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The Community Democracy Project is your connection to direct democracy in Oakland! Convened out of Occupy Oakland in Fall 2011, we’re gathering steam on a campaign to bring the people back in touch with the city’s resources through participatory budgeting.

Picture this: Across Oakland, Neighborhood Assemblies are regularly
held in every community. People come together to tackle the important issues of their neighborhoods and of the city. At these assemblies, people don’t just have discussions–they learn from one another, from city staff, and they make fundamental decisions about how the city should run. They decide the city budget.

Democratic, community budgeting is a powerful step toward building strong communities, real democracy, and economic justice–and it’s being done all over the world.

The budget of the City Oakland totals more than $1 billion per year. Although part of the budget must be used for specific purposes, still over half of the budget–over $500 billion per year–consists of general purpose funds paid by the taxes, fees, and fines of the people of Oakland. The Mayor and the City Council decide the city budget, with minimal input from the community.

Working together, we will not only get a seat at the table–we will REBUILD the table itself. Participatory democracy is real democracy–join us to say: Local People, Local Resources, Local Power!

San Francisco’s Summary Judgment Motion Denied!

We have received extremely positive news regarding the Alex Nieto case!

Today a federal district judge denied San Francisco’s attempt to dismiss the case by way of summary judgment. The city attempted to obfuscate and distort the evidence and facts of this case, and the judge saw through their manipulation and flat out denied their elaborate motion for dismissal.  The judge decided that we deserve a full-blown trial! Trial date: March 2016.

There was no plausible reason for Alex Nieto to have been shot at 59 times and killed by the SFPD. In order to update the community about new details that have emerged and to celebrate this victory, we invite youto join us for a press conference .

Please join the event page and invite your friends as well.
Amor and victory for Alex Nieto!

To learn more about the case please visit: http://justice4alexnieto.org/

Here we are once again in another relentless election season, which has grown ever more tiresome and, in this case, outrageous. The two mainstream parties are interchangeable on much of their policy, and the results after millions are spent amounts to “same old same old;” — an increasingly dangerous result.

​SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION​
What Will It Take? The Organization Question in US Progressive Politics
by JACK RASMUS

Fast food workers fighting for a living wage. The new civil rights movement fighting police brutality and for “black lives matter.” Immigrant workers and their families fighting for citizens rights they have earned but are continually denied. Teachers fighting against union busting charter schools and defending their pensions and the right to bargain from constant right wing attacks. Public workers resisting Koch brothers funded ‘open shop’ initiatives in a dozen States, designed to destroy their unions and collective bargaining rights. Minorities and allies defending against conservative legislators in North Carolina and elsewhere attempting to deny them their right to vote. Environmentalists confronting the escalating poisoning of US water and air from shale fracking. Seniors and retirees opposing efforts to deny social security disability benefits and legislation in Congress to raise Medicare doctor costs. Independent truck drivers fighting federal laws that prohibit them from unionizing.

Contingent, part time faculty everywhere in colleges across the USA organizing to secure a decent wage that finally pays above poverty levels and provides a semblance of job security beyond semester to semester employment. Union workers in manufacturing, locked in a desperate last ditch effort to prevent a new Asia-U.S. free trade agreement that will mean millions more lost jobs. Citizens from all groups and classes working to pass a constitutional amendment to reverse the US Supreme Court’s blank check to billionaires to buy politics. The list goes on, and on and on. Resistance is everywhere in the U.S. at the grasssroots. But the gains are few. It’s like 1932, i.e. after the crash but before the storm. So why so little to show for so much effort?

In 2008 many placed their hope in the faux-progressive presidential candidate named Obama. He certainly talked the talk. His advisers ran one of the slickest PR campaigns in modern US history. After eight years of ‘fist in your face’ corporate rule under George W. Bush, many were desperately ready to believe whatever Obama and his ad-men advisors told them. They listened. They believed. But they did not understand that in the US politicians have made an art form out of telling people whatever they want to hear in election campaigns, and then go and do what their corporate campaign paymasters tell them they must do.

