Just Work

A publication of: The Coalition for Economic Justice CEJ is an affiliate of Jobs With Justice & The New York State Labor-Religion Coalition

Notes from the Director

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of participating in this years AFL-CIO Advanced Leadership Institute. Representatives from state labor federations and central labor councils from across the country convened in San Diego, joined by organizations like CEJ to talk about best practices for developing powerful labor-community coalitions. Thats not a new concept for CEJ, which has been a home for an alliance between labor, community, faith, and student groups and activists for more than two decades, longer than any of the other organizations that were at the table. But the opportunity to come together for real talk about the challenges we face and to share strategies for moving forward was incredibly valuable. The conference opened with the admonition that the problem with being polite is that you never get to the core of the issues. Throwing manners out the window in favor of frankness and honesty allowed us to have some really intense, productive conversations about how to build and sustain strong coalitions. On the second day of the conference, one of the facilitators shared the parable of the babies in the river. There are a lot of ways to tell it, but this particular version really speaks to the importance of coalitions. In the story, a group of people ends up constantly rescuing babies that they find floating downstream in the river that passes through their village. They are soon exhausted by the sheer amount of work it takes just to save all the babies from drowning, yet more and more appear every day. Eventually, they look upstream and see a monster tossing the babies into the river. If theres just one small group of villagers, they have to decide whether to spend their limited resources saving each individual baby, or they can stop the problem at its source by attacking the monster. But if different groups of villagers work together in coalition, they dont have to choose one over the other. Instead they can develop a comprehensive strategy based on the strengths of each of the groups and attack both the symptom of the problem and the root cause. The story may be more than a little bit morbid, but it highlights the power of what we can accomplish when we work together. Service providers, advocacy groups, labor unions, religious congregations we all bring something different to the table. In this political climate, its hard for any one organization to do much more than simply survive on our own. But if we work together with one shared vision and draw from the assets and experiences we each offer to build a united progressive movement, then theres nothing we cant do...
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Summer Edition 2013

Highlights: POWER for All American Workers (page 3) Making Democracy Work in an Open Buffalo (page 5) Whats the CEJ Staff Reading? (page 6) & More!

Notes continued...

In this newsletter, youll read about some of the collaborations weve been taking part in, from the latest Contact us: developments in our ongoing subsidy reform efforts, to the exciting Open Buffalo planning process, to outreach to 237 Main Street New Americans living in Western New York. Suite 1200 Buffalo, NY 14203 Im so excited to bring back reports of best practices in Phone: 716.892.5877 community-labor coalitions from the interesting work Fax: 716.852.3802 thats happening around the country, and I look forward to sharing it with all of you and putting some of it into action Email: here at home in these campaigns and beyond. jenn@cejbuffalo.org micaela@cejbuffalo.org In solidarity, andy@cejbuffalo.org saty@cejbuffalo.org saladi@cejbuffalo.org

Visit us online: cejbuffalo.org

Thank you to all of our foundation partners who have generously supported CEJ this year. In particular, we would like to thank The Unitarian Universalist Veach Program at Shelter Rock, Ford Foundation, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Ben and Jerrys Foundation, Rev. Bissonette Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Northstar Fund, and Assemblymember Sean Ryan.

Thank you! For making our 2013 Annual Award Banquet a wonderful success! We would like to once again thank our keynote speaker, David Cay Johnston, the emcee, Terri Legierski, and this years honorees: Jim Crampton, Beverly Newkirk, John Lichtenthal, and WNY Next UP A special thank you to our banquet sponsors: CWA WNY Council, WNY Area Labor Federation, Creighton, Johnsen & Giroux, UFCW District Union Local One, Paul William Beltz PC, and CWA 1122 And to our event photographer, Lukia Costello

