As government falls short, mutual aid can step in

 

Bill Knight column for 2-25, 26 or 27, 2021

 Despite President Biden on Feb. 20 issuing a major disaster declaration for 77 Texas counties, local and state government responses to winter’s recent catastrophe there saw some businesses, such as Houston’s Gallery Furniture, literally open their doors to people without power, water or food, and many individuals help neighbors and strangers stay warm, fed and safe.

That’s “mutual aid.”

And in downstate Illinois, the isolation needed in a pandemic is maintained even as dozens of people get together to work for others, even at a safe distance. That’s also mutual aid – specifically Tazewell County Mutual Aid. There, a garage outside Pekin is constantly filled and emptied of material for neighbors. A recent wish list for items to gather and distribute includes powdered milk, dish soap, coins for laundromats and gift cards (“no more than $25 increments”) for fuel.

In Texas or Tazewell, mutual-aid organizations are grassroots groups trying to take their community’s welfare into their own hands, bridging gaps in necessary goods and services. The local network was founded a year ago next month, when COVID-19 surged but aid didn’t.

“I feared and anticipated what the pandemic would do to folks,” says Erin Rockhill Brown, a 52-year-old former educator, and social-service and childcare worker.

Brown’s helped with similar projects but says this was hard to get going.

“In the beginning, we had difficulty finding folks in need of assistance,” she says. “I was the founder of our network and woefully lacking in the skills needed to put the word out.”

Lacking an identity and reputation, her effort slowly caught on through “word of mouth, social media, and referrals from similar groups,” she says.

After the number of participants grew, some with organizing skills, requests for assistance and offers of assistance took off, she says.

Some volunteers are workers, others retired or jobless; many have disabilities, and some have serious illnesses; one lives in long-term care.

“Members include people of every age,” Brown says. “Some live in houses, some in apartments, some in mobile homes, and some outdoors.

 “Several are veterans,” she continues. “Some are Republicans, some are Democrats, some Independents, and some Democratic Socialists. Some are convicted felons; one is a retired police officer. Most of us are White, some are Latina/Latino, and some are Black.

“We all look out for each other in whatever ways we can and accept assistance as needed.”

Structured informally, mutual aid doesn’t work top-down, but horizontally, and it’s designed not to be judgmental nor “charity,” Brown says.

“We’ve received messages from folks who are ashamed to ask for assistance, [but] our motto is ‘Solidarity, Not Charity.’ We make clear that the network is dependent upon all of us,” she says.

“One person who felt ashamed at first had prided himself on being self-sufficient. [Since,] he’s collected and distributed produce, performed more wellness checks than I can count, cooked meals for his neighbors, and is a wonderful asset to the network.”

Although the deadly weather disaster and pandemic have created such responses, some point to similar approaches in Puerto Rico in 2017, post-Hurricane Maria, about which anthropologist Isa Rodriguez-Soto wrote, “Only the people can save the people.” Decades before, the Black Panthers provided free breakfasts for kids who otherwise went without. And more than 100 years ago, zoologist and philosopher Peter Kropotkin wrote about people joining forces to help each other.

“It is not love and not even sympathy upon which society is based. It is the conscience – be it only at the stage of an instinct – of human solidarity,” he wrote in 1902. “It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid.”

In fact, the idea goes back centuries. In the Bible, St. Paul in Romans writes, “Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbringing.”

A 2020 book by lawyer and Seattle University professor Dean Spade, “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),” presents principles, one of which is “solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

“More people are learning how to organize mutual aid than have in decades,” Spade said. “This is a big chance for us to make a lot of change.”

Change needs supplies: ter and groceries, coats and personal hygiene items, temporary indoor shelter, and more. Sometimes, the effort can seem overwhelming, concedes Brown, who adds, “It’s definitely easy to feel happy and hopeful when people in our network can come together safely to actually hang out and have more traditional friendships,” she says. “We have made friends, and the conversations are often hilarious.

“Laughter and fun don’t seem like basic needs to many people,” she adds, “but they are.”

Organized labor still a popular, powerful force

 

Bill Knight column for 2-22, 23 or 25, 2021

 Most people know with certainty, or at least have a strong hunch, that there are real advantages to working jobs with contracts bargained collectively between people elected to negotiate and employers.

The union difference.

And now, there’s more evidence of that fact.

The union edge is sharp in higher pay, safer work, and better job security, all of which together translate to an increasing popularity of labor unions by everyday Americans.

The number of U.S. union members is down slightly, but unions’ density in the overall work force is up, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual “Union Members Survey,” released a few weeks ago.

The number of workers represented by a union is now 15.9 million, down 2.7% (about 444,000), but the percentage of union workers in the entire labor force is 10.8% – up 0.5 percentage points, according to BLS, which collects its data as part of the Current Population Survey, surveying 60,000 households.

One explanation is the 9.6 million drop in overall employment related to the pandemic, and much of that job loss was felt by non-union workers. Therefore, that reinforced that union contracts not only gave workers higher pay in 2020, but better job protection.

But the higher pay remains significant.

“The median weekly wage for all workers in the U.S. rose from $917 in 2019 to $984 in 2020, compared to the year before,” reported Mark Gruenberg of Press Associates. “That 7.3% increase is higher than figures in other BLS reports, but for the purposes of this column, the union report’s numbers govern.

The median weekly wage for all union workers rose from $1,095 to $1,144 (4.5%),” he continued.

