The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Civil Rights Monitor
Winter 2007

• Introduction

On the Hill

• The Year in Judicial and Executive Nominations
• D.C. Voting Rights: Closer than Ever
• Hate Crimes Bill Moves through Congress
• Fighting to Preserve and Restore Workers' Rights
• The Immigration Reform Debate Continues
• Congress Begins Addressing Subprime Mortgage Fallout
• Successes and Setbacks on ENDA
• Backlash against the REAL ID Act Grows

Executive Branch

• Deja Vu at the FCC?

In the Courts

• Supreme Court Hands Down Major Decision on School Integration

In the States

• New Threats to Affirmative Action

LCCREF Activities

• Civil Rights Enforcement Takes Center Stage
• Leadership Conference Steps Up Anti-Poverty Efforts
• New Civil Rights Partnership Calls Attention to Nation's High School Crisis
• Why Americans Should Care about the Great Switch to DTV
• President Clinton, John Hope Franklin, and Tammy Duckworth Are 2007 Hubert H. Humphrey Honorees

Leadership Conference Steps Up Anti-Poverty Efforts

In May 2007, a rapt audience at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights' (LCCR's) annual Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award dinner heard one of LCCR's honorees, former President Bill Clinton, issue a challenge to the civil rights coalition.

President Clinton said that the Leadership Conference needed to "revive the last chapter of Dr. King's legacy, and talk about economic opportunity as a civil right." It was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who once asked, "What good is it to be able to sit at a lunch counter, if you can't afford the price of a hamburger?"

Clinton echoed this theme, asking, "What difference does it make in the end to somebody trying to raise two or three kids if they can vote at election time, when no vote they cast for anybody gives them a chance at a better job, a secure retirement, or access to credit at affordable rates?"

Rising to this challenge, the Leadership Conference, guided by the LCCR Economic Security Task Force, is developing a project designed to examine the intersection of race and poverty and more broadly, to help the national civil rights community play a central role in the policy debates over how to reduce poverty in the United States.

This initiative focuses on two primary frames: first, low-wage work, which accounts for much of the longstanding disproportionate poverty of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and some Asian Americans; and second, the concentrated poverty of the inner city, which typically has an African-American or Latino face, and came as an apparent surprise to so many Americans by way of Hurricane Katrina.

Increasing public awareness about the relationship between poverty and racial isolation is a key objective of the project. Toward this end, on June 7, 2007, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF), in partnership with the Center for American Progress and the National Partnership for Women and Families, convened the first in a series of policy briefings designed to engage the civil rights community, policymakers, and the media around issues at the intersection of race and poverty, and help identify policy priorities around which the coalition could mobilize.

The briefing, "Intersections: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Poverty," focused on the persistence of poverty and the intersection of race, poverty, gender, and ethnicity. The panel brought together two researchers who discussed the implications of racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in poverty rates, Peter Edelman of Georgetown University Law Center and Avis Jones-DeWeever, of the Institute for Women's Policy Research; and advocates who identified potential policy solutions, including Angelo Falcon of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Kiran Ahuja of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, Jacqueline Johnson of the National Congress of American Indians, and Hilary Shelton, of the NAACP.

LCCREF's second briefing in the series was convened on September 12, 2007. Entitled "Poverty, Income and Health: What the New Census Data Tells Us," this briefing focused on new data on poverty and family income -- critical information for policymakers to consider as they pursue initiatives to assist low-income families, such as increasing access to affordable quality health care for low-income children and adopting measures to raise the incomes of families in deep poverty. Panelists included Rebecca Blank, Visiting Fellow, The Brookings Institution and Ron Pollack, Families USA , who gave perspectives on the new data; and Mark Greenberg, of the Task Force on Poverty, Center for American Progress, Cecilia Muñoz, of the National Council of La Raza, Terry Ao, of the Asian American Justice Center, Stephanie Jones, of the National Urban League, and Jen Kern, of ACORN, who discussed the data's policy implications.

More recently, building upon these efforts, the Leadership Conference has joined the Center for American Progress (CAP), ACORN, and the Coalition for Human Needs in a new multiyear public awareness and advocacy campaign to reduce poverty in the United States by 50 percent within ten years. The campaign is based on the recommendations of CAP's Task Force on Poverty in its report, "From Poverty to Prosperity, A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half," and will educate policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels, while using a targeted communications plan to reach the public.

The campaign will seek to achieve the following objectives:

• Elevate and sustain national, state, and local focus on the economic conditions that contribute to poverty and impede opportunity in America today;
• Build and strengthen an effective constituency to demand legislative action on poverty and economic inequality and to hold political leaders accountable for these actions; and
• Pass or advance specific legislation or policies at the national and state level that will achieve the overall goal of cutting poverty in half within a decade.

As part of a multifaceted effort to engage policy elites, grassroots advocates, opinion leaders, and elected officials at the federal and state level, the campaign will initially focus on a key set of high-impact substantive recommendations, many of which were identified by the CAP Poverty Task Force Report:

• Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit;
• Raising both state and federal minimum wages;
• Guaranteeing child care assistance to families in need;
• Increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance; and
• Preventing predatory lending practices and preserving home ownership.

Although these issues were selected as the campaign's top tier, the collaborative will also draw from a larger set of policy priorities described in CAP's report. Those include housing assistance, improvements in food stamps, and other key policies.

The campaign will draw on existing relationships with coalitions of labor and civil rights organizations, grassroots activists, service providers, advocates for children and other populations, groups focused on specific needs, and the growing leadership among faith-based advocates for information sharing, strategic planning, and potential sub-granting of campaign activities to increase field capacity. Through use of established networks, the campaign will build on ongoing work while at the same time being prepared to provide bold leadership in coordination of advocates where and when it is valuable.

LCCR President and CEO Wade Henderson views stepped-up efforts on this issue as a priority for the civil rights coalition. "The reason why the Leadership Conference decided to get involved in this issue is simple: economic opportunity is a civil right,"

Henderson said. "President Clinton said that the Leadership Conference has always been in the tomorrow business, but you know, there's not going to be a tomorrow for millions of Americans if we don't take a hard look at anti-poverty measures that cut across race, ethnicity, and gender."