In the upcoming general election on November 8, 2016, California faces an unprecedented number of propositions. Many of these propositions will have direct equity impacts on the state's low-income communities and communities of color. To help inform your decision making, PolicyLink has studied the issues and created a 2016 ballot guide available in English and Spanish. Please share it widely and encourage your families and friends to participate and vote. For further information, please see the Official Voter Information Guide, polling place information, and additional voting resources offered by the office of the California secretary of state.

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To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

Yesterday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1726, the Accounting for Health and Education in API Demographics (AHEAD) Act, into law. AB 1726 amends current state code to require the California Department of Public Health to expand the number of Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups for which they collect and report data to also include Bangladeshi, Hmong, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, Thai, Fijian, and Tongan Americans. The final amendments to the bill removed requirements for public higher education institutions and the Department of Healthcare Services. The University of California and the California State University systems agreed to voluntarily disaggregate Asian and Pacific Islander (API) data, but the California Community Colleges system has yet to signed on.

AB 1726 is a step in the right direction, but all of California’s public higher education and health agencies should report data for more detailed API subgroups, especially because California has the largest and most diverse Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander population.

This week's chart highlights the importance of data disaggregation within the API community, particularly when it comes to higher education, by showing the share of the population ages 25 to 64 with an Associate degree (AA) or higher by selected API ancestry groups.

By 2020, a projected 44 percent of jobs in California will require an associate degree or higher. And while 60 percent of the API population as a whole in California has at least an AA, this varies considerably by ancestry. Among Taiwanese people in California, the number is 81 percent, but it drops to 19 percent for Samoans and Laotians. Similarly, Hmong and Tongan Americans have lower levels of education than both African Americans and U.S.-born Latinos. At the other end, Asian Indians and Pakistanis are twice as likely as African Americans and U.S.-born Latinos to have an AA or higher. Less detailed API data can mask barriers faced by certain sub-populations.

For more information about the wide range of outcomes within the API population, check out Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s report A Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the West.

To see how educational attainment varies by ancestry in your state or region, explore the education levels and job requirements indicator, type in your state or region in the Explore box, then select the “By ancestry” breakdown. Download the charts and share them on social media using #AllCACounts and #equitydata.

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart drawing from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

In honor of #LaborDay and the #Fightfor15, this week’s chart looks at the share of workers earning at least $15/hour in California. In an equitable economy, all workers would earn enough to support their family, or a “living wage.” What constitutes a living wage varies based on family size, but $15/hour is a good benchmark for understanding which groups are least likely to be earning a living wage. The fight for a $15/hour minimum wage is also an important campaign that continues to gain momentum.

In California, among full-time workers ages 25 to 64, Latinos are the least likely to make at least $15/hour. 49 percent of Latino women and 54 percent of Latino men earned at least $15/hour in 2012 compared with 81 percent of White women and 87 percent of White men. Latinos are the single largest ethnic group in California, but they continue to face some of the steepest barriers to economic inclusion.

Low wages among the growing Latino population is bad for families and bad for California’s economy: more money in the hands of workers means greater demand for goods and services. Research shows that companies can pay living wages and remain profitable, in part because paying higher wages reduces turnover and increases productivity.

Thanks to policy changes, we should soon see positive changes on this indicator. The minimum wage in California is currently $10/hour, but earlier this year, state lawmakers struck a deal to gradually raise the state minimum wage to $15/hour by 2022.

To see how the share of workers earning at least $15/hour varies by race/ethnicity and gender in your community, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your city, region, or state, and select the “By gender” breakdown. Download and tweet at us the chart for your community using #equitydata and #Fightfor15.

 

Across California, young people of color are courageously leading the charge to protect basic dignity, justice, and fundamental rights for themselves, their families, and their communities. From the Black Lives Matter to the Dreamer movement, from school board meetings to corporate board rooms, these youth are demanding that their voices be heard and their lives valued. 

On Monday, August 8, over 400 youth of color from across the state will convene in Sacramento for the Free Our Dreams Youth Organizing Summit and Advocacy Day. Organized by the Movement Strategy Center, PolicyLink, and the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, this event will strengthen youth leadership and advocacy skills, build power for a movement led by youth of color, and engage statewide decision makers on key legislative priorities for some of California’s most vulnerable communities.

The rally takes place on the west-steps of the Capitol from 12:00pm-1:00pmET. 

In addition to youth engaging legislators, the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color will be reaching out to its supporters to help pass these key pieces of legislation, throughout the legislative season.  For a full list of legislative priorities, see their statewide campaign page. 

