of our favorite Jerry stories. They all begin with the story of Jerry in some kind of a jam – with a school committee, or the legislative leadership, or on a picket line—but they all end with laughter and smiles because he just had this way of not caring about what the politic or politically correct thing, or even the easy thing, to do was. Just the right thing. And that’s why so many people loved him.

It is Jerry’s big heart — his do anything for his fellow Union members approach to life that he will be most remembered for. I will always remember one time when he sent out a call for picket line support for some members up in New Hampshire who were going to be picketing an event on a Sunday morning at 7AM in the middle of winter. Jerry, who had a hard time breathing, especially in the cold, met me at a Dunkin Donuts in Rhode Island and the two of us drove 4 hours through an ice storm to walk a line in the freezing cold for people we didn’t know for a cause we knew little about other than the call went out and people needed our support. That’s just the type of guy he was.

Jerry and his wife Alma at a Statehouse protest.

Jerry was the president of the staff union for myself and my co-workers at NEARI and was on the committee that interviewed me when I applied for the job I was eventually hired for at NEARI. I can honestly say he changed my life forever. I never got a change to say this before he died, but thanks Brother. In the words of our homeland ……..Tiocfaidh ár lá!

His funeral will be Saturday at 8:00 am from the Frank P. Trainor & Sons Funeral Home, 982 Warwick Avenue, Warwick. Mass of Christian Burial in St. Michael Church 239 Oxford St., Providence at 9 am. Calling Hours Friday 3-8 pm. In lieu of flowers donations in his memory to St. Michael Church or the Dana Farber Cancer Institute P.O. Box 849168 Boston, MA 02284 will be appreciated. Burial with military honors will be in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery.

August 31, 2012August 31, 2012

Remember the Battle of the Gravestones in Saylesville

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In 1934, during the height of the Depression and one of the largest national strikes in history, 4 unarmed Rhode Island workers were killed by State Police and Militia Men called out by Governor TF Green to protect the Saylesville Bleachery in Lincoln, Rhode Island. It wasn’t a “strike,” he declared, but a “communist insurrection.”

Militia attacking striking workers from behind gravestones in Saylesville, Rhode Island.

Whatever. Four workers were cut down in the street. You can still see the bullet holes in the gravestones from the high powered guns used against the strikers and each labor day some of us gather to remind the powers that be that we are not all dead and buried. This year Maureen Martin, Secretary-Treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO will deliver the address at the memorial to the martyrs created by the Rhode Island Labor History Society to memorialize what is known as The Battle of the Gravestones.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls.

All are invited to a ceremony honoring the event and those who lost their lives.

You can register for the event on Facebook.

If you like, you can see actual newsreel video of the street battle here.

CIVIL WAR AT SAYLESVILLE

August 23, 2012August 23, 2012

Labor History Society to Honor URI’s Molloy Tonight

If you believe singer Utah Phillips, the long memory is the most radical notion in this country today. It is in that vein some of us gather tonight in Providence at the Roger Williams Park Casino to celebrate the 25^th Anniversary of the Rhode Island Labor History Society. For a quarter century Rhode Island’s organizers, trouble-makers, boat-rockers, dissatisfied and disaffected with the status quo have met, sometimes under cover of darkness, to meet and pass along the stories of the heroes of our past. People like Seth Luther, Ann “the Red Flame” Burlak , and Rita “the Girl in Green” Brouillette. Songs of struggles are song, memorizing the battles at the Woonsocket Rubber Company in 1885 when the Knights of Labor went up against a Knight of St. Gregory, and the 1934 Battle of the Gravestones, when the State Police massacred striking workers, creating the conditions necessary for TF Green’s “Bloodless” Revolution, and the death of Wilma Schesler, martyred in 1974 on a picket line for public sector workers.

Tonight the Society honors its founder, Professor Scott Molloy. A hero for our times, no strike or rally is complete without a harangue against the injustices of our modern world and the economic royalists and all of their accumulated power from Brother Molloy. As the invitation from the society reads:

University of Rhode Island Professor Scott Molloy will be honored by the Rhode Island Labor History Society during its 25th annual awards banquet, Aug. 23.

The event, “A Celebration of Labor Day in Rhode Island,” will be held at the Roger Williams Park Casino in Providence. Festivities begin at 5 p.m. Donation is $25 for individuals or $250 for a table of 10.

Molloy is founder of the Rhode Island Labor History Society and was a bus driver, shop steward and business agent for the Transit Union from 1973 to 1984. He has been a URI professor in its Schmidt Labor Research Center since 1986, and he has been education director for the Rhode Island Irish Famine Memorial since 1996. He is the author of Trolley Wars; Irish Titan, Irish Toilers; and All Aboard.

The West Kingston resident, known for his colorful and fiery lectures at URI and before civic and labor groups around the region, was awarded the URI Foundation Teaching Excellence Award in 1995.

In 2004, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education chose the West Kingston resident as its Rhode Island Professor of the Year.

Presenters at the event will be:

• Cathy O’Reilly Collette, president of the Rhode Island Labor History Society, retired director of the Women’s Rights Department of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington, D.C. and former president of the World Women’s Committee of Public Services International, Geneva;

• Tom Cute, bus driver with the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority and vice president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Division 618;

• Donald Deignan, president of the Rhode Island Irish Famine Memorial;

• Eve Stern, associate professor of history at URI, author of Ballots and Bibles; and

• Patrick T. Conley, retired professor of history at Providence College and president of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

For further information, call Cathy Collette, 315-0535.

“…and agreement is sacred.”

July 26, 2012July 26, 2012

‘They Bought It’: How RI Is Like Ferris Bueller Parents

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If you are of a certain age “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ is an iconic movie. Reading about the fretting going on in the media about the latest edition of CNBC “Business Rankings” I can’t help but think about the movies’ opening sequence when Ferris’ parents, thoroughly convinced he is sick (once again) let him stay home from school and as soon as they close the door to his bedroom and are safely out of ear shot he shoots up from under the covers and says:

“They bought it.”

Five years ago, CNBC ranked us 48^th in the country. At the time, our unemployment rate was less than half of what it is today, 5.2% for July of 2007. In the legislative session that followed, there was a progressive proposal to revamp the tax structure of the state, known as the Economic Growth and Fairness Act of 2008. I’m not interested in re-arguing those ideas here, what I am interested in is the response to the bill from the corporate class in Rhode Island. Writing in The Providence Business News, Greater Providence Chamber leaders Laurie White and Ed Cooney specifically referenced the CNBC ranking as a reason to kill the bill. But more interestingly, they ended their essay with these words:

Protect our jobs. Fight for our ability to compete. Stay the course on tax reform.

I could be snarky and ask “Whose jobs?” but I won’t. But I will point out the current unemployment rate is 10.9% according to DLT. But it is the “stay the course” line that is intriguing to me for two reasons.

We have stayed the course. And it hasn’t worked.

If 5 years ago we were ranked near the bottom in the country we are now at the bottom (again, assuming these lists matter, which I am not willing to concede, but for arguments sake….). In those 5 years, we have seen the Flat Tax option for high income earners made permanent, cuts to the income tax, two rounds of draconian pension reform to public sector workers including teachers and state employees, an erosion of collective bargaining rights in the public sector, cuts to social services in the state budget, aid to cities and towns in the state budget slashed and slashed again, and the escalation of the property tax cap at the local level thanks to the 3050 law of 2006.

In other words, state mandated austerity for the last five years and our “Business Climate Ranking” declined. Now, we can believe the corporate class and say “stay the course” or as more recently stated “give the cure more time to work” or we can wake up to the realization that Ferris isn’t sick…he’s skipping school.

2. When did Tax Reform Start?

When Ferris says “They bought it” who is “they” in this case? The legislature? The Press? Both? Maybe…. you can help decide. See, the theme in the debate over the proposal in the last legislative session to raise income taxes on the wealthy centered in part on giving recently enacted tax cuts a chance to work. SOME local media outlets (I won’t link to them, you can find them on your own and decide) fell for the argument hook line and sinker that tax reform just started in 2010. That’s why when Chamber Lobbyist Kelly Sheridan wrote in The Providence Journal “It would extremely unwise to dismantle the 2010 reform before the first returns are evaluated” it was a theme repeated by members of the legislature AND, unfortunately, members of the media.

But wait a minute: Didn’t the Chamber use the exact same argument in 2008 about letting tax reform take affect so that it can be evaluated before it is changed? Yes, as we see in the 2008 piece in PBN referenced above. They also did it in 2009, when there was a strong push to repeal or reform the Flat Tax for high income earners. That is where the line “give the cure time to work” comes from. ( Of course in 2009, we were still ranked in 48^th place by CNBC).

Why does it matter? Because if the Chamber and the powerful corporate special interests are allowed to pull the wool over the media and the politicians eyes every year by saying “hey, we just implemented this last year, let’s give it a shot” most people are good natured enough to say “ well, sure, why not? We’ve got to try SOMETHING.” Well, we’ve been giving them their shot for the better part of a decade, and if only people would remember that they keep using the same argument that “this time, things will work out” then maybe we won’t fall for the sales job. Again. Maybe? Hopefully? Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Look, I get it. Ferris Bueller is an endearing kid. He’s funny, likeable, smart and in a 1980’s John Hughes movie kind of way showing a safe way to “fight the power.” But it isn’t real. And neither is the line of argument put forward by the corporate class in Rhode Island that we need to “stay the course” or “give the cure time to work” on austerity. Hopefully Rhode Island can turn things around – but we will never do it by continuing to run the same plays and chase ideas that continue to drive out economy deeper into a ditch while enriching those at the top of the economic ladder. You want a cure that works? We can start by stopping doing the things we know that don’t work.

July 9, 2012July 9, 2012

Tuesday Rally to Support NK School Custodians

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Flyer courtesy of the Ecumenical Students for a Living Wage.

A rally in support of the North Kingstown custodians has been scheduled for Tuesday, July 10 at 6 p.m. at the North Kingstown School Administration Building, 100 Fairway, Drive North Kingstown.

GCA Services, is the national privately owned company from Knoxville, Tennessee. The North Kingston School Committee voted privatize custodial services and turn over operations to GCA. Who are they? Writing about the situation on Change.Org, Local Union President Sandie Blankenship tells us:

My co-workers and I made $1.3 million in concessions to the district. And when the committee sought an additional $400,000, we all pitched in, took a big hit, and came up with the money the committee sought.

So if it is not about money, what is it about? It is about power and the capacity of the powerful to limit workers from having any say about their working conditions. It’s about silencing our voices.

But we will not be silenced.

GCA will slash wages and other benefits. However, most devastating to our members is the loss of traditional health insurance which GCA will replace with a limited benefit plan.

The difference between what we all think of as insurance (Blue Cross, United Healthcare, etc.) and limited benefit plans? With typical insurance coverage – the sort we are all used to – our costs were covered once we paid our deductible. So if someone’s child had to go to the hospital, the family could focus on treatment and care and not costs. If the bill reached $5000, those costs were covered once we paid our deductible.

That’s not so with a limited benefit plan. GCA’s coverage (provided by Symetra, a life insurance company, not a health insurance company) will pay a flat $500. The rest is on the family.

That’s a short road to poverty.

We also have serious concerns about the company the five committee members plan to hire: GCA Services. Their record troubles us. Independent news services – found with a quick Google search – have documented the serious problems with GCA, including hiring and placing a registered sex offender in a Texas middle school despite GCA’s screening efforts.
GCA Services profits by cutting wages, cutting benefits, and cutting corners.

In a recent (December 16, 2011, cases 28-CA-23513 and 28-CA-62481) decision from the NLRB and gives you a good indication how GCA treats its employees. The National Labor Relations Board ordered* GCA Services to “cease and desist” enforcing its rule (contained in GCA’s employee handbook) that prohibited GCA employees from encouraging or soliciting “membership in…organizations (meaning Unions) on work time or in work areas.”

GCA was ordered to

• Stop interrogating employees about Union membership;
• Stop interrogating employees about Union activities;
• Stop enforcing rules that prohibited employees from speaking about the Union;
• Stop engaging in surveillance of its employees to discover their Union activities;
• Stop threatening employees that it will not discuss with or grant its employees pay raises or improved benefits until they cease support for the Union;
• Stop threatening employees by inviting them to quit their employment because of their Union activities;
• Stop maintaining a rule that prohibited employees from discussing their wages with fellow employees;
• Stop threatening its employees with transfers to isolate employees from fellow employees for the purpose of interfering with their Union activities;
• Stop maintaining a rule requiring employees to surrender their personal phones to GCA so that GCA could discover and ascertain with whom its employees speak and text; and,
• Stop discharging employees in order to discourage membership in the Union.

