Caitlin Van Orden
Fundraising | Marketing | Communications
Blog Posts
These are a few blogs I've written for Center for Community Change Action. Look for my personal blog, comming soon!
Flash Boys: How to Stand Up Against the Powerful Elite and Win
By Caitlin Van Orden
May 12, 2014
If you don’t believe that the system in America is rigged to favor the rich at the expense of everyone else, you need to read Flash Boys by Michael Lewis. The book details the secretive world of “High Frequency Trading,” a new type of complicated, computer-based trading on Wall Street that allows the banks and high frequency trading shops that use it to front run the orders of everyday investors in order to rip them off.
The actual mechanism for this is too complicated for me to get into here, but Michael Lewis does a beautiful job of explaining it all. The bottom line is that every single one of us is being robbed every single day in order to make a relatively small group of very unscrupulous people mind-bogglingly rich. If you own stocks personally, have a 401K, a pension, an IRA or are in any way invested in the U.S. stock market (or most other stock markets around the world, for that matter), you are affected.
The craziest part about all of this is that what these high frequency traders are doing (which, to be clear, is stealing money from ordinary investors to line their own pockets) is perfectly legal. The book’s protagonist, Brad, was the first person on Wall Street, but outside of the high frequency trading world, to figure out what was going on and try to stop it. But when he went to the Securities and Exchange Commission to report what he’d found, half the people in the room defended the right of the high frequency traders to steal our money.
As I read the book, all I kept thinking was, “How have these revelations, put forth by a very popular author who has been on every major talk show promoting this book in the last two months, not incited people to a revolution?”
I don’t know the answer to that question, but the more I think about it, the more I keep coming back to one answer, and it’s actually the one that scares me the most. We as a society have become so used to the idea that the financial world is screwing us and so used to the enormous power they have to dictate the rules of the road (bought with our money, by the way), that we can’t even muster a response.
Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time at CCC, it’s that all of the major wrongs throughout our history that seemed too institutionalized to possibly be changed have been changed through massive social movements. Institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia have all been changed or are being changed by the deliberate organization of massive numbers of people affected by these injustices to make their collective voices heard. Winning small, local victories and using those to build momentum and win more victories until finally the drumbeat is so loud it can’t be ignored—this is what we must continue to do until the rest of the nation has no choice but to right the wrong.
The issue of high frequency trading is just one small example of a much larger problem. It is the entire configuration of our financial and political systems that big businesses and wealthy elites use to influence elections and otherwise buy off politicians in order to pass laws that allow them to get richer and block laws (such as raising the minimum wage) that would cost them money.
In Flash Boys, Brad and several of his friends and colleagues from Wall Street quit their jobs and start a new stock exchange that prevents high frequency traders from gaining the edge that allows them to rob other investors. Brad and his colleagues “pound the pavement,” getting other banks and investors who are tired of being screwed to start using their exchange. By the end of the book, Goldman Sachs gets on board. The problem isn’t fixed, but it reminded me of the power of the little guys to change the behavior of the big guys for the better.
That’s what CCCAction does. We equip the little guys to fight the big guys. Across the country, we’re empowering manufactured homeowners to stand up against abuse. In North Carolina, we’re helping the unemployed fight for a wage subsidy program to help increase jobs. And in California, our Housing Trust Fund project is helping cities across the state develop a strong network to ensure funding for housing for low-income families.
This is a just a snapshot of the work we’re doing to bring fairness back to our economy and stop the rich and powerful from running roughshod over everyday Americans. Join our movement.
Link to original post: http://www.cccaction.org/flash-boys-how-to-stand-up-against-powerful-elites-and-win/
Why I won’t be quiet.
(Ghost written by Caitlin Van Orden)
28.March.14
By: Hattie Wilkins
(Hattie Wilkins is a great-grandmother and organizer with CCC partner Ohio Organizing Collaborative.)
Growing up my parents used to tell me “A closed mouth doesn’t get fed, if you have a problem, you need to let people know about it.” That always stuck with me. In 2009, when I lost my job and my health insurance, I started talking about it with the women in my neighborhood, some of whom were going through the same thing. That was when I met with an organizer from the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a CCC partner, who told me how I could get involved in the healthcare fight by telling my story.
