“The promise of this country is not realized on its own”
“The promise of this country is not realized on its own”
An iconic American story in the making
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This time last year, Ana María Archila was leading the grassroots charge to convince New York lawmakers to do right by struggling immigrants that’d been denied any government help during the pandemic.
Make the Road New York, the non-profit organization on whose board Archila serves as co-chair, helped to spearhead an intensive campaign marked by months of mass public protests, hunger strikes, and dedicated media outreach. A model of effective grassroots advocacy, it ultimately helped win over enough lawmakers to establish New York’s Excluded Workers Fund.
An unprecedented program, it set aside $2.1 billion for immigrant workers that normally provided the beating heart of the state’s economy but were ignored by federal and state Covid relief benefits. But by that point, the need was even more unprecedented than the size of the fund, which was tapped out just two months after it opened for applications.
Archila is now leading the fight to replenish the Excluded Workers Fund — not only as an activist, but also as a Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York, supported by the Working Families Party. Because in a state with the highest wealth inequality in the United States, renewing the Excluded Workers Fund is just one of the many urgent steps Archila believes should be taken to achieve a fairer and more just society.
“If we allow business as usual to take hold again, we will continue to impose incredible harms on the communities that were the epicenter of the pandemic in the country,” Archila told Progress Report earlier this month. “I’m sick of [politicians] celebrating immigrant labor and the courage and resilience of immigrant communities, then excluding immigrants from all the systems of support, whether it’s health care, unemployment insurance, or housing.
“So I decided to jump into this to re-energize communities and elevate an agenda that is transformative and entirely possible if people who govern have the political will to make it happen.”
Born in Colombia, Ana María Archila emigrated to the United States at the age of 17. Feeling like an outsider in her adopted home country, she threw herself into grassroots organizing, following her aunt into the ceaseless struggle to win power for immigrants, people of color, and working families.
Over the course of more than two decades, Archila, now 41, built Make the Road New York into one of the most influential immigrant-led grassroots advocacy groups in the country. She also co-founded the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, which serves as a sort of umbrella group for pro-worker, pro-democracy, and pro-equality organizations.
“Every time that I've been engaged in a fight, I'm reminded that the promise of this country is not realized on its own, but forced into existence by people who are forced to the margins demanding to be included,” Archila said. “And that it’s actually the act of demanding that allows us to make progress.”
Archila has led coalitions of working people in making those demands time and again; if you have at any point in the past two decades read a story in a New York media outlet about efforts to raise the minimum wage, mandate paid sick time, prevent wage theft, or create more affordable housing, you’re likely to have seen her quoted or pictured in a protest. Make the Road’s community services have also helped thousands of immigrants learn English and take legal action against predators seeking to rip them off.
Most famously, Archila confronted Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) in a Capitol elevator to demand that he reconsider his support for Brett Kavanaugh, who was then Donald Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court.
After watching Christine Blasey Ford testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee about how Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her during a party when they were both in high school, Archila made the difficult decision to discuss her own experience of childhood assault. An impassioned five-minute conversation with Flake led the senator to demand an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh.
Though Kavanaugh was ultimately confirmed to the bench by a single vote, the legacy of that moment of bravery lives on. It later emerged that the FBI buried more than 4000 pages of documents in a half-assed investigation that put heat on former bureau chief Chris Ray, and as the hearings over Biden nominee Ketanji Jackson Brown indicated, Republicans are still actively and performatively bitter over having one of their own face any sort of consequences for toxic behavior.
New York’s Big Moment
If you were to travel back in time to early 2018, drop into a Working Families Party meeting, and sketch out the basic dynamics of New York politics as they stand today, you’d likely get treated either like a lunatic or a messiah.
Democrats with full control of state government, the turncoat IDC obliterated, progressives ascendant, and Andrew Cuomo driven from office and reduced to a bitter pariah? Even now, having all four happen inside a few short years seems like a pipe dream or hallucination. And yet, here we are, thanks to the combination of relentless grassroots activism and the former governor’s monumental hubris.
Already, progressive Democratic lawmakers have teamed with community activists to achieve once-unthinkable successes, from the Excluded Workers Fund to historic criminal justice reform. But the work is hardly done; as Archila argued, the pandemic exposed just how far the state has left to go to truly ameliorate its political and economic inequity.
Roadblocks remain, too. The state is hardly a utopia of good government and public service. Real estate, private equity, and other corporate interests still hold powerful sway over many Democratic leaders, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and the unelected Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin. On Sunday, the New York Times broke the news that Benjamin is the subject of an FBI investigation focused on a real estate mogul’s efforts to defraud the state and funnel money into his campaign.
It’s no surprise that Hochul and Benjamin’s housing plan provides for a dreadfully inadequate number of affordable units and largely exists as a giveaway to big developers.
Although the positions are elected separately, Archila is running in the Democratic Primary on an unofficial ticket with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is running for governor. They are the only viable alternatives in an election that will serve as a crucial hinge point for New York and Democratic politics nationwide.
The progressive caucus is growing in Albany. People have seen what’s possible. And huge budget surpluses and waves of incoming federal funding offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to establish programs that could vastly improve the lives of tens of millions of people. But unless they can replace the conservative and corrupt leaders presiding over the system, change will be incremental at best.
Negotiations happening in Albany right now indicate the chasm in ambition and values. Due April 1st (though that’s always been fungible), New York’s annual budget provides the blueprint and funding for the state’s most important policies.
“The governor is asking people to basically go back to pre-pandemic times with her policies,” Archila said. “She wants to do just a little bit of childcare expansion, just a little bit of tinkering at the edges of health care. That would be a profound failure for what’s needed right now.”
