CDFI Fund Director Donna Gambrell testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services on Wednesday in support of the President's FY12 budget, which includes funding for the CDFI Fund. Director Gambrell's testimony outlined the important programs and financing the CDFI Fund provides, and the impact CDFIs have in low-income communities:
CDFIs are strategically positioned to help some of the most vulnerable populations in the nation at a time when they are facing many financially challenging situations. CDFIs are often the only source of financing in underserved communities. CDFIs support productive small businesses, affordable housing for low-income Americans, high-quality community facilities, and provide retail banking services to the un-banked and others often targeted by predatory lenders.
As I read futher through the published testimony, I was thrilled to see mention of Boston Community Capital, a CDFI and Tzedec borrower that is undertaking groundbreaking work to address the foreclosure crisis. More from the testimony:
Boston Community Capital, a CDFI headquartered in Massachusetts, has developed a new Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods initiative, where the CDFI partners with other organizations to buy foreclosed properties and sell them back to the original owners with a reduced mortgage payment, preventing displacement. As a result, low-income urban neighborhoods in Boston are at less risk of population loss due to unaffordable housing costs.
Gambrell also talked about the important role that CDFIs have played in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and last year's oil spill:
After both Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast oil spill, CDFIs were at the forefront of re-building the Gulf Coast region and providing support for small business owners who saw their livelihoods threatened.
We have invested in CDFIs through JFSJ's Tzedec Community Investment program for the past 12 years, and our commitment continutes. We will follow the FY12 federal budget process as it continues. Future funding for the CDFI Fund will provide support and investment in low-income communities that critically need access to affordable capital. I am sure this is not the last we will hear.
More congratulations are in order, this time to longtime JFSJ partner Mignhon Tourne, President & CEO of ASI Federal Credit Union in Louisiana. Mignhon has been named the recipient of a 2011 Annie Vamper "Helping Hands" Award from the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (NFCDCU). The second recipient is Kim Vermander, Senior Vice President of Communicating Arts Credit Union in Detroit.
According to the NFCDCU President Cliff Rosenthal, the awards "not only recognize each awardee's selfless work to promote the credit union ideal of 'people helping people,' but they also honor the credit unions that have enabled these individuals to shine. Through the individual efforts of our honorees, and the collective efforts of their credit unions, thousands of low- and moderate-income residents of New Orleans and Detroit have access to affordable and responsible financial services."
Mignhon and Kim will receive their awards at the National Federation of Community Development Credit Union's upcoming national conference next month.
Did you see what mothers did for their kids on Mother’s Day? They spoke out about the need to preserve Medicare for the next generation!
On a Facebook page called Worried Sick: Medicare for the Next Generation, twenty-seven families posted photos over Mother’s Day weekend of mothers and grandmothers standing up for their children and grandchildren’s right to Medicare. Many mothers held signs like, “Medicare is for my kids too!” The page received 979 “likes” directly and when our allies “shared” it on their pages.
The project, initiated by Jewish Funds for Justice, engages families in showing their opposition to the budget plan that passed the House of Representatives in April. The plan turns Medicare into a private voucher program for people currently under 55. The voucher program would leave tomorrow’s seniors paying double the amount for health insurance compared to what they would pay under the existing Medicare plan. This would increase poverty rates among seniors, which have dropped by almost two-thirds since Medicare was enacted in 1965.
The Facebook postings on “Worried Sick” included a touching array of stories and photos demonstrating intergenerational support for Medicare. Elizabeth Haggerty Roth posted a picture of her mother with the comment: “After having a stroke my mother lived with me for 11 years until her death in 2000. Medicare and Social Security allowed her to live out her life with dignity and respect. Protect Medicare for me, my child and grandchildren!”
Many allies partnered with JFSJ to promote the “Worried Sick” page, including Campaign for America’s Future, The Other 98%, Pursue, National Council of Jewish Women, Faithful America, Social Security Works, Families USA, and Progressive Jewish Alliance.
Where are Medicare negotiations now? The Washington Post reports:
Obama has been calling for long-term deficit reduction that blends both tax increases and changes to massive government health programs such as Medicare for older adults and Medicaid for the poor. Some Democrats are anxious for Obama to detail his proposals, worried that he might cut too deeply into venerable Democratic initiatives. Meanwhile, Republicans have proposed restructuring Medicare and Medicaid but have rejected any tax increases.
On the heels of its successful campaign against Glenn Beck’s scapegoating, JFSJ is focusing now on protecting Medicare, a solution that has been working since 1965. For more on the Solutions Not Scapegoats campaign, contact campaigns@jewishjustice.org.