I began going around and telling people my story about losing my health insurance. Many of them had similar experiences, but they were scared to speak up. I would tell them that I am telling my story to speak for those who are afraid. But after I was done, many of them would start to speak up as well. I spoke to everyone, Republicans, Independents, Democrats.A lot of people I spoke to were not on board with Obamacare at first. They had a lot of misgivings and many of them didn’t really understand it. But after I talked to them, they would see it in a different way and then they would support it and go out and talk to other people about it and get them on board too.
Even after Obamacare passed, I continued to work with OOC. When the bank tried to foreclose on my house, I used the grassroots organizing skills I learned to fight back. So I studied up on foreclosure laws. I knew that if the bank kicked me out of my house, they would have to pay the city of Youngstown $10,000 because the city enacted a new law requiring banks who want to foreclose on properties to pay a $10,000 bond on each structure in an effort to make those lending institutions more accountable. Once you start talking about money coming out of their pocket, the banks are more willing to figure out how to keep you in your house. So they forgave my debt and I maintain the property and pay the taxes.
Now I am known in my community as a fighter. I feel more powerful now that I am able to help the people in my community. The skills I learned when I attended a Grassroots Ambassador training session helped me help myself and so now, I can help others. There was a whole group of us from Youngstown who went to the training and we formed our own community group that meets regularly to discuss the problems facing our town and to build strategies to fix them.
Getting involved, knowing your rights, and standing up and speaking out for what you believe is so important. I have a 7-year-old great-grand daughter, Ja’Nia. I tell her, “I’m doing all of this for you, so you can watch me and then one day you can do it too.” And you know what, she tells me that when she grows up she wants to be just like me. I hope it’s true.Click here to learn more about other female organizer heroes and the Women Fight Poverty NOW campaign.
L:ink to original post: http://www.cccaction.org/the-other-war-on-women/
The Other War on Women
by Caitlin Van Orden
6.February.14
When we hear the term “war on women,” it generally refers to attempts by state and local governments to limit women’s access to reproductive services. While this is a real and serious issue (and one that makes me very angry), there is another war raging that is just as insidious and receives far less media attention. The economic war on women.
As a professional woman with a good job and a stable economic situation, I recognize the enormous privileges I enjoy. But the more I understand just how much of an exception I am among women in my own country, the more obsessed I have become with learning everything I can about why the number of women living in poverty in the U.S. is at such a record high and how we can fix it. To that end, I have been devouring The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, released last month by the Center for American Progress.
Here is some of what I’ve learned.Of the more than 100 million people in the United States who are living in or near poverty, 70 percent are women and their children, despite the fact that women comprise half of the U.S. workforce and hold the majority of college and advanced degrees. (We also make up the majority of the country’s breadwinners, caregivers, consumers and voters.)
Why is poverty for women so lopsided? Well, as with most things, there is no one answer. But we can easily point to several main contributors to this phenomenon.The first, and probably the most widely known, is the persistent pay gap between men and women. Five decades after Peggy Olson fought Don Draper for the equal pay that she deserved, women still earn only 70 cents on average for every dollar earned by a man. If you are a woman of color, it’s even worse. African American women earn 64 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents on average for every dollar earned by white men.
I’ve been hearing about this wage gap my whole life, but the cause has never been clear. It can’t possibly be that a majority of employers are just outright sexist, can it? The answer is that while that’s part the reason, it’s not the whole story.If you look at average wages for low-wage jobs in a variety of sectors such as construction, nursing, home-care and truck driving, with a few exceptions, the jobs we know to be dominated by women pay less on average than those we know to be dominated by men. The exceptions are for jobs such as registered nurse and teacher, which require more education.
Aside from lower pay, many jobs lack family-friendly policies, such as predictable work schedules, paid sick leave and medical insurance. While this is bad for everyone, it affects women most acutely as they are more likely to be the primary or sole caregiver of children.Without the ability to plan their schedules week-to-week or day-to-day, or the flexibility to take off work to care for a sick child without losing pay, or worse, their job, women are often forced to choose between their jobs and their other responsibilities, leaving them in a cycle of economic instability.
