The Empire Page

Background: A lot of political activity in this country does not get regular coverage.  Much activity taking place at the "grass roots" level, for example, with people organizing around local issues, only gets coverage when there is a confrontation or protest.  To learn more about one group's political activity, we interviewed Karen Scharff, Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York.

 

Empire Page: Tell the readers a little about the origins of CANY.  Who started it? When was it started?  What is your mission?

Scharff: Citizen Action of New York was founded in 1983 to organize at the grassroots level for social, racial and economic justice.  It was started by organizers and leaders active in the Citizen Labor Energy Coalition, and in community groups that became the NY Community Action Network.  They wanted to create a statewide organization that would empower low and moderate income New Yorkers to have a voice in the decisions that affected their lives at the local, state and national levels. They also wanted to continue to build strong coalitions between community leaders and labor unions around basic issues affecting working families.

Citizen Action of New York has grown into a statewide grassroots membership organization that takes on big issues that are at the center of transforming American society – issues like:

• quality education and after-school programs for all our kids
• guaranteed quality, affordable health care
• public financing of election campaigns
• dismantling racism and promoting racial justice
• a more progressive tax system

We look for opportunities to accomplish big changes while also winning incremental reforms along the way.

Citizen Action also works to elect progressive candidates who are committed to our issue agenda.

 

Empire Page: Do you only work on national issues or do you also focus on local and statewide problems?  If the latter, can you site some projects you're working on now that are local or statewide?

Scharff: Citizen Action works on local, state and federal issues.  One of our major local issues has been the need for a grocery store on the Northside of Binghamton.  For about 15 years, residents of the Northside of Binghamton haven’t been able to buy fresh fruit, vegetables or meat without taking a bus or cab to grocery stores in other areas. After working with Northside residents for many years to bring a grocery store to the neighborhood, and getting little help from the City, Citizen Action decided it was time for a new council person for the Northside, and we organized a successful grassroots campaign to elect Lea Webb in 2007.  With Lea's help,  and the persistence of Northside residents organized by Citizen Action, on November 24, 2009, the City of Binghamton broke ground for the new $1.8 million Save-A-Lot grocery store.

Citizen Action works on local education issues in many areas of the state. For example, in Syracuse last year, we worked with the City Council and parents to successfully fund 100 new full day pre-K slots.  In Buffalo, we are currently organizing support for a uniform school dress code across the city to reduce gang violence. Our Long Island affiliate organized successfully to pass a ground-breaking no-nepotism policy for the Wyandanch School District, and is now working on other local education reform issues.

At the state level, one of our top issues has been expansion of health care coverage.  Last year, we were part of the successful campaign to pass an extension of COBRA benefits to 36 months for unemployed New Yorkers, and also extension of coverage for dependent children through age 29. We are now working to reinstate regulation of health insurance rates so that the State Insurance Department can review rate increase proposals of more than 10%, and determine whether they are justified.  We are also supporting legislation to limit insurance company profits so that New Yorkers stop having to face double digit insurance rate hikes every year.
 
We have led a long-term campaign for adequate funding of our schools.  Citizen Action was one of the founders of the Alliance for Quality Education in 2000, and has led AQE's upstate and Long Island organizing every since.  With AQE, we helped establish a fair funding formula in 2007, and we are now fighting to stop the proposed $1.4 billion in school aid cuts in the state budget.

We are also organizing support for an end to prison-based gerrymandering. We believe that people should be counted in their home communities, not where they are incarcerated, for the purposes of re-districting. An end to prison-based gerrymandering is essential to creating a system that provides fair and equal representation to all communities.

And Citizen Action supports public funding of elections.  It's time the public regained control over who runs for office, and who has the funds to win, rather than leaving all the power in the hands of the wealthiest corporate donors.

 

Empire Page: How is Citizen Action of New York organized?  What's the leadership structure and how do you decide what issues to address?

Scharff: Citizen Action is a statewide organization with seven regional chapter and affiliates.  Our Rochester affiliate is Metro Justice and our Long Island affiliate is Long Island Progressive Coalition.  We have chapters in Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany and New York City.  All seven regions have their own local boards of directors, and each chooses representatives to our statewide board.  The statewide board also has representatives of the United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America and NY Democratic Socialists of America, as well as at-large members elected at our annual leadership meeting. 

Our statewide board makes final decisions on state and national issues, and on state and national candidate endorsements.  Our local boards make decisions on local issues and local endorsements, and provide their views to the state board on state and national decisions.  Issues are developed by staff and board members, and brought to the boards. Our annual leadership conference brings together 100 to 200 board members and other volunteer leaders from across the state for strategic discussion and leadership training.

 

Empire Page: How is CANY funded? 