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POWER for All American Workers

by Saladi Shebule, CEJ Dignity at Work Organizer As the new Dignity at Work organizer, my longer term goals include moving policy that protects all workers, increase the diversity of workers involved in CEJ and work in coalition with our labor and community allies to increase the ability of all workers to change their working conditions through collective action and organizing. As such, CEJ has joined our national affiliate, Jobs with Justice in the campaign to win comprehensive immigration reform. Below is a broad strokes description of some important elements of the much needed immigration reform that we want to see. Immigrants and guest workers are a significant part of the U.S. workforce and economy, but confront enormous challenges in the workplace. These workers face exploitative working conditions and vulnerabilities, and are denied basic rights on the job as a result of our nations broken immigration system and corporate greed. Far too often, businesses exploit immigrant workers to drive up corporate profits and drive down the wages and working conditions for all U.S. workers in a race to the bottom. Our broken immigration laws and labor policies often deter immigrant workers from speaking out about violations of workplace rights or low-wages because greedy employers use the current immigration policy to silence these workers. When immigrant workers try to organize, these employers retaliate against them and threaten deportation to stop their organizing efforts. Basically, under existing immigration law, employers have the power to threaten workers who attempt to exercise their labor and civil rights. As a result, employers pay immigrant workers severely low-wages and even steal their wages, and force them to work in unsafe, brutal conditions for long hours under the threat of deportation. Immigrant workers cannot report these workplace violations without fear of retaliation from their employer. These practices hurt immigrant workers, erode working conditions and wages for U.S. born workers, and weaken our economy. Clearly, the current immigration system is broken and in need of comprehensive reform. After avoiding the issue for many years, lawmakers are now engaged in a serious discussion on fixing the immigration system to provide workplace protections for immigrant workers, which will strengthen rights for all workers in the U.S. The Senate recently passed an immigration bill that provides a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants and strengthens workers rights protections across the nation. Provisions from the POWER ACT (Protecting Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation) were included in this bill, which will allow immigrant workers to speak out about exploitative employers and workplace violations without fear of deportation. However, the bill is currently being blocked in the House of Representative. It currently looks like the House of Representatives will only pass pieces of the bill, rather than the comprehensive bill that is necessary to provide a pathway to citizenship and safe conditions for all workers. New Americans and all workers cannot afford a piecemeal approach. CEJ and its allies throughout the country are gearing up for a fight come September to ensure comprehensive immigration reform.
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POWER for All American Workers continued

The POWER Act will help secure job opportunities, wages, and working conditions for all American workers. The act ensures protection for both low-skilled and high-skilled workers, which will help rebuild the middle class and boost the economy. The act will have a significant impact on local communities, particularly here in Western New York, where we have a large number of immigrant and refugee workers who may be vulnerable to employers looking to exploit them for profit. What can you do to ensure all workers have dignity at work? Learn more about this issue at thepoweract.com, read stories of immigrant workers dealing with our nations broken immigration system, and contact your congressional representative to urge them to support the Senate bill. In addition, you can write a letter to the editor on immigration reform and workers' rights. Feel free to contact Saladi for more information on how to take action-saladi@cejbuffalo.org

Through CEJ's membership in the WNY Environmental Alliance and in partnership with the WNY Worker Center project, we have a new tool you can use to confidentially report a workplace concern, request assistance with a problem, find information on various workers' rights laws, dignity at work campaigns, and more. Text the word WORKER to 877877 or go online to http://grow716.org/worker to get started. (Standard messaging and data rates apply.)

Building a Movement for an Equitable WNY and Beyond

As you know, CEJ is working with our statewide partners in the Getting Our Moneys Worth coalition to fix NYSs broken economic development system. We are making progress in our campaign to rein in the out-of-control spending of these corporate subsidy programs to ensure that public dollars equal a public good. Just in the past few months, the Erie County and Amherst Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) passed local labor policies following demands for reform from our coalition and labor and community leaders. Now, instead of seeing construction projects go to out-of-state contractors that bring in workers from outside our region, these policies will help guarantee local construction workers are hired by companies that receive ECIDA and AIDA tax breaks. This will put more local workers to work, keep more money in our economy, and strengthen economic development efforts. How can we build on this momentum to win even more important victories for workers and our communities? By working together to build strong coalitions we can win and win big. CEJ members and labor, faith, and community leaders are stepping up to build a powerful new committee to stand up to IDAs and fix our economic development system in WNY and across the state. This committee took action to help ensure the ECIDA and AIDA passed local labor policies and is focused on policies based on community standards to guarantee companies receiving public subsidies create good jobs and shared community benefits. Our committee on IDAs is focused on bringing together residents throughout Erie County to discuss and develop communitybased strategies for reforming IDAs in WNY to ensure publicly subsidized projects are benefitting the community. Stay tuned for details on the next event and how you get involved. For more information, contact Andy at andy@cejbuffalo.org or 892-5877.