• We need to close loopholes in the TRUTH Act and hold police accountable, vote yes on AB2792 #freeourdreams
   
• Youth need legal counsel to ensure they understand their Miranda rights, vote yes on SB1052 #freeourdreams
   
• No youth should have a criminal record because they can't pay a transit fare. Decriminalize fare evasion, vote yes on SB882 #freeourdreams
   
• Secret police databases of alleged "gang members" violate due process & criminalize POC youth.  AB2298 brings transparency & oversight
   
• For-profit immigration detention facilities are known to abuse detainees. SB1289 will stop police dept from using tax $ to hire them
   
• Solitary confinement is no way to deal with kids. Vote yes on SB1143 to limit its use on juveniles #freeourdreams

 

Over the next few weeks, Equity Blog will feature posts about the newly-released series of 13 issue briefs from PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation. This series highlights the economic imperative of equity for the policy planks of the foundation’s Equal Voice Campaign National Family Platform.

The recent policy brief from PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Transportation for All: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy, provides a compelling set of demographic and economic indicators that strengthen the case for an equity-led transportation policy agenda. The national level examples help reinforce the example that Urban Habitat and our allies in the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network made in the Bay Area’s 2013 regional planning process, known as Plan Bay Area. The 6 Wins Network developed a regional plan alternative, known as the Equity, Environment and Jobs scenario, which demonstrated a regional transportation, land use, and housing plan that starts with community-identified needs that produces the greatest range of co-benefits (greenhouse gas reductions, increased transit service, better air quality, less risk of displacement) for all communities.

In the Bay Area, we’ve had strong success relative to the rest of the nation in passing local/county transportation funding measures. In November 2016, there will be another full slate of transportation measures in Silicon Valley San Francisco, and the East Bay. One of our strongest arguments in getting local officials on board to support transportation funding measures has been to demonstrate the nexus between quality job creation and transportation investments. However, we've still struggled to translate the job creation benefit data of shifting funds from highways to transit (and especially transit operations) into concrete changes in investment priorities. There’s still much education and advocacy work to be done on this front.

Regionally in the current round of Plan Bay Area, 6 Wins Network members such as Working Partnerships USA and the San Mateo Union Community Alliance have led efforts to incorporate quality job creation into our campaign for equitable regional planning. This is a new effort to show how investments and programs in regional land use and transportation planning can be leveraged to create more middle wage jobs and address the “hour glass” economy that has developed in the Bay Area.

Urban Habitat, Public Advocates, and members of the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network have also just released a second “equity report card” on the regional planning scenarios for Plan Bay Area. We’ve continued to document and provide analysis on how inequitable regional planning disproportionately impacts low-income people and communities of color and fails to achieve regional and state climate change goals. The report card has been one of our most effective communications and policy analysis tools for highlighting the costs of inequitable regional planning both for the public and decision makers.

In San Francisco, we’ve helped lead the development of MUNI’s transportation service equity strategy which provides a neighborhood level framework to help ensure that community identified transit service needs define investment priorities and that funding – especially new funding – is targeted to meet these needs in transit dependent communities. Transportation for All provides a framework for a lot of these issues and shows how targeted investments in equitable transportation can create more jobs than previous decades of highway construction have, while expanding access to opportunity to those communities that have not benefited from the current economic recovery.

For more information on Urban Habitat, visit: www.urbanhabitat.org or follow them on Twitter @Urban_Habitat.

A reflection on the PolicyLink Equity Summit, which took place in Los Angeles, Oct. 2015.

As I sit here among 3,000 people, I cannot help but think this is the moment. I look out and see the faces, young and old, new and familiar. I cannot help but think this is the moment.

The affirmative advancement of fair housing, the empowerment of low-wage workers, fighting urban displacement, ending mass incarceration, Black Lives Matter, addressing immigration, improving the lives of boys and men of color, addressing income inequality. These issues are front and center, with thoughtful leaders ready to take action.

I think this must be the moment. But what moment is it?

Is it the moment that we fear? The moment that we realize the great American dream of opportunity for all is really just the opportunity for a few? That the promise of this young nation is just another in a long line of promises unkept? Is it that moment?

Is it the moment that we throw up our hands and say that our differences are just far too wide, too deep and too complex, and go to our respective corners and try to make it work separately and segregated by race, class, or party affiliation? Is it that moment?

Or is it the moment we’ve been waiting for? The moment when we finally realize that our fates are linked, the moment when we find the highest common denominator. The moment when we find our best selves and live up to the promise of liberty and justice for all.

I hope it’s that moment. No, let’s make it that moment.

See new video: What does it mean to be Bay Area Bold?

