The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities

In the 2010s cities and counties across the US witnessed long-overdue change as they engaged more with questions of social, economic, and racial justice. After decades of urban economic restructuring that intensified class divides and institutional and systemic racism, dozens of local governments countered the conventional wisdom that cities couldn’t address inequality—enacting progressive labor market policies, from $15 minimum wages to paid sick leave. In their book Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities, Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock visit case studies in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and New Orleans, and show that the contemporary wave of successful progressive organizing efforts is likely to endure—but their success hinges on a few factors including sustaining power at the grassroots. Here, Marc Doussard is in conversation with David B. Reynolds.

Marc Doussard is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is coauthor of Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities and author of Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market.

David B. Reynolds was director of the Center for Labor and Community Studies at University of Michigan. Reynolds has been a labor educator for 20 years and is coauthor of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement and coeditor of Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities.

Books and published works referenced:

-Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities by Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock

-Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market by Marc Doussard

-A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds

-Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons

-Partnering for Change: Unions and Community Groups Build Coalitions for Economic Justice, edited by David B. Reynolds (with essay by Reynolds and Jen Kern: Labor and the Living Wage Movement)

-”Living Wage Campaigns: An activist’s guide to building the movement for economic justice.” David Reynolds and Jen Kern. (Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2000.)

-Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies by John Kingdon

-The City Is the Factory, edited by Miriam Greenberg and Penny Lewis

Other references:

-Fight for 15

-ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

-PowerSwitch Action: https://www.powerswitchaction.org/

-American Rescue Plan (also known as the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA)

-The Green New Deal

Cities mentioned:

Seattle

Detroit

Denver

Chicago

San Jose

San Diego

Silicon Valley

Ann Arbor

Episode Transcript

David B. Reynolds (00:07):
We are living in a new era, when it comes to
cities.

Marc Doussard (00:11):
What this book, we would like to think, does
shows the tremendous tangibleand practical benefits to
thinking about economic andracial justice as, of course,
the very same justice.

David B. Reynolds (00:28):
Well, hello, Mark. It's a pleasure to be with
you today. For our audience, I'mDavid Reynolds. I just retired
as the director of the Centerfor Labor and Community Studies
at the University of, Michigannear Detroit and, have been a
labor educator for twenty yearsand was very excited to get a
copy of your book Justice atWork, The Rise of Economic and

(00:51):
Racial Justice Coalitions inCities. And I'm looking forward
to discussing it.
So, Mark, why don't youintroduce yourself and say a bit
about your coauthor?

Marc Doussard (01:00):
Yeah. For sure. First of all, Mazel Tov on your
retirement. I am a bit of lifephase where I think about that
more than I should. So I'm MarkDussard from the University of
Illinois along with, GregSchrock from Portland State
University, who's not heretoday, unfortunately.
I'm the coauthor of Justice atWork, the rise of economic and

(01:22):
racial justice coalitions incities. And I'm particularly
happy to be here because Davidand I have been treading the
same terrain, if you will, foran extremely long time. And
it's, always nice to meetsomebody whose work you like.

David B. Reynolds (01:38):
Yeah. So, in fact, I wanted to get into how
both of us kind of came to thiswork because we have been kind
of, in a conversation kind ofjust through our publishing and
our interest for years. I cameto this topic because for the
better part of twenty years, Iwas involved in a a network of
labor educators and researchersthat work with the national AFL

(01:58):
CIO. And what we were doing wasto try to document and provide
materials for efforts to revivetheir central labor councils,
the local AFL CIO bodies thattraditionally had been fairly
weak and moribund in America.But there was a real effort to
make them a a way to rebuild thelabor movement as a movement and
especially build those communityconnections.

(02:21):
And so, out of that, what werealized was that a new model
was emerging for how to buildpower one region at a time in
America. We actually coined theterm regional power building. We
did case studies about that.This turned into a book called A
New New Deal, how regionalactivism will transform the
labor movement. And in that, welaid out the basic strategy

(02:44):
where the local AFL CIO or somekey unions set up anchor
organizations that built theselong term coalitions.
So how do we use the powers oflocal government to make real
change and get a real agendagoing and really build a
movement? And and and the pitchin that was this was important.
It needs to get more resourcesand far more attention, which it

(03:06):
has. And so, more recently,Louise Simmons and I published a
book, which is now in paperback,called Igniting Justice and
Progressive Power, thePartnership for Working Families
Cities. So that partnership forWorking Families Cities is the
network which unites all thesekind of anchor organizations.
The exciting thing is that thesehave evolved. In some ways,

(03:28):
they're kind of a subset of whatyou're talking about, which, you
know, they're kind of aparticular model, but then
you're talking about thisbroader economic and racial
justice coalition. So just say alittle bit about kinda how you
came into this.

Marc Doussard (03:42):
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I showed up
after the spade work had beendone by the revitalization of
Central Labor Councils and thelabor movement's decision to go
local. In that way, as a youngperson, I had zero curiosity
about the world before when Icame to it, and I just assumed
that it had always been thisway. And then, of course, got to

(04:04):
learn a lot.
You know, my interest in thiswork has been seeing changes in
unions and the labor movementitself and in the collaboration
with community organizations.You know, when Greg and I were
doing this book, we came from aplace where in the mid two
thousands, unions and communityorganizations were selling all

(04:26):
out for these tiny victories bytoday's standards. You know, a
living wage for employees of bigbox retailers, small
unenforceable wage premiums formunicipal employees, you know,
things where people wouldorganize for two years to try to
raise a few people's pay to $10an hour or something that really

(04:46):
wasn't gonna move the needle onpoverty, life, and so on. And
about a decade later, a third ofthe country is in a state where
the minimum wage is slated to goto $15, and the agenda for
unions and communityorganizations is getting bigger,
not smaller. Right?
They're rolling logs. More andmore things are being placed on

(05:08):
the table. And what we wanted todo in this book was capture that
by talking talking about some ofthe connective tissue nationally
in this project of regionalpower building. So how are these
organizations knitted togethernationally? And we wanted to
talk about what this means forurban politics.

(05:30):
So as scholars of urbanplanning, Greg and I care a lot,
and we have to think in terms ofelectoral politics and things
like that. And our education asgraduate students started with
this kind of finger wag thatdon't you dare try anything
redistributive in cities. You'llbe punished swiftly for it. And
what really made us want towrite this book was looking

(05:51):
around and realizing that kindof first hazing lesson we had in
graduate school is mercifullycompletely out of date now. So
we wanted to write a book abouthow this happened, how the field
flipped, how labor and communityorganizations went from two
ships passing in the night topartners, how they went from

(06:11):
playing defense to offense, andhow being a progressive, which
used to be a dirty word, Ithink, in urban politics, came
to be something that, electedofficials are kind of climbing
over themselves to claim.
That's the very long winded gistof where this came from.

David B. Reynolds (06:29):
Yes. And and that's what I think makes this
book so important. You know, Ithink of the conversations I
have around, lunchtime with mysome of my progressive friends.
You know, inevitably, you get onthe talk of politics and what's
going on. And and, you know,it's either while during the
Trump era was the bad stuff thatwas happening, and now it's the
stuff that, well, it gotfilibustered.

(06:50):
Oh, congress is split. And youyou end up getting cynical. Why
are Americans so conservativeand all this and that? And I'm
sure you've had the sameexperience, and and both of us
probably have to be the ones toinject some optimism there to
say, well, you know, there'sstuff that is not being covered
in the evening news, and that'sthe subject of what we're we're
writing about. So why don't wedive into that?

