HONORING THE OBSTRUCTIONISTS
New York Sun Editorial
June 27, 2007

New York University law school was the scene yesterday afternoon for a four-hour presentation of the first-ever "New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Awards," which, so far as we can tell from an insert in yesterday's Times, was backed by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and by Mayor Bloomberg, who wrote a letter hailing "four outstanding organizations" as "deserving honorees" who "exemplify our belief that success is most meaningful when shared with others."

 

Well, hold your applause. One of the "deserving honorees" is none other than an outfit called "Families United for Racial and Economic Equality," an organization so left-wing that its Web site boasts that it held "a protest at Hillary Clinton's residence" to complain about her support for welfare reform. It's not just Senator Clinton that Families United for Racial and Economic Equality is protesting, but just about any non-communist American politician. The Web site boasts that the group "helped lead the organizing of the march against the Republican National Convention in NYC," surely a cause with which JPMorgan Chase, the New York Times, and Mayor Bloomberg want to associate themselves.

 

Mr. Bloomberg himself has been targeted by the group. Its Web site reports that in November of 2003, members of the group spent an hour and a half yelling and singing outside Mr. Bloomberg's residence in protest of his insistence that able-bodied welfare recipients work. The protesters wanted the city to cover carfare and childcare while the welfare recipients went to "job training" or other educational activities other than actual work.

 

A brochure for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality includes the claim that "as the economy worsens under Bush's reign," funding has become "scarce." Not so scarce, apparently, that the New York Times Company, abetted by JPMorgan Chase and the mayor, don't want to shovel $5,000 of prize money in the organization's direction for "excellence in meeting emerging issues or serving emerging communities." The brochure also reports that new members of the group are subject to a "three-month intensive political education," including sessions on "The Local & Global Economy: Why the Rich Get Richer & the Poor Get Poorer."

 

The Web site of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality explains that its top priority campaign at the moment is blocking "the Mayor's Downtown Brooklyn Plan," which, it says, threatens to ensure that "one more Black urban Downtown, rich in history and culture, will fall prey to gentrification." It says it wants to prevent the creation of another Metrotech, a downtown Brooklyn development it says consists of "high-end office space for financial services companies with a dismal record of employing local residents." Maybe they were talking about JPMorgan Chase, which has offices in Metrotech.

 

A "global philanthropy executive" with JPMorgan Chase, Kimberly Davis, said her bank, in backing the awards, didn't intend to take a position on the gentrification of downtown Brooklyn, but just wanted to recognize nonprofit leadership and management. The president of the New York Times Company Foundation, Jack Rosenthal, who is a terrific fellow, said the award recipients weren't judged on their content but on how well they fulfilled their missions.

 

No doubt it's a fine idea to help the city's non-profits improve their management skills and techniques, and how the New York Times and JPMorgan Chase executives choose to spend their time and money is between them and their shareholders. But surely Mr. Bloomberg, who speaks for all the city's taxpayers, is shrewd enough to realize the contradictions inherent in his joining capitalists in doling out an award to a group whose goal is to obstruct his welfare and economic-development agenda. It's an agenda, after all, that, if realized, would do far more to improve the lives of the city's residents of all incomes than would yet another motley protest outside Senator Clinton's house or outside the mayor's. This is the kind of thing one would think the mayor would want to figure out before he launches any campaign for the presidency.

 

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Letters to the Editor
July 5, 2007
 
 ‘Honoring the Obstructionists'

 

I was also surprised at the honors bestowed on Families United for Racial and Economic Equality because I had assumed that Chase Bank and the mayor might be more ideologically circumspect than to honor a well run, principled, and militant poor-people's organization [Editorial, "Honoring the Obstructionists," June27,2007].

 

But perhaps there's another way of looking at this.

Philanthropies have long been a way for the elite to save themselves from their worst excesses and complete intellectual dishonesty. FUREE, which is independent and accountable to its members —unlike many nonprofit organizations — as you point out, opposes work based welfare reform, and tries to reduce the economic hardship imposed on welfare recipients who are made to jump through numerous bureaucratic hurdles in order to maintain their meager cash and housing assistance. If you do the math, you'll find that the average welfare benefit comes out to $18.23 per day per family, for the modal family of three. That includes a housing allowance.

 

It would be interesting to see how many readers of the Sun could even contemplate living on this sum. It is just 40% of the federal poverty level — itself scaled far too low, based as it is on an assumption of low, and geographically invariant housing costs and 1950s household cost-structures.

 

For these benefits, welfare recipients are compelled to work. They are not legally defined as workers, and enjoy few of the rights enjoyed by regular workers, and many fewer rights than do the unionized workers alongside of whom many of them work in city agencies. Contrary to the claims of the champions of this so-called "workfare," employment outcomes for welfare recipients are far more dependent on the general health of the local labor market than on work-first programs.

 

Whether measured in terms of yearly income or stability of employment, the outcomes for workfare programs have been less than the stunning success its bipartisan cheerleaders have claimed.

 

FUREE directs its activities toward creating a more equal system, one in which severe economic hardship is not cheered as motivational, but looked at squarely as what it is: cruel and demoralizing.

 

If only the Sun directed its fury at the inequality in a city whose homelessness rates have been rising — 40% of whose population is low-income — and where

Wall Street bonuses totaled more than $23 billion last year.

 

Perhaps FUREE's having been honored by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the New York Times Company, and Mayor Bloomberg is a way for the city's elite to acknowledge what all but the most ideological economic libertarians recognize, namely, that the current situation has no justification at all.

 

JOHN KRINSKY
Associate Professor
The City College of New York
New York, N.Y.