The Affordability Campaign
The Feb. 1 Assembly at Mother Bethel was a success. 500 people from across the city gathered in the snow on one of the coldest days of the year – because the Unaffordability Crisis affecting our families and neighbors is that serious.
Since the Assembly, Council people have shown more interest in working with us. At the Assembly, Isaiah Thomas agreed to help us gather data for the Affordability Report. He followed through as he committed.
While we were getting the rest of the info for the Affordability Report together, we collected hundreds of stories of how the unaffordability crisis is affecting Philadelphians. Old First leaders – Kathy, Beth, Barbara, Michelle – collected stories from our Saturday guests.
Most of the but most of the report was really a POWER effort. We need the numbers and facts and we need the real life stories to back them up. And visa versa.
If you want to read it, here is the full report. It has now been hand-delivered to every Council person. (Kathy and I had to take it to Councilman Harrity’s office!)
The Affordability Report was released at a press conference on March 16. We got front page coverage in all the papers, and were covered by the local news stations. More importantly, Isaiah Thomas, as promised, released the report with us. And Jamie Gautier, who is the most housing focused of our City Council showed up too. She hadn’t come to the Assembly because she didn’t want to be asked why she had voted for the elimination of the business tax. But in the meantime, she realized she needed to be part of what we are working on, even if we do not agree on every fine point. Gauthier has no2 agreed to lead a City Council briefing on our Affordability Report. Councilman Nic O’Rourke is steady in our corner.
The mayor has also taken notice of what we are up to, and POWER leaders are beginning to hear from her directly and indirectly. But we got some more power building to do before we bring Council President Johnson over to our side. But the POWER leaders in his district have heard he’s going to send them some dates for a first meeting.
We’ve got a ball rolling. Last week, at a Center City leaders meeting at Old First, we began speaking about plotting our strategy for making the “politically impossible into the politically inevitable.” That means we have to figure out and effect a couple of changes:
1) How do we make unaffordability an issue that Council cannot ignore?
2) How do we build enough power that Council finds itself wanting to “govern with us”?
3) How we can call the Council to transform itself from a legislative body that doesn’t do much to a political force in the city that actually improves life here for us all.
Last night at the Citywide leader’s meeting at Rodeph Shalom, we began planning the actions to move more Councilpeople into relationships with POWER and into alignment on the policy goals to produce more revenue for the city and to bring down prices for the people who are finding their lives in Philadelphia unaffordable.
ICE OUT OF OUR AIRPORT
The primary unions representing workers at the airport — representing the concerns of their workers who 1) by law must be U.S. citizens to work at the airport, but 2) are still afraid of ICE’s presence, tactics, profiling, overreach and violence – have challenged our political leaders to stand up publicly against the presence of ICE at the airport and the continued lack of pay for TSA staff who are working.
There was a press conference at City Hall yesterday morning. POWER clergy decided to be present to show our support for their demands. City Council President Kenyatta Johnson joined the press conference to support the Unions’ demands. City Council is presently considering and likely to pass ICE OUT legislation that will put into law many of the commitments of Philly as a Sanctuary City as well as place some tight regulations around ICE anywhere within our city limits.
Mayor Parker has been tight lipped on any critique of ICE’s presence. She says she doesn’t want to draw undue attention from the Administration and she’s trying to safeguard federal funding.
I do not know if Governor Shapiro has responded to the Unions or taken a public position on ICE at PHL
MAY DAY MARCH ON CITY HALL
POWER will be joining with other justice organizations and community groups and local Unions for a march to lay demands at City Hall’s doorstep – Regular Folks Over Billionaires!
The event is hoped to bring out as many as 10,000 people on Friday, May 1, from 4 to 6 pm as we bring our demand to the doorstep of City Hall. We’ll be protesting;
~ the mistreatment, denial of legal right and deportation of immigrants;
~ the cutting of SNAP benefits;
~ the rising cost of ACA insurance that is causing people to go without coverage; and
~ federal workers’ loss of jobs, loss of collective bargaining rights and loss of pay during the partial shutdown.
City Hall needs to recognize what is happening and respond!
This will be our POWER mass leaders / public witness event this spring, and we hope that Old Firsters will commit to participating.
FINALLY: After Easter our POWER leaders group will get together as a team. Tentatively, that is scheduled at 10 am on Saturday, April 18. Speak with Kathy, Annaka, Barbara, Beth or Howard if you want to know more. And join us if you want to get involved…
Photo Credit: Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer, Philadelphia Inquirer
