Reform

A Tale Of Many Cities: The Road To Municipal Reform

September 6, 2017 Steve Early, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Cities, Reform

By Steve Early for Counter Punch - There is no better role model for aspiring radical scribes than Juan Gonzalez. The country’s leading Latino journalist is cohost of Democracy Now!, a former columnist for the New York Daily News, and twice winner of the Polk Award for his investigative reporting. Not many veterans of campus and community struggles in the Sixties and workplace organizing in the 1970s later moved into mainstream journalism with such distinction, Gonzalez has managed to combine daily newspapering with continued dedication to the cause of labor and minority communities. As a New York Daily News staffer for two decades, Gonzalez broke major stories on city hall corruption, police brutality, and the toxic exposure of cops, firefighters, and construction workers involved in 9/11 attack rescue or cleanup work. When he wasn’t cranking out twice-a-week columns, he helped lead a big Newspaper Guild strike and wrote four books including Harvest of Empire, a history of Latinos in America. Gonzalez’s movement background and intimate knowledge of New York City politics makes him an ideal chronicler of the unexpected rise (and near fall) of Bill de Blasio as a city hall reformer.

New Model For Conservative Rule And Progressive Renewal

August 31, 2017 Tyler Norris, www.ncpolicywatch.com Strategize! Legislation, North Carolina, Reform

By Tyler Norris for NC Policy Watch - My home state was once a model for progress. For half a century, North Carolina was a beacon of moderation in the South, an outlier dubbed the “Dixie Dynamo” as early as the 1960’s for its farsighted reforms and public investments. The state had its share of problems, especially around the pernicious legacy of Jim Crow, but many of its trend lines were positive and generated an infectious optimism. I remember that optimism. Even in Appalachia, my father could start a successful small business, and the public schools offered a quality education. In high school, I was given the opportunity to attend the North Carolina School of Science and Math, founded as the first public school of its kind in the early 1980’s and used as a model for 18 other schools nationally. Opportunities were expanding, barriers to mobility were dropping, and the state’s future looked bright. Today, North Carolina is different. The numbers speak for themselves: the share of workers living in poverty is up from one-in-four in 2000 to every one-in-three today, according to the NC Justice Center – the second highest share of any state. Middle-wage jobs have hollowed outand median income has plunged since 2007.

Why American Politics Can’t Be Reformed

August 6, 2017 Robert Urie, www.counterpunch.org Strategize! Capitalism, Democracy, Reform

By Robert Urie for Counterpunch. The dominant political parties in the U.S. have assumed absolute control over electoral processes at a time when the power of concentrated wealth has been solidified. The result is an all or nothing political process where who it is that perpetuates this system of upward distribution is the only open question. For those who forgot, Bill and Hillary Clinton attended Donald Trump’s wedding and they consider each other ‘friends.’ The food-fight over ‘Russian interference’ is political theater for gullible loyalists, I mean an outrageous assault on our sacred democratic institutions. A central challenge for reformers is that ‘the world,’ including the dispossessed plurality within the U.S., doesn’t have another fifty years to work current political dysfunction out. A political system that can only support the upward distribution of social resources at ever-rising social costs will fail more people at an increasing rate. As fact and metaphor, Barack Obama’s program to combat global warming was insufficient on its face and a cynical dodge when combined with his program (TPP) to give corporations the ability to override environmental regulations aimed at resolving it.

Tell Trump, And Democrats: We Demand Black Community Control Of The Police

August 4, 2017 Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Police, Police Abolition, Reform

By Glen Ford for Black Agenda Report - The cops at a Long Island, New York, pro-police event “laughed and cheered” when President Trump urged them to brutalize immigrant prisoners – “animals,” as he called them. Then, caught in mid-guffaw, the supervisors and flaks for the bad boys and girls in blue struggled to straightened out their faces and disavow Trump’s remarks. “What the president recommended...is not what policing is about today,” claimed Steve Soboroff, a civilian commissioner of the Los Angeles Police Department, which is forever situating police brutality somewhere in the past. “The president’s comments stand in stark contrast to our department’s commitment to constitutional policies and community engagement,” said New Orleans police chief Michael Harrison. His city took until last December to reach a $13.3 million settlement for Katrina-related police murder and maiming of civilians. The International Association of Chiefs of Police hastily restated its policy “that any use of force is carefully applied and objectively reasonable considering the situation confronted by the officers” -- a statement that sounds very much like the standard legal defense presented in the miniscule fraction of police brutality cases that actually go to trial.