You can do two things to help the North Kingstown Custodians:

1. Sign the Change.Org petition to send message that races to the bottom strategies don’t help Rhode Island;

2. Come to the Rally to show your support for the workers Tuesday night.

June 3, 2012June 4, 2012

EP To SK: Law Firm Earns Big Money Creating Chaos

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Now that the House Finance Committee has released its proposed budget, it’s worth noting that most of Governor Chafee’s municipal relief package is not contained in the document. Readers familiar with my opinions will know what I think of that; so I wanted to use that fact to highlight another set of facts: that things at the municipal level, and particularly the school level, are crying out for change.

When I testified at the State House on the Governor’s proposal I pointed out how school committee attorneys use the current broken system of laws governing everything from contract negotiations to lay-offs to enrich themselves : to the detriment of teachers, students, and citizens. For example, between August 2008 and early 2011, the firm of Little, Mederios, Kinder, Bulman, & Whitney, PC, was paid $1,363,989.96 for their legal advice to the school committee in East Providence. This extraordinary amount of money was transferred from the public to private hands during (some would say caused) the worst labor strife the city has seen in years.

Why is this relevant now? Because it keeps on happening and no one in the main stream media seems to want to dig into the practice of how certain (not all) law firms bilk tax payers at the municipal level. For example, the same firm listed above was recently hired to represent the School Committee in South Kingston. According to an information request answered John Ritchotte, Chief Financial Officer of the South Kingstown School Department, since July 10, 2010, LMKBW has been paid $226,364.34 in legal expenses. The school committee has spent a total of $266,206.27 in legal expenses over that same period. The main lawyer from the firm assigned to South Kingston is named Sarah Rapport.

What has the town’s $226,364.34 paid to Sarah Rapport and LMKBW bought them? Chaos. Early this spring, after the terminations of three teachers, a series of protests erupted at school committee meetings. Local media like the South County Independent and The Narragansett Times have done a great job covering the discord, but state wide media has ignore the strife. It doesn’t seem to fit the story arc put forward by RIDE of collaboration and cooperation.

But that’s another story. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s the point – maybe the whole point of this is to show that what is really happening at the municipal level and the school committee level has multiple perspectives. Too often we only get one side of the story shared by the media, especially the dominant media sources in this state. When you drill down and really start to look at root causes of problems at the local level and say “hey wait a minute…..” and see a high powered Providence law firm travelling from town to town, earing millions of dollars by creating discord and disharmony maybe then the story has to change a little bit. Maybe the problem isn’t the all-powerful unions. Maybe the problem isn’t overpaid public sector workers. Maybe there is a different problem we need to address.

May 20, 2012May 21, 2012

Tax Debate: Back to Future for Business Community

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Back in June 2009, there was a strong push for the state to make changes to the tax structure. Organizing from the grassroots was highlighting the inequity of what was then called the “flat tax.” Boring you with all the details now isn’t the point, but reminding you of the rhetoric from the business community is.

On June 12, 2009, leaders of the business community, including Alex Taylor of FGXI (Foster Grant sunglasses), John Muggeridge of Fidelity, and Mark Higgins, dean of the Business School at URI, penned an op-ed in The Providence Journal, pleading with the leadership of the General Assembly to stay to the course and not abandon the flat tax. (The Journal archive will not let me link to the story.)

The businessmen describe Rhode Island at an “economic crossroads.” Our “significantly higher” unemployment rate (at the time, a seasonally adjusted 10.9 %) and our “dropping” economy are, if we follow the crossroad metaphor, down one path, and prosperity, jobs, and a better business climate are down the other path. The key, according to the businessmen, is to not tinker with the flat tax. In their words : “Now it’s time for state leaders to give the cure time to work.”

According to the last available data, Rhode Island’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 11.2%.

I think it is crucial to revisit this 2009 op-ed from these leaders in the business community now in 2012 as we are debating a proposal to once again revisit our tax structure in Rhode Island. And once again, the business community is asking the General Assembly to “give the cure time to work.” Writing in another op-ed column for the Journal, R. Kelly Sheridan, legislative counsel for the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, said “It would extremely unwise to dismantle the 2010 reform before the first returns are evaluated.” Sound familiar?

The real key from the 2009 op-ed from the business community leaders is how the view the original tax reform. It is very clear from the rhetoric there is a direct correlation between tax cuts for the wealthy and job creation for the working class. They write “With it (the flat tax), private-sector business leaders can make decisions regarding the location of their facilities on the basis of workforce and real-estate availability, not on the variables of the personal-income-tax structure.” Again, according to RIDLT, unemployment in Rhode Island was 5.1% in June of 2006.

The economic strategies advocated by the business community simply have not worked for Rhode Island. For years now their only answer to critics of their approach has been “just give it more time.” But during that time more jobs are lost, more businesses close, and, ironically, taxes increase on working and middle class people at the local level in the form of property taxes and fees. All the while vital public services are cut. There has to be a better way because the business community’s cure for what ills Rhode Island seems certainly worse than the disease.

May 7, 2012May 7, 2012

‘Unions Buy Local’ Campaign Set to Launch

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Two of Rhode Island’s largest unions, NEARI and the RI Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, are launching a new Unions Buy Local campaign just prior to this Mother’s Day weekend. Shopping locally makes sense as we try to work with our neighbors to help grow our local – and state – economies.

Rhode Island union members and other working people have the real purchasing power in the state, much more so than wealthy individuals. We want to use that purchasing power to support local businesses and jobs for local workers in these businesses – and strengthen ties within our local communities.

Participation is simple – members will just pass a “union buck” whenever they spend money at a local business, dine at a local restaurant, or pay for a local service. The project will roll out in three locations next week: Thursday in Warren, Friday in South Kingstown, and Saturday in North Kingstown. More towns will be announced over the next few weeks. The campaign will continue between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Union members know they fight for all working people when they engage in contract fights and legislative battles on issues like increasing the minimum wage or protecting workplace safety. Too often, Big Business tries to pit Main Street businesses against the interests of organized labor. But as is becoming clearer to more Americans, the interests of Wall Street business and Main Street business are truly divergent. That’s why it is a shame that here in Rhode Island, groups like EngageRI tried to severely diminish the purchasing power of retirees and working people in general – something that will truly hurt local business.

Unions Buy Local is a positive way for the working people of Rhode Island to demonstrate to local merchants and shop owners how much teachers and public employees contribute to the local economy. As NEARI President Larry Purtill said in the latest edition of the NEARI magazine Newsline:

“If we want local business owners and workers to support us and our financial security at budget time, then we have to support theirs. Everybody wins in this campaign. We will not be asking business owners to do anything but open their doors and understand we want to help them. All we ask in return is for those who have been critical of union and public employees to stop and think before they act. There are always ramifications to every position one takes.”

October 3, 2011January 8, 2012

Egad! Ronald Reagan was a Socialist!

H/T Think Progress

September 9, 2011January 6, 2012

Connecting the Dots In the Rhode Island Pension Crisis

September 7, 2011January 8, 2012

Think you don’t have to worry about Corporate Education Reform?

September 4, 2011January 6, 2012

The End of the American Dream?

August 30, 2011January 6, 2012

Remember Saylesville: The Long Memory is the most radical idea in America

“The long memory is the memory radical idea in the country.” — Utah Phillips

On Monday, September 5 there will be a Labor Day rally at the Saylesville Massacre Monument at 11:00 AM. Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the RI AFL-CIO’s largest organization, will speak about our history and the current state of affairs.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls, still the scene of Labor-Management strife. Come and commemorate the martyred activists from the 1934 textile strike, hear blistering talk, and show the world we haven’t forgotten our roots and we’re not going away.

From prior posts

Celebrate Labor Day this year by remembering the Great Textile Strike of 1934 and the Battle of the Gravestones .

Join the Rhode Island Labor History Society this Monday at the Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls, 978 Lonsdale Ave, at 11:00 AM for a ceremony remembering the valiant battle waged by the workers against the power of the State and corporate exploitation.

On Labor Day, 1934, a national textile strike began in Rhode Island and spread to southern cloth mills in an attempt to raise wages and improve working conditions during the Great Depression.