(07:12):
Because you you have fourchapters on four different kind
of policy campaign areas. Andthe the first one does concern
wages. I think you you do makethis important point that, you
know, in in the year February,no cities had minimum wages.
Very few states had minimum wageabove the federal level. And if
you look at it simply in termsof the federal level, you got

(07:34):
depressed.
It's like, well, it hasn't goneup in a long time. Right? How
can you can't survive on thatwage. Yet the it starts out with
this really modest beginnings ofthe living wage movement, where
all you're asking is thatcompanies that get a contract or
financial support from the localgovernment pay those people

(07:54):
above the poverty level. Right?
But nevertheless, that leads towhere today, the majority of
Americans get more than thefederal minimum wage. And
increasingly, they're covered bya $15 an hour minimum wage,
which I remember when the fightfor 15 movement first came out.
People were like, ah, it's a piein the sky. It'll never happen.
This is crazy.
But you show how this kind ofevolved. So so get into that.

Marc Doussard (08:17):
For sure. And let me start by saying that, I'm not
so smart because when, somefolks in the labor movement
sounded me out and said, youknow, we're thinking of going
for $15 minimum wage. What doyou think? I said, basically,
fail big. Obviously, it'll neverwork, but you gotta try.
So, it's nice to be humbled forthose reasons, I guess. In the

(08:41):
book, we talk a lot about theliving wage movement, which we
see as kind of a watershed. Andthere's a lot of things to
appreciate here. So the livingwage movement as we know it,
first of all, took a long time.So it started with, Baltimore
living wage law in 1994, Ibelieve.
And if you look at the livingwage movement on its own terms,

(09:05):
if you were to stop the analysisaround the year February, you'd
kinda throw your hands up in theair and say, I guess we
succeeded, but I'm not sure whatwe won. You know? So the first
living wage ordinance and thehundreds that then diffuse
throughout US cities proposedbasically to raise, the minimum
wage for some city employees orcity contractors by an amount

(09:30):
that if you heard it today,you'd spit out your coffee. A
dollar, a dollar 25. So itwasn't a lot.
There were other problems withthe living wage. You were asking
for small raises for tinysegments of the workforce. And
then on top of that, enforcingthose laws was next to
impossible. Right? There reallyweren't mechanisms to do it.
This all sounds incrediblydepressing, but social movements

(09:53):
and change take a long time. Andthe living wage movement did a
lot of things that are now thekind of backbone for things we
take for for granted about,urban politics today. For one,
focusing on the living wagesmeant focusing on low wage
service jobs. The worst of theworst that happened to this

(10:14):
country afterdeindustrialization. Right?
Replacing stable, decently paidjobs with minimum wage, jobs
with a few protections, nobenefits. Focusing on those
jobs, elevated the concerns oflow wage communities of color.
It was a predominantly feminizedworkforce. So this kind of

(10:36):
changed the who. It kind ofmoved the labor movement, if you
would, a little bit off the kindof naive class analysis into
thinking more through the otherkinds of social difference that
were a part and parcel of whoended up in these jobs.
This was a significant changeover time. A second thing was
that to operationalize livingwage campaigns, you know, David

(10:58):
talked about the historical thekind of revitalization of
central labor councils. Well,this gave them a target to hit.
Right? So even if the initialtarget you're hitting of a small
living wage ordinance isn'tterribly significant, learning
to work together.
And, you know, unions andcommunity organizations are
federated in different ways.They have different conventions,

(11:21):
different kinds of resources.This is, yeah, I'm not gonna
make it like the Brady Bunch orsomething like that. But, these
were some seriously different,family traditions that needed to
be reconciled, and the livingwage movement provided glue for
that. I think a third reallysignificant thing was the living
wage movement was nationally,federated.

(11:43):
So working through, ACORN, whichwas the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now,ACORN set up a national living
wage resource center. And thiskind of circulated model
legislation, ideas, testimony,advice. And if you look at that
kind of elemental simple form,that's kind of the backbone for

(12:06):
take an issue, minimum wage,something I'm working on today,
basic income. They all workthrough that structure of kind
of having a national clearinghouse to kind of knit together
and learn from these localcampaigns. And I think a fourth
thing, which will just doesn'tneed to go into a lot of detail,
but we'll talk about it for therest of the time here, really.

(12:27):
This introduced communityorganizations and unions as a
kind of combined force in urbanpolitics, if you will. They
built a citywide coalitiondesigned to move all Germanic
votes. And once you, have acoalition in every ward, you
have, as they say, a coalitionin every ward, and you have some
real power.

David B. Reynolds (12:45):
Yeah. I was excited to see how, yeah, you
linked this idea that one of thethings that was new was this
national connection and nationalnetwork. In my own modest way,
you know, just as I was startingmy career, I proposed and got
funding for a living wageresource guide, a handbook of
how to organize these campaigns.And so I actually worked with
the Acorn person, Jen Kern, whowas the national resource

(13:08):
person. And, yeah, we got to seethat that book go out in several
thousand per copies out allaround the country.
We did some of that locally and,yeah, to put a face on it. Like,
I remember it just just the thethe cultural learning. Sitting
in the, Central Labor Council'soffice where the head of the
Labor Council brings his mail inthat has his guns and ammo

(13:31):
magazine that he's all veryexcited about because he was a
gun collector. And, you know,he's sitting there with some
environmental people and somepeace people, you know, and and
we're all getting along great.Right?
Because, you know, there therewas that kind of this
recognition what, you know, whatunites us is far bigger than
what's, what's the buy us. Sojust say a little bit about
where we at now today with theminimum wage. Yeah. I think

Marc Doussard (13:53):
there was a delightful time when we were,
concluding the draft, gettingthe book out for review, and
doing the proofs where all ofour facts about the minimum wage
were out of date as soon as wewrote them down. So, you know,
the the long story short isthat's where we are with the
minimum wage, is that it hasbecome so popular that nobody
opposes it on the face of it.Not really. The states, if I

(14:16):
were to do this off the top ofmy head, the states with a $15
minimum wage right now goingwest to east, I believe, are
Hawaii, California, Oregon,Illinois, New York, Delaware,
Maryland, Massachusetts, andthen the real outliers, Florida
and Nebraska, which areremarkable things to think
about, given our stylized factsabout politics. Where we are

(14:40):
today is that the limits of theminimum wage, which used to be
basically nonviable everywhere,are the limits of current
electoral politics.
So states with democratictrifectas typically today have
$15 minimum wages or somethingnear. What you might think of as
red states, the legislatures donot introduce the legislation

(15:03):
there. But when you get a ballotinitiative to put it in front of
voters, they stampede towardsit. Right? So the minimum wage
has won on far more levels thanwe ever thought was possible.
Cities have their own minimumwages, which is kind of a first
step. And a lot of what'sdistinctive about the fight for
15, I see I've got the story alittle bit backwards here, is

(15:26):
that by moving cities and bychanging opinion and the law one
city at a time, this became thebackbone for moving container,
policy at the level of states,which is a much bigger container
to influence a lot more people.So there's this been this very
real way where coalitions andcities have been able to scale

(15:48):
up the idea of the minimum wageby making it so popular and by
using their political connectionso skillfully that, there's not
a lot of states at this pointthat do not have minimum wages
higher than the federal one.It's been a remarkable
transformation.

David B. Reynolds (16:04):
Yeah. And and to come back to it, again, this
didn't just happen. This was alllots of hard work on the ground
organizing these coalitions. AndI think this this wage activism
did lead people to think, well,what more can we do? Like, I
remember in Detroit where the,Detroit Metro Detroit AFL CIO
got this put on the ballot andit passed by 80%.

(16:26):
And I just just how stunnedpeople were like, wow. You know,
we've been fighting defensivebattles for years. Look at this.
We just went out there and wewant this thing. What else can
we do?
And so one of the questions thatyou're looking at is this
question of and, well, whatabout job access, especially for
low income and communities ofcolor getting access to jobs

(16:47):
that are coming back to citiesand maybe thinking about
community benefits, while we'reat it. So so talk about that.
That's the kind of the secondcase study in your book.