Congratulations to Martin Eakes, a community development finance leader and visionary who recently received a Ford Foundation Visionaries Award. The Ford Foundation is honoring 12 leaders in honor of its 75th anniversary.
According to the Ford Foundation's website, the leaders' "innovative efforts on the frontlines of key social issues offer clear and concrete pathways to improved economic opportunities and expanded political and social participation for milliions of marginalized people worldwide."
Eakes founded the Self-Help Credit Union in 1980 and has since created the Center for Community Self-Help, the Center for Responsible Lending, and the Self-Help Federal Credit Union in California.
Self-Help Credit Union in North Carolina is highly regarded as a leader in the community finance field. It paved the way for other Community Development Financial Institutions by creating access to affordable banking products and services in low-income communities without access to traditional banks.
Read more about the Ford Foundation's Visionaries Awards and view profiles of all 12 award recipients here.
The annual NYC May Day rally is train wreck of every progressive issue you ever have (and haven't) heard about that spews pamphlets, Communist newspapers and poorly amplified speeches.
On the heels of the sense of frustration that the May Day rally can create, it's great to see the May 12th Coalition pulling together a strong coalition to propose a unified and practical message.
They're proposing a budget that replaces cuts to human services with measures to eliminate tax breaks for banks. Lots of great community organizations, some local politicians and good press will hopefully move this plan along. More here.
What's not to love about a flash mob for workers' rights? Especially when it's a sunny day in Bryant Park and there's a horn section, stilts, drag, and chants in Spanish and English.
Three cheers to our friends at Jobs for Justice, Make the Road New York, etc.
Bonnie Benwick brings last night's JFSJ-PJA Food & Justice Seder at the USDA to life on The Washignton Post's All We Can Eat blog!!
Tom Vilsack throws a seder
By Bonnie S. Benwick
The USDA held a seder Wednesday night, but it was neither a day late nor any part of a dollar short on meaning. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and two Jewish outreach organizations used a novel, piggyback-on-Passover approach to spotlight issues related to hunger and justice in America.
Scheduling the event on the heels of the eight-day Jewish holiday with the bounty of symbolic foods didn’t seem like much of a stretch. The evening at the department’s Whitten Building had hardly begun when Vilsack agreed to make it an annual tradition.
Before a group of 55 guests, he was presented with artwork that represents the Counting of the Omer -- the 49 days between the second day of Passover and Shavuot -- a holiday that honors the giving of the Torah to the Jews freed from slavery in Egypt. It signifies their journey to reconcile freedom and collective obligation. The secretary was obviously moved, and grateful.
And with that, the seder got underway. A succinct haggadah composed for the event summarized the Passover story and provided four major talking points for the tables to consider as they blessed the service’s four cups of wine: hunger and access to healthful food; examples of modern-day slavery (in the form of the Immokalee tomato workers) and others who grow our food; sustainable eating; and committing to action in these matters on a personal basis.
A Passover seder follows a specific ceremony, as it were; on this night, however, the blessing of the matzoh came before the first cup of wine. Rabbi Dara Frimmer of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles explained the liberties taken: “Changing the order of this seder is okay, since it’s the ninth day. We have a story . . . and it is profound, reflective of many people’s experiences.” So the group broke the symbolic bread of poverty and affliction as they read and discussed sobering USDA statistics: One in six Americans does not have access to enough food. Some 28 million Americans received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2008; 44 million do so today.
Frimmer was one of two officiating; Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim congregation in Alexandria split the duties. With so much ground to cover, the pace of the two-hour seder was brisk. Empire Kosher Poultry of central Pennsylvania sponsored the kosher meal, which consisted of fresh-tasting salads and dips, couscous, organic chicken and an apple dessert. Chief executive officer Greg Rosenbaum was proud to participate: “We support local farmers and workers’ rights. We are the world’s largest producer of kosher chickens and turkeys,” he told me as we waited on the buffet line. Empire also donates 50,000 pounds of poultry to food banks and kitchens each year.
After a little singing, short speeches and responsive reading, strong voices around the room answered the final call to action:
“I will commit to buying products from companies with good ethics.”
“I will support restaurants that treat their workers with respect.”
This evening the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will host its first-ever Food and Justice Passover Seder with Elissa Barrett of Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and Simon Greer of Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ). Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy at the Rabbinical Assembly, and Rabbi Dara Frimmer of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles will officiate at the seder, to be held at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
As participants drink the traditional four cups of grape juice, the seder will bring a Jewish perspective to today’s pressing issues of hunger in America, the exploitation of food workers, and the unsustainable food production methods that are destroying our environment. Participants will discuss our individual and communal responsibilities for ensuring that healthy food, ethically produced, is available to all.