A 2013 Cornell study referenced in the Shriver Report found that the U.S. dropped from 6th to 17th in rankings of female labor force participation between 1990 and 2010. The study’s authors cited one main reason as our failure to keep up with other countries in terms of family-friendly policies. In fact, we are the only developed country that doesn’t require paid maternity leave. In that category we find ourselves in the company of only three other countries: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and Liberia.
CCC has always emphasized the particular needs of women in our fight for economic justice, for example, in our push for a caregiver credit for Social Security, which primarily benefits women by ensuring they receive credits toward their Social Security when they leave the labor market to care for children or ailing relatives. It is one of the things that attracted me to the organization.As we embark on our new campaign, catalyzing a movement to fight poverty in the U.S. through more and better jobs, we will continue to focus on the particular needs of women. Join our movement to fight poverty by signing our Fight Poverty NOW pledge.
Ohio Bus Tour Series
by Caitlin Van Orden
May 2013
This was a multi-part series I wrote about my experience on a bus tour in Ohio fighting for better jobs and fairer economic policies. Each "Day" was a new post.
Day 1: Akron
I am on my first trip to the field for the Center for Community Change. I am taking the opportunity to gain firsthand experience with our work. Community organizing is difficult, but magical. It pulls people from many different corners with many different experiences toward one cause. Some on this tour are very directly affected by the issues we are fighting for, others are merely brushed by the issues, yet they all chose to leave their lives for a week and make a statement.
I arrived in Ohio yesterday, after waking at 5:30 am to catch an early flight, I was tired and unsure of what to expect when I was greeted by Tammy, a fellow CCC staffer from Maine who spends the majority of her time here in Ohio working with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC)—one of our main partners in the state—fighting to improve the economic situation in the state.
Although I was not supposed to meet up with the tour until later that evening in Cleveland, my early arrival gave me the opportunity to join the tour at its inception in Akron. During the 45 minute drive between Cleveland and Akron, Tammy gave me an overview of the issues.Ohio is facing a dire situation. A state economy based largely on manufacturing jobs that have left the country, the unemployment remains over seven percent statewide and is as high as 9.5 percent in Youngstown. Many people here had their wealth wrapped up in their homes, but with the housing crash, they have seen it all disappear. The school system is funded by property taxes that have rapidly declined due to foreclosures.
Making matters worse, over the last 10 years there has been a rapid growth in for-profit charter schools in the state, which are publicly funded but privately run. David Brennan, an Akron resident and the CEO White Hat Management, owns the majority of the charter schools in the state. Because of his wealth and influence in the state government, he’s successfully had laws passed that funnel tax money away from public schools and toward his charter schools. It might be one thing if these schools provided an excellent learning opportunity for Ohio’s children. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The majority of White Hat’s charter schools are failing. Although there are laws in place mandating that failing charter schools close after three years, Brennan’s found a way around this by reopening closed schools under new names.
Once in Akron, I went to a local school to attend a community meeting for parents and city council members to discuss the city’s education system. Many parents came up to discuss their experience with charter schools. One thing that kept coming up was the “School to Prison Pipeline”. A term coined to describe how schools are providing substandard education and systematically criminalizing students through extreme implementation of “zero tolerance” policies. One parent told of her six year old son who was suspended for assault after breaking and throwing a crayon in class.
In addition to privatizing the schools, the state is also privatizing its prisons. Prison owners have successfully pushed the state to pass laws that send more people to prison. The situation is so bad that it’s estimated that 80-90 percent of the black male population in Akron have been incarcerated. For every prisoner in the system, the prison receives $45,000 in tax payer money. That is more than that same prisoner would likely make in salary if they were not incarcerated.
People in the meeting were riled up once this was laid out for them. They knew their kids were not getting the education they deserved and were dealing with an unreasonable disciplinary system, but this was a whole new angle.