If anyone had bothered to investigate Obama’s financial and business connections before 2008, they would have discovered the big Chicago corporate benefactors who handpicked him out of a south Chicago political ‘no man’s land’ and pushed him to the top on an accelerated fast track. They would have discovered his hedge fund roommates and buddies from his Harvard years. And his close connections to Wall St. interests. But they didn’t. They believed because they wanted to believe that Obama and the Democrats were different and would save them from the Bushes, Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the bankers, and the rest of the US political elite. They believed because there was no alternative: i.e. because there was no other organization on the US political horizon they could turn to that raised the potential of something different, something real, something outside the two wings of the single corporate party of US America.

Fast forward to 2015 today. Rewind the old 2008 tape and the show is about to begin again. Like a bad TV comedy rerun, only the names of the players have changed. Substitute gender for race, and we have Hillary Clinton instead of African-American Barack Obama. If we only pick the right race scratch that the right gender, that will surely ensure a progressive candidate and solution. Identity politics is the name of the game in US politics. And single issue politics the bane of the American liberal left.

Déja  vu All Over Again

So now the cycle has begun again. As the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra, once said: “It’s déja  vu all over again.” Among union leaders, leaders of various ethnic organizations, church leaders, liberal academics, and all the rest that consider themselves “progressives,” one today hears the same refrain: Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, is our preferred candidate. If Hillary implodes before November 2016 national elections, we have Elizabeth Warren in the wings. Hillary may be the only one who can win against a Republican. But Elizabeth will keep Hillary honest and ensure she, Hillary, adopts appropriate progressive positions during the 18 month campaign that lies ahead. Push the Democratic Party to the left and Hillary will have to follow.

And this year we are especially fortunate, progressives add. Now we have an even more progressive candidate, left of Warren, waiting to step up as well—the Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, who also announced his candidacy for president in recent weeks. If Warren pushes the party left, then Sanders, just outside the party (actually always with one foot in it) can pull her still further left. And who knows, if Hillary falters, Sanders might actually push Warren to finally enter the race, providing her ‘left cover’ for her candidacy, as they say.

And Bernie’s not Ralph Nader, progressives happily further declare. He won’t disrupt either Hillary or Warren from winning, since he’s already publicly made it clear, in announcing his candidacy to run for president on the Democrat party ticket, that he’ll vote for whoever becomes the Democrat party candidate in 2016. Sanders may be an “independent,” but he’s running for the Democrat party nomination and he’ll support the Democrat candidate if he doesn’t win it. As Sanders himself put it in a recent CBS News interview, “If you want to mobilize people it is hard to do it outside the two-party systems.” As if popular mobilization could only occur within the two wings of the single (not two) party system that is U.S. politics.

So it’s “back to the future” once again. But nothing has changed organizationally from 2008, whether it’s Hillary, or Warren, or even Sanders. Progressives and leftists can maneuver on the ever-shrinking left margins of the Democrat party all they want, to little avail. In fact, corporate interests who today really run the Democrat party like and encourage that. Keeps potential discontented rank and filers oriented to the party during the campaign period, to be called upon to vote again for the ‘lesser evil’, to hold their noses and vote Democrat again, in order to prevent an even worse alternative. Like the Koch brothers “bought boy,” governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Or that remaining “royal,” the preferred choice of the big corporate blue bloods, Jeb Bush. Or that Tea party “enfant terrible,” Rand Paul.

Whoever rides in on the white horse”  Hillary, Warren or even Sanders (or pperhaps Biden, O’Malley of Maryland, or someone else)  it’s still the horse that chooses the direction it wants to take the rider. And that horse is the Democratic Party’s corporate leadership.

In the late 1980s, led by the corporate faction within it at the time, then called the ‘Democratic Leadership Conference’ (DLC), the influence and role of anything resembling progressive forces within the Democratic party began a long decline. Bill Clinton was the first DLC candidate. Once in office, he delivered on free trade, tax cuts for investors, purged welfare programs, gave a green light to the health insurance lobby to merge and acquire competitors at will, accelerated the destruction of defined benefit pension plans, let big banks like Citigroup run the U.S. Treasury Dept., opened up China imports to the U.S., embarked on military adventures in Europe and Somalia, deregulated financial institutions and commodity trading, and even suggested the partial privatization of social security trust fund investing. When George W. Bush replaced Clinton, he merely drove a bigger hole through the various openings that Clinton provided. The Democratic Party transformed during the Bill Clinton years, to an even more strongly dominated corporate-financed and corporate run party by 1990s end. There was no need for the DLC by the end of the decade; the DLC had become the Party leadership elite.

Formerly a coalition of interests : union, urban activists, ethnic and minorrities, unions, progressive intellectuals, and business interests , the Demmocrat party today is not the Democrat party of one’s fathers. It is not the party of Franklin Roosevelt. It is an entirely different political animal. And those within it, or support it, who think it can be reformed and again become a party of FDR are seriously deluding themselves. Nevertheless, progressives still talk in terms of push this or pull that candidate. (Push too hard, and they get “Kuciniched,” as in the case of party progressive maverick, Dennis Kucinich, who pushed too far left. He then had his U.S. House of Representatives district conveniently restructured out from under him by a committee of Republican and Democrat party leaders, leaving him with no seat in Congress).

“Inside” vs. “Outside” Strategies

Despite the Democratic Party having been transformed in all but name over the course of the last quarter century, the old debates are again being resurrected among trade unionists, liberal intellectuals, and progressives in the U.S. — i.e. debates about whether the best strategy in 2016 is an “inside” or an “outside” strategy in relation to the Democratic Party.

What is meant by “inside-outside” strategy is whether it is best to work “inside” the Democratic party or ‘outside’ it to bring about changes in programs and policies that the party nominee for president will carry into the next presidential election campaign and, by assumption, translate into action after winning the election.

“Inside” means working within the party to convince the Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, to run for the Democrat party presidential nomination and to support her should she do so; “Inside” also means, at minimum, to assist Warren to raise issues in caucuses and local levels to force Hillary Clinton to adopt more progressive positions during the upcoming campaign.

“Outside” strategy means trying to achieve more or less the same by supporting the Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Sanders would raise real issues in the Democratic party debates before and during the primaries, to move the party itself left. That would, according to political logic, force Hillary Clinton to propose ideas during the debates and primaries period that she could not later back away from during the general election after the primaries. Within the party itself, albeit on its left wing, Warren could not be as aggressive with new ideas or as critical of Hillary, as could Sanders located outside the party.

But all this has been tried before, and failed to result in any change. “Inside” strategies have been employed by Democrats, from Jesse Jackson in the 1980s to Dennis Kucinich and now Elizabeth Warren. “Outside” strategies have been undertaken by the most recent experience with a Labor Party, from the 1990s through mid-2000s; the so-called Working Families Party’ launched by the AFL-CIO; and now the Sanders’ candidacy.

What Will It Take?

No. They introduce ideas into the public discussion. But that’s basically all. Their discussion of ideas won’t lead to any fundamental change. And change is what is needed. Workers, students, immigrants, minorities, union members, don’t need to be informed about income inequality, or anything else. They know. What’s needed is organization. And by organization is meant a new, grassroots, bottoms-up movement that is united in new ways organizationally as well as in terms of strategy and objectives. A movement that is unified across single issues and is oriented toward a struggle for institutional power, and not just improving the rights of this or that identity group.

Does that mean a Labor Party? Not if the strategy for creating such a party depends on getting the endorsement or support of top level union presidents in the AFL-CIO or Change to Win labor federations. They will never break from the Democratic Party. As the organized union movement grows weaker, it will depend even more on the Democratic Party. Union leaders pulled the plug after 2000 on the 1990s initiative and movement to form a labor party, fearful of a repeat of the Nader-Green party experience of 2000 where the Greens and Nader were blamed for George W. Bush’s victory in Florida and thus the presidency. But it was Democrat candidate, Al Gore, who refused to have the ballots in Florida properly re-counted, not the Greens. And it was the U.S. Supreme Court that gave Bush the election, based on the weakest of legal arguments: not the Greens or Nader.

The tragic collapse of the U.S. labor movement since 1980 can be traced in large part to its growing adherence and dependency on the Democratic Party. Even as union membership has fallen in the private sector to less than 6.7 percent of the workforce today, and as public sector workers are under increasing attack, national union leaders will never break from the Democrats and support a new independent party. In fact, they will exert all necessary pressure on local unions to prevent them from doing so as well.

