Good News!

About two months ago, we wrote to tell you all about the successes Partnership for Safety and Justice were having with their effort to move omnibus criminal justice reform bills through the Oregon legislature.  Well, we’ve got good news.  The bill has passed!  The bill that was put through the legislature includes a number of reforms that PSJ has been working hard for:

• Increase in earned time for about 1/3 of the prison population
• Reduction of the length of re-incarceration of felony probationers for technical violations
• Creation of earned time for probations
• Suspension of the most expensive sentencing enhancements of the recent ballot measure, measure 57

There was another article in The Oregonian about the passing of this bill.  You can read that article here.

Congratulations to Partnership for Safety and Justice and all the others who put time and effort into achieving this victory!  Thank you for all your hard work.

Keep Up the Momentum!

In our last blog post, we posted a link to information from CAUSA on how to let Congress know that we want to see reform of the immigration system.  Well, CAUSA needs your help again.

August is a critical month for pushing this issue, as Congress is currently in recess and Town Halls are being held with members of the Congress.  CAUSA is calling for people to attend one of two (or both if you would like) Town Halls with Congressman DeFazio happening in Lane County, OR:

• Tuesday, August 18th 5:15 pm – 6:15 pm at City Council Chambers, Eugene City Hall, 777 Pearl St, Eugene  RSVP here.
• Tuesday, August 18th 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm at City Council Chambers, Springfield City Hall, 225 5th St, Springfield  RSVP here.

If you are able to attend, please RSVP by clicking the links above.  Additional information will be sent to you when you RSVP.

It’s important that as many people as possible are there, to let Congressman DeFazio know that there is widespread support for immigration reform. Be a part of the movement!

Stonewall Youth, one of our 2008 Basic Grant recipients, is looking for volunteers to help with their Stonewall Activism Summer School (aka SASS), coming up on August 24th-28th in Olympia, WA.  This is a week long activist training for 35 youth, aged 13-21, from all over Washington.

SASS provides free housing, food, and evening activities for participants and they are looking for volunteers in the Olympia area to provide community housing, food, rides and other support.  They need people to:

• Host youth participants in your home for the week.  All you need is couches/floors for folks to put their sleeping bags on and a welcoming environment for youth after a long day of activist training!  Rides will be provided in the morning and evening after the day’s activities.
• Rides for participants.  Transport you to and from their host homes, to the day’s activities.
• Collaborate with friends to provide lunch or breakfast for participants (about 40 people).  Buffet style is great, people will provide their own food for dinner.

Stonewall Youth is also looking for the following donations for SASS:

• Groceries so volunteers can make breakfast or lunch for participants.
• Workshop supplies for 35 people:  notebook paper, pens, folders, nametag holders, 2 packets of markers, 5 large pads of paper for guest facilitators.
• Help to cover the cost of an honorarium for one guest facilitator ($50).  SASS invites guest facilitators to come and do workshops on topics varying from sexism in the queer community to racial justice.

If you have any questions or other ways to help, call Stonewall Youth at (360) 705-2738.
There are great things happening all over the place.  It doesn’t take much to get involved and help to keep up the momentum!

Take Action!

Just over a month ago, Social Justice Fund announced the nine recipients of our Civic Action:  Delivering on Change Initiative.  The groups are working on some of the most pressing issues of the day and are taking advantage of the current political situation to really speak out.  It’s an exciting time in this country and we know that you all want to be involved.  Since the announcement of our grantees, we here at the SJF have been busy keeping up-to-date on what is going on with our grantee groups and we’ve found that there are plenty of opportunities for our members to participate.  Here are a few:

Immigration Reform

CAUSA invites everyone to contact their Senators, Representatives, and Congressional leadership to let them know that reformation of the current immigration system cannot wait.  Click here for more information on how you can speak out.

Health Care Reform

Statewide Poverty Action Network is working in Washington State to strengthen the voices of the 72% of Americans who support a overhaul of the health care system.   They can’t do this unless you first give yourself a voice, so click here to contact your Senators and Representatives and let them know that your opinion matters.

Idaho Community Action Network is working on an expansion of SCHIP eligibility restrictions to include more of the 44,000 chilren in Idaho.  To get involved on this issue, click here and follow the directions for sending your postcard to ICAN.

This is your opportunity to make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.  Take Action!

Partnership for Safety and Justice in the News!

Partnership for Safety and Justice is a Portland, Oregon based non-profit that unites people convicted of crime, survivors of crime, and the families of both to advance approaches that redirect policies and resources from an over-reliance on incarceration, to effective strategies that reduce violence and increase personal and community safety.

Over the past several months, PSJ has focused their attention on moving a number of omnibus criminal justice reform bills through the Oregon legislature.  According to Executive Director David Rogers, they have been working hard to bring “new and unlikely voices to the public discussion about smarter public safety and  policy spending.”  They have been seeing success and will be making the final push to move the bills through in the next 30 days, which are the final days of the legislative session.  Among their successes is an article published in Oregon’s largest daily newspaper, The Oregonian.  The introduction to the article and a link to the full article follow.