Feeding on the enthusiasm, OOC invited all of the participants to take part in an action on David Brennan’s house. I joined about 20 people from the meeting in a nearby school parking lot in the pouring rain. We all learned a few chants and then began marching from the parking lot through a wealthy neighborhood to Mr. Brennan’s home. When we arrived, I was astonished. What initially appeared to be two very large homes next to each one another was actually one large “complex” with tennis court in back.
It was galling to look at this man’s enormous home, paid for with these people’s taxes and meant for their children’s education. They stood in the rain chanting for him to stop taking advantage of Akron and destroying their schools. A list of demands were read and a small delegation went to the front door to deliver a letter. We had done what we had come to do and we all marched back, in the rain, still chanting. It was the first action of the Opportunity Bus Tour and it engaged a new crop of people.
After the action, 20 of us loaded up the bus and headed to Cleveland for the night. Exhausted, but energized, we ended the first day in the Cleveland Hostel.
Day 2: Cleveland and Youngstown
The next morning we all awoke bright and early and enjoyed a practically gourmet breakfast in the hostel provided by the local chapter of the Communication Workers of America. Over eggs and coffee we got to know each other and prepped for that day’s actions.
After breakfast we got back on the bus and headed to a local church where members of the community were already filing in, anxious to hear about an issue facing their town. The city of Cleveland had recently passed a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) resolution meant to ensure that “local development projects create direct benefits to residents”, according to the city’s website.
But the CBA was negotiated without input from the true community, including sufficient representation by low-income communities and communities of color. The result is a CBA that doesn’t provide many of the safeguards for Clevelanders that it is meant to, such as livable wages and preferential hiring for local residents.
After explaining the issues to the nearly packed church, everyone loaded onto two school buses and headed downtown with a letter, signed by all of the attending members, outlining eight enhancements to the existing CBA to make it truly benefit the community. We parked in front of the Cleveland City Hall and began chanting. It was a sight to see! All of these incredibly passionate people chanting and waving signs in support of their cause. After a couple of speeches, a small delegation was sent into the building to deliver the letter to Mayor Jackson. Speeches and chanting continued while we waited and a short while later the delegation returned and let us know that the letter had been delivered a meeting was set up with the mayor for the following week. This is what democracy looks like!
Next stop: Youngstown.
Youngstown
We arrived in Youngstown a few hours later. I had spent my time on the bus reading a fascinating article about the history of the city, much of it revolving around the town’s previous problems with the mafia (who knew?).
We were there for a mayoral forum being held by the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative (MVOC). The town had a mayoral primary in a couple of weeks, and all three candidates were attending this forum to answer questions about jobs, housing, and fracking.
The room was set up with three large boards, one for each of the issues named above, with questions down the side and two columns: one labeled “Lead” the other “Get out of the way.” The first part of the forum was relatively straight forward, with each candidate stating they would lead on almost every issue presented. Getting out of the way was clearly explained as abandoning the community—something no one wanted to be seen as doing.
But when the subject got to fracking, the audience suddenly became deeply divided. The MVOC presenters were of the viewpoint that fracking needed to be closely regulated by the local community, not the state, to ensure protection of the areas environment, especially water. But many people in the town were finding jobs through the fracking industry for the first time in years and were not interested in strict local restrictions that might drive those jobs to other towns.
The candidates, for their part, took very nuanced views on the issue and in several instances stated they would “get out of the way”, including on the issue of passing local legislation to return control of environmental regulations to the city from the state.
I have a background in environmental science and am familiar with the ways that fracking will likely destroy Youngstown’s environment and future. But I also understand the need to find a job in a town that still suffers from 9.5 percent unemployment. It was an interesting lesson in the tension that can exist between economic and environmental needs and a good reminder of the challenges faced by community organizers on complex issues.
Day 3: Canton and Newark
In Canton, we arrived at Nimisilla Park where local organizers were already setting up for a town meeting. It was a beautiful day, the first sunny day of the entire trip, and the tour organizers immediately jumped off the bus to set up. Within an hour, a group of 100 or so people had gathered at the park to hear the presentation on an issue that was deeply affecting their small community: foreclosures.
