Friends -
Here is a hodgepodge of articles (only one by me) on different topics that might be of interest:
Friends -
The current (Fall 2007) issue of Shelterforce magazine, published by the National Housing Institute, explores strategies for promoting a progressive housing agenda in a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House after January 2009. It includes my cover story, "Housing the Working Poor," and a critique by Barbara Sard of the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities. In addition, Greg Squires of George Washington University offers a proposal for building a more robust fair-housing movement. PLUS: In “Struggling in the Crescent City,” learn how a burgeoning network of local grass-roots organizations has taken the lead in rebuilding homes and neighborhoods two years after Katrina hit New Orleans.
With the majority of Americans now in favor of reducing poverty and dealing with the growing economic insecurity of middle-income families (including the accelerating wave of foreclosures, loss of health insurance and pensions), the time is right to advance progressive policies for achieving social and economic equity into the mainstream of American politics. Housing activists are strategizing with their political allies on how to move this agenda to center stage in the 2008 presidential debate.
Many of you have seen the LA Times' 4-day series last week criticizing the United Farm Workers. In response, I wrote this op-ed, published in the Sunday LA Times (yesterday), criticizing the paper's general coverage of labor and workplace issues.
On a positive note, the NY Times Magazine yesterday ran a great cover story on the growing "living wage" movement around the country, focusing on ACORN staffer Jen Kern.
And Holly Sklar has a great article about Dr. King's views about economic justice and labor on the TomPaine website.
The new (Winter 2006) issue of Dissent has my tribute to Rosa Parks.
CommonSense last week published a tribute to civil liberties and housing activist Frank Wilkinson by Jan Breidenbach and me. It was also published in The Nation as part of Katrina Vanden Heuvel's column.
Also in The Nation, I recommend "A Top Ten List of Bold Ideas" by Gar Alperovitz and Thad Williamson. Even if you don't agree with all of these ideas it is important for progressives to create a positive forward-looking agenda, not just be against things.
Something to be against, though, are the huge tax break for the wealthy, including that part of the homeowner deduction that goes to the richest folks with the biggest homes. My article in the current issue of Shelterforce examines President Bush's tax reform task force and its recent recommendation to reform what I call the "mansion subsidy":
Finally, I recommend a new report by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes, who estimate the cost of the war in Iraq at $2 trillion - four times more than the Bush administration's projections.
The obituaries for Frank Wilkinson, who died January 2 at 91, primarily focused on his role as a leading opponent of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and government spying on citizens. In 1958, Wilkinson was one of the last people ordered to prison for defying HUAC. He appealed his contempt citation all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 against him. After spending nine months in federal prison in 1961, Wilkinson through the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, spend more than a decade fighting to dismantle HUAC, which was finally abolished in 1975. Wilkinson also fought the FBI. He sued the FBI to obtain its files on him, eventually getting 132,000 documents, which revealed that the agency had been spying on him for 38 years. A federal judge order the FBI to end its surveillance of Wilkinson.
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