The event turned ugly when local management ask for protection at the non-union Sayles Finishing Company. National Guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, confronted hundreds of unarmed strikers and chased them into the Moshassuck Cemetery. Ironically, union picketers too cover behind headstones in the graveyard. The bullet holes remain dozens of stones to this day. Strife there lasted almost three weeks resulting in the injury and wounding of hundreds of protesters and the deaths of several others. The strike would erupt in violence in Woonsocket as well.

In this period of the Great Recession, let’s remember the struggle of our ancestors and learn the lessons of the past. Pay homage to those who made sacrifices so long ago so that we, their grand children, could have a better life. And in doing, we must learn to mobilize in a very different world to maintain the food life that our families fought and died for.

***

Original Post

This year is the 75th anniversary of The Uprising of ’34. The “Uprising” was a national textile workers strike that saw some intense street fighting in the Saylesville neighborhood of Lincoln. Check out this VIDEO. Anyway, while researching the strike for a project with the Rhode Island Labor History Society, I came across this section of text is an issue of Time Magazine. Governor TF Green, after declaring that there was no strike, but “It is a Communist insurrection,” he faced the following situation:

Jitters, Lawyer, banker, scholar, Fellow of Brown University, 66-year-old Governor Green belongs by birth to Rhode Island’s Republican mill-owning class but has cast his lot with plebeian Democrats. Last week he was an old man badly frightened when he asked his State Assembly for: 1) $100,000 to up the State police force from 51 to 1,000 during the emergency; 2) $100,000 more to put 1,000 War veterans under arms; 3) power to close any or all textile mills in the State; 4) power to call in Federal troops, which he said President Roosevelt had promised him.
Republicans lined up behind the Governor, his own partymen against him. The Republican leader of the Senate said he had received the following message from Brig.-General Herbert R. Dean, commander of the State’s National Guard: “I think I can control the situation but for God’s sake tell the Legislature to do something. We need Federal troops!”
Answered the Democratic leader of the Senate: “Don’t call in the regular army! Don’t militarize Rhode Island for the sake of the selfish interests of a small group of mill-owners! If you want to stop the trouble, stop it at its source, the mills, which are a cancer in this body politic.”

When the shouting died that night the Assembly had granted none of the Governor’s requests. Voluntarily mills at Woonsocket, Saylesville and four other trouble spots closed and the Governor started a Communist round-up on his own authority. Though Federal troops were reported mobilizing in New York and New England, President Roosevelt at Hyde Park appeared to be in no rush to send them to Rhode Island.

August 25, 2011January 6, 2012

Achievement First Secret #4 – Nothing Says 21st Century Education Like Segregation

Do charter schools have to teach all kids in the community equally? As they find them, as they are? This blog post from Wait, What in Connecticut, looking at the enrollment data of several charter schools, including Achievement First schools, argues no.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is the fact that despite Connecticut’s urban areas having significant numbers of students coming from non-English speaking homes, charter schools have somehow managed to create learning environments in which virtually NONE OF THE STUDENTS who come from non-English speaking households end up in their schools.

As educators and policy makers know, one of the most significant challenges to educational achievement is language barriers particularly a problem when students take their homework (which is written in English) home to non-English speaking households. Greater parental engagement in their children’s education is hard enough, but when the students are learning in a language that is not spoken at home it makes it virtually impossible to generate significant parental involvement.

In Bridgeport 40% of the students go home to a non-English speaking home. That percentage increases to 44.7% in Hartford and in New Haven the percent of students coming from non-English speaking homes is 28.6%

In Connecticut, charter schools are required to ensure equal access to their schools. Efforts must be made to recruit students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and admission tests can’t be used. In fact, entrance decisions must include a blind lottery system. So that said, compare the percentage of students from non-English speaking homes with the numbers the charter school have reported to the State Department of Education:

School     (% students from non-English speaking homes)
Bridgeport Public Schools     (40%)
Achievement First – Bridgeport Academy (0.6%)
The Bridge Academy (14.9%)
New Beginnings     (0%)
Park City Prep     (0%)
HartfordPublic Schools     (44.7% )
Achievement First – Hartford (0%)
Jumoke     (0%)
New HavenPublic Schools     (28.6%)
Achievement First – Amistad     (0%)
Achievement First – Elm City Prep     (0%)
Common Ground School     (4.6%)
Highville Charter     (0%)

The data is certainly unsettling. If Connecticut’s publically funded charter schools are supposed to be equally accessible to all and up to 4 in 10 students from those areas come from non-English speaking households then it is pretty unbelievable and completely unconscionable that almost no charter school students come from non-English speaking households.This follows along the lines of scholarly reports that have looked at whether charter schools are recreating the conditions of segregation. As the LA Times reported:

The trend toward segregation was especially notable for African American students. Nationally, 70% of black charter students attend schools where at least 90% of students are minorities. That’s double the figure for traditional public schools. The typical black charter-school student attends a campus where nearly three in four students also are black, researchers with the Civil Rights Project at UCLA said Thursday.