Cross-posted from the New Economy Week

Uber recently purchased one of the largest office spaces in downtown Oakland, California, with plans to move 3,000 of its workers there by 2017. For a city facing a housing crisis and rapid displacement of Black families and low-income communities, many fear this act will accelerate gentrification pressures. It has also led to some cautious optimism for an opportunity to make Oakland a leader in what Mayor Libby Schaaf has called techquity: “fostering our local technology sector’s growth so it leads to shared prosperity.”

Tech companies can play a role in advancing an equitable economy, but they will first have to confront a deeply inequitable status quo. The San Francisco Bay Area has one of the highest levels of inequality of any region in the country, and it is growing at an alarming pace. Unequal access to business and job opportunities have deepened racial economic gaps – Black and Latino workers earn a median wage that is $10 an hour less than White workers in the Bay Area, and these racial inequities exist across all education levels. The tech-driven “innovation economy” can reverse these trends. But to understand how, it’s important to examine how the innovation economy works.

An innovation economy is based on a model of economic growth that leads with knowledge, technology, and entrepreneurship to increase productivity, and therefore business revenues and profits. It is not a particular sector of the economy, rather it cuts across many sectors and industries, such as information technology, advanced manufacturing, and energy. Increasingly, cities across the country are pursuing economic growth through innovation by creating what The Brookings Institution calls Innovation Districts – urban, walkable neighborhoods where research institutions are housed alongside start-ups, incubators, and accelerators in order to foster a network of “creative class” technologists to spur economic activity.

This economic model raises important equity questions: Who is developing these new technologies and how do they decide which societal challenges to focus on? Who owns these companies, and who is investing in (and profiting from) them? Who works at these companies, and who works in the many jobs that support them? How is the wealth they create distributed among the workers, the community, and the city where the company is located? In other words: Who benefits?

Throughout most of the innovation economy, and in technology companies in particular, the answer to these questions does not include Black, Latino, and low-income communities. Black and Latino residents combined make up only five percent of the tech workforce, two percent of tech company founders, and two percent of investors, even though they are nearly 30 percent of the U.S. workforce. Innovative companies spur the creation of a large number of service and support jobs – as many as four support jobs for every one technology job created – but these tend to pay low wages, even though rents and the cost of living are rising most rapidly in areas with strong innovation economies.

This presents a paradox. Today, the innovation economy is undoubtedly contributing to rising inequality and a widening racial income and wealth gap. Yet a growing body of research is showing that equity – just and fair inclusion in society – is not only beneficial for innovation, but is essential for our future economic prosperity. Diverse companies are more innovative and more profitable. Regions with greater equity have longer economic growth spells and fewer and shorter downturns. And reduced income inequality may actually lead to more inventors, who create more new technologies and drive innovation forward.

So how can we foster an equitable innovation economy?

Here are three examples of organizers, educators, and, yes, even economic developers, who are working to harness the power of the innovation economy to head towards a future of shared prosperity for all:

Raising the floor for the low-wage "invisible" workforce in Silicon Valley

Tech companies may have a dismal record on diversity among their engineers and top executives, but they employ the services of thousands of workers of color, mostly Black and Latino, who cook, clean, and guard for them. Most of these “invisible” workers earn less than a quarter of the salaries of the engineers they work with in the same building.

In Silicon Valley, janitors, food workers, bus drivers, and other low-wage workers are rising up to demand good jobs from these tech companies. Silicon Valley Rising, launched in February of this year, is a coalition of labor groups, faith leaders, and community-based organizations that is pushing for quality jobs, affordable housing, and corporate responsibility in the tech sector.

In its first ten months, it has achieved impressive results. The shuttle drivers who drive Facebook employees voted last Spring for a union contract that increases their pay by over 25 percent and includes health care, paid time off, better scheduling, and more. Facebook has also agreed to require their contractors pay a minimum of $15 an hour and provide paid time off. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other Bay Area tech companies have also improved wages and working conditions for some of their contract workers.

“We believe we can create something different here,” said Maria Noel Fernandez, campaign director with Silicon Valley Rising. “We’re working to inspire tech to rebuild the middle class with us.”

Re-directing planning and economic development tools to support manufacturing and promote equitable innovation

With an unemployment rate below four percent, some are declaring that the Bay Area has recovered from the recession. Yet this masks the reality of where the job growth has been – primarily in low-wage jobs and some high-wage jobs – and where it’s not been – mainly in middle-wage jobs that have seen a nearly 10 percent decline over the last 12 years in the Bay Area. These middle-wage jobs may not be found in tech companies, but they do exist in industries like manufacturing, and are essential to building an equitable innovation economy.