Marc Doussard (16:57):
Yeah. For sure. So one of the long time
drawbacks to this kind of naiveclass analysis of work that said
where the bargain was, thinkabout class, numbers of jobs,
and economics, and this longtime approach that kind of
consign social difference tosecondary importance. One of the

(17:18):
downsides about that is peoplewould tend to be able some
movements would create net oraggregate job opportunity. We
might make more good jobs.
And then, you know, when thosejobs go to the same people over
and over, namely white men, youtend to not get the results you
want. And furthermore, inaddition to it being kind of

(17:42):
normally disappointing at aminimum, you you had a condition
where this was not good for yourbroader organizing coalition.
Right? If you're creating jobsthat sound great but are
reserved for a small segment ofthe population, this isn't going
anywhere. So one of the longtime goals of the kind of
community side of communitylabor coalitions was having some

(18:05):
say over who had access to goodjobs.
And this went to historicalracism within the building
trades. This goes to the socalled spatial mismatch, where
you would have urbanizedpopulations of color and, good
wage jobs far away from them.And other things, one of the
long time goals of theseorganizations was to ensure that

(18:29):
representative communities andthe people who actually live
near the jobs could get them. Itwas a very similar story to the
living wage and the minimumwage. You had a bunch of,
frankly, unenforceable earlylaws that sounded great, but
they won small victories thatdidn't amount to much.
What we've seen since 02/2010is, lesser than the minimum

(18:51):
wage, but for sure, a resurgenceof this kind of approach. And
what we talk about in the bookis that when you get away from a
simple issue like the minimumwage, which everybody knows what
it means and everybody knowsit's not high enough no matter
how high it is, you have to dealwith other kinds of

(19:12):
inequalities. And this is wherethe kind of strength of
community labor coalitions comesin. So we look at a few cases,
but we look in particular at thecase of a green jobs ordinance,
construction climate jobsordinance in Seattle. And what
you find is that communityorganizations having both sides

(19:33):
of the equation, understandingthe brass tacks of how
construction jobs are assigned,but understanding the social
side of discrimination andshutout access was key.
And there, what you had was athird variable, coalition in a
city where it had a lot of bitesat the apple. So if the minimum

(19:54):
wage is something that's kind ofa miniature from federal policy,
and we can just kind of imaginelocalizing it and everybody
knows how it works, Theseclimate jobs ordinances like
you're seeing are experimental,and they require greater
strength. So this is somethingwhere we found success to be
sure in a way that you wouldn'thave thought possible ten,

(20:17):
twenty, certainly thirty yearsago. But it's also definitely a
more qualified kind of successjust because the issue is that
much thornier. And as we'regonna get into the other
chapters in the book, this is alot of the story.
Certain kinds of inequalitiesare easier to organize on than
others, although racial justiceis a, tremendous asset in

(20:40):
organizing all of them.

David B. Reynolds (20:42):
Yeah. And I I think this job access. Yeah. The
the link to racial justice andthe link to starting to think
about what's going on withdevelopment in my city, in my
region, and how do we get morefrom it than the vague promise
of jobs that are gonna go to thewhite guys is important. I mean,
you get in a little bit to thecommunity benefits, agreement

(21:04):
movement, which would try andget these binding agreements on
big development projects thatincluded job access, but might
include other things like, youknow, investments in a park,
investments in community funds,living wage, etcetera.
And, even when these weremodest, it seems that you're
still really achievingsomething. And and I I I saw

(21:26):
that, you know, we had acommunity benefits agreement in
Detroit. The hospital thatsigned it wouldn't even call it
that. They called it a a letterof agreement. But nevertheless,
it was with a coalition of 21community groups.
And in the process of doingthat, the building trades were
supportive and got into aconversation with these inner

(21:46):
city Detroit groups. And, youknow, that just cut through, you
know, decades of tension betweenblack Detroit and the building
trades in the metro area. And soyou you can't underestimate
what's kind of going on behindthe scenes in addition to
winning that little formal thingthat, you think about. We
encountered this, you and Icoauthored in igniting, justice

(22:10):
and progressive power. We did acase study of Metro Denver,
where there you have a grouporiginally called the Frontline
Economic Strategy Center that'sgrew out of activism by the
local AFL CIO, and they getinvolved in this community
benefits campaign that takesthree years around the gates,
rubber and development.
It all this time and resources.And then what happens? The

(22:31):
economy collapse as thedevelopment didn't happen. You
say, well, what do we achieve?Well, still, like, you know, it
built the relationships.
And I think it built people'ssense of horizon. Like, no, we
don't we're not just fightingdefensive battles. We can
actually be proactive. What kindof city do we really wanna live
in? What kind of economy do wereally want?

(22:51):
And so it it wasn't surprisingthat today you have well, it's
been renamed the, United for aNew Economy, and it moved out to
the suburbs. You still have allthis activism going around a
different model. They really hadto evolve things. But
nevertheless, this organizing,even when it was ultimately
unsuccessful, led to somethingbigger, and more long term. So I

(23:12):
wanna get into then the thirdcase study because, you know,
the minimum wage activism, theaccess to jobs is all about
family supporting work.
But there's another part offamily supporting work and that
is actually having the time foryour family. That's the third
case study that you look at. Sosay say a bit more about that.

(23:32):
And how kind of more from, theright to time off from being
sick or vacations or gettinginto the issue of what control
do I have over my work schedule?

Marc Doussard (23:43):
Yeah. This landed on my radar in a big way in the
early days of the fight forfifteen. When I was involved in
Chicago and spent a lot of timeinterviewing striking workers,
why do you do this? What areyour conditions on the job? And
what was really striking wasthat even though the movement

(24:03):
was called the fight forfifteen, it was named after
hourly pay.
Nobody started their grievanceswith low hourly pay. I mean, to
be sure, the pay was too low.Everybody complained about
schedules. And after in the wakeof the great recession and with
the introduction of schedulingsoftware, the stories you heard
were you know, they're almostDickensian in their brutality.

(24:25):
So there's someone who's in thebook.
She had, pretty harrowing tohear her describe it. She had a
perfect schedule. She had twofull time minimum wage jobs. And
by working sixteen hours a dayfor hardly anything per hour,
She could scrape together aliving and, you know, for her

(24:46):
kid who, by the way, she nevergot to see. And just to make
sure to protect her windfall,this worker went to her boss on
her day job and said, I have anight job.
Please don't schedule me fornights. She was immediately
scheduled to work nothing butnights, remarkably. So her
employer scheduled her straightinto a conflict, and she finally

(25:08):
went back. She quit the secondjob. She went back to the boss,
said, okay.
I quit the second job, and she'snever worked a night since. So
this is terrifying in terms ofso many different ways that it
makes a mockery out of whatpeople want for work. You know,
first of all, contra the storyyou get about shirking or people

(25:31):
who don't wanna work. This womanlabeled more hours than I've
ever worked in my life a perfectscenario. All she wanted was
control over her time.
She would happily fork overmassive amounts of time, sixteen
hours a day, in order to havesome scheduling flexibility, and
even that was denied to her justbecause. So when you talk to low

(25:53):
wage workers, and this justscratches the surface, the
typical response in a lot of lowwage retail is if you get sick
or if a kid gets sick or aparent gets sick because a lot
of people are inmultigenerational families, you
just quit your job. You know youdon't get days off, and you just
quit your job and go start againsomewhere else. Right? This way

(26:14):
that the lives of workingpeople, you know, you're often
tap dancing on the head of apen.
There's been a range of policymodels and movements to try to
improve this. The two majorefforts are paid time off,
earned sick time legislation,which, some states now have as a

(26:35):
result of this movement. And theother one is so called fair work
week laws. Both of these get atthe problem of how you reconcile
work with life or what we justtalked about as social
reproduction in the book.They've been modestly
successful, but what we found inthe book is it's mostly because
these legislative efforts havebeen riding the coattails of the

(26:59):
minimum wage.
Namely, anywhere where acoalition is powerful enough to
win a minimum wage, it can comeback for another bite at the
apple and to do more. However,while you can kind of win the
public's attention with theminimum wage, sick days are
really hard. And in the book, weshow that sometimes people
represented it as a humandignity issue. Sometimes

(27:22):
activists represented it as achild care issue. Sometimes,
this will have a lot moretraction after COVID.
They represented it as a publichealth issue. You don't want me
showing up at the job sick. Sothey couldn't ever really settle
on a way to sell it, and weconcluded in the book that this
comes down to the kind of moreinvisible role of the feminized

(27:46):
work that is behind needing tocontrol your schedule. You know,
everybody can picture Rosie theRiveter on the job and counting
up the hours she works, but wedon't have a very good picture
of Rosie the Riveter at home ortrying to balance her schedules
or take care of a sick mother orsomething like that. So we
talked about that in the book,and the same thing for so called

(28:07):
fair work week laws.
We're just there to to just toregulate the horrors that are
visited on people withscheduling. You need to define,
like, eight new legalcategories. Right? So one thing
workers talk about is theneologism of the clopin, which
is when you close your retailerlast thing at night and you're

(28:28):
called back six hours later inthe morning to work an opening
shift. Clopin.
Right? And why? Yeah. Basically,because your boss wants you to
stay miserable is why peoplework clopins. So they have to
come up with one way to regulatea clopin, and another to get
advance notice of schedulingchanges, and another for being
sent home early.

(28:49):
And what we concluded in thebook is that in our masculinized
society, our vocabulary forphysical labor and paid work is
stronger, more familiar, moreintuitive sounding than our
vocabulary for the feminizedaspects that go to your work in
the home. You know, we concludedmodestly, I think, that this

(29:09):
represents the current power ofthe movement to move
legislation. But here, this isdespite, I think, what you could
consider a failure to win thebattle of ideas, if you would.

David B. Reynolds (29:22):
And I think this hearkens back to these
campaigns take resources andtime. Because one of the things
that that in my publishing isthat the coalitions have these
anchor organizations. Like, youknow, for Chicago, it's the
grassroots collaborative, itmight be LA, the LA Alliance for
New Economy, Atlanta, GeorgiaStand Up, because it takes time

(29:44):
to really define the problem anddevelop the policy that can
address it. And as you'respeaking to, some of these are
more straightforward thanothers. And so it is this
process, but what you'reidentifying is that there are
these resources there at thegrassroots level.
And as you mentioned before,more importantly, they are
networks. So there's a nationalconversation going on about how

(30:06):
do we do this work. Well, Ithink that with this issue,
right, we're we're we'recatching it in the middle of
things. Right? That, things areare are evolving and developing.
Well, I I wanna, turn to the thelast case study in your book,
which concerns municipalbudgets. So I think that's
inevitable if you're talkingabout what do families need to
thrive, then you're getting intomunicipal budgets because

(30:29):
municipal budgets have not beengoing in positive directions for
about a half century. Right? Thethe federal and state
governments have been cuttingaid to, to cities. Local
governments have been beengiving away the tax base,
whether it's through the bigpublic stadium that, you know,
you throw an ungodly amount ofmoney at or, these kind of more

(30:50):
secretive things like these taxincrement finance districts
where we draw a line around theneighborhood.
No. All new development thatraises property values in that
neighborhood will stay in thereand not get shared for the
general coffers of the cities.And as the black lives ladder
movement made public headlineswith their call to defund the
police, which is easilymisunderstood, but it's pointing

(31:12):
to a reality that for decades,we have been taking money out of
social spending and putting itinto police and prison spending.
Right? So they're raising a verykey question that in your,
chapter on this, you look at howpeople have begun raising
important questions about, oh,hey.
Wait a minute. Time out. Are wereally using our public funds

(31:33):
the best way we can?

Marc Doussard (31:35):
Yeah. So I don't wanna speak for Greg, although
that is what I'm doing here, butthis was my favorite chapter in
the book by a mile. And thereason why, it's because this
makes me the most hopeful. Ithought forever that austerity
was basically this inviolablerule of urban politics and that

(31:55):
no amount of starving people andcutting off your nose to spite
your face could bring sense. Andwhat we found in the book is
that a vision of racial justice,organizations putting their
money where their mouth is withhiring female organizers,
organizers of color, and so on,played this absolutely crucial

(32:18):
role in getting traction onausterity.
And there's a few examples ofhow it does this. One example
would be tax incrementfinancing. And, David, you gave
about as simple an explanationof TIF as I've ever heard. But
TIF destroys urban budgets. Itbasically creates a parallel

(32:38):
budget for, wealthyneighborhoods and for services
that, white folks who don'twanna send their kids to public
schools use, essentially.
It's really destructive. Theproblem is it's through an an
equalized assessed valueincrement earned over time, but
not inflation adjusted,consigned to a special district
for particular aldermanic usesfor twenty three years under

(33:02):
circumstances of blight, butalso renewable. Nobody could
organize around this. It's it'snonsense coming out of my mouth.
It's like, you know, listenersmight have clicked off just in
the middle of hearing this.
And for a long time, communityorganizations in Chicago, in
particular, tried to educatepeople on TIF. I once rather

(33:23):
disastrously gave a lecture inSpanish on the economic theory
behind TIF. Nobody was havingit, and you can't blame them. As
someone in the book reflected,we presented too many
PowerPoints with thesemultidimensional graphs trying
to explain what TIF does to yourbudget. And then what they
discovered, this and this wouldbe in particular in Chicago

(33:43):
grassroots collaborative said,you know, the effect of TIF is
racist.
It transfers revenues fromcommunities of color to
gentrified neighborhoods thatthose communities are locked out
of. We're just gonna startdescribing TIF as racist. As
soon as they did that, the pennydropped. And this is an
important lesson for financebecause the things that go on in

(34:06):
finance can be so Byzantine,like the bespoke arrangements
that go over Chicago privatizingthe parking meters, the Detroit
bankruptcy and the state'sattempt to privatize the water
system there. You're talkingabout swaps and sweeps, and you
need to really like to know,arcane financial argument.

(34:28):
And so community organizationsdiscovered, you know, we can
just say that this is racistjust like Wall Street's racist,
just like, high ATM fees areracist when the only bank in
your neighborhood is an ATM. Andonce Grassroots Collaborative
and other organizations starteddescribing TIF as racist, people

(34:50):
didn't need to understand thedetails of the system as much
because this accorded with theirlived experience. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Of course, people inLincoln Park keep more money for
themselves, and, of course,neighborhoods on the South And
West Side are starved, same asit ever was.
So in the case of TIF, thisculminated in a successful

(35:12):
lawsuit that stopped hundreds ofmillions of dollars of city
subsidies for, plannedredevelopment and a very well
located part of the North Sideon the grounds that it was
racist. And calling TIF racistbrought the city back to the
table and inaugurated aftertwenty plus years of demands,

(35:35):
TIF reforms, including some kindof community input. That's a
first example. There's two morevery small ones that I just
wanna say are very vivid.Another was a seniors
organization in Chicago thatlearned that by adding a racial
equity analysis to looking atfunding for, home health and

(35:56):
nursing services for seniors,learned that they could broaden
their coalition and that theycould analyze the issue better.
So, before, they said theseservices are underserved. And
now, they say they're racist,and they're racist because
they're they're services forcommunities of color, with
workers of color. And, ofcourse, those services are

(36:17):
underfunded, and they gottraction in Springfield after
years of not doing it. And Ithink, finally, if you look at
the Chicago Teachers Union andred for ed, and I I do apologize
for my examples being so Chicagocentric. The Chicago Teachers
Union, in advance of rollingover several mayors to win kind
of unthinkable amountsunthinkable in The US amounts

(36:41):
of, resources for primaryeducation.
The report that inaugurated thisdeclared the city to have a
state of educational apartheid.That's not very subtle, but
segregation and racism are verysubtle, and it's very much to
the point. This convenes biggercoalitions. It simplifies
issues. And I think it gives youa kind of legal threat around

(37:04):
systemic racism.
So I love this chapter becauseyou're starting to see austerity
be contested in meaningfulrather than symbolic ways. And
racial justice in particularplays a driving role.

David B. Reynolds (37:19):
Yeah. I mean, I've seen this in, the community
benefit organizing, both inDetroit, my own little town of
Ypsilanti nearby, that peopleget the idea where you say,
well, is this development reallygonna fit the neighborhoods? I
mean, you they at a gut level,people get, yes. Resource look
look at one neighborhood looksone way, and other neighborhoods

(37:40):
look the other. And what's goingon?
Right? And it's defining it thatway, you know, makes it very
obvious to people, like, right.That's the that's the effect. I
I would also say that, in doing,igniting justice, we came across
several cases in San Jose and inSan Diego. We're also raising

(38:01):
the question of local democracyand budgets.
Right? Like, shouldn't people beable to get together and look at
numbers are, how much money, thecity has, and where it's going.
And, actually, you can do that.And in both cases, that's what
these coalitions have done.They've had an organized process
of getting people together,examining the budget so they

(38:24):
understand the numbers, and thenstarting to talk about what are
what are needs and how does thatmatch up to what is actually
happening and can lead to somevery meaningful change.
One of the things that'll popout is how much the local
government spends on policingversus other, things. Right?
That immediately always alwaysstrikes people. What what I
wanna do now is step back fromthese these case studies because

(38:46):
I think, you make a very goodpoint. Right?
That a lot of the classicstudies of urban politics is one
city at a time. Right? That acase. And what you've done
through these cases, if youlooked at across the country and
now four different kind ofpolicy areas, and that allows
you to really kind of highlightsome things about what's
happening, what's exciting aboutwhat's happening today. And you

(39:08):
talk about the three p's, whichI think is a very as an
organizer can be a very helpfultool.
And those are policy, politics,and problems. And policy, I
think you can get your headaround. You know, it's it's it's
developing the, actual changethat you want enacted that using
the powers of local government.And, one of the discoveries I

(39:30):
think, was of this movement wasthat local governments have a
lot more powers than we givethem credit for. And then if you
understand them, you canactually make meaningful change.
There's a politics which I'lltalk about in a bit, but I
wanted to talk about thisproblem, which is really kind of
the starting point. Right? Thatthat that that this is how
change happens. The first stepis to define the problem in a

(39:52):
way that you can do somethingabout it. You know, I think of,
you know, when politicians arerunning for office and always
talking about jobs.
Right? But what a lot of thesemovements that we're talking
about did is good familysupporting jobs. Right? And
that's the problem. Right?
So talk about this. This iscrucial first step in in
defining the problem. How folkshave been able to do it and how

(40:13):
this can be a struggle.

Marc Doussard (40:15):
Yeah. So we owe a debt here to the, a a kind of
classic book of politicalscience by John Kingdon. And the
idea is simply that thepolitical system has, what we
would call today limitedbandwidth. Controlling problems,
what Kingdon calls the problemstream, is your surest way to

(40:36):
relevance because you'redefining which issues
politicians have to consider.And, you know, part of the
development of these movementshas been to change the way we
talk about things.
So the problem of tax incrementfinancing used to be an
arbitrary and unenforceabledefinition of blight, which

(40:59):
wasn't gonna move to the top ofanybody's queue. And now the
problem's racism. People arelike, okay. We better deal with
that. Similarly, with theminimum wage, I remember the
early days of local organizingaround this.
I think the labor movement maybasically spend its time
apologizing. Well, we don'tthink anybody will lose their
jobs. Businesses can bear theincrease. Nobody was talking

(41:21):
about the problem of our economycreating jobs that make a
mockery of what you work for.And so there's been this shift
in how community and laborcoalitions define problems.
A lot of that is centering theracial equity portion of their
analysis. So this is it's notwindow dressing. It helps them

(41:42):
define problems in terms thatmatch the lived experience of
people in cities. But what wedocument in the book is
basically, it's a lot easier tocontrol what your city council
cares about than to control whatthe federal government does. And
if you think about it this way,the old saw that if you wanna do
something about the economy, doit federally, not locally, in

(42:03):
some ways, it has it backwards.
Because to get something donefederally, what, everybody knows
how big the filibuster is, howour system's gerrymandered to
protect rural states, and so on.You don't need a lot to set the
agenda and define the problemsat city hall, though. And this
is a major element of the book,and I think a major reason of

(42:24):
why regional power buildingworks. A lot of cities have city
councils of 10 to 12, olderpeople. In Denver, really,
everybody knows there's oneolder woman.
You get her on your side, youcan make something an issue.
This is a lot nicer thanCongress where it really often
doesn't matter who yourcongressperson is. Community

(42:45):
organizations, if you work withthem, most of them have, ins and
deep working relationships withthe city and with, elected
officials. And, you know,finally, go on Univision or go
on the local news or, go in yourlocal, black newspaper or, if
all else fails, go march aroundcity hall. It's really easy to

(43:10):
set the agenda in cities.
So the problem stream is the onewe talk about the most. And
then, of course, that plays outin different ways. Right? And
part of what we talk about isthat defining the problem of
nobody earning enough at work ispretty easy because I don't
think I'm giving away anythingwhen I say nobody feels like
they're paid enough. Whereasdefining the problem with sick

(43:32):
days or paid time off or fairwork weeks gets tougher.
So this is kind of a basicdimension of power, and
reworking advocacy to the urbanscale puts activists in such a
better position to define theproblems that politicians have
to focus on.

David B. Reynolds (43:53):
And I think this is just a story it's almost
impossible to appreciate enough.That this is where your capacity
is and where you really onlyneed to know two or three people
in a city to get something onthe agenda. It's it's a
remarkable amount of power. Andand like you said, sometimes
this can be fairlystraightforward. Like, you know,
in our living wage campaign herein Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, you

(44:16):
know, yes, you get yoursympathetic reporter and have
them interview the parking lotattendant at the city owned
parking structures and talkabout how their wages, fell when
the work was privatized.
You know, you you get it.However, some like you said, it
can also take a lot of work. Andso one of the things that that
in in my writing that we'refocused on and the the

(44:39):
partnership of working familiesnetwork or these anchor of
nonprofits, these think and acttanks. And the the thinking part
is is kind of what we're talkingabout, which is how do you
define the problem? So forexample, you know, twenty plus
years ago when WorkingPartnerships USA was getting
started in Silicon Valley, theydid a report called growing

(45:00):
together or drifting apart.
And this was at a time when thenational press was heralding
Silicon Valley is this miracleeconomy of the future and the
knowledge economy, and this iswhat America needs to be and
blah blah blah. And, what thisreport showed was that this was
half the story, but the otherhalf of the story was this
explosion of low wage servicejobs that among other things,

(45:22):
half of the workforce of SiliconValley could not afford to live
in Silicon Valley. And so it itit created the problem. Right?
And the problem was prosperitywasn't being shared.
And, a few years ago, weactually used this we stole
their title. We did the samething, in what here in Washtenaw
County in Ann Arbor because it'sthe same thing. It's like, oh,

(45:42):
Ann Arbor is prosperous. We'reone of the highest per capita
incomes in Michigan. Oh, buthalf of the jobs are poverty
wage jobs that are gettingcranked out by our economy.
So this also does take somedeliberate effort. I do wanna
say a bit more about effortbecause especially in the wage
organizing, you make a veryimportant point of how it may

(46:03):
start as a very resourceintensive knock down drag out
battle. But because this stuffis networked and it's not just
happening in your city or area,the ease can change over time.
So say some more about that.

Marc Doussard (46:17):
I think this is a vital thing that can change the
way we think about what'spossible and what kinds of
policies are worth trying

David B. Reynolds (46:27):
to move.

Marc Doussard (46:28):
So we talked earlier about the Acorn Living
Wage Resource Center. You know,that circulated model
legislation, but it alsocirculated a remarkably well

(46:49):
built out nationalinfrastructure for these kinds
of things. Around the minimumwage, if you were to look at,
for example, whenever we do getto a solution for making a I
know it when I see it problemout of just in time work
schedules and, paid days off,it'll be through two
organizations called A BetterBalance and nine to five, which

(47:13):
are think and do tanks for thenation, right, that organize
these local campaigns, providelegislation, legislation, help
people, and then they helppeople learn from their
experiences, which is crucial.So the minimum wage, you went
from the first local minimumwage of $15 in The US was in

(47:33):
SeaTac, Washington. It's a cityof 40,000, basically a box drawn
around the airport there.
That campaign was in no waysustainable if you took it on
its own terms. Basically, theorganizers, as far as I can
tell, knocked on literally everydoor in the town because this
was gonna be done via a ballotinitiative. So they needed

(47:55):
everybody to turn out. Hundredsof organizers took part. It
built on a decade plus of kindof deep spade work, you might
call it, by unions and communityorganizations.
And you would think looking atthis, well, this is no kind of
model. We did all that to raisethe minimum wage to 15 for a
municipality of 40,000 people.And yet that both derisked the

(48:19):
idea and worked out some bettertechniques. So the campaign
moved up the highway to Seattle,and there, the organizers found
a way to get to scale. Theysaid, well, we obviously can't
knock on every door in Seattle,but there's a mayoral campaign.
We're gonna organize the mayoralcampaign. So they knew that
there was a democratic socialistof America, City Councilwoman,

(48:43):
who in the way of democraticsocialists, monopolized the
attention of the local press.They got her to champion the
issue. And then they startedorganizing mayoral town halls.
So just within the space, thesehappened, you know, you could
drive from one campaign to theother in a half hour.
And just in the space of a fewmonths difference between these

(49:03):
two, you went from a knockoutdrag out effort to something
where they figured out how tomobilize the mayors. And both
mayoral candidates in Seattle,by the end of this election,
were fighting with each otherover who embraced the $15
minimum wage more. And thenfinally, when you move to
Chicago, there wasn't evenreally a sustained campaign. The

(49:27):
activist passed a symbolicordinance with no teeth in the
local elections to show that,most Chicagoans would like a $15
minimum wage. And then theyconvene one of these blue ribbon
working groups, such as it were,which, normally, that's the kiss
of death.
That's where an issue goes todie. But then they showed up,

(49:48):
and they organized the workinggroup, and it became standard.
And if you fast forward a fewyears when Illinois achieved the
democratic trifecta, and theywere gonna move on the minimum
wage, I was brought toSpringfield to testify. I
testified to a committee. Theysaid, well, we'll call you back
for the for the actual bill.
They never did. They didn't needto. Nobody was even fighting the

(50:10):
issue at that point. The networkinfrastructure is so good at
disseminating techniques for howto organize, how to message,
where to look for politicalopportunities. And this is a
remarkable thing we've seen kindof play out over and over.
And I guess I go into thisamount of detail because I think

(50:33):
the details are kind of cool,but also because it's pretty
humble to recognize that you canset up a national network that
is going to move policy aroundUS cities so capably.

David B. Reynolds (50:47):
Yeah. And then and I think you do a great
job of highlighting this. And,again, you know, it it doesn't
show up in the evening news.It's it's the background story,
but it's a crucial, I thinkbackground story. I do wanna
touch on the first couple partsof your book, and one of which
is highlighting that wholenetwork that's really kind of

(51:08):
developed.
But also what this said pointsto is that we are living in a
new era, when it comes tocities. And and I discovered
this when I wrote a a new newdeal, which is that that, you
know, there's so much focus atall. The global economy and
everything seems outside of ourcontrol and national governments
even have less control. Whywould you think locally? But the

(51:30):
regional power building movementthat first began in California,
I think took ideas from thebusiness community and their
thinking, which was that no.
In the global economy, theoperating element is the region.
Right? The the metropolitanurban area. And then that's how
economic activity organizesitself and moves around and and
so forth. And so you're kindatelling a parallel story where,

(51:52):
you know, in in the latetwentieth century, the, a lot of
urban scholars and alsopractical activists on the
ground would say, well, it's allover.
Cities are falling apart. Wecan't get anything. But that's
not what cities are in 2023. So,give a plug for, for urban
activism.

Marc Doussard (52:09):
I think it's pretty simple, and it accords
with, most people's livedexperience today. Forty, fifty
years ago, I think the idea wasthat cities needed capital more
than capital needed cities, andthe future of investment was
suburbs and somewhere else. Andwhat we've seen for twenty five

(52:29):
years now is, I think, thatbalance of power. It's not the
same everywhere. I'm aware thatyou're near Detroit, but it's
altered.
And now there's another bookwith a tremendous title, which
is The City is the Factory. Andthe argument is simply that the
city is the factory of twentyfirst century capitalism. And

(52:51):
that's because corporations,business needs an urban location
to coordinate these very complexbespoke tasks to put together a
labor market with the depth tofind the kind of specialist it
needs. A lot of my books aboutChicago, everybody who doesn't
like Chicago and Illinois makeshay over the falling population.

(53:12):
It's true the population ofChicago is falling in the
aggregate based on thinning outfrom the very far South Side
what's essentially already asuburb.
Everywhere around the loop, youknow, it's the, and the North
Side Lakefront, the opposite'sthe case. You cannot pack in
people soon enough. The Centralpart of cities is so important

(53:34):
in the contemporary economy. Andthis just means leverage that
urban activists never used tohave. A ball bearing factory
could say, could make a crediblethreat.
You know, we don't like thewages you want us to pay. We're
gonna move. A hotel's not doingthat. A casino's not doing that.
Restaurants, laundries are notdoing that.

(53:56):
And that the economic base ofcities today is based on firms
who benefit from having affluentcitizens and who, even if they
don't, can rarely execute acredible threat to leave. And
that means that cities can picktheir heads up and say, I think
we can pass the minimum wage nowbecause everybody who would flee

(54:17):
a higher minimum wage has, let'sbe honest, already moved
offshore. So it's a grim storyfrom that point of view, but in
the aggregate, it means thatthere is leverage for place
based policy. And it's what youfound in a new new deal, and,
you know, the region is the kindof container for these things
for geographers. But the centralcoordinating unit in the region

(54:40):
is the city, and the center ofthe city is the central business
district.
And building out from thosethings, I think, leverage
abounds for people who want moreequity.

David B. Reynolds (54:51):
Yeah. And I I think, you know, Detroit for
decades being a poster child forurban disinvestment. And yet
today, if you go to Detroit,certainly the downtown and that
area going up north, it's a verydifferent story. And so it's
about how do you leverage thisto benefit all Detroiters.

Marc Doussard (55:10):
Not to pick on Michigan, David, but I think in
the book we said, even Detroithas pockets of, gentrification
and rising investment.

David B. Reynolds (55:20):
That's right. Yeah. And there was a
foundational document thatpeople put together in the early
two thousands called the hiddenpower of cities, which made this
argument and identified the veryconcrete powers that cities
have. In igniting justice, wegot the authors to update it,
and they renamed it why citiesmatter, but it's the same thing.
There there's concrete stuff youcan do.