Defendants Can’t Be Jailed Just Because They Can’t Afford Bail

July 26, 2017 Staff, www.reuters.com Resist! Chicago, Courts, Prison Industrial Complex, Reform

By Staff of Reuters - CHICAGO (Reuters) - Defendants who are not considered dangerous will no longer have to stay in jail if they cannot afford to pay bail while awaiting trial in the Illinois county that includes Chicago, a circuit court judge ordered on Monday. Before an initial bail hearing, information will be provided by the defendant in Cook County regarding his or her ability - within 48 hours - to pay bail, the order said. If the defendant cannot pay, he or she will not be held before trial. “Defendants should not be sitting in jail awaiting trial simply because they lack the financial resources to secure their release,” Timothy Evans, chief judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, which includes Chicago, said in a statement. “If they are not deemed a danger to any person or the public, my order states that they will receive a bail they can afford,” the judge said. The order goes into effect on Sept. 18 for felony cases and on Jan. 1, 2018, for misdemeanor cases in the circuit court. Defendants who are deemed dangerous, however, will be held in jail without bond, according to the court’s statement. Judges can also release defendants on individual recognizance or electronic monitoring, which do not require the defendant to pay money to be released, it said.

A Municipal Vote In Providence For Police Reform Carries National Implications

April 24, 2017 Shahid Buttar, www.eff.org Create! Police, Reform, Rhode Island

By Shahid Buttar for EFF - After three years of sustained community mobilization and advocacy, the Providence City Council in Rhode Island voted this Thursday to unanimously approve among the most visionary set of policing reforms proposed around the country to protect civil rights and civil liberties, including digital liberties. EFF supported the proposed Community Safety Act (CSA), and its adoption represents a milestone that should prompt similar measures in other jurisdictions. Reflecting an understanding of of how many different communities endure parallel—but seemingly separate—violations of civil rights and civil liberties, the CSA aims to address surveillance alongside racial and other dimensions of discriminatory profiling. The ordinance imposes crucial limits on police powers at a time when local police have become the leading edge of mass surveillance, as well as longstanding abuses of civil rights and digital liberties rooted in the war on drugs. The most notable facet of the CSA is its sheer breadth. It addresses a wide-ranging set of issues in a single reform measure.

Bernie’s Tuition Plan Is Doomed To Fail

April 13, 2017 Alan Collinge, www.thehill.com Educate! Bernie Sanders, Higher Education, Reform, Tuition

By Alan Collinge for The Hill - Bernie Sanders unveiled his free-tuition plan this week. The plan, which would eliminate tuition charges for undergraduate students whose families earn less than $125,000 annually, looks much like the proposal from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and also like Hillary Clinton’s revised plan from 2015. Sanders’s plan would provide $47 billion to states to cover “tuition and fees” at public colleges with the requirement that states come up with the remaining $23 billion, thus making public college tuition-free. While Sanders’s plan certainly does dedicate far more money (per student) than Cuomo’s or Clinton’s plans would, it’s ultimately doomed to fail — just like Clinton’s plan and Cuomo’s plan.

Sessions Orders DOJ To Review Police Reform Agreements

April 5, 2017 Sari Horwitz et al, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Jeff Sessions, Police, Reform, Trump Administration

By Sari Horwitz, Mark Berman and Wesley Lowery for The Washington Post - Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Justice Department officials to review reform agreements with troubled police forces nationwide, saying it was necessary to ensure that these pacts do not work against the Trump administration’s goals of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime. In a two-page memo released Monday, Sessions said agreements reached previously between the department’s civil rights division and local police departments — a key legacy of the Obama administration — will be subject to review by his two top deputies, throwing into question whether all of the agreements will stay in place.