Scharff: Citizen Action is funded by membership dues, fundraising events, contributions from individuals and organizations and grants.

 

Empire Page: Let's turn back to issues.  According to the state comptroller, New York is looking at a $9 billion deficit for 2010-11 and even greater budgets in 2011-12 and 2012-13.  Does your group have a position on how the state should balance its budget?

Scharff:  Citizen Action believes the state should balance its budget by raising revenues and cutting costs that are not serving New Yorkers.  We want to see the Legislature make the choices that are in the interests of the majority of New Yorkers rather than the choices that reward large corporate donors.

We are members of the Better Choice Budget Coalition, which has presented many revenue-raising and cost-saving proposals, most of which we support.  We strongly support progressive taxation so that the cost of providing education, health care, transportation and other key government functions is born more heavily by those most able to pay.  Currently in NY, the less you earn, the higher % you pay in total taxes - that's backward.  We support a millionaires’ tax to make the tax system more progressive and to help close the budget gap.  We also think it’s time Wall Street bailed out Main Street with either a bankers’ bonus tax or the stock transfer tax.

Cost savings suggested by BCBC such as closing unused or underutilized jails and juvenile justice facilities, reducing contracting out, reforming the brownfields subsidies, eliminating Empire Zones and reforming IDA's are all good ways to cut costs without harming working families, local communities and cities, or New York's economy.

Empire Page: Economic justice is a fine idea when the economy is expanding, but the US is facing the most difficult economic circumstances in 80 years -- a world-wide recession and the fact that the cost of maintaining our public sector at all levels has exceeded the ability of the tax base to fund it.  We're taking on debt that could cripple our nation's ability to recover.  Isn't your group's platform out of touch with that reality?

Scharff: Citizen Action's agenda provides solutions to the economic crisis that focus on meeting the needs of average New Yorkers rather than continuing the policies that created the recession and fiscal crisis.  Financial de-regulation, massive gaps in income between CEO's and workers, a health care system designed to create insurance company profits rather than affordable quality health care, an education system that lacks the resources to close the wide educational achievement gaps based on race and income, tax cuts for the wealthy -- these are all the policies that got us into this mess.

These policies that go against economic justice are the policies destroying our economy and our democracy.  We can only return to economic growth by investing in people: we can't have sustainable economic growth without economic justice. That means creating and saving jobs, funding schools and hospitals, providing transportation and human services. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report in December showing that the American  Resource and Recovery Act had already kept 419,000 New Yorkers our of poverty, and reduced the severity of poverty for another 2.4 million New Yorkers.  State spending has a similar impact - it keeps people employed, funds essential services and boosts our economy.  Budget cuts do the opposite - they take money out of the economy and drive us further into recession.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich provided a commentary this week on Marketplace on NPR, in which he argued that the most important investment for the future of our economy is investing in education - early childhood education, K-12 and higher education.  He said "our schools are the engines of human capital," and that the skills and insights of our people are the one resource that is uniquely American, and can provide the basis for future economic growth.  That's Citizen Action's agenda for education - invest in schools so that every child has the opportunity to learn, and to be prepared for college and a career.

Similarly, our agenda for health care reform not only saves lives (45,000 people a year die due to the lack of health insurance), but also saves money for individuals and businesses.  A recent report from Health Care for America Now (http://hcfan.3cdn.net/578b1f7456962bfa7a_r6m6bhcjn.pdf) found that insurance premiums grew at more than 3 times the rate of wages. Premiums grew 97% while inflation grew 21%.  Citizen Action's agenda for national health care reform will control the growing costs of health care, and expand coverage to everyone in America.  This is good for the economy, good for businesses, especially small businesses, and good for working families who can't afford health care.  Without reform, health care will eat up more and more of our GDP every year, creating a huge barrier to economic recovery.

Citizen Action also believes public financing of campaigns is more important than ever.  The small cost to the taxpayer of taking back ownership of our electoral system, out of the hands of large corporate donors, will be repaid many times over by the savings to consumers and taxpayers.  Once our elected officials are accountable to voters not donors, much less of our money will be spent on corporate tax breaks and favors, and pro-consumer legislation will have a better chance of passing.

Two recent studies document some of the impact of our current privately funded electoral system on public policy:

http://www.cleanupwashington.org/documents/breaking_free.pdf

http://citizenactionny.org/2009/05/new-yorkers-pay-when-big-money-plays-the-case-for-public-financing-of-elections/739

Here are a few articles and reports that explain the importance of government spending to bring us out of the recession:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/galbraith

http://fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_Release_CBPPshowsRecoveryActHelpingNewYorkers.pdf

http://fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_Brief_BalancingTheStateBudgetSensibly_20100310.pdf