(55:40):
It's not going to bring therevolution and completely solve
all problems, but you're gonnasolve some problems and lead to
some change and that's gonna getpeople thinking. What else more
can we do? I do wanna just putin a plug very briefly why the
book is titled The Rise ofEconomic and Racial Justice
Coalitions. We've we've alreadytalked on that a little bit,

(56:02):
especially in terms of budgetsand how you define the problem
of budgets. But I wanna give youan opportunity to talk more
about that because I've seenthis in the groups that I study
where very deliberate twentyyears ago, you know, you peep
who are the the heads of thesethinking act tanks?
They were largely white, oftenwomen. But you could see over

(56:23):
time, this very deliberate, thestaff, who they're hiring as
staff, and then who's going upthe chain. And today, this is a
woman of color led movement, interms of the the partnership for
working families, which by theway, if you folks Google that,
they need to Google powerswitch. They changed their name
just as our book was coming toprint. You know, very clearly,

(56:43):
this racial lens has become, Ithink, you know, very state of
the art and very important.
So I just want you to say alittle bit more about it.

Marc Doussard (56:52):
Yeah. I mean, I think the important thing, and
you really touched on it well,it's not just window dressing.
You know? It's not just we'regonna talk about what are
economic justice concerns andadd a kinda racial justice code
of paint to it. It's at everylevel.
It's through shared resourcesand practices between unions and
community organizations, and alot of this is the latter day

(57:15):
fruits of the living wagemovement. It's exactly what you
said. Right? I think for forbetter, the world is is passing
by people who look like, well,me and you, David. You know, to
to get hired doing organizing,you'd, better speak a language
beyond English.
And the movement organizationshave been very intentional about

(57:38):
elevating women and people ofcolor into leadership. And you
look around, the change isreally striking. And this does a
lot of things. Right? It it addsto your kind of legitimacy in
the community and your strengthas an organization.
Centering racial justice also, Ithink, makes movements smarter.

(58:00):
One very good example from thebook comes from Denver, where
there was a fiscal justiceorganization for the state of
Colorado. And that organizationhad been trying to raise revenue
forever. Colorado has a fairlyregressive tax code. In the mid
to mid twenty tens, thisorganization started doing

(58:22):
outreach to, communityorganizations representing
communities of color in Denver.
And they learned very quicklythat these communities that they
had assumed to be their fellowtravelers on raising revenue
were not in any way on the samepage. So what happened is upon

(58:42):
talking to these organizations,the fiscal justice activists
found out that if you're fromNortheast Denver, that raising
taxes didn't look good to youbecause, all that tax revenue
was gonna go somewhere else. Andunder Colorado's regressive tax
code, you were gonna pay more ofthe cost. So doing that outreach

(59:05):
helped the organizationunderstand that we can't just
assume a broad and diverseracial coalition and that we
have to take regressivity moreseriously over increasing
revenue. We have to reinvent theway we talk.
We have to work in legitimatepartnership. But what really

(59:26):
made this work, of course, isthey committed to do all those
things. Seeing the world throughthe lens of racial injustice
makes you smarter, but you don'tdo anything with it. You haven't
gained anything. But theorganization acted to the point
where when the CARES Act camedown early in the pandemic, they
were able to mobilize thisexpanded coalition that had been

(59:48):
expanded by centering racialjustice to, basically sneak
through an expanded earnedincome tax credit for Colorado
permanently.
Really simple thing. Right?There's a lot of steps there,
but centering racial justicemade organizations reflect on
what they did, talk differently,think differently, network
differently, and they finallygot the result they'd wanted all

(01:00:11):
along, which was, of course,going to now very directly
benefit those communities ofcolor. So we say a lot of it in
the book, but the message Iwanna emphasize is that there's
a lot of current academic workabout racial capitalism that's
kind of normative. It says,racial capitalism's a problem.
We need to do something aboutit. And if you wanna think about

(01:00:33):
what justice at work does, Ithink it shows the community
organizations and unions gotthere way before scholars and
pop discourse did, and that theyhave been putting a racial
capital analysis into practice.And the things that you might
not think of is the fruits ofracial justice, like the fight
for 15, are very directly thefruits of that. And I think

(01:00:57):
every time people, you know,some well intentioned people
stop and they think, doestalking about race just bring
backlash? For sure it bringsbacklash, but backlash is in
plentiful supply.
And what this book, we wouldlike to think, does, it shows
the tremendous tangible andpractical benefits to thinking

(01:01:19):
about economic and racialjustice as, of course, the very
same justice.

David B. Reynolds (01:01:25):
Yeah. Exactly. Well, I wanna circle
back to where we started, whichwas the hope for change in
America, by bringing in thislast p that you talked about,
and that's the politics. Now inthe book, what you're doing is
often talking about politics interms of the insider outsider
game. Right?
The insider lobbying for whatpolicy you want, and then
organizing kind of the streetheat from the outside. But

(01:01:48):
there's the more narrow form ofpolitics, which is electoral
politics, which in some ways youdon't talk a whole lot about,
although it's there. In someways, the connection is indirect
because a lot of the coalitions,their anchor organizations are
five zero one c threes that bylaw cannot engage in the
partisan politics. They can,however, engage in civic
education and getting people outto vote. But I I did.

(01:02:11):
There clearly is a connection.And to be very timely, just
recently, Brandon Johnson waselected as mayor of Chicago.
Right? A a teacher activist.Someone that you would say,
well, he doesn't have a chanceten years ago becoming mayor of
Chicago.
So this may have surprised many,but I bet you were not surprised
given all the stuff that youstudied to what had been

(01:02:32):
happening in Chicago with theRacial and Economic Justice
Coalition. So, talk about that.

Marc Doussard (01:02:37):
It's remarkable. I was fairly confident.
Everybody I knew was fairlyconfident that, Brandon Johnson
was gonna win that election. AndI think the reasons why are easy
to see. And if I were to saysomething provocative, it would
be that I don't think thattwenty years of people
obsessively reading five thirtyeight and keeping track of who's

(01:03:01):
gonna win the senate election inArizona and kind of focusing on
the minute details of electoralpolitics.
I don't think that's made ussmarter about how to affect
political change. I'd say theopposite. It's made us a lot
dumber, or it's focused ourattention in the wrong places.
Where Brandon Johnson came fromwas the Chicago Teachers Union

(01:03:21):
and the Chicago Teachers Unioncommitting to rebuilding itself
from the ground up. In the book,we talk about it's a very
memorable quote.
The first, this organizer, thefirst time she met the Chicago
Teachers Union, she saidsomething like, we came into the
school, and these people walkedin in fur coats. I said, who's

(01:03:42):
that? They're like, that's theChicago Teachers Union. It was
not a good union. Right?
It was, people who saw the unionas their ticket to for Coats.
The commitment to rebuild thatunion, to organizing in a basic
way was in some ways steppingaway from electoral politics. At

(01:04:03):
the time this was happening,Rahm Emanuel had just taken over
as mayor of Chicago. Theindependent older people were
not many. And, you know, RahmEmanuel, not for nothing, he
started out by he was reallyexcited about closing libraries,
like, really wanted to closelibraries, which is not well,

(01:04:23):
says what you will about yourpriorities.
Then he wanted to close publichousing, then he wanted to close
schools, and you got the idea.And this was grim stuff. And I
think what's simple to say isthat controlling politics
happened not by setting out tocontrol electoral politics, but

(01:04:43):
rather, in large part, bydeliberately reallocating
attention and resources awayfrom that, from understanding
that dropping everything for thenext aldermanic election is
probably a fool's errand, and weneed to build a more sustainable
form of power. And that's whatthis kind of organizing did. So
if you fast forward to theChicago of today, a former CTU

(01:05:07):
member and, organizer is themayor.
I am having trouble, if I'mbeing honest, counting how many
I forget how many democraticsocialists are on the city
council, but I believe I needmore than one hand to count
them. The progressive block ofAlderman, which was, one out of
50 when I moved to Chicago inthe nineties, is now over 20.