What about the Occupy movement of 2011? Will it resurrect and move toward some form of party organization? The answer is not likely on either account. Occupy was a movement that mistook a tactic (occupy government or public spaces) for a strategy. And because tactics flow from strategy and there was no strategy, it was unable to adjust tactics quickly when attacked by a nationally organized and coordinated police offensive. And organization was of even less concern to the movement than was strategy.

How about left intellectuals? Can they call a conference for the purpose of forming an independent progressive party in the U.S.? Actually they have. Repeatedly. But like all such efforts in the past, no ‘top down’ party creation called by intellectuals has ever taken root and grew. They fundamentally lack any base on which to build a movement and organization.

That leads to the only possible solution. An alternative, progressive, independent party is desperately needed in the U.S. But progressive politics cannot continue down the dead end path of single issue politics. Party must come ‘from below’, from real social movements, led by real leaders of those social movements: i.e. leaders of immigrant rights groups, of local trade unions unafraid of national union opposition or pressure, of leaders of the new civil rights movements now in formation, of leaders of movements to protect and defend democratic rights, of leaders of environmental movements with a broader vision of strategic alliances, leaders of movements to fight for a living wage, and so on. These are the only real forces upon which independent political action can be built.

The first step toward forming such a unified movement is for leaders and representatives of grassroots movements to realize they cannot succeed long term pursuing their single issues on their own any longer. They must come together to create unified regional and national movements. Appropriate, pre-party forms of organization will be required, as may some kind of fundamental founding principles and a shared, basic strategic view. Creating a movement of movements is the first requisite, in other words. Perhaps a founding convention might be called as a preliminary first step, attended by a critical mass of grassroots leaders and activists by invitation: i.e. a founding convention followed by further subsequent follow up regional conventions. A united movement first, composed of real grassroots movements, leaders, and activists. Perhaps a party later, only after a unified front of movements is first firmly established.

Can such an approach work? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But its chances of success would be no less likely than trying to reform the Democratic Party by means of either an ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ strategy. Or by running around the country talking about things the majority of the American people already know by now, in this the 7th year of the fake recovery from the crisis of 2008.

Jack Rasmus is the author of the forthcoming book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, by Clarity Press, 2015. He blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is www.kyklosproductions.com and twitter handle, @drjackrasmus.

This content was originally published by teleSUR.

Berkeley Copwatch is tired of unjust policing and lack of accountability. We stand in solidarity with those protesting the murders of black people across the nation and say that this must end! We have our unique problems in Berkeley and the East Bay and we must take local action to stand up and demand justice!

We Demand:

• End racial profiling in Berkeley! Get the statistics on who is really being detained and arrested and stop handcuffing men of color for no reason!
• No tasers in Berkeley! Spend money to study how to end racial profiling – not acquire tasers!
• End the militarization of the police! No boats, no armored personnel carriers, no more weapons and no more military games. Withdraw from Urban Shield!
• Justice For Kayla Moore!
• Decriminalize Mental Illness! Police with no training in mental health crisis are most often the first responders to these kinds of situations. Berkeley must fully fund emergency mental health response in the city and prevent militarized cops from being the first point of contact for members of the public who need help in dealing with emergency mental health situations. No more putting spit hoods over the heads of people with mental illness! No taser use on mentally ill people! Counselors not cops!

Meetings at 7pm every Monday!

OTU’s Mission

The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists dedicated to protecting tenant rights and interests. OTU does this by working directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacting legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and working with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares our core values and who believes that tenants themselves have the primary responsibility to work on their own behalf.

Monthly Meetings

The Oakland Tenants Union meets regularly at 7:00 pm on the second Monday evening of each month. Our monthly meetings are held in the Community Room of the Madison Park Apartments, 100 – 9th Street (at Oak Street, across from the Lake Merritt BART Station). To enter, gently knock on the window of the room to the right of the main entrance to the building. At the meetings, first we focus on general issues affecting renters city-wide and then second we offer advice to renters regarding their individual concerns.

If you have an issue, a question, or need advice about a tenant/landlord issue, please call us at (510) 704-5276. Leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will get back to you.

