Time is almost up. The city budget is scheduled for a vote May 25, 2011. There are still a couple of things you can do to keep the outrageous cuts to the social services from happening. Call, email, or visit the members of the council who remain against the proposal to increase taxes on DC’s wealthiest citizens by a mere .4 percent. There names and contact information follow:
Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans
202- 724-8058
jackevans@dccouncil.us
Council Chair Kwame Brown
202-724-8032
kbrown@dccouncil.us
At-Large Councilmember David Catania
202-724-7772
dcatania@dccouncil.us
Critical, Unified Fair Budget Action: Social Services Walking Tour
Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
May 18th, 11 a.m. -1 p.m.
Even if the budget passes with a slightly more progressive tax code, many cuts to social services will remain. DC’s progressive activists work hard for positive outcomes during budget season, but the low- and moderate-income residents who are most affected by these budget cuts must deal with them year round. We should be organizing year round. The following video, “How to Be an Affordable Housing Advocate,” suggests that we stay informed about legislation and that we hold our elected officials accountable however and whenever possible. Enjoy.
So, you didn’t make it to last Tuesday’s Winning a Better Budget Dinner and Action Session at Bread for the City. That’s okay. This week Empower DC and DC Jobs With Justice will be having a free training on the DC Budget. Here are the details.
DC BUDGET TRAINING
It’s YOUR Money! Where is it Going?
Tues. April 19, 2011
6:30-8:30 PM
Empower DC, 1419 V St, NW
(2 1/2 blocks from the U Street Metro)
Special guest Jenny Reed from DC Fiscal Policy Institute will fill us in on the details of Mayor Gray’s budget. How much money is going to subsidize DC’s for profit developers and how much money is being cut from child care, affordable housing, human services programs, etc. Being sponsored by Empower DC and DC Jobs With Justice much of the discussion will be about what we can all do about it.
The following videos, which the Grassroots Media Project produced last year at budget time, show some of the issues at stake. The first is about hits to the city’s subsidized child care program, the second is about the need for adult education and the third is about the council’s refusal to adopt a more progressive income tax code. Enjoy or, ya know, get indignant. Hope to see you on Tuesday night.
So what are you doing this Tuesday, April 12? How about a free meal, good conversation and some concrete suggestions for how you can make this city a better place to live.
As you know, we are deep into budget season. We’ve all been disgusted at the “negotiations” that have been going on at a national level. The effect of last Friday’s deal will have a disproportionate impact on DC residents not only because of the last-minute riders funding the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and reinstating a ban on abortion funding but also because cuts were made on the backs of the poor and our sizable low-income populations will struggle mightily as subsidized housing and income maintenance programs are starved along with the people that they are meant to serve. Having no national representation in this “Capital of the Free World,” we should not be surprised to take a larger hit. However we do have representation or something like it on the local level. Most long-term residents of DC believe that government should prioritize human rights over property rights, but when you listen to the fiscal conservatives on the city council and in the mayor’s office, it’s pretty clear that they’re not representing that point of view. This is in part down to us. Elected officials must be held to account and no one but their constituents legitimately have that right. It is not enough to vote, we must make demands.
To that end is Tuesday night’s dinner which sponsors are calling:
Winning a Better Budget: Dinner and Action Session
Bread for the City, 1525 7th Street NW
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
5:30 – 8:00 PM
Free! Free! Free!!!
Dinner starts at 5:30 PM. The information and action session starts at 6:00 PM. Bread for the City is 2 blocks from the Shaw/Howard Metro station on the Green Line, between P & Q Streets NW.
Joni Podschun, steady force behind the Save Our Safety Net Campaign, has posted details about the event and why you should be involved on her blog which is cross posted below.
Good News Really Bad News About the DC Budget
Fast Facts
• Nearly 1 in 5 DC residents live in poverty.
• 1 in 3 children in DC live in poverty – much higher than the national average.
• 1 in 5 workers in DC has a job that won’t lift a family
Hello good people,
The Mayor’s budget was released on Friday. It was a moment of reckoning, demonstrating both our power to affect change and the unjust cuts our city leaders are willing to make instead of truly progressive new revenue. Now we need you to tell the Council to make a better choice.
Here’s what happened: Mayor Vince Gray proposed a new tax bracket of 8.9% for household income over $200,000 a year, a modest increase from the current bracket of 8.5%. Save Our Safety Net and coalition partners put on the heat with emails, calls, and visits to City Hall these last few weeks to push for progressive taxes to fund safety net programs, and this effort clearly paid off.
The Mayor also slashed the safety net. Though human services programs make up roughly a quarter of the local budget, they are taking 67% of the
Mayor’s proposed cuts. Early analysis suggests that homeless services, affordable housing, help for families in crisis, disability assistance, child care, and health care have all seen drastic cuts. This targeting of safety net programs can not stand.
We need your help to send a strong message to the Council. Join us in asking them for smart, responsible leadership. With even more progressive income tax brackets, we can restore these essential programs. Email the Council now.
For the first time since our campaign began in the summer of 2009, we have a change in our tax system. Please take a minute now
to show the Council that DC residents want this change, and we need to bring in enough money to restore funding for these programs.