Budget crisis could curtail Oregon’s prison boom

Susan Goldsmith; susangoldsmith@news.oregonian.com

With nearly 14,000 people locked up in state prisons and another 35,000 under supervision from the Department of Corrections, criminal justice has been one of Oregon’s most recession-proof industries.

The department’s budget has grown at a 20 percent clip each biennium since 1995, and every household in the state pays $1,414 every two years to fund corrections.

But with a $4 billion state budget shortfall, legislators have tough choices to make about crime and punishment. If any real reform is to be made, however, it must pass one giant hurdle: Voter-passed initiatives.

In 1994, the public approved a measure that mandated much longer sentences for 16 crimes. That in turn drove the number of inmates in the state much higher, while keeping them there longer.

Lawmakers face either overhauling the criminal justice system or continuing down the same path, watching corrections eat up more and more revenue.

While the state’s prison population has grown to nearly 14,000 people, crime has plummeted in every category. Criminal justice advocates say Oregon’s model is a success, but researchers and data from here and across the nation show something different: Only a small percentage of the drop in crime can be attributed to more prisons and longer sentences.

In Salem these days, the criminal justice debates under way are philosophical: Should the state simply let large numbers of inmates walk free to balance the budget in the short term or retool the way Oregon manages corrections?

Some legislators and even the head of the Department of Corrections, a former Republican legislator, are quietly pushing for a new approach to criminal justice — one that allows for a range of sanctions for lawbreakers so fewer people end up in prison.

“This is a structural nightmare. This is the box the Legislature is in,” said Max Williams, director of Oregon’s Department of Corrections. “If we can’t change the size of the box, we are going to be stuck.”

Read the full article here.

As the article points out, the biggest hurdle that the reform bills face is voter-passed initiatives.  Change is possible if you all get out there and make your voice heard.  If you are in Oregon, let your legislators know that you believe in criminal justice reform and you want them to help you make it possible.  Even if you are not in Oregon, speak out!  Let your state legislators know that you do or do not support your current criminal justice system and what they can do to make it work for you.  Be heard!

May Day for Immigrant Rights

Tomorrow is Friday, May 1st, May Day, and tomorrow thousands of people across the nation will be marching through their city streets to support immigrants rights.  This will be a march to unite people in a call to President Obama to take action on his plan for immigration reform in 2009 and to restore equal rights for every person.

May Day, or International Workers Day, is a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement.  May Day began as a commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886.  The first May Day was a call put out by the first congress of the Second International, who at the time was meeting for the centennial of the French Revolution, for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Haymarket Massacre.  These demonstrations were so successful that the next year, in 1891, May Day was formally recognized as an annual event.

Now, May day is still celebrated as a day for all laborers to organize rallies and marches to call for equal rights for all.  And we in the Pacific Northwest are lucky to have strong labor communities with the passion to organize and mobilize people together to make a serious impact in their community.

So how can you get involved?

If you are in Seattle, WA, attend the May Day March and Rally organized by El Comite Pro-Reforma Migratoria Y Justicia Social.  At 3:30 pm, labor unions, immigrants rights organizations, other local grassroots groups and individuals such as yourself will be meeting at Judkins Park (611 20th Ave S) for a short rally before the march.  Check out El Comite’s event page for more details.

There will also be a march in Bellingham, WA which will meet at 12:00 noon at Cornwall Park and another march in Yakima, WA which will meet at 3:30pm at Miller Park.

If you are in Salem, OR, you will be marching with organizations such as CAUSA, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Rurual Organizing Project and Voz Hispana Causa Chavista.  Meet at the Oregon State Capitol (900 Court St NE) at 11:00 am.  CAUSA has a great blog up with information about the issues that need to be addressed at these marches, in case you need some more inspiration.

There will also be a march in Portland, OR that is organized by the Portland May Day Coalition in conjunction with the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC) and Jobs with Justice (JwJ).  Meet at 4:00 pm in Downtown Portland at the South Park Blocks.  More information about the march can be found on CAUSA’s event calendar page.

And if you’re not in any of these places, do not panic!  The official May Day website has a list of all May Day events and actions happening around the country.  So tomorrow, go out and support the renewal of justice and restoration of equal rights to all!

Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality Celebrates 10 Years

Congratulations to the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality (a current grantee of the Social Justice Fund) on celebrating their 10-year anniversary on April 21st.

Below is an excerpt from Salem’s Statesman Journal article by Dennis Thompson:

The Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality celebrated its 10th anniversary Monday amid some high-powered company.

The group that gathered for the luncheon included Salem Mayor Janet Taylor, Police Chief Jerry Moore, Salem/Keizer School Superintendent Sandy Husk, Marion County Commissioner Janet Carlson and former Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Edwin Peterson.

Not bad for an advocacy group that started a decade ago with 24 dedicated volunteers, said coalition Executive Director Eduardo Angulo.