Brazilian People Mobilize Against Michel Temer Reforms

March 17, 2017 Staff, www.en.escambray.cu Resist! Brazil, Class Struggle, Reform

By Staff of Escambray - Brazil staged today a National Day of Mobilization and Paralysis against the proposed labor and social security reforms by which popular movements and central trade unions describe as Michel Temer”s ”illegitimate government.” Throughout the country, demonstrations of protest are planned from the early hours of the morning, culminating in the event that will take place in the afternoon on the crowded Paulista Avenue and which former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will attend. The mobilizations, convened by the Brasil Popular and Pueblo Sin Miedo fronts and backed by the main Brazilian trade union centers, will coincide with the beginning of a general strike of public education workers.

Manufacturing Dissent Out Of Control Of Our Puppet Masters

February 1, 2017 Mitchel Cohen, www.popularresistance.org Strategize! Civil Servants, Media, Reform, Revolution

By Mitchel Cohen. CJ Hopkins has penned, below, a very perceptive, snide (and funny) analysis of what we're facing. Might as well call it "Manufacturing Dissent." I pretty much agree with it, except that as a participant in many radical movements I've noted that things happen in the course of movements that the puppet-masters can't control, although they try. So the neoliberal Dems' bolstering of the anti-Trump movement is a gambit that they're willing to risk, just as they've done many times in the past. Usually they've emerged victorious, but with unanticipated side effects. Our job is to make those "side effects" come back to haunt them. Remember when the robber-baron Jay Gould in the 1880's bragged that he could hire half the working class to kill the other half? His observation was correct -- and so workers organized into the Knights of Labor, Western Federation of Miners, the Wobblies, and other militant working class organizations whose goals included unifying sectors of the working class around defending workers through direct action.

‘People’s Hearing’ Convened To Reform FERC

December 6, 2016 Mark Hand, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! FERC, Reform

By Mark Hand for DC Media Group - Described as the first-ever “People’s Hearing” challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), more than 60 speakers presented testimony on why they believe the agency systematically fails to listen to the concerns of the general public. A panel of “judges,” fashioned similar to the monthly FERC open meetings, presided over the Dec. 2 hearing, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Unlike the real FERC meetings, speakers did not run the risk of getting escorted out by security guards for standing up and expressing dissent with the agency’s decisions.

Health Reform In Trump Era: Big Step Back, Possibilities For Bigger Steps Forward

November 18, 2016 Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Donald Trump, Health Care, Reform

By Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein for The Huffington Post - The 2016 election turned on racism, xenophobia and anger at the status quo, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law covered about 20 million, and modestly improved access to care. But it didn’t address the health care problems facing most working families, feeding the perception that the Democratic Party had neglected them. Trump seized on the ACA as a symbol of the establishment’s false promises, and has placed repeal at the top of his to do list.

France And The Struggle Over Labour Reforms

September 24, 2016 Maxime Benatouil, www.socialistproject.ca Educate! France, Labor, Reform

By Maxime Benatouil for The Bullet - The so-called Labour Law, passed en force by the French government on 20 July, is the most serious attack against the “Code du Travail,” already undermined for the past thirty years. A short historical overview is necessary to better grasp the destructive scope of this law, promoted and enforced by a socialist government – cruel irony!

Pondiscio Exposes Split In Ed Reform Camps Over Role Of Race

September 7, 2016 John Thompson, www.livingindialogue.com Educate! Education, Race, Reform

By John Thompson for Living In Dialogue - Although I wouldn’t spend too much time eavesdropping on the civil war between liberal and conservative reformers, it is fun to periodically check it out. The first of the loudest shots in their internecine conflict was issued by Fordham’s Robert Pondiscio in the aptly titled post “The Left’s Drive to Push Conservatives Out of Education Reform.” He condemned “social justice warriors” who “no longer feel any compunction about accusing their conservative brethren of racism and worse.”

Do Unions Belong In Fight Against Corporate School Reform?

August 22, 2016 Staff, www.gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com Resist! Privatization, Reform, Schools, Unions

By Staff of Gad Fly On The Wall - In the fight for public education, the forces of standardization and privatization are running scared. They’ve faced more pushback in the last few years – especially in the last few months – than in a decade. The Opt Out movement increases exponentially every year. Teach for America is having trouble getting recruits. Pearson’s stock is plummeting. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter have both come out strongly against increasing charter schools.

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