California Calls is building deeper alignment among the movement for progressive tax reform in the state through a series of meetings bringing together community-based organizations, unions, foundations and service groups. The second of these sessions took place on July 19. After presentations by policy experts, with the use of cutting-edge audience response technology, participants narrowed the 23 policy initiatives under consideration down to seven consensus items that will be used to develop California Calls policy agenda. These include:

• Requiring California’s corporations to reveal their tax expenditures (as a step towards     closing corporate tax loopholes);
• Raising taxes on the top income earners in the state;
• Imposing a “restitution” fee to mitigate the effects of pollution on California’s neighborhoods;
• Reforming commercial property tax laws;
• A proposal allowing for a “double majority” vote of the electorate and the legislature to increase state taxes;
• Reducing the 2/3rds vote threshold for state tax increases;
• Imposing an oil severance tax.

In August the California Calls Coordinating Committee voted to adopt these recommendations as a formal part of its short, medium, and long-term policy agenda.

The policy with the strongest support and which offers the best opportunity for a 2012 victory was raising taxes on the top income earners in the state. California Calls convened a strategy committee of 25 organizations to explore possibilities for 2012 collaboration and joined a research project with several unions and organizations to assess the viability of a Top Tier Tax fight next year.

The next Strategic Collaboration meeting will be on November 15 focused on strategic communications: how we change the story about government and taxes. A key feature of this meeting will be a discussion on how to manage the tension between long-term narrative/message development to change public consciousness and issue framing/messaging required to win now.

The California Calls policy agenda was developed through a committee of progressive tax and fiscal policy experts: Jean Ross from the California Budget Project, Lenny Goldberg from the California Tax Reform Association, Ben Tulchin from Tulchin Research, Bob Brownstein from Working Partnership USA and Sarah Zimmerman from SEIU 1000; Jennifer Ito, USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity; Fred Keeley, Treasurer of Santa Cruz; Steve Levy, Stanford’s Center for Continuing Study of California; Ken Jacobs UC Berkeley Labor Center

Towards that end, California Calls convened its first “Camp Calls”, an inspiring, groundbreaking training for the core leadership of the alliance. Three hundred leaders from 17 organizations in vastly different regions of the state gathered in Los Angeles for a weekend of political education, story-telling and skills building.

The excitement of the three day weekend began on Friday night when participants met around a “makeshift campfire” (a giant orange paper flame), forming “troops” – cohorts of 12 people who shared the weekend experience together. Each troop came up with chants and creative names like Fighting in Solidarity and Truth (FIST), Leading People for Change, and the West Coast Swagger Factory. Click here to see pictures.

The curriculum covered story-telling, the origins and consequences of California’s devastating 1978 Proposition 13 (that created a giant corporate property tax loophole), competing values about the role of government, tax and fiscal policy solutions, and how to recruit volunteers.

“I got a little more courage to stand up and say what I think and feel,” one participant explained when asked what she got out of Camp Calls. Another said, “We may be different races, genders, ages and from different parts of the state, but we have the same problems and are in this fight together. Our stories really do connect.”

The curriculum was developed by staff from California Calls and WorkingPartnerships, USA, based on a scan of best practices. Thanks goes to Making Cents, California Federation of Teachers, National Organizing Institute, and SCOPE for use of training modules.

The Alliance’s goal this month is to contact 104,567 voters and identify 68,741 who support increasing taxes on the wealthiest to bring more justice to California’s fiscal system. To date, 39,843 people have pledged to get involved in a 2012 battle to raise taxes on the wealthiest in the state.

See what we do – watch this music video, “Everyday I’m Dialin,” developed by youth leaders at Knotts Family Agency in San Bernardino.

The budget process and the draconian cuts that have followed emphasize the need for real, lasting tax and fiscal reform. To this end, California Calls continues to build a base of 500,000 new and occasional voters to tip the balance towards progressive solutions and restore fairness and equity to our budgeting process.

California Calls just completed its fifth Civic Engagement Program in 18 months, contacting 129,755 voters across 11 counties. In an extensive four-week door-to-door and phone-calling campaign, anchor organizations identified 84,731 voters who support tax extensions to stop the decimation of schools, libraries, firehouses as well as long-term solