January 13, 2016

Contact: Malik Russell (703) 589-0856

For Many, Grassroots MLK Day Event to Provide first Experiences in Lobbying State Lawmakers

STUDENT DEBT, IMMIGRATION AND MASS INCARCERATION HIGHLIGHT KEY ISSUES FOR PARTICIPANTS                                                                                                        

Student Speakout@9AM (Hotel) AND RALLIES @11AM & 2 PM IN FRONT OF GAB (sidewalk of 9th Street between E Broad St. and E. Grace St)

Richmond—the process of sitting down and meeting with state legislators to lobby for better laws is normally a process reserved for policy wonks, advocates and representatives of corporations. Rarely, do people from communities most-impacted by legislation view this level of civic engagement as a normal part of the political process.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Richmond, New Virginia Majority (NVM) organizers are bringing together students, activists, community residents and others to meet with close to 50 lawmakers to talk about legislation and the issues that affect their daily lives.

“This is a new experience for me,” said Noah Goodwin, a sophomore at the University of Mary Washington. “We’ve been out front protesting the rising cost of college and the crisis of student debt all year, but the actual process of sitting down with legislators to talk about legislation and our issues is something totally brand new,” he added. Students are putting their support behind 2 bills sponsored mainly by Senator Janet Howell and Del. Marcus Simon – SB 52/ HB 400 and HB 401. Currently Virginia public universities are the fifth most expensive in the nation.

For others, such as Iman Shabazz, a New Virginia Majority organizer based in Richmond, the focus is helping local residents meet with legislators around supporting criminal justice legislation that will slow the impact of mass incarceration in African American communities.

“One of the key bills we are pushing for is SB310 which raises the felony larceny threshold from an incredibly low level of $200,” said Shabazz. “This law has a disproportionate and detrimental impact on my community,” he added. Supporters will also push legislators for support on HB1061 patroned by Sen. McEachin, which promotes alternatives to incarceration by instructing schools to utilize ideas like restorative justice as opposed to incarceration for addressing behavior. “Often these laws trap young people in the criminal justice system and mark them for life. We have to do better,” added Shabazz.

Also partaking in the day of action will be individuals from Latino communities all around the state who are seeking to talk to legislators about issues related to immigration as well as the issue of providing driver licenses for undocumented immigrants.

“For many of our members this is an issue that impacts them on a daily basis, especially in localities that have limited public transportation options.  Proving driver’s licenses for all, would cement Virginia’s commitment as a welcoming state for the refugee and immigrant communities,” said NVM organizer Melquiades Fernandez.

Fernandez and others point to the recent study by the Commonwealth Institute showing that providing driver licenses to all would boost the economy and make roads safer, as validation of their cause. They look to support legislation from Delegate Kaye Kory and Senator Scott Surovell designed to expand driving privileges to more residents of Virginia.

In all, NVM expects over 200 supporters to travel to the GAB on MLK Day with the first rally by students members of the Virginia Student Power Network at 9am and a large rally at 2pm. From 2 – 4 pm, participants have several scheduled meetings with legislators to talk about their issues.

See below for day of events schedule.

9:15-11 AM — Virginia Student Speak-Out against Student Debt:

@River City Ballroom – Hilton Hotel 501 E. Broad Street

Rally includes firsthand accounts on how debt affects them, skits, music performances and speeches.

11-11:45 AM — Virginia Student Power March for Free Higher Ed, outside and around the General Assembly.

• 11:10-11:20 AM: marching down E. Broad St. from the Hilton to outside the GAB, chanting and holding signs.
• 11:20-11:35 AM: rally on the sidewalk of 9th Street between E Broad St. and E. Grace St. (right outside the General Assembly Building). Students chanting and telling their personal stories on the megaphone.
• 11:35-11:55 AM: marching around the perimeter of Capitol Grounds, chanting, holding signs, and hearing students’ stories on the megaphone.

12-1:20 PM — Lunch with all of NVM’s campaigns and members. Educational program over lunch to teach members about the different campaigns and train them for doing lobby visits that afternoon. @River City Ballroom – Hilton Hotel 501 E. Broad Street

1:30-2 PM – Big Rally outside with all NVM campaigns, for a joint message.

• 1:25 PM: March on E Broad St from the Hilton to rally near the General Assembly Building on 9^th Street.
• 1:35-2 PM: rallying on the sidewalk of 9th Street between E Broad St and E Grace St (right outside the General Assembly Building). (Same location as student rally before lunch.)

2:30-4:30 PM — Lobby meetings: members from all of NVM’s campaigns break into groups of 5-10 and enter the GAB to attend scheduled lobby meetings with legislators.

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NVM MLK DAY (Jan 18^th) Grassroots Mobilization Schedule

9:15-11 AM — Virginia Student Speak-Out against Student Debt:

@River City Ballroom – Hilton Hotel 501 E. Broad Street

Rally includes firsthand accounts on how debt affects them, skits, music performances and speeches

11-11:45 AM — Virginia Student Power March for Free Higher Ed, outside and around the General Assembly.

• 11:10-11:20 AM: marching down E. Broad St. from the Hilton to outside the GAB, chanting and holding signs.
• 11:20-11:35 AM: rally on the sidewalk of 9th Street between E Broad St. and E. Grace St. (right outside the General Assembly Building). Students chanting and telling their personal stories on the megaphone.
• 11:35-11:55 AM: marching around the perimeter of Capitol Grounds, chanting, holding signs, and hearing students’ stories on the megaphone.

12-1:20 PM — Lunch with all of NVM’s campaigns and members. Educational program over lunch to teach members about the different campaigns and train them for doing lobby visits that afternoon. @River City Ballroom – Hilton Hotel 501 E. Broad Street

1:30-2 PM – Big March/Rally  to GAB –all NVM campaigns, for a joint message.

• 1:25 PM: March from hotel to General Assembly Building.

2:30-4:30 PM — Lobby meetings: members from all of NVM’s campaigns break into groups of 5-10 and enter the GAB to attend scheduled lobby meetings with legislators.

###

Virginians Announce Drive Virginia Forward Campaign for All

Drive Virginia Forward Joins Delegate Kaye Kory, New Americans Caucus, Senator-Elect Scott Surovell in Announcing Campaign to Expand Driving Privileges

Richmond, VA- Led by a broad coalition, Delegate Kaye Kory, the New American Caucus, Senator-elect Scott Surovell, and the Drive Virginia Forward Coalition announced today that they will introduce several bills to expand driving privileges to more residents of Virginia.  Proposed legislation will ensure that residents have the necessary driver’s education and insurance, reduce traffic accidents, improve community relations with law enforcement, increase state revenue, and ensure that Virginia remains a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees. For many residents from all walks of life, driving is a necessity for their livelihoods, their families, and their communities.

Alba Rodriguez, a member of New Virginia Majority’s Manassas chapter who has lived in Virginia for 15 years, shares why expanding driving privileges is a must. “I have to travel to Charlottesville to receive cancer treatment.  In the past, my own husband has lost his job for missing too many days.  If driving privileges were expanded, my husband would not be in danger of losing his job.  I need to drive to live so that I can take care of my family.”

Margie Del Castillo, Senior Field Coordinator for the NLIRH Virginia Latina Advocacy Network said, “Being able to drive to pick up medicine from a pharmacy, get to a doctor’s office for prenatal care, or take our children to school are part of reproductive justice. Driver’s licenses is a reproductive justice issue, keeping families healthy while making our roads safer.  It’s imperative that we fix this lack of access and ensure a safe, legal way for all working Virginians and residents to continue contributing to Virginia’s growing economy.”

The expansion of driving privileges will bring about a net economic gain to the state. According to a report released today by The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, increasing access to driver’s licenses will enable workers to fill job openings that would otherwise remain vacant and lower everyone’s car insurance costs by boosting road safety and decreasing the number of uninsured drivers.

Dong Yoon Kim, Program Director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium said, “There are 475,000 Asian American and Pacific Islanders who contribute daily to Virginia. Many of these individuals do not have the same driving privileges as the rest of Virginians. Expanding driving privileges will ensure that AAPIs and all immigrants will have the same opportunity to provide for their families and work together with all Virginians in building Virginia’s future.”

For working families, driving will mean access to better jobs and opportunities that outside of public transportation and ability to fill jobs that are not accessible by public transportation, improving the quality of life for thousands of Virginians.

January 12, 2016

Contact: Melquiades Fernandez of New Virginia Majority, mfernandez@newvirginiamajority.org, 347-287-5794

Margie Del Castillo of NLIRH Virginia Latina Advocacy Network, margie@latinainstitute.org, 571-436-5673

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The Drive Virginia Forward Coalition, composed of Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations (VACOLAO), NLIRH Virginia Latina Advocacy Network, Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Right (VACIR), National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Sacred Heart Center, and Virginia New Majority, seeks to promote legislation that will benefit all Virginians by making our roads safer, generating increased state revenues and stimulating state and local economies.

Lillie Branch-Kennedy is founder of Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged.

Quan Williams is a policy associate for New Virginia Majority.

Read online at:
http://pilotonline.com/opinion/columnist/guest/lillie-branch-kennedy-and-quan-williams-the-arc-of-virginia/article_e1bc0ceb-9fe0-5d1b-bd18-5f12dddfa2de.html

As always, please email Eric@Inclusv.com if you apply for any of these positions, and let us know if you have applied for positions in previous Opportunity Lists and are currently going through the interview process.

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Trainings and Workshops

• The DCCC is now accepting applications for it’s Spring Fellowship Program.

Jobs

• Here are new openings with Bernie Sanders’ campaign:

  • African-American Outreach Coordinators.

  • Virginia Field Directors and Organizers.

  • Digital Organizing Directors.

  • New Hampshire Campus Organizer.

  • New Hampshire Field Organizer.

• Community Outreach Group is hiring a National Organizing Director.

• Latino Victory is hiring a Digital Manager.

• MPower Change is hiring a Campaign Manager.

• CAP is hiring a Research Manager, Women’s Economic Policy.

• Chicago Ideas is hiring a Head of Program.

• The Smoot Tewes Group is hiring a Communications Associate.

• Community Outreach Group is hiring a Raiz Program Director to build power in the Latino community.

• Democracy Prep is hiring a Louisiana based Community Organizer.

• Wellstone is hiring a Director, Movement Technology.

• United We Dream has several openings.

• Bus Fed Civic is hiring an Organizational Health Director.

• One of their openings is for a Director for their DreamConnect project.

• FairShare is hiring a Program Director for the Community Voters Project.

• Demos is hiring a Director of Campaigns and Outreach.

• Demos is also hiring a Communications Director.

• The DCCC has several new openings.

Internships

• The White House is accepting Fellowship applications.

• Hillary for America is seeking Winter and Spring Interns to work in their Brooklyn HQ. Note: Interns must be current college students.

  The mission of Inclusv is to ensure staff, consultants, and vendors of color are found at every professional level within advocacy, policy, and campaigns and elections. We envision those who are disproportionately represented in almost every negative measure of well being in our society have a seat at the table to create strategies and solutions for change. Too long organizations and institutions have been working on behalf of communities of color and not working with them. We don’t need well-intentioned ideas that continue to fail. We need to jumpstart professional inclusionary efforts to keep up with the demographic changes in our nation as well as to protect access to the American Dream for all.

In Solidarity,

Eric Lundy, Inclusv Program Director

By: Michael Pope
December 14, 2015

Michael Pope/WAMUDaniel Villarroel and Gloria Phunanzita watch neighborhood friends play soccer on a tennis court in Alexandria’s West End, which is slated for redevelopment.
It’s late afternoon, and a chill fills the air as West End neighborhood kids gather to play soccer on the tennis courts. We’re standing outside a cluster of garden apartments locals call the Hamlets along Beauregard Street. Daniel Villarroel, whose family came here from Bolivia four years ago, is watching the game. He just learned about a developer’s plan for his neighborhood, which calls for all these apartments to be demolished and replaced with high-end, mixed use buildings.

“The news shocked me and all that. So yes, it’s affecting me, like, God, what are we going to do? Where are we going to move? How is the situation going to be?” asks Villarroel. “It’s like, putting me in a lot of stress and I’m confused about what my family’s going to do. Are we going to separate or are we going to be living together?”

Several years ago, Maryland-based developer JBG purchased these apartment buildings and started making plans. That’s when the Alexandria City Council stepped in to give JBG the zoning changes it needed to move ahead. Only one member of the City Council voted against the zoning plan: Vice Mayor Allison Silberberg.

“At the time of the vote, I felt that we definitely could have pushed harder and that I wanted us to push even harder to negotiate for more affordable housing units,” says Silberberg.

Her opposition to that zoning change and her vote against a waterfront development plan put Silberberg in a league of her own as the only member of the City Council to vote against developers. That created a base of support among people who say big business has been calling the shots for too long. One of those supporters is Jon Liss, director of an advocacy group known as Tenants and Workers United.

“I think if people read the tea leaves as I would read them, the Alexandria city elections indicated if anything that there’s a certain tiredness with developers having their way,” says Liss.

Changing political landscape

The debate is not just an academic discussion about tone and priorities. It means that Mayor Bill Euille will not be presiding over the City Council when JBG presents specific plans to demolish existing buildings and start constructing new ones. Mayor-elect Allison Silberberg will. And Liss says he’s hoping Silberberg will use her new position to push for more affordable housing units, to make sure that they are delivered early and that city leaders will analyze who is displaced, what happens to them and how the city can keep them from leaving.

“I think it’s a question of can we cobble together a new majority on the City Council of four votes who will break with the past and try and put more checks on developers so hopefully we can put together four people that will actually make a stand and go in a slightly different or radically different direction,” says Liss.

Advocates of the plan say it does have affordable housing — 800 units in fact. That’s not a one-for-one replacement of the 2,500 units there today. But it is an unprecedented addition of dedicated affordable housing units, and it was one of the key points that led council members to vote for the zoning change.

“The reality is that anything is done on City Council and in the city government by four votes,” says Councilman Justin Wilson, who is likely to replace Silberberg as vice mayor after the council is sworn in. “One of those four votes can be the mayor. But it doesn’t have to be the mayor, and so we will figure out where we agree and we’ll work together. And where we disagree, we have a process to sort that out.”

JBG has already chosen sides. Company executives gave Euille $1,500 during his primary campaign against Silberberg. Then, after he lost to Silberberg, they gave him another $5,400 to support his write-in campaign.

“In this particular election, the lines were drawn pretty clearly,” says Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University. “The developers clearly had their candidate, and they clearly opposed the other candidate.”

Through a spokesman, JBG declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a written statement, the company says it looks forward to working with the new mayor.

Diverse neighborhood at a crossroads

In this neighborhood along Beauregard Street, Census records show, the median household income is about $63,000, about half of the median income in the city. And because rents at the garden apartments are so low, city officials have declared thousands of them “market rate” affordable.

“It’s not always about money,” says Gloria Phunanzita, whose family moved here from the Democratic Republic of Congo three years ago. “This neighborhood is becoming more and more from, like, immigrants families and those immigrants families just arrived here. And then having them to move again and trying to adjust to another place, this is actually very hard for them.”

For now, these families will have to wait and see. Will Silberberg’s election mean a change in direction on the West End? Or will JBG be able to use the new zoning to get what it wants?

Related Links

By Jenna Portnoy December 1
RICHMOND — Election officials in Prince William County this week asked the Commonwealth’s attorney to investigate one of their own.

They say Guy Anthony Guiffré, a member of the county electoral board, might have broken state and federal laws in his quest to determine whether someone improperly used technology to impersonate voters in last month’s election.

At issue is a state rule that says a voter can apply for an absentee ballot online using an electronic signature instead of the old-fashioned way — with paper and pen.

Guiffré, a Republican, says the system opens the door to fraud. To prove it, he recruited four friends — while the county’s registrar was away — to inspect 151 absentee ballot documents and registration records laden with Social Security numbers and other personal information. In doing so, Democrats say, he compromised the meticulous process used to handle ballots, usurped his authority and violated voter privacy.

“It’s my obligation as an individual electoral board member to make sure if I see something that looks extremely suspicious to do something about it,” he said.

State election officials, the two Democrats on the county’s electoral board and the registrar don’t see it that way.

In a letter last week, the office of Virginia Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortés said that Guiffré’s actions “may constitute serious violations of federal and state law.” County officials were summoned to the state elections board’s next meeting on Dec. 16.

In response, Keith A. Scarborough and Jane M. Reynolds, both members of Prince William’s electoral board, and County Registrar Michele L. White referred the matter to the Commonwealth’s attorney and alerted the state attorney general.

The dispute is the latest episode in a debate that started this summer when House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) set up a secure Web site to make it easier for voters to request absentee ballots electronically.

[Challenger to Va. House speaker accuses him of ‘cheating’ in ballot rules]

The site — which utilized electronic signatures instead of pen and ink — raised the ire of Howell’s primary opponent but didn’t catch fire until Sen.-elect Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) started to have success with a similar Web site.

Going door to door, he claims to have helped 900 voters request absentee ballots, while the Stafford registrar has said Howell’s site yielded just 17 requests. The volume of Prince William applications alerted elections officials — and political operatives.

Bill Card, chairman of the Prince William GOP, said he worried that the technology could have unintended consequences and encourage abuse. He called Surovell’s system “certainly not illegal but unwholesome.”

Surovell called the effort “voter intimidation in its purest form.” “These kinds of tactics are straight out of the Republican National Committee voter-suppression handbook,” he said.

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, said the integrity of elections depends on voters having confidence in elections officials’ integrity.

“These are serious allegations against an electoral board chair that the Commonwealth’s attorney must investigate in earnest and with greatest transparency,” she said.

In the meantime, Guiffré said he can’t understand what all the fuss is about when he’s simply seeking fairness.

After the Nov. 3 election, he made sure that absentee ballot envelopes were not sealed at the clerk of court’s office, per protocol, and instead kept separate in the county office, according to the state’s letter. About two weeks later, he and four Republicans, whom he had deputized using the same oath poll workers take, went to the office while the registrar was absent — a situation Guiffré calls a coincidence.

The group — who had no training in handwriting analysis — compared the envelopes with registration records and made photocopies. Then, Guiffré said, he told staff that an inch-and-a-half-thick stack of copies could be destroyed.

This isn’t the first time Guiffré, an accountant, has launched his own study. Earlier this year, he said he applied for absentee ballots online no less than four times as a test.

The result? “I found out it works pretty crappy and it needs to be changed,” he said.

Jenna Portnoy covers Virginia politics for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrats-accuse-rogue-elections-official-of-compromising-voter-privacy/2015/12/01/1f763ce4-985b-11e5-b499-76cbec161973_story.html

2015 HOLIDAY TRANSPORTATION 

 

November 27-29 & December 18-20

Virginia State Capitol

Posted: Thursday, October 22, 2015 7:30 pm

By ANDREW CAIN Richmond Times-Dispatch