The March on Washington Film Festival, in partnership with the SNCC Legacy Project, invites you to a webinar: “Making Eyes on the Prize: Reframing the Civil Rights Movement” on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6 pm.  A screening of short clips from Eyes on the Prize will be followed by a conversation with those who helped shape that 14-hour series. The discussion will focus on how Eyes on the Prize helped change the narrative of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, more accurately reflecting its grass-roots foundation and highlighting the critical role of women and young people in ways that impact organizing today. Panelists: • Jon Else, Eyes on the Prize Series Producer & Cinematographer • Sam Pollard, Eyes on the Prize Producer • Judy Richardson, SNCC Veteran and Eyes on the Prize Series Associate Producer and Education Director Moderator: • Jessica A. Rucker, Washington, DC high school teacherEyes on the Prize, originally broadcast on PBS nationally in 1987 and 1990, is an Academy Award-nominated, multi-award-winning television series narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews with those who actually lived the events and historical footage, the series covers major — but oftentimes little-known — events of the civil rights movement (1954-1968), including the call for Black Power, the Lowndes County (AL) Freedom Movement, the Detroit rebellions, the student take-over of Howard University, the community work of Black Panthers in Chicago, Boston busing, and the Attica prison rebellion.   The series reveals the impact of ordinary people working for a just world. March on Washington Film Festival A National Civil Rights and social justice organization that finds, encourages, and brings to life stories of both icons and foot soldiers from the Civil Rights Movement. We were founded in 2013 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington March for Jobs and Freedom. In presenting a range of films, panel discussions, lectures, and performances each year, MOWFF fulfills a crucial historical role, connecting past and future generations of political and cultural activists in unprecedented ways. SNCC Legacy Project (SLP) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) grew out of the 1960’s sit-in movement and was the only national civil rights organization begun and led primarily by young people.  SNCC workers committed themselves to full-time organizing, grounded in the bottom-up organizing principles of SNCC’s mentor, the legendary Ella Baker.   They were the primary movers behind the sit-ins, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the call for Black Power, and other movements for economic, political, and educational change.  The SLP was founded by SNCC veterans in 2010 to capture the history and legacy of SNCC’s work, including its collaboration with Duke University on a documentary website:  SNCCDigital.org.  SLP continues to work with today’s young organizers on many levels. SNCC’s 60th-anniversary convening has been re-scheduled for June 3-5, 2021 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, DC. sncclegacyproject.org  REGISTER

Arlington County and the State of Virginia’s subsidy package for Amazon to locate its HQ2 facility in Arlington is another version of trickle-down economics or voodoo economics theory that giving more public funds to the rich and corporations will trickle down to lower income and middle class people. This is yet another episode in the Democratic county board’s determination to gentrify Arlington and eliminate the few remaining moderate income residents, both renters and homeowners and replace them with households earning well in excess of $150,000 a year.

The first impact on Arlington housing will be to raise rents and to raise prices of condos and houses. In Arlington a majority of resident are renters and not homeowners, and renters will clearly pay a price in the form of higher rents. The Arlington County Board has promised to spend $7 million a year to add 100 subsidized apartment to help renters, an amount so small in relation in relation to Arlington’s over 50,000 rental units as to be a joke.

The county and the State are giving Amazon roughly $1.5-2.0 billion in incentives; the chief beneficiary is the CEO and principal owner of Amazon Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man on the Planet. So the premise is that if taxpayers in Virginia and Arlington give the richest man on Earth $2 billion, then there will be a wonderful world created that will trickle down prosperity on the rest of us.

The Arlington County Board’s mindless enthusiasm over giving Amazon as much as $400 million as incentives for 25,000 more Amazon employees to Crystal City within a decade or so must be dampened with the likelihood that higher local government expenses will absorb a high share of the expected higher tax revenues and that the cost of the subsidy itself will have to paid by current taxpayers.
The essential problem for Arlington is that we spend today about $22,000 per public student, and it is expected that these new Amazon employees will add at least 1,000 students to APS. Our schools are already overcrowded, and these new students will require the equivalent of two new elementary schools or a new middle school or a new high school. The new residents will also need our other services—recreation, libraries, social services, police and fire, sanitation, and the myriad services we Arlington residents cherish.

A George Mason University (GMU) report in November 2018 by Stephen Fuller found that a new Amazon HQ2 in Crystal City would add about 8,000 Amazon related households to Arlington, (The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Locating Amazon HQ2 in Arlington, VA,). It also highlights that currently Arlington County spends $850 more per capita today than it gets from tax revenues so adding 8,000 new households with around 2 persons/household means that Arlington’s fiscal deficit rises by about $15 million, which is somewhat offset by $8.7 million in added tax revenue. Non-resident Amazon employees are expected to generate tax revenues that will add up to $19 million in tax revenue,

However, if one uses current school spending costs of almost $22,000 per student to obtain more accurate fiscal costs in Arlington, then the net fiscal impact of HQ2 shrinks to about $5 million a year. This is a trivial or negligible sum, compared to Arlington County’s annual fiscal revenues of about $1.3 billion in FY 2017. It also underscores how fragile are reports that there will be a large positive impact on Arlington of HQ2.

Beyond the higher school and services spending to meet the needs of these new Amazon employee residents, the county government will still have to pay off the $359 million in infrastructure bonds for Crystal City, come up with $7 million more per year for 10 years for affordable housing assistance, and then pay Amazon roughly $51 million from TOT and IFF funds over 10 to 15 years. This merely adds to net fiscal deficit that Amazon HQ2 will bring to Arlington.