We’re standing together on November 10 to say, “We need a raise!” People across the country will be standing up with fast-food workers and all 64 million underpaid workers making less than $15, because it’s time for $15 for all workers. Together we’re turning the tide in favor of working people and our families. And we’ll need everyone’s help — including yours — to make this a reality.

RSVP here to receive email updates: http://fightfor15.org/s-petition/november-10-rsvp/

—–

We’ll call on corporate CEO’s to raise pay and respect our right to form unions without retaliation. And we’ll call on our elected representatives to stop letting the wealthy and powerful write the rules in their favor.

Together we can work to end racism and oppression, create a path to citizenship for immigrants, and fight for wages that strengthen our communities.

Click for full sized image

Click for full sized image

Join Black Workers, Labor Unions, the Fight for $15, and more to tell Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley: DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST THE BLACKFRIDAY14!

Workers from across the Bay Area unite on this National Day of Action for the Fight for $15 to say: Black Workers’ Lives Matter, and ALL Black Lives Matter.

We won’t stand for O’Malley’s racist prosecution and criminalization of Black folks. From the targeting of Black churches and African drummers, to the displacement of longtime Black Oakland communities, and police terror and murder of Black folks, there is a WAR on Black Lives, and so far, Nancy O’Malley is on the wrong side.

On November 28, 2014, the BlackFriday14 chained themselves to two BART trains at West Oakland Station, shutting down service as a call to action nationwide for folks to step up and put an end to the war on Black Lives.

Now the BlackFriday14 face criminalization of their own actions demanding justice.

District Attorney O’Malley has the power to drop all charges against the BlackFriday14 by just saying the word.

Workers stand with the BlackFriday14.
People of conscience stand with the BlackFriday14.
When will D.A. O’Malley stand on the side of justice?

Join us for a Black Worker Speakout, rally, and more to demand that D.A. O’Malley DROP ALL CHARGES NOW!

Afterwards, we will march to Oscar Grant Plaza to join the 4pm Fight for $15 Rally: https://www.facebook.com/events/901358749959991/

#BlackFriday14 #BlackLivesMatter #Fightfor15 #DroptheCharges

We’re standing together on November 10 to say, “We need a raise!” People across the country will be standing up with fast-food workers and all 64 million underpaid workers making less than $15, because it’s time for $15 for all workers. Together we’re turning the tide in favor of working people and our families. And we’ll need everyone’s help — including yours — to make this a reality.

RSVP here to receive email updates: http://fightfor15.org/s-petition/november-10-rsvp/

—–

We’ll call on corporate CEO’s to raise pay and respect our right to form unions without retaliation. Andf we’ll call on our elected representatives to stop letting the wealthy and powerful write the rules in their favor.

Together we can work to end racism and oppression, create a path to citizenship for immigrants, and fight for wages that strengthen our communities.

Click for full sized image

Please join the First Amendment Coalition and a panel of distinguished law-enforcement access experts for a discussion focused on the important issues of public oversight and access to law enforcement, including body cams; public access to emails on private electronic devices; the state of the law on whether the public has access to police disciplinary proceedings, and publc access to information about officer-involved shootings.

RSVP

The city council meets to discuss the measure for $19/hour by 2020 on November 10! If this measure passes Berkeley will have the highest minimum wage ordinance in the country, paving the way for a higher minimum wage nation wide. This has become part of the National Day of Action for the Fight for $15, which has an event in San Francisco early morning and an event in Oakland at 4:30 PM.  Then on to Berkeley at 7:00 !

1. a. Revisions to Minimum Wage Ordinance B.M.C 13.99 (Continued from September 15, 2015)
   From: Commission on Labor
   Recommendation: Adopt first reading of an Ordinance amending Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.99 that will ensure the Berkeley Minimum Wage Ordinance is successful in promoting and protecting the rights and the individual self-reliance of working people in Berkeley by raising the minimum wage to a living wage, adding an annual cost of living adjustment, and granting adequate paid sick leave to all workers.
   Financial Implications: None
   Contact: Delfina Geiken, Commission Secretary, 981-5400