The other researchers also focused on economic segregation, looking at private companies that manage schools, in most cases charters. The enrollments at most of these campuses exacerbated income extremes, they concluded. Charters tended to serve higher-income students or lower-income students. Charters also were likely to serve fewer disabled students and fewer English learners.Because nothing says Progressive like Segregationist policies!

August 24, 2011January 6, 2012

Achievement First Secret # 3 – Treat kids like scholars?

According to the Achievement First website, this person is part of their leadership team:

Chi Tschang – Regional Superintendent

Mr. Tschang is responsible for driving high student achievement by overseeing a portfolio of schools and supporting Achievement First principals in developing and implementing rigorous academic programs and positive school cultures. Previously, Mr. Tschang founded KIPP Academy Fresno, a 2008 Title I Distinguished School in California. In addition to serving as principal for five years, he also taught fifth-grade history, sixth-grade math and seventh-grade English. Prior to that experience, Mr. Tschang taught history for four years at Boston’s Academy of the Pacific Rim charter school. After college, he participated in City Year, where he lived in a housing project and tutored fourth graders in south Providence. For his work in Boston and in Providence, he was profiled on the Oprah Winfrey Show and in the New York Times #1 best-seller, What Should I Do With My Life? Mr. Tschang holds a B.A. in history from Yale University, and is the recipient of several distinctions including the Comcast National Leadership Award.

Now, this caused quite a stir in New York because after a few run in with parents, it was discovered that Mr. Tschang was run out of a KIPP school in Californa for a raft of bad treament of students. From The New York Post:

A Brooklyn charter school administrator who gave up his old gig in California amid charges that he had been physically and emotionally abusive to students is at it again, fed-up parents told The Post.

Just over a year into Chi Tschang’s role as assistant superintendent of middle schools for the Achievement First charter school network in Brooklyn, a student’s mother said he aggressively grabbed an 11-year-old boy he was kicking out of class last month.

READ THE CALIFORNIA REPORT

“[Tschang’s] not supposed to do that,” said the AF Crown Heights mom, who asked to be identified only as Lorna. “He’s supposed to speak with his mouth, not grab him.”

Several other parents at the Crown Heights school questioned Achievement First’s judgment in hiring an educator who resigned as head of KIPP Fresno, part of the Knowledge Is Power Program charter network, in February 2009 after an investigation into his disciplinary practices.

Achievement First officials, who have fielded complaints about their strict discipline in the past, stood by Tschang, despite the ruckus raised earlier this year when he took a misbehaving Crown Heights student home in his car.

That incident prompted the network’s co-CEO, Doug McCurry, to write parents a six-page letter in May that qualified Tschang’s move as a misunderstanding of school policy.

The letter also said Achievement First’s review of Fresno’s investigation found it to be factually inaccurate, “bogus” and conducted by a district that was biased against charter schools.

“During his entire tenure in Fresno, Mr. Tschang never hurt a single child,” Dacia Toll, co-CEO of the Achievement First network, told The Post. “In fact, he was beloved by the students and parents at his school, so much so that hundreds of them took to the streets to protest his resignation.”

Tschang resigned following a report issued in December 2008 in which the school district of Fresno, Calif., found that he had pushed students against the wall, repeatedly yelled at them and instituted various forms of punishment that “exceeded the bounds of the law.”

This included a charge that he forced a student to crawl on his hands and knees and bark like a dog, according to the district probe.

Tschang had allegedly punished a whole fifth-grade class by stuffing them into two bathroom stalls and placed misbehaving kids outside the school building for hours at a time in extreme heat or rain.

He even channeled Oscar the Grouch on one occasion by dumping a garbage can over a student who was clowning around.