“We did a lot of rallies. We did a lot of marches. We did a lot of demonstrations,” Angulo told the lunch crowd of more than 100 people. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s been a ride.”

Local leaders spoke in praise of the coalition’s growth during the years into a force for community good.The coalition focuses much of its work on children, providing parent-education classes and volunteer mentoring for students attending troubled schools.

Social Justice Fund is proud to support the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality and wishes them many future successes!

Read two great articles in Salem’s Statesman Journal about the impact the Coalition has made:

Equality coalition turns 10

Equality coalition has made a difference: The group has been crucial to success of children of color

“Break Up the Banks” Nationwide Protest

This Saturday, April 11, there will be protests across the nation to protest further bailouts of Wall Street financial institutions and regulatory reform of the current economic system.  People are call for real reform that gets at the root causes of problems in the current system, not just a quick fix.  The web organizing platform putting together these protests, A New Way Forward, has published a letter to President Obama calling for these 3 specific reforms:

1. Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur only a temporary FDIC intervention — no more taxpayer subsidies.

2. Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place — new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that poses systemic risk through the creation of complex financial instruments and consolidation efforts, or otherwise known as “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function.

3. A new agency — accountable to an elected Congress and an elected President and with no ties to the nation’s 12 largest banks — must be created to enforce strong anti-trust laws and other rules that limit and guide the behavior of financial firms, and to restrict harmful features and practices in financial products.

For more information on the protests and to see list of protest locations, visit the Demonstrations page of A New Way Forward’s website.

Thanks to Working Group on Extreme Inequality for passing this along!

Cesar Chavez Demonstration- March 31, Portland

Thanks to VOZ Worker’s Rights Education Project for sending this along. Hopefully some of you can attend! Send us photos!

Cesar Chavez Demonstration
March 31,  12:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Portland State University’s park blocks
(on the corner of Park Ave and Harrison Street)

M.E.Ch.A. de Portland State and Las Mujeres invite you to join us in a demonstration honoring Cesar Chavez. This event will pay tribute to an individual who not only inspires Chicanos and Latinos, but all those who champion for workers’ rights and equality.  The demonstration will also address ongoing campaigns in the state of Oregon.  Cesar Chavez, former leader of the United FarmWorkers, fought for improving the working conditions of agricultural workers by leading national boycotts and marches across America.

While progress has been made, there are many hurdles and obstacles that Latinos and other immigrants in the United States continue to face. >From the criminalization and sweeping deportations of undocumented immigrants to inequalities in education, health, and employment, Latinos and other immigrant populations must contend with unjust laws and attitudes.  Here in Oregon, the draconian executive order barring undocumented immigrants from obtaining licenses to drive is felt by a sizeable segment of the population that contributes greatly to our state—both economically and socially.
Whether it is lobbying at Salem for tuition equity, naming a street in memory of Cesar Chavez, or demanding the end of ICE raids, individuals and organizations are carrying on Chavez’s spirit and legacy.  On the day of the event, guest speakers will focus on the following:

* Cesar Chavez and his legacy
* Workers’ rights
* Comprehensive immigration reform

We will begin gathering at noon and the march will commence soon after.  For more information, please contact Cyan Solis-Sichel at cyan.solissichel@gmail.com or call M.E.Ch.A. at 503-725-5648.

Technical Difficulties

You may have noticed that our main website, http://www.socialjusticefund.org is experiencing technical difficulties. We’re working hard to resolve these issues, but in the meantime, please give us a call at the office if you have any questions!

206.624.4081

ESPC Recaps 2009 Legislative Session

The Equality State Policy Center (ESPC), a current 3-Year grantee of the Social Justice Fund just reported back to us about the 2009 Wyoming legislative session. ESPC played a pivotal role in supporting positive legislation, and stopping bad proposals.

Interesting fact: In Wyoming, the legislature meets for no more than 40 days in odd-numbered years, and for no more than 20 days on even-numbered years to determine the budget. That means a lot has to get done, and fast!

Thanks to Dan Neal, ESPC’s Executive Director, for sending this along:

The deeds are done. Thank you all for helping us with what we have to rate as, overall, one of the better general sessions of the Legislature for the ESPC. Here’s a partial list:

Passed:

• Workers’ comp reform – improved benefits for injured workers and their families
• Property tax on helium
• Insurance reform:
  1. Discretionary clause prohibition act – reduces legal advantage insurance companies have over consumers when the company refuses coverage
  2. Medical necessity review procedures – Improves transparency in benefits management by insurance companies.

Killed:

• DOMA – Amendment prohibiting all civil unions except those involving a man and a woman
• Tort reform — Caps on medical malpractice awards of non-economic damages
• Co-employee immunity
• Higher campaign contribution limits
• Voter ID bill
• Licensing exemption for employer-based daycare
• Many bad property tax relief bills

Sad losses:

• Expansion of KidCare Chip program
• Mental injury – workers compensation