So: Subtract $958 from $1,144 and that leaves a $186 median weekly difference. (The median is the mid-point, with half the workers are above and half below). That shows union workers have a 19.4% premium in pay. Almost one-fifth better.

A breakdown of a few segments according to race also reveals union pay advantages:

* All white men: $1,003, unionized white men $1,243 – better by 23.9%.

* All Black men: $794; unionized Black men $965 – a 21.5% advantage.

* All Hispanic workers: $758; unionized Hispanics $1,016 – a 34% premium.

 The COVID-19 pandemic is showing more people the union difference, which also includes better access to personal protective equipment, hazard pay, and safer working conditions, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the connection between the pandemic and public support for unions.

“The majority of Americans support unions,” he said on CNBC. “We have a pro-labor Senate, House and White House. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the labor landscape into one that works for all of us.”

An MIT poll in 2018 showed that some 48% of non-union workers would join a union if they could – representing about 58 million workers, or half the non-union labor force.

Also, in 2020, Gallup reported survey results that 65% of all Americans approve of labor unions, including 83% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 45% of Republicans.

Other facts from BLS’ report:

* the state of Illinois ranks 14th in the nation in union density, at 15.2% of employed workers. Also, that 15.2% was up from 2019’s 14.7%.;

* the public-sector rate of unionization is 34.8% overall, with fire fighters and police together at 36.6%, and education, training and library occupations at 35.9%; and

* looking at unionists’ ages, the highest membership rate is for people 45-64 years old.

             So: Maybe “only” 1 out of 10 working people is in a union, but that’s almost 16 million Americans. Compare that to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (300,000), the American Conservative Union (500,000), the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (600,000), the American Civil Liberties Union (1.7 million), the NAACP (2 million), the Knights of Columbus (2 million), the National Rifle Association (5 million), and the American Farm Bureau (6 million – there are just 2 million farmers, but the FB counts those with FB insurance or other affiliates).

Without the Fair Tax, are there actual fiscal ideas?

 

Bill Knight column for 2-18, 19 or 20, 2021

 These are taxing times; times when we face not just a public-health crisis, but higher taxes – or lower levels of public services.

Or both.

Nationally, Republicans who backed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are responsible for federal taxes going up sometime in 2021.

That measure originally lowered taxes to some degree for many, but it had a hidden feature, an automatic tax hike every two years starting this year, increases that in six years will touch virtually everyone except those at the top of the economic ladder.

Since the law was complicated, debated and analyzed more than three years ago, it’s understandable if it’s been forgotten. A refresher: Back then, the law was drafted and approved (with zero Democrat votes) despite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasting it will increase the budget deficit by $2.2 trillion over a decade.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times recently wrote, “Republicans – who suddenly lost their grasp on their self-described fiscal conservatism – saw a chance to give their rich friends and corporations a big thank you for campaign contributions.

“But the tax cuts they promised these donors produced projections [of] budget deficits,” he continued. “To reduce that stomach-churning amount, they had to phase-in higher taxes on ordinary Americans.”

Now, according to the CBO and the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, taxpayers with incomes of $20,000-$30,000 could owe another $365 this year. Keep in mind that the Federal Poverty Level for a family of four is $26,200, so that $365 will come from folks already having a hard time.

In Illinois, the sleight-of-hand was performed by the expensive campaign to defeat the Fair Tax amendment and the predictable consequences, financially and politically.

Shortly after November voters defeated that measure – to substitute a progressive income tax based on individual income for the current “flat tax” that has everyone pay the same, apart from their wealth – Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned of possible future spending cuts to deal with fiscal woes without that new revenue.

The governor warned that “middle class, working class and poor families will likely suffer from cuts to public safety, education, human services and environmental safety – and the potential layoffs will make the economic recession worse.”

This week, however, Pritzker said he’s presenting a budget proposal to lawmakers that doesn’t increase overall state spending or raise the flat-rate income tax (4.95%). The General Assembly will debate the budget, and many will mostly posture.

For instance, Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, who opposed the Fair Tax, has blasted Democrats for having previously passed a “budget based on hypothetical revenue and false promises.”

The state has had financial problems for decades, under Democratic and Republican legislatures and governors, from billions in unpaid bills to pension obligations plus the ongoing essential services taxpayers rely on, from schools to state police.

The Fair Tax’s opposition claimed that voting against the referendum was casting a ballot for No New Tax, which was false. Besides, though a progressive tax system would be better, future challenges may be so significant that fewer services or higher taxes could be necessary. But whose?

After Fair Tax’s defeat, perhaps everyone’s.

Here are questions for the victorious anti-Fair Tax crowd of Big Business and their Springfield mouthpieces: What services do you favor cutting? If that prospect is unpopular with the people you’re supposed to represent, what new revenue do you instead propose (revenue that Fair Tax would have provided, studies showed)?

And drop the worthless comments about “kicking the can down the road,” trimming vague “waste,” or the unconstitutional betrayal of pensioners. Be specific.

As for new revenue, relying on gambling and marijuana seems inadequate. Come up with something promising and feasible.

So, Rep. Durkin and GOP colleagues pandering to the anti-tax (something-for-nothing) mindset: Ideas?

What programs would you abolish? Who would you fire? Do you favor eliminating townships that serve rural areas, or social-service agencies vital to cities? Which bridges and roads would you ignore? Which age group will be “de-funded” – children at risk? Schoolkids? College students? Seniors at home or in group settings?

Or are you just against everything, celebrating when regular citizens are struggling, disappointed or angry because you can exploit that for political gain?