During the economic boom of the late 1990s, the City of San Jose faced enormous pressure to convert much of its industrial land in the north end of the city to housing or other development. However, these industrial spaces were some of the few places where manufacturers could locate. Instead of converting the land, the City adopted a development policy for the area that prioritized industrial uses. Today, the area is home to 25 percent of all jobs in San Jose, many of which are provided by manufacturers that supply some of the biggest tech companies in the area with custom orders for new products or parts.

San Jose is one of four cities that has joined the Equitable Innovation Economies Initiative, a project of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance led by the Pratt Center for Community Development with PolicyLink. Each of the four cities – New York City, Indianapolis, and Portland, Oregon – is designing strategies to increase access and economic opportunities within the innovation economy such as targeting investment dollars to entrepreneurs of color and women, bringing businesses back to industrial spaces in working class communities, and supporting manufacturers to hire neighborhood residents. As a part of this initiative, San Jose is now working with manufacturers and community colleges to create a pipeline for young people from low-income communities to start careers in manufacturing.

Developing the leadership and tech skills of young, Black men in Oakland.

Begun in 2012 as a labor of love by five Black entrepreneurs and technologists, The Hidden Genius Project was envisioned as a project for youth to discover their passions through technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills. Three years later, The Hidden Genius Project has served over 350 Black youth and young men, and was recently announced a winner for the highly competitive Google Impact Challenge Grant.

Based in Oakland, the project operates in the center of the Bay Area’s tech economy, yet in neighborhoods like East Oakland where few tech workers live. They plan to change that equation by involving young men in middle school and high school in an intensive, multi-year training and mentorship program to develop new tools and start companies that meet the challenges in their communities. They organize hackathons, workshops, visits to tech campuses, and provide an intensive 15-month program.

“We don’t do this work so that companies like Google can diversify its workforce,” said Brandon Nicholson, founding executive director of The Hidden Genius Project. “We do it so that Black youth can be leaders in transforming their lives and communities.”

The innovation economy can help us solve one of the most pressing challenges of our generation – rising inequality and a growing racial wealth and income gap – or it can accelerate us down our current path of low-wage jobs for the many and unimaginable wealth for the few. These local leaders are showing that an equitable innovation economy is possible. Indeed, it is necessary. Now, it is up to us all to create it.

Making our tax system fair should be a top priority for people who care about shaping an equitable California — where revenue comes from can impact equity just as much as where we choose to invest it. And at a time when California is searching for new revenue to make up for cuts in education, housing, and the social safety net,  a new coalition of civil rights, religious, community, and labor groups is dedicated to rebuilding our state by working to close tax loopholes and make the commercial property tax system more fair.

Make It Fair has determined that the best way to create a revenue stream for the state to help close gaps in funding for essential programs and expand opportunity is to assess commercial and industrial property at fair market value. Taking this step will close loopholes and ensure that big corporations and wealthy commercial properties pay their fair share of property taxes.

Indeed, a recent report by the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) found that reassessing commercial property at its current value would generate up to $9 billion in additional revenue each year for our state. This is based on recalculating the current market value of land owned by companies like Chevron, whose Richmond refinery was last assessed almost 40 years ago. Right now Chevron is paying taxes on the 1978 value of that land — not what it’s worth today. Statewide, Chevron’s underassessment alone shortchanges our communities by $100 million every year.

State Senators Loni Hancock and Holly Mitchell recently introduced an amendment to the state constitution that will correct this loophole. Act now by contacting your state senator today and expressing support for Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 5 (find out who your senator is by clicking on this link).

Going up against big companies and wealthy commercial property owners will be a challenge. But the large amount of money at stake can help increase equitable investment in California’s low-income communities and communities of color and will make a real difference for kids, seniors, and our shared future.  

Learn more about Make It Fair and add your name to the growing list of endorsers.

Read the rest of the Summer 2015 California Equity Quarterly issue>>>

Since 1991, PODER — People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights — has worked to improve the lives of low-income communities and communities of color within San Francisco’s Mission and Excelsior districts, with a particular focus on Latino immigrants. PODER brings people-powered solutions into the community to support local economies, nurture individual leadership, and speak to community power and culture. 

According to PODER Organizational Director Antonio Díaz, PODER’s origins can be found in the neighborhood’s need for community organizing. “As we got to know the Mission, we realized there was an amazing number of community-based organizations and a wealth of community-serving organizations,” Díaz noted. “However, we got the sense that there weren’t institutions focused on initiating community organizing, engaging folks at the door, and focusing on community priorities by working on solutions together.”