Archila is much more in sync with the priorities of progressive legislative leaders, some of whom she helped to get elected. She name-checked many of the items that wound up in the State Senate and Assembly budget proposals, including creating universal child care and major investments in health care, including coverage for immigrants and wages for the terminally underpaid home care workers.
None of these items are in Hochul and Benjamin’s budget. Neither is a statewide Medicare for All program, which Archila also ardently supports.
Theirs is a regime of fiscal conservatism that is far less willing to upset exploitative markets. Archila has seen all of this before, having spent the past two decades fighting uphill battles against corporate interests. And now, she wants to elevate the office of Lt. Governor to take on those powers from the inside and make sure the voices she worked so hard to organize and speak as one are heard in the highest halls of power.
“We saw tremendous wins last year on protections for renters, on investment in public education, and new taxes on millionaires and billionaires,” Archila said. “But I think that the pandemic, combined with the polarization of the Trump era, has really fried people's ability to connect. Progressive policies are only possible when people tune into this idea that we belong to one another, that we depend on one another, that we that I am, because we are.”
Alarmed at both the exhaustion she saw in her community and the direction in which Hochul wants to take the state, Archila felt as if she had no chance but to finally step into the spotlight and run for office herself.
“I’m just one person, but in a moment of fatigue, I want to bring our people out, to remind each other that what defines these moments is people's courage and ability to take care of one another and show up for one another. And that’s what we need to bring into this election.”
If she can win, it’ll not only push New York in a more equitable direction, but it will further evolve what activists and lawmakers can pursue in other states. It’s a hinge point for everyone.
Here’s a small sampling of stories we’re following in the premium weekday editions of the newsletter!
Housing
St. Paul: With just over a month to go before the voter-approved rent control law takes effect, developers are scrambling to convince the Minnesota capital’s mayor and city council to gut the measure of any meaningful impact.
We covered the grassroots campaign to pass the unprecedented measure last fall, when the corporate real estate lobby was in the process of spending millions of dollars on a huge misinformation campaign that rained lies down on working-class residents across the city. The astroturf lobby blitz failed to convince people being priced out of their homes to vote against their best interests, but the developers are giving it one last push before they have to respect the democratic process.
A piece in today’s Pioneer Press illustrated the problem with what is usually glowing coverage of the people most responsible for the unsustainable housing market. They did a puff piece with a powerful developer in the city who demanded that new construction be exempt from the rent control ordinance, eliding the fact that he builds mostly luxury real estate that is helping to cause the crisis in the first place.
Then, when asked to take some accountability, he suddenly retreated into vague promises and lame talking points:
A critic would argue that landlords who raise rents more than necessary have been part of the problem. They’ve benefited from passive income, and they should be focusing on tenant-based solutions.
There’s a lot of dialogue occurring about multi-family housing in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. We’re very focused on working with the city to improve production, preservation of more affordable housing. We’re working with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul on how we can better approach providing more housing options.
We’re seeing inert promises like this in big cities across the country; until they are willing to put numbers down on paper, there’s no reason to believe any of it.
Economic Justice
Amazon: Union elections are underway at Amazon warehouses in Staten Island, NY and Bessemer, Alabama. Remarkably, the two facilities are being organized by two different unions; Staten Island is the result of two years of work by former warehouse supervisor Chris Smalls and his fledgling independent Amazon Labor Union, while Bessemer workers are voting on whether to join the RWDSU in a re-run of last year’s suppression-tainted election.
During the day, I work as a producer for the media organization More Perfect Union, and last week produced this report on the nasty union-busting campaign being run by Amazon in Staten Island:
You can read more about the union-busting and Amazon’s high-tech bombardment of workers right here.
California: Organized labor helped save Gov. Gavin Newsom’s job last fall when he was facing a statewide recall, and to show his appreciation, the French Laundry’s most famous patron promptly vetoed two bills that had been top priorities to the union movement.
Now, a progressive lawmaker from Los Angeles is pushing to get one of those bills, which would have improved the state’s paid leave system, over the finish line.
State Sen. María Elena Durazo introduced Senate Bill 951 in February which would phase in increases in the percentage of the earnings low-wage workers receive while out on family leave, so three years from now a worker would receive up to 90% of their pay.
A recent analysis from the California Budget & Policy Center shows the program is still a far reach for most low-income workers. Data from 2020 reveal that California’s workers who earned $20,000 or less a year made up 37% of all workers eligible for paid family leave — the largest share — but they had the lowest family leave utilization rates at 14%. In fact, between 2017 and 2019, the number of claims filed by these workers steadily declined while claims from workers in every other income bracket increased, according to data from the Employment Development Department.
Right now, workers making the minimum wage at California’s small businesses receive just 70% of their salary during their leave, or a meager $378 a week. This bill would increase that somewhat significantly while not raising taxes on anyone making under $145,000 a year — 91% of workers in California.
Michigan: There is likely to be no state this fall with more ballot initiatives than Michigan, with progressives and conservatives dueling over voting rights, education funding, and now, potentially a $15 million wage.
Under the proposal, by the Raise the Wage Michigan Ballot Committee, Michigan would increase the $9.87 an hour minimum wage in $1 increments over five years, starting at $11 in January 2023 and increasing to $15 by 2027.
The initiative would require automatic adjustments for inflation every year after 2027.
It would also end the "sub-minimum wage" for tipped workers, for people younger than 20 years old or for people with disabilities. The sub-minimum wage would be phased out in steps until it reached parity with the standard minimum wage Jan. 1, 2028, Rep. Andy Levin said.
You can thank the grassroots advocacy group One Fair Wage for the effort to eliminate the historically racist tipped minimum wage, which still exists in many states. Outgoing Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is also seeking to tackle that very unfair policy, though his ability to do so is limited to more technical and less effective rule changes.
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