13. Proposed Amendments to the Minimum Wage Ordinance; Amending Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.99(Continued from September 15, 2015)
    From: City Manager
    Recommendation: Review and consider information regarding the activities and costs associated with implementing and enforcing the Commission on Labor’s proposed amendments to the Minimum Wage Ordinance (MWO), including the potential impact of the proposed amendments on the City’s minimum wage employees, employers, non-profit organizations and community-based organizations, on-call workers and youth training program workers, and either:
    1. Adopt first reading of an Ordinance amending Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.99, which includes staff-recommended revisions to the Commission’s proposed Ordinance;
    -OR-
    2. Refer the MWO back to the City Manager for further analysis and revisions.
    Financial Implications: Staff time
    Contact: Kelly Wallace, Health, Housing and Community Services, 981-5400
14. Paid Sick Leave Ordinance; Adding Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.100
    From: City Manager
    Recommendation: Review and consider the attached Paid Sick Leave Ordinance (PSLO), including the potential benefits and impacts of the ordinance on employees, employers, and the community and either:
    1. Adopt first reading of an Ordinance adding Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.100;
    -OR-
    2. Postpone adoption of the Ordinance until businesses have had a chance to assess the impact of the new state Paid Sick Leave law on business operations.
    Financial Implications: See report
    Contact: Kelly Wallace, Health, Housing and Community Services, 981-5400

1. Berkeley Fair Elections Public Campaign Financing Ballot Measure (Continued from September 15, 2015)
   From: Fair Campaign Practices Commission
   Recommendation: Consider the public funding proposal from MapLight and the League of Women Voters (dated January 5, 2015) for possible further consideration for the November 2016 ballot.
   Financial Implications: None
   Contact: Savith Iyengar, Commission Secretary, 981-6950

Film evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments & social hour at 6:30 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by optional discussion after the film.

Here’s a description of this film.

Humanist Hall is wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

Last week Berkeley High students walked out en masse and marched to UC Berkeley over a racist notice at the Berkeley High school.

They plan to do it again. Join them in solidarity.

During the accreditation crisis, City College students and workers fought alongside our community for CCSF. Now Administration intends to shrink classes by 26%, layoff more than a quarter of the faculty, and refuses to negotiate a fair faculty contract. Help us defend a City College for everyone!

1:30 PM: MARCH for CCSF
from CCSF Downtown (88 4th St. @ Mission)
to CCSF Civic Center (1170 Market St. @ UN Plaza)
2:00 PM: RALLY for CCSF

A National Day of Action on November 12th.

The #MillionStudentMarch demands three key things:
1 – Tuition-free public college
2 – Cancellation of all student debt
3 – $15/hr campus-wide minimum wage at every college in the country

The United States is the richest country in the world, yet students have to take on crippling debt in order to get a college education. We need change, and change starts in the streets when the people demand it.

Over 40 million Americans share a total of $1.2 trillion in student debt and over half of that is held by the poorest 25 percent of Americans. While top administrators take home six and seven figure salaries, campus workers are paid poverty wages.

The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education reaffirmed California’s prior commitment to the principle of tuition-free education to residents of the State. This is not happening. The UC is a public university system under attack by predatory lenders, ignorant corporate leadership, and the forces of capitalism that oppress students and promote inequality of race, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.

We will no longer sit idly by. #MillionStudentMarch will be a day of local actions united to show support for the above demands. Imagine the message we could send to the government and the corporate establishment if we have marches at hundreds of colleges. Education should be a human right and we’re willing to fight for it! Join the march, join the movement! With students, college graduates, and workers united we can build a movement capable of winning debt-free college for all and a $15/hr minimum wage for all campus workers!

If you or your organization would like to sponsor or be part of planning for this action, please contact the organizers at eavporganizing@asuc.org.

Newly revised: Zara’s Faith
by Marc Sapir

Featuring Kenia Serrano Puig, President of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and Member of the Cuban Parliament.
Others to speak, Dra. Laura Gomez recently graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba, Richmond Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin and others.

Door open at 6:30 PM.

Dear Healthcare Activist,

I hope you can attend a presentation on ColoradoCare on Nov 14.
`
The San Francisco & East Bay branches
of the California Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program
are proud to present journalist and health reform advocate

T.R. REID

well-known author of

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

Speaking about ColoradoCare
a citizen’s initiative to provide

affordable, high quality health care for all Colorado residents

going before voters of Colorado in November 2016

more info: http://coloradocareyes.co

Refreshments will be served

Description of the program

ColoradoCare is a ballot initiative for a publicly financed, universal health plan for the state of Colorado that would be operated by a private cooperative under a 21-person elected Board. While the ballot measure spells out the program’s governance and Board structure in considerable detail, key aspects of the program are not specified, and/or left to the discretion of the Board. In the past the drafters made clear in public statements that ColoradoCare is NOT a single-payer plan.