PODER’s unique environmental justice approach organizes low-income communities to recognize and challenge the disproportionate impacts of environmental hazards on their neighborhoods. PODER works on issues such as land use, affordable housing, community planning, and other aspects of the built environment as potential avenues for change.

“Environmental justice organizing has been important, in that we’re able to really speak to different neighborhoods,” said Díaz. “We’ve been especially instrumental in urban areas, which are impacted by poor planning decisions and environmental inequities.”

Most recently, PODER responded to the “tech boom” gentrification in the Mission by working to impede displacement-causing development projects and to bring new affordable housing projects to the Mission and Excelsior neighborhoods. Other PODER initiatives distribute resources to construct urban parks and gardens on publicly owned land, fund urban farming projects, and support and foster local co-ops.

PODER focuses on practical solutions: “As much as it’s important to fight and try to get rid of the bad, we also need to take a proactive stance to bring in the good. That’s manifested in building projects and other people-centered solutions that address the needs of current residents,” he noted.

PODER supports local economies as the key to thriving, sustainable neighborhoods. Through its Working Together Initiative, PODER fosters economic resilience and environmental sustainability by training community members to launch social enterprises or community cooperatives. With the use of a community educational toolbox and advisers from a diversity of sectors, PODER has been able to launch a Co-op Academy and help individuals learn about working cooperatively and to potentially start their own co-op or social enterprise.

Another strength of PODER is the involvement of the community. In order to sustain local leadership, PODER prioritizes recruitment of new members and develops community leaders to support the work through its numerous leadership programs and trainings, such as caminos de lidergazo, convivios, and art and resistance events. PODER also runs civic engagement programs to address immigration rights and engagement, as well as language access.

“Based on past organizing, it isn’t enough to win. How can we continue to ensure community involvement and faith? We engage community stewardship and work to foster community assets in the neighborhood,” said Díaz.

PODER’s maturation has included advocating for government funding to ensure that community members have access to programs that develop their skills and connect them with their neighbors. It has also strengthened its network by joining groups such as San Francisco Rising, the California Environmental Justice Alliance, the Our Power Campaign, and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. These alliances help PODER develop tools and stay informed on relevant local and state policies, as well as sustain momentum for further community involvement.

“People recognize the issues in their neighborhood, and when given the opportunity, they step up,” Díaz noted. “This speaks to the rich history of organizing.”

Learn more about how PODER is mobilizing the Latino community for upcoming elections.

Sign up for updates and learn about volunteer opportunities with PODER.

Read the rest of the Summer 2015 California Equity Quarterly issue>>>

We are witnessing a major demographic shift to a majority people of color nation, likely by the year 2043. At the same time, the technology sector is flourishing and has become a pillar of our economy. Acting now to connect youth of color—the country’s future workforce—to the growing technology sector is in the nation’s best interest, and an emerging partnership in Oakland is doing just that.

The partnership consists of:

• #YesWeCode, a national effort led by Van Jones that, like Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH coalition, draws attention to the underrepresentation of people of color in the technology sector;
• The Hidden Genius Project, which is pursuing opportunities to scale up its efforts to train Bay Area youth of color to build programming and coding skills;
• The David E. Glover Education and Technology Center, which has been providing technology training for young and older residents in the underserved, low-income East Oakland community for the past 15 years; and
• The Brotherhood of Elders Network, an intergenerational network of African American men with the mission of assisting African American boys to reach their potential, contribute to community, and thrive.

 

The project will get off the ground this summer with an eight-week pilot coding skill building program for 20 youth of color, which will lead to a year-round coding program for up to 50 youth of color at the Glover Center, starting this fall.

On June 19, this unique partnership was featured on MSNBC’s The Cycle during a live broadcast, including a town hall with Oakland residents at the David Glover Education and Technology Center. The town hall conversation was intergenerational, with African American boys—ages 14-18—listening, learning, and asking questions of elders, successful African American entrepreneurs, and a Facebook executive.

The broadcast and town hall also focused on the complementary values and win-win outcomes of the emerging partnership: #YesWeCode brings in a national constituency of interest, Hidden Genius can scale up years of coding experience, the Glover Center has trained low-income communities of color on technology for years, and the Brotherhood of Elders network brings decades of combined experience, wisdom, and political and resource connections—the Brotherhood will also provide youth in the coding cohort with coaching, mentoring, and soft skill development tools.

Equity advocates need to follow and support this partnership—what better time to get on board, when youth of color are our emerging leaders and the technology sector is the major economic engine of the future?