This trickle down deal for Mr. Bezos the richest man in the Planet certainly provides a financial boost to Amazon, but it will cost Arlington taxpayers big time.

Co-chair Marie Pellegrino spoke on March 29 to the Arlington County Board public hearing on the fiscal year 2017 budget for Arlington County and urged the board to expand the living wage for current county and county contractor employees to $14.50 per hour, and for the board to more than double the number of housing grants provided to low income renters.

(Marie Pellegrino, cochair on the left, with Sandra Hernandez, cochair on the right.)

Dear Members of the County Board:

We are here tonight to present the views of the Arlington Greens on the FY2017 budget. Thank you for your work to make our community a better place for all.

We support two items in the budget—a higher living wage for county and contractor employees and more affordable housing funds for housing grants. We ask you to expand the scope of the living wage ordinance, and to more than double the number of housing grants from today’s 1,300 low-income households to closer to 3,000.

The county manager recommends, and we support raising the living wage from $13.13 to $14.50 per hour for all county employees and for those few covered private contractor employees. A living wage ensures that an employee does not have to turn to the county and our community to live above poverty. We Greens want all Arlington employees to earn at least a living wage and live above poverty.

Please expand the scope of the living wage ordinance to require ALL contractors with the county no matter where their employees work in Arlington to pay them a living age. The current ordinance only covers contract employees physically working in a county facility. Many, un-covered contractor employees are low-paid healthcare aides, employees of group homes and other nonprofits, or employees of for-profit companies.
We would also like you to require private companies and developers that receive substantial direct subsidies from the county, such as the $55 million of county funds you gave last year to Forrest City Realty the billion-dollar developer/owner of Ballston Shopping Center, to pay a living wage to its employees.

We support doubling the 2017 budget for housing grants from $9 million to $18 million. Housing grants are the county’s single most effective housing assistance program, and help seniors, disabled adults, and families with a child. An average household gets about $500 a month, and earns well under $30,000 a year (less than 30% of the area median income (AMI).

Another $9 million could fund 1,800 households each with a $400 monthly housing grant. To get this $9 million, you could shift some of the current housing funds from less effective housing assistance programs, such as the AHIF. And, you could triple the current developers’ tax to raise another $6-7 million a year (see addendum). Developers pay a very low county fee when they choose not to provide at least 5% affordable apartments in new complexes and this fee should be raised.

It is far more effective to give tenants a grant, and let them rent their own apartment or share housing in Arlington than building just a few more expensive subsidized apartments. Only current county residents get a grant, whereas new subsidized apartments must be rented to anyone who applies. Housing grant recipients can live anywhere in north or south Arlington rather than only in subsidized apartments built mostly along western Columbia Pike.

The Arlington County manager has proposed to the Arlington County Board as part of its annual budget adoption that it increase the living wage of $13.13 per hour (the minimum wage for county employees and for certain contractor employees working in a county building) to $14.50 an hour. At 40 hours per week for 52 weeks, such a wage yields $30,000 in gross income (before taxes).

The living wage is based on the federal poverty income needed for a single person to live slightly above the poverty level. In Arlington according to database from a MIT professor, a single person living in Arlington would need to spend $26,430 a year to live without public subsidies, mainly $14,000 for housing; $3,000 for food, $2,300 for medical, and $4,600 for transportation. http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/51013
For a single parent with one child, living expenses in Arlington are much higher at $48,000 or $26 per hour (before taxes), as childcare would cost about $7,000 a year.

Arlington Greens support the proposed increase in the rate of the living wage, but also believe the ordinance should be expanded to cover ALL contractor employees of Arlington County including healthcare aides, employees of nonprofits, and employees of private companies that receive tens of millions of dollars of local funds of economic development subsidies. Last November, for example, the county board gave $50 million in county funds to the Ballston shopping center developer to rebuild and develop a new shopping center that will employ hundreds of low paid retail clerical employees, food service workers and cleaning crews. Many of the low paid employees will then be eligible for a range of county safety net subsidies ranging from food assistance, free or reduced lunch for their children, and housing assistance.

The current Arlington county ordinance on the living wage does not require the payment of a living wage to organizations that contract with the county and provide these services outside a county-owned facility. Thus, most nonprofit organizations do not provide a living wage routinely. Employees of group homes that are privately operated are not routinely paid a living wage. Healthcare aides working in a disabled person’s home are not required to receive a living wage.

In essence, low wage employers shift their employment costs onto the public taxpayers by paying less than a minimum poverty income. Arlington County development funds that come from Arlington county residents should NOT be used to attract and keep low wage employers in Arlington. The county should require that companies getting these funds guarantee that all its employees receive at least a living wage.

In 2015 according to data of the Virginia Employment Commission, the average wage in the retail stores, entertainment, and food/hotel service in Arlington in 2015 was about $500 per week or $13 per hour, with many such employees making far less than $13 per hour or unable to work a full 40 hours a week. These three industries employed 27,000 people or 16 percent of total Arlington employment of 169,000. Thus, today about one out of every six employees working in Arlington are in a low wage industry. http://virginialmi.com/report_center/community_profiles/5104000013.pdf

Arlington County planning and community development staff have indicated in the past that every new high rise commercial office building in Arlington will generate over 50 low wage jobs that would entitle the employee to county subsidies, particularly housing assistance. The county’s economic development philosophy should be to discourage such low wage jobs and such associated development.

Arlington Greens have long supported the living wage which has been in effect in Arlington since about 2006. We support raising the living wage to at least $14.50 and support expanding its coverage to all employees of private contractors of the county government and to private employees of companies receiving large amounts of county development funds, such as at the Ballston Shopping Center.