According to the Fresno investigation, Tschang admitted to placing “an empty, clean trash can over his head for a few minutes while I was talking to him.”

In response to an allegation that he had picked a student up, held him against the wall by his neck and dropped him, Tschang told probers, “I don’t remember picking up and dropping a student, I do remember shaking a kid.”

A message left at a number listed for Tschang Friday was not returned.

Fresno district officials dismissed the characterization of their probe as biased, noting it had been conducted by an independent investigator.

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/school_big_bullies_kids_tYDkSueDY2zXz7GDx6H70H#ixzz1VwfOyaSO

August 23, 2011January 6, 2012

Why do Big Banks care about Charter Schools?

Why Does JP MORGAN CHASE want to create a $325 million fund to invest in charter schools? Because they can make money off of them silly.

JPMorgan Chase Creates $325 Million Funding Initiative For High-Performing Charter Schools$50 Million in Grants Crucial Amidst Challenging Credit Markets

New York, May 4, 2010 – JPMorgan Chase announced today a $325 million initiative to support the growth of high-performing U.S. charter schools in today’s challenging credit environment.

“Many charter schools have expanded access to academic opportunities for students in all types of communities, so we shouldn’t let tough economic times bring them down,” said JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. “Improving educational opportunities is a cornerstone of JPMorgan Chase’s philanthropic giving.”

The bank will provide $50 million in grants to community development financial institutions (CDFIs) focused on funding charter schools. In turn, these institutions will use these grants as permanent equity, which they will leverage to fund top-performing charter schools.

Additionally, JPMorgan Chase will work with the CDFIs to provide about $175 million in debt and approximately $100 million in New Markets Tax Credit equity to support the development of charter school facilities. This will allow the CDFIs to access Obama Administration financing programs designed to help charter schools meet facility needs.

JPMorgan Chase estimates that this initiative will help underwrite about 40 charter schools, which will serve more than 50,000 students throughout the term of the loan.

Initial CDFI partners include The Reinvestment Fund of Philadelphia, The Low Income Investment Fund of San Francisco, and NCB Capital Impact of Arlington, Va. Additional partners will be announced later in the year.

“The Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) is proud to be one of the partners with JPMorgan Chase on this initiative. Through this financing initiative, JPMorgan Chase and LIIF will invest in exceptional educational opportunities for thousands of low income students,” noted Nancy O. Andrews, President and CEO of LIIF. “A key constraint to growth for many high performing public charter schools is their ability to finance facility development or enhancement. By providing an equity investment, JPMorgan Chase and LIIF will give schools access to affordable capital in a difficult credit environment.”

The grants to help charter schools are part of JPMorgan Chase’s larger $100 million grant initiative for CDFIs that also support small businesses, community healthcare centers, green initiatives and affordable housing. Details on the rest of the initiative will be announced later this year.

“JPMorgan Chase has been a committed partner to the CDFI industry by providing critical access to capital where it otherwise might not exist,” said Terry Simonette, President and CEO of NCB Capital Impact. “This new initiative continues that commitment by providing the critical capital that is required for charter schools to meet the need for access to quality education in low income and underserved communities.”

Despite the increasing demand by families across the country for charter schools, they have found it difficult to arrange financing for expanded and new facilities.

While public school districts can access the municipal bond market for long-term funding, charter schools almost always pay more for financing because lenders require higher interest rates from the relatively new industry.

“In these next seven years, this new investment by JPMorgan Chase in The Reinvestment Fund projects will allow us to create school opportunities for thousands of students,” said Jeremy Nowak, President and CEO of The Reinvestment Fund. “This major investment certainly positions the bank as a national leader supporting charter schools and meeting their significant unmet financial needs.”

JPMorgan Chase sees high potential for improving childhood education and community development through charter schools, and is committed to their development. The bank has been an active supporter of public school education, donating $181 million in education grants over the last five years. Additionally, the bank provided nearly $12 billion in financing to education institutions and school districts through lending and bond underwriting in 2009 alone.

Community development financial institutions that fund charter schools and are interested in applying for a grant through this new program should contact JPMorgan Chase at CharterSchools.CDFI@jpmchase.com.

About JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2.1 trillion and operations in more than 60 countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers, small business and commercial banking, financial transaction processing, asset management and private equity. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase & Co. serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world’s most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.

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