Maz

Tracy Lake can't believe that anyone would be willing to risk the U.S. credit rating.

TRACY LAKE: It's probably the most valued asset we have in a global economy, is the faith in credit of our ability to pay something back. And the fact that we've already purchased goods and services, and now we're deciding whether or not we're going to pay for them is just plain wrong.

KASTE: Lake is a real estate developer and she's worried that a downgrade would raise interest rates and make it harder to get the loans she needs to run her business. Like Carender, she's politically active but she's part of Responsible Wealth, an organization of well-to-do types that want to pay higher taxes.

LAKE: The only right and moral thing is to tax the wealthy, wealthier part of our population.

KASTE: Be completely honest. If you had to pay a higher tax rate, wouldn't that suppress you're productivity as a company, or your ability to employ people?

LAKE: Yes, it would. But I look at it this way: I am where I am because of opportunities afforded me because of our economic structure, because of our culture, because of the freedom and access to education. Wealthy Americans owe this due bill back to our country for the opportunity to earn great sums of money.

Listen to the story and read the full transcript on NPR.org

The Massachusetts Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) have launched MassHope 2011, a round-the-clock vigil on the steps of the Massachusetts State House to prevent the passage of anti-immigrant amendments in the state's budget.

Last year, SIM staged a 19-day vigil to prevent similar measures from passing, and they succeeded. They recognized that the victory was only made possible by a highly engaged community of human rights supporters, which included immigrants and U.S. citizens.

Despite popular support for SIM's — and other immigrant rights groups' — cause in Massachusetts, a relentlessly dismissive Republican contingent is hell-bent on advancing this inherently hateful legislation.

Q: Ty, what's your story, and how did you get involved in popular education for social change?

Whew! That’s a packed question.

Well, I’m a black man, eldest of seven and raised in Harlem and the South Bronx. I came of age during the social ferment of the 1960s – a time that shaped my understanding of the world as it was, and quickened my hunger to play a part in shaping the world as it might be.

The fight for social justice found me at a young age. I was six-years-old in 1955, when I discovered those photos from Emmett Till’s autopsy and funeral in a magazine in my parent’s livingroom. Till had been brutally beaten and murdered by a group of white men because he was young and foolish, and had broken one of their most sacred cultural taboos: he forgot his “place” in White America.

Those horrifying images brought my childhood to an abrupt end, and I became the black kid who refused to comply.

Q: Ty, would you share with us a specific instance in which you witnessed the effectiveness of popular education?

The D7 RoundTable was a community-based organization focused on the struggles against racism, violence, and poverty in Greater Roxbury – Boston’s poorest, brownest, most culturally-diverse, and politically-marginalized neighborhood. For eight years, from 2000 to 2008, D7 convened a monthly grassroots public policy forum, bringing residents of Roxbury and Boston's other progressive communities together to examine, debate, and exchange opinions on a host of critical issues and public institutions.

In the spring of 2001, Boston’s public schools were being criticized for an evident “achievement gap,” as reflected in the scores of mandatory standardized tests. D7 dedicated one of its regular monthly forums to exploring the issue – specifically, the factors contributing to the “gap” in student test performance.

The nearly one hundred community members who attended the forum were seated at tables of with 8 to 9 of their neighbors. On each table was an information packet providing a detailed profile of a selected area school district or local high school.

The popular education exercise was divided into three rounds. In round one, participants were tasked with becoming “experts” on their data packets...

Ten years ago, the great con known as the Bush tax cuts was signed into law.

We were told that the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration would be better off in the hands of the taxpayers. Those tax breaks were to stimulate the economy, create jobs and lead us all to the American Dream.

Of course, the story of the past decade has been much different:

The lion's share of the tax breaks were stuffed into the pockets of a small percentage of taxpayers. The top 10 percent of earners received 55 percent of the tax benefits; the top 1 percent alone grabbed 38 percent. And, at the tip top of the income scale, the top .01 percent of households snatched an average cut of $520,000, or 450 times the average break for a middle-income family.

The current unemployment rate of 9.1 percent is more than double the rate in the same month a decade ago. In more human terms, 13.7 million people are currently looking for work but can't find a job. But those figures are upwards of 76 percent higher if we include the under-employed and folks discouraged by a still-thin job market.

As for the American dream of white picket fences and a home to call your own, overall home foreclosures were two-and-a-half times above the 2001 rate by the end of 2010. Today, roughly 3.7 million homes are in danger of foreclosure.

The problem with President Obama's commitment to "comprehensive immigration reform" is that, like George W. Bush's, his measures thus far also antagonize immigrants – documented or not. But why antagonize working immigrants during this severe an economic crisis? Even undocumented workers are significant contributors to the U.S. economy, having paid over $11 billion in taxes last year.

Two very different federal budgets were considered this month by the U.S. House of Representatives: Rep. Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity," which was approved by the House, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus' (CPC) "People's Budget." While both have their ideological streaks, only the latter assumes a firm and rational position on deficit reduction without economic gimmicks claiming that lower taxes will miraculously produce additional revenue.

Emily Kawano, UFE board member and director of the Center for Popular Economics, and UFE's Steve Schnapp joined Cynthia Lin of WORT-FM in Madison, WI, the epicenter of recent GOP attacks on public workers, to explain the power of popular economics education in building a movement for economic justice. 

They also discuss the role of movement support organizations – like UFE – in supplementing, enhancing and amplifying the work of grassroots social and economic justice groups across the country.

Click here to download the interview (forward to 27:45 to hear from UFE's Steve Schnapp).

UFE's Mazher Ali shares news of Responsible Wealth's "Tax Wealth Like Work" campaign on Workers Independent News' Labor Radio, emphasizing progressive tax policy as a common sense measure to help avoid slash and burn budget measures that exacerbate the economic crisis and hurt the most vulnerable citizens. Taxing investment income the same as wages and salaries would raise more than $80 billion annually.

Click here to download the interview.

UFE's Federal Tax Policy Coordinator, Lee Farris, joined Linda Pinkow, host of "What's Left," to spread word about ways people can get involved in the fight for federal tax and budget justice.

Click here to download the interview (forward to 19:15 to hear from UFE's Lee Farris).