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MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK IN AN OPEN BUFFALO

By Jenn Diagostino,

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, youve probably have heard the name Open Buffalo used a lot over the past several months. You may have attended an event, shared some food for thought, or even joined a focus group. Still, you may be asking, what is Open Buffalo? We believe an Open Buffalo is an equal, just, and free city driven by a united and empowered community, open to full and democratic participation by all its residents, open to innovative ideas and policies, open to new leaders from diverse communities, and open to meaningful economic opportunity and sustainable wealth creation for all.

stage, competitive process, in which OSF is offering grants to new programs that build enduring civic capacity for their regions.

policy research, create a public face to communicate the need for reform, and mobilize a large base of engaged citizens to bring about the changes our city needs.

So where does all that come from? The story starts back in December, when CEJ, PUSH Buffalo, VOICEBuffalo, and the Partnership for the Public Good received invitations from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) to convene our local progressive community to take part in their new Open Places initiative. The idea behind Open Places is to improve the quality of democracy here at home by expanding access and participation to low-income, minority, and other historically underrepresented groups. Buffalo was one of sixteen cities initially invited to participate in a multi-

Later this month, a group of Open Buffalo representatives including me will be traveling to Denver, Colorado to meet with other Open Places competitors. There, we will participate in workshops and work with consultants to refine our proposal, while keeping true to the In April, we learned that our kinds of projects we think are true collaborative Open Buffalo proposal to what Buffalos community won as one of eight available members have identified as most planning grants in the first phase of important. OSFs selection process. We have until September to design our plan around strategies and themes that we believe will make Buffalo a more open place to live and work. In the fall, OSF will review proposals from each of the eight remaining cities and award three to five implementation grants of up to $1 million per year for a minimum of three years, and potentially a full decade. Though the summer seems to be Needless to say, we have been flying by, there are still plenty of hard at work with our partners to opportunities to get involved with build a process that includes as Open Buffalo. You can find out much input from as broad a about upcoming events and keep community audience as possible. track of our progress at http:// openbuffalo.org, follow CEJ has taken on the role of @Open_Buffalo on Twitter, or find coordinating the Economy for the us on Facebook at http:// Common Good working group, one facebook.com/OpenBuffalo. of three such groups tasked with identifying issue priorities that are most important to improving the (Photos in this article courtesy of quality of civic participation in our Open Buffalo; view more at http:// region. In parallel to those www.flickr.com/photos/ discussions, the Open Buffalo open_buffalo/ ) Planning Council has been developing structures and strategies that will help build a case for those issue priorities through

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Whats the CEJ Staff Reading?

Transactions, Transformations, Translations: Metrics that Matter for Building, Scaling and Funding social movements. In a time of such great uncertainty and urgency, social justice organizations must be able to effect and articulate social change in a common language that draws people in, ensures necessary resources, and sustainability so that we may continue to win progressive change. This insightful report lays out challenging questions about evaluating the real impact and success of social movements. The report covers how to measure the day to day or short term activities of an organization (i.e doors knocked, phone calls made, list serv's sent, etc) as well as the transformational (i.e. membership's ownership of the work the organization does, members ability to speak about the issues and solutions set forth by the organization,) work of an organization. This resource proved incredibly useful in our most recent staff retreat and the CEJ staff is excited to continue to use metrics that matter to improve our impact in WNY and NY State. A special shout out to Erin Heaney over at the Clean Air Coalition for introducing us to this report! Jenn Diagostino, Executive Director I am a big fan of dystopian fiction, and I'm currently rereading one of my old favorites. "Jennifer Government," by Max Barry, paints a picture of a world where corporations run rampant, government is impotent to stop them, indoctrination begins with corporate schools run by the likes of McDonald's and Mattel, and people have so little control over their own lives that their last name is actually the name of company they work for. It's a world that imagines not George Orwell's Big Brother, but Big Business that is just as scary. I won't spoil the ending for you, but the book is a fun and fast-paced summer read that still makes you think. Andy Reynolds, Communications Organizer I am reading What Then Must We Do: Straight Talk About the Next Generation, by Gar Alperovitz. Thanks to Eric Gallion for recommending the book and dropping off a copy in our office, I am enjoying this book which focuses on strategies for systemic and social change. Alperovitz, writing in an accessible style, proposes common-sense solutions to the systemic challenges that face us, including ways to make our economy more democratic through the establishment of worker-owned cooperatives. Saty Singh, Development/Administrative Assistant I am currently reading "Lean In," by Sheryl Sandberg. This controversial book looks at the societal and personal barriers preventing women from taking leadership roles in the workplace. Sandberg proposes that women need to break down these barriers by striving for and achieving leadership roles. The ultimate goal is to encourage women to lean in to positions of leadership because she asserts that by having more female voices in positions of power, there will be more equitable opportunities created for everyone . Saladi Shebule, CEJ Dignity at Work Organizer I just completed reading an article entitled, Who stands to lose more if immigration reform fails? by Sandra Hernandez from the Los Angeles Times. The article discusses whether comprehensive immigration reform is a priority in Baracks second term agenda outline, given the need to address the budget and gun violence in the nation. This article seems to pose a legitimate question as I believe the time to reform the nations immigration system is now. Just because politician act on agenda as a p riority, it does not mean its a priority. Micaela Shapiro-Shellaby, Organizing Director Nelson Mandela-Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela's autobiography beautifully and provocatively chronicles his life as an anti-apartheid revolutionary in South Africa. His strength, strategic mind, honesty, passion and devotion to justice continues to inspire. The recent celebration of his 95th birthday prompted me to pick the book up again. It's length is daunting, but I am captivated.

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For over 26 years, the Coalition for Economic Justice has united faith, labor, community organizations and activists to win dynamic campaigns that promote economic justice for all. Our members commitment to building strong, sustainable communities remains as strong as ever. True to our roots, CEJ is sustained by compassionate individuals who are dedicated to advancing social and economic justice.

NOW is the time to support the Coalition for Economic Justice.

Support from members and donors has allowed us to keep moving forward. Just this past year weve added new staff and grown our coalition; weve built new relationships and formed powerful alliances. We are advancing an agenda to create quality jobs for workers, and provide long-term solutions to the economic challenges we face in NYS and Western New York. But - its a lot of work with limited resources. We rely heavily on support from individuals like you who believe in our work. We need your help to keep going strong!

Please become a 2013-14 member TODAY! Just fill out the form below, return it to us or pledge online through our secure server at cejbuffalo.org.

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YES, I would like to become a Monthly Sustainer for the Coalition for Economic Justice (circle one) : $50/month $25/month $10/month $5/month Other_____ YES, I would like to make a one time membership contribution: ( ) Agitator $35 ( ) Organizational Sustainer $500-$999 ( ) Change Maker $50-$99 ( ) Organizational Benefactor $1,000-$4,999 ( ) Justice Fighter $100-$499 ( ) Organizational Change Maker $5,000 + ( ) Movement Builder $500 + Name___________________________________ E-mail___________________________________ Organization Name_________________________________________________________________ Address__________________________________ Zip_______________ Phone________________ Credit Card Type (circle one) VISA MASTERCARD Expiration Date ___________________

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Thank You! Checks made payable to the Coalition for Economic Justice are tax deductible.
Full financial information is available from CEJ or the office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New Y ork, NY 10271

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Teams compete for prizes donated by the finest local businesses, people, and organizations in Buffalo! Saturday August 17 7:00PM Kenmore Lanes 1691 Kenmore Ave To sign-up, email or call Saty@cejbuffalo.org or 716-892-5877
(To see the list of our event sponsors, visit cejbuffalo.org)

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