This seder was also conceived as a springboard for building relationships between members of the progressive Jewish community and a critical federal agency. The USDA wields enormous influence over how food is produced in the United States and is also responsible for ensuring that Americans in need – including the nearly 40 percent of U.S. children living in low income families – receive help putting food on their tables.
With the first cup dedicated to considering ways to end hunger and food insecurity, seder guests will receive poster illustrations of the “Food Desert Seder Plate” created last year in conjunction with a tour PJA conducted of Los Angeles neighborhoods to highlight communities where supermarkets are scarce and where healthy, nutritious food is hard to come by.
The question of food workers, and the conditions under which they toil so we may eat, will be the focus of the second seder cup, and has special resonance for Jews coming together at Passover to celebrate our freedom. Just last Wednesday, the EEOC filed two federal lawsuits accusing eight some of the world’s largest and most powerful agricultural producers of what amounts to modern day slavery. The allegations include human trafficking of hundreds of men, confiscating their passports, holding them hostage, saddling them with insurmountable debt and forcing them to harvest fruit, right here, on American soil, while also enduring verbal and physical abuse.
While these lawsuits are welcome, we know that our responsibility cannot end here. There are far too many abuses in the food chain – whether that means migrant workers and their families who don’t enjoy basic wage and working condition protections, whether it means contract farmers who can’t afford to stay on land their families have owned for generations, or food processing workers who can’t take a day off to care for a sick child. In one significant effort to address unfair labor practices in the food industry, PJA is currently supporting organizing efforts of Mercado food workers in the San Francisco Bay area who are seeking an end to poverty wages, a dearth of benefits, and substandard working conditions.
With a number of USDA staff members, Judith Belasco of Hazon, Josh Viertal of Slow Food, and dozens of other knowledgeable people at the table, there is sure to be a lively discussion of how unsustainable food production and consumption are damaging our water, soil and air – and what to do about it – as those attending the Food and Justice seder drain the third cup of the evening.
As guests work their way through the Food and Justice Haggadah created by JFSJ and PJA they will wrestle with the fundamental question: What is our responsibility and role – individually and communally – for repairing our broken food system, ensuring that everyone has access to healthy food, produced without exploiting workers, and without destroying the environment that sustains all life on Earth.
JFSJ partner Domestic Workers United (DWU) has taken the lead in making sure that New York State’s historic bill – signed into law last August – is understood and implemented.
After years of organizing, passage of the law, which spells out legal rights and labor protections for domestic workers, was a huge legislative victory.Now DWU is partnering with the Labor Department to make sure it actually helps the workers it was intended to protect.Worker-employee workshops are planned, and DWU organizers are pounding the pavement and seeking out child care providers to educate them about the law, the first in the nation to set time and hour requirements for in-home care-givers and housekeepers, including mandated overtime pay, vacation pay and a 40 hour standard workweek.The law also provides for temporary disability benefits and spells out protections for domestic workers facing discrimination or harassment.
How well and how quickly the domestic workers law is understood and implemented in New York will provide a model for other states and organizing efforts, as similar bills move to the forefront nationwide. On Wednesday, while hundreds of domestic workers and their supporters packed a Sacramento hearing room, a bill modeled on New York’s law passed out of the California Assembly’s Labor Committee by a 5 to 1 vote. Here’s more on DWU’s implementation campaign from today’s New York Times.
Next Monday evening, Jews across the world will be participating the Passover seder, the quintessential Jewish meal. Its food recreates the tastes of slavery and freedom: matzo, the bread of affliction; the maror of embittered lives and hard work; charoset, thick as mortar; the four cups of triumphant redemption; and the savory pesach sacrifice, a celebration of being passed-over and chosen for a life of service. Food at the seder goes beyond just simple nourishment; it is symbol and performance.
The seder incorporates these tastes and smells of freedom to tell a story about the Jewish people, specifically, a story of the liberation from slavery and their realization as a people. The Haggadah provides the general narrative of this story but its telling remains incomplete. In every generation, one must regard themselves as though they had gone out from Egypt and in every generation we must continue the work of the Exodus and continue to create freedom and fairness in the world. In this generation, Uri L’Tzedek has chosen to add an ambitious chapter to the seder’s never-ending story of oppression and freedom: food and justice.
The Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement contains commentary by 26 different authors highlighting themes related to food, social justice, and ethical consumption found in the Haggadah.