The initiative would cover all Colorado residents under a publicly funded, cooperative insurance plan. While the new program would replace most private insurance, Medicaid and CHIP coverage, it would serve only as supplemental coverage for those covered by Medicare, the VA and TriCare. The initiative would not prohibit the purchase or sale of private coverage duplicating the public plan. However, proponents expect that little private insurance would persist, since most businesses and individuals would not want to pay twice for coverage.

The proposal would cover a broad range of benefits, but would not cover dental care for adults, or long-term care for most individuals.

ColoradoCare would be funded via a payroll tax of 6.67 percent on employers and 3.33 on employees, or 10 percent of non-payroll income (excluding pensions and annuities), along with federal funds that would have come to the state via subsidies for private coverage under the Affordable Care Act, for Medicaid, and for other programs.

The drafting of ColoradoCare was spearheaded by Colorado Sen. Irene Aguilar and psychologist Ivan Miller. Volunteers and paid staff gathered the signatures necessary to put it on the ballot. Journalist T.R. Reid has become a champion and spokesperson for the plan both inside and outside of Colorado.

Strengths of ColoradoCare

1. The proposal if implemented would cover all, or nearly all of Colorado’s uninsured, apparently (and laudably) including the undocumented.
2. The proposal includes some useful cost-control features, notably the creation of an annual budget, and the ability to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies.
3. The plan allows for a free choice of primary care doctor.
4. The financing plan is more progressive than the current system.
5. ColoradoCare’s organizers have mounted an impressive campaign with considerable mobilization.

Weaknesses of ColoradoCare

1. Multiple payers would persist – probably including private insurers. As a result, it sacrifices much of the administrative savings that could be realized through a true single- payer reform because providers would have to maintain much of their current cost-tracking and billing apparatus in order to apportion costs among the multiple payers. Published cost estimates for ColoradoCare overstate the savings that could be achieved through single payer, and do not take into account the additional costs entailed by ColoradoCare’s failure to adopt a full single-payer structure.
2. The initiative makes no mention of how hospitals or other institutions would be paid – apart from a rhetorical nod favoring ACOs. It makes no mention of global budgeting, separating operating and capital payments, or other constraints on hospital capital spending. Global budgeting is critical to achieving administrative savings; separating operating and capital payments is a bedrock of effective health planning, which is essential for long-term cost containment.
3. The initiative would not ban for-profit hospitals or other providers, despite clear evidence that they inflate costs and compromise quality. For-profit ACOs (indistinguishable from HMOs in most respects) might also flourish.
4. The initiative specifies that patients would have a free choice of primary care physicians, but makes no mention of whether the choice of specialist or hospital could be restricted.
5. While the plan would outlaw deductibles, the Board could impose copayments.
6. While the 10 percent tax rate would apply to both the rich and poor (including those with incomes below the poverty line), income over $350,000 would not be taxed.
7. The campaign’s anti-government rhetoric is problematic.
8. Rather than specifying critical aspects of the plan, the initiative leaves many of these to be decided later by the Board. Delaying such decisions has often favored corporate interests, who can intervene after the popular mobilization required to pass a reform has subsided. In the case of the ACA, corporate lobbying during the rule-making process attenuated cuts in Medicare HMO overpayments; reduced promised funding for public health and community clinics; effectively neutered limits on insurance overhead; and watered down the mandated benefit package. In Vermont, the broad-brush program initially passed by the legislature was whittled down in the detailed design stage, leading to rising cost estimates and ultimate rejection by the governor.

Dr. Ida Hellander is director of health policy and programs at Physicians for a National Health Program. Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler are internists, professors at the City University of New York School of Public Health, lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and co-founders of PNHP.

PNHP note: While there have been numerous articles about the ColoradoCare plan, one by Michael Corcoran, published by Truthout on Oct. 20, is among the most comprehensive.