Norma Mills, an organizer in Canton spoke of the damage she saw in her community. As an organizer, she spends a lot of time walking neighborhoods and knocking on doors. Last year, she noticed that many of the homes she had visited previously were boarded up and the people still in the neighborhood seemed to be in despair.
People in Canton, and throughout Ohio, are losing their homes. And those who’ve been lucky enough not to, have found that their homes losing value as their neighborhood falls into disrepair from empty houses that attract crime and vandalism.
Last August, Norma turned her frustration into action, spearheading an effort to put an ordinance on a city ballot to address the problem. It mandated that when a bank forecloses on a home, it must put up a $10,000 cash bond that the city then must use to maintain the property. The measure passed, but instead of complying, the banks found a clever way around this “problem”. They start the foreclosure process and kick people out of their homes, and then withdraw their claim and abandon the property, thereby avoiding having to put up the $10,000.
Following pressure from the community, an amendment to the ordinance is now before the city council that would require the banks to put up the bond as soon as they started the foreclosure process. At the Nimisilla Park rally, four city council members came out to express support for the amendment. Even the mayor, previously indifferent to the issue, came to express his support after receiving pressure from the community. It was the perfect example of the power of people to make change.
One of the biggest offenders of this practice of skirting the mandatory bond is JP Morgan Chase, owner of Chase Bank. To express our displeasure, we all boarded a bus and headed downtown to the local Chase Bank. Upon arrival we quickly shuffled into the bank with signs and a bullhorn in tow. Norma walked up to the bank manager and began reading a letter to bank president Jamie Dimon. Once she was finished, we chanted inside the bank and then again outside the bank. It was beautiful.Once back at the park, we reloaded the bus tour. At this point we had collected so many people for the tour we need two buses! We all settled in for the two hour drive to Newark.
Newark
I fell asleep on the ride from Canton to Newark, but I woke up to the most amazing sight, some 100people holding signs, lining the street and cheering for the buses! It was such an energizing moment after so many days on the road. We all felt instantly rejuvenated.
When we got off the bus we were greeted by a full scale community concert taking place in the space behind the Shiloh Baptist Church. A band was playing, grills churned out hotdogs and hamburgers, and people of all ages and races dancing and holding signs.
Newark is a community that is plagued by arrests and drug addiction. It is a perfect example of the problems with the so-called “war on drugs”, which targets primarily low-income communities and communities of color, putting millions of people—mainly black men—in jail for non-violent infractions that tears apart families and communities.
If you have never been caught up in the criminal justice system or know anyone who has, it is hard to imagine the real effects. On this trip, I learned how impossible it can be for someone who’s been to prison to ever become a productive member of society because we won’t even allow them to have a job!
One way many are fighting this scourge is through a movement called “ban the box”. You may have noticed a question that comes standard on most job applications that many of us answer without a second thought: "Have you ever been convicted of a felony in the United States?" Most of us simply answer “no” and move on. In Newark, I learned what it's like for the millions of people who have to answer “yes”.
At the rally several people spoke about their experience with “the box”. The stories were all unique, but had one thing in common, every one of them were stuck in a cycle. Although they had paid their debt to society, getting more education, helping others, and serving in their communities, they were all struggling to get by because they can’t find jobs or housing.
It was frustrating and sad to hear. All of them had made the best out of a bad experience. They learned from their mistakes and worked to better themselves and give back, yet society would not forgive them. Not only is that unfair to them and their families, it hurts the entire community.
Luckily we were able to vent our frustration a bit with a march around the neighborhood.Although the bus tour still had two more stops, Newark was the end of the line for me. After dinner, I hugged everyone goodbye, promised I would be back (a promise I sincerely hope I am able to keep) and hopped back in Tammy’s car for the 45 minute drive to Columbus where a Ramada Inn a 9:30 am flight awaited me.
It was sad to leave. It was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. For the first time, I truly understood on a very deep level, exactly what we do. I saw firsthand how it makes a difference. Now I just had to figure out a way to tell everyone else.