(01:05:28):
This didn't happen by, you know,obsessively looking at poll
results. This happened byembracing this more sustainable,
durable, nutritious, if youwould, form of power grounded
in, the spade work of, growingthings from a healthier soil.
I'll stop there before I getinto more metaphors, but

(01:05:49):
electoral politics, I think, isan artifact of the other things
that are more justified inmonopolizing an activist
organization's attention.

David B. Reynolds (01:06:00):
Yeah. In in a new new deal, Amy Dean and I
made a pitch to the labormovement saying, look, you guys
are spending a mountain of moneywhen it comes to election season
on elections. And while that'sall well and good, you might
wanna think about having some ofthat go into this more long term
regional power building becauseultimately, in the long run, you

(01:06:22):
get a lot more bang for yourbuck. And in, promoting the
paperback edition of IgnitingJustice, you know, and I make a
plug for the last election.There were two two notable
things in the last election.
One was Arizona elected,Democratic governor and some
other statewide offices, and thereelection or the, you know, the
the maintenance of twoDemocratic senators from

(01:06:44):
Georgia. And both of those wereconnected to long term
grassroots organizing. In thecase of Arizona, I did a case
study on it's called CentralArizonans for a Sustainable
Economy and their evolution. Andwhat they ended up was being
part of a broad statewidecoalition to really mobilize
Latino and other low votingpopulations to become part of

(01:07:06):
the electorate. And that reallyis a story of why all of a
sudden you're seeing Democratsable to start winning statewide
offices in Arizona.
And in Georgia, another casestudy in the book is of Georgia
stand up, in Metro Atlanta,which has been organizing for,
you know, fifteen, twenty yearsnow. And one of their campaigns

(01:07:26):
in, before the twenty twentyelection was a transit campaign,
because what's happening isAtlanta is gentrifying. Poor
folks are getting thrown outinto the suburbs where there is
very little or haphazardconnection, for public
transportation. So this was amillage to raise more funds for
regional transportation, so itwas actually regional
transportation. And, this led toa lot of door knocking and

(01:07:51):
really going into kinda lowincome suburban black
communities and getting peoplewho were alienated from voting
to vote.
Right? And the millage passedand that then carries forward.
It's now easier to say, well,okay, you need to keep voting
because now we can have this,you know, black, senate. So, the
very is a a a a connection, butit's not gonna be identified in

(01:08:15):
the evening news. Well, I justwanted to wrap up with placing
this book in the forward lookingtwenty first century issues.
You know, what we Amy called ourbook a new new deal, referencing
the historic new deal. And wementioned in there that the
historic new deal didn't justpop out of the minds of Franklin
Roosevelt and the Democrats inthe midst of the great

(01:08:37):
depression. You can look andtrace several decades of
grassroots organizing that werefighting for minimum wages and
banning child labor and theforty hour workweek and all
these things. And sometimes theywere successful, sometimes the
court struck them down, but itcreated the the context and the
pressure that when this economiccrisis hit, all of a sudden
these ideas were out there andcould actually be actualized. I

(01:09:01):
think it's important for peopleto think about that today.
And, you know, we think of, agreen new deal, which the
Sunrise Movement and otheractivists succeeded in kind of
putting before the nationalstage. And now what they're
doing, the Sunrise Movementitself is actually now trying to
sync roots in the local level.So you may not hear them from
the news, but there's a lot oforganizing going on. And I I so

(01:09:24):
I wanted to wrap up because youmentioned that where is this
movement heading. Right?
And we we look at the issue ofclimate change and we say, wow.
This see. I I haven't heardabout the great new deal
anymore. What happened to it? Noone's doing anything.
And you if you wanna getdepressed, it's a very easy
topic to get depressed around.Yet, in preparation for our
conversation, I went to thePowerSwitch website, and you can

(01:09:46):
see that they're talking aboutaddressing corporate utilities
and the rates they're chargingand and combining this racial
justice of rates with theclimate impact. And then also
the fact that guess whosecommunities are gonna be the
worst hit and the the earliesthit as things get worse, it's,
the communities of color becausethey're the ones that get shoved

(01:10:07):
on the marginal land that's inthe flood plain, etcetera. So
all of a sudden sudden, you'reseeing once again, right, big
global issue, but we look atwhat's going on locally and, ah,
look at that. People arestarting to, you know, make
plan.

Marc Doussard (01:10:21):
I guess maybe I like to protect myself from
disappointment. So I never readtoo much about the Green New
Deal just because I was fairlycertain where it was headed,
which is where it ended up. Butthe job of something like that
in the near term is to move thegoalposts. Maybe it did, maybe
it didn't. But what I know isthat if you were to look at the

(01:10:43):
local and the state level, thenumber of piggyback ordinances
on this form of power is almosttoo big to count right now.
We have, you know, something Iwe could have talked more about
in the book. Universal pre kpilots are everywhere, and
modestly funded programs, right,to just make childcare a public

(01:11:04):
good or getting off the ground.Here in Illinois, the state
passed so there's no Green NewDeal, but the state passed
something called the ClimateEquity Jobs Act, which is a
fairly ambitious piece of statelevel, green jobs legislation.
And I think most remarkably, ifyou were to look around at

(01:11:25):
what's happening with the, ARPAor the American Rescue Plan, we
are seeing this kind of policydevelop and be circulated and
tested at a scale that's almosttoo big to imagine. So if you
look at what some of the ARPApilots are trying, it's, you
know, pardon me for sounding myage.

(01:11:46):
It's wild. Right? Like, Chicagoand Toledo are experimenting
with pilots to buy people out oftheir medical debt. You can't
swing a dead cat without hittinga basic income trial or a new
affordable housing program orbaby bonds or some kind of cash
program. So some of these thingscome directly out of the

(01:12:10):
coalitions we have.
Some of them don't. Right? Someof these are kind of wonky ideas
that were turbocharged with allthe ARPA cash. But what I know
is that these ideas are outthere in cities now, and the
programs are going out. They'recreating beneficiaries and
constituencies.
And what seems certain is thatthe infrastructure of economic

(01:12:33):
and racial justice coalitionsand then the kind of national
learning infrastructure thatknits them together is your best
bet for how these ideas aregoing to continue to extend and
disseminate and broaden and movefrom kind of novel programs to,
taken for granted policies.Right? Much like Social

(01:12:55):
Security, which I have to remindeverybody, used to be an insane
idea that was gonna bankrupt theentire planet, but, of course,
it wasn't. And these are thekinds of coalitions, and this is
the kind of organizing that'sgonna make it happen. So I do
think that we think a little toomuch about things like the Green
New Deal.
Because if you look at wherethis coalition is gonna get that

(01:13:17):
traction, it's through,something that looks like the
old New Deal, which is acommitment to funneling hundreds
of billions of dollars throughcities where these kinds of
reenergized coalitions are gonnatake it up. So, you know, David,
you and I have, I don't not sureif it's an antiquated or, an
anticipatory professionalcommitment to optimism, but it's

(01:13:39):
there. And this is one of thosethings where I think if you look
at what's happening in citiesright now, that's a surer guide
to where things are headed thanwhatever is getting eaten by the
filibuster. And maybe I'll leavethat there.

David B. Reynolds (01:13:53):
Well, Mark, it's been a pleasure having this
conversation with you and andand reading the book. I hope
people get it and, as well asigniting justice. It's it's it's
rich, it's timely. And, I thinkby being exposed to these kind
of things, folks can share ourcarefully qualified, but

(01:14:14):
nevertheless, their optimism,that there is hope for our our
nation in the future. So, takecare, Mark.

Marc Doussard (01:14:21):
Take care. It's been great. This has been a
University of Minnesota Pressproduction. The book Justice at
Work, The Rise of Economic andRacial Justice Coalitions in
Cities is available fromUniversity of Minnesota Press.
Thank you for listening.