If you’re interested in learning more about the budget and connecting with SOS and other organizing campaigns, come to Winning the Budget: Dinner
and Action Session from 5:30-8:00 pm Tuesday, April 12 at Bread for the City (1525 7th St NW). RSVP on Facebook or email me for more information.
On Thursday, March 17, 2011, St. Patrick’s Day, members of Empower DC’s Child Care for All Campaign and Save Our Safety Net DC came together to demand that newly elected Mayor Vincent Gray “Show Us the Green” for Child Care Subsidies.
Most of the people featured in this video, and many of their neighbors in Ward 7 and 8 supported Gray – without those wards Gray may well have lost the election. Yet many are worried that Gray will continue some of the same dangerous trends that Fenty began – including slashing the budget for child care subsidies.
The Child Care Subsidy Program is a critically important program that allows low-income families to access child care so that they can keep their jobs, enroll in school, and provide for their families. If these subsidies are cut further, parents will be left with no option but to forego employment and remove their children from quality early childhood education. Child care providers, who rely on DC’s reimbursement for serving subsidy-holders, will be left with no option but to close – as over 50 have already in the past year.
Child care like that provided by those featured in this video ensure that children are more likely to be prepared to enter school, successfully graduate high school, move on to college, and stay out of the criminal justice system. Investment in early childhood has a huge return on investment by saving taxpayer money down the line on reduced need for remedial education and pressure on the penal system.
In four years, this critical program that also employs nearly 6,000 people in DC, has been cut nearly $30 million. THE CUTS MUST STOP NOW. Send Mayor Gray the message: eom@dc.gov.
Thank you to all the Child Care for All Campaign members, to Save Our Safety Net DC, and the Puppet Underground (for the great signs in this video)!!
Not so much written by the Coordinator, as posted by the Coordinator. This piece was actually written by Ben Parisi of Empower DC
On Tuesday, December 7, 2010, the DC Council voted on a last-minute measure to close a $188 million deficit in the fiscal year 2011 budget. On the chopping block were nearly $50 million in services for DC’s low-income residents. Among these critical services were affordable housing programs, child care subsidies, interim disability assistance, HIV/AIDS screening, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, and more.
Thousands of residents demanded a simple solution of the DC council: a 1% tax increase on income over $200,000. This would have affected only 5% of DC’s wealthiest residents, most of whom have not seen any of their city services cut and have not felt the crunch of this recession as low-income people have. This tax, as small as it is, would have raised more than enough revenue to allow the Council to make the better choice by restoring all the proposed cuts to safety net programs.
A group of 100+ people and organizations, led by Empower DC, DC Jobs with Justice, Save our Safety Net, DC We the People, and H St small businesses, met at the Council Building that morning to voice their protest over the proposed cuts and to call on their elected representatives to make the better choice. Since the council gave only one opportunity for public comment, announced right before Thanksgiving, many of those residents who stood to be impacted by the cuts did not have ample opportunity to voice their opinions. Because of this, a People’s Hearing was planned to take place outside the Council Building that morning, giving spokespeople from an array of safety net programs the opportunity to address the impact of these cuts. Due to the fact that temperatures outside were sub-freezing and there were small children present, the group took its hearing inside, to the fifth floor outside the chamber where the Council would vote in a matter of hours. Immediately, security descended upon those who had gathered to raise their voices to their elected representatives. Spokespeople agreed to whisper, and the audience gathered closely around them. Still, security intervened, claiming that rules forbade gathering. With no other option, the group entered the hearing room, filling all the seats, and waited for the hearing to begin. When it did, individuals stood up and made their statements directly to the Councilmembers on the dais, since they had been given no other chance to speak with their elected representatives.
Ten individuals stood to call upon the council to make the better choice and not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. All ten were powerful voices and represented thousands of residents struggling with similar circumstances. All ten were thrown out of the building by security.
Despite all this, 5 councilmembers heard the call for progressive income taxes to save the safety net that these groups had been making for months. They stood on the right side of this struggle, but their other 8 colleagues voted against their proposals and brought the ax down on critical programs in DC that save lives. As a result, thousands of low-income residents of our nation’s capital will suffer an especially cold holiday season.
If this angers you, turn your anger into a plan! Join Empower DC and get organized! Give us a call at (202) 234-9119, and get involved! In making these cuts, the Council was led by Chairman Vincent Gray, DC’s mayor-elect. When he is sworn in as mayor in less than a month, one of the first things he will do is draft a budget for fiscal year 2012. Let’s be prepared to make sure it turns out differently this time! (202) 234-9119
Post Script,
For the record, those who voted for a more progressive tax code were At-Large Councilmember Michael Brown, Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham, Ward Five Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr., Ward Six Councilmember Tommy Wells and Ward Eight Councilmember Marion Barry.
Those opposed were, Council Chair Vincent Gray, At-Large Councilmember David Catania, At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, Ward Two Councilmember Jack Evans, Ward Three Councilmember Mary Cheh, Ward Four Councilmember Muriel Bowser, Ward Seven Councilmember Yvette Alexander.
Be sure to send your councilmember words of encouragement or otherwise. We are also hoping the above video will go viral, at least here in the District of Columbia. Please feel free to post it on blogs and Facebook pages at will. I’m certain the above councilmembers would appreciate having it posted to their pages. The Youtube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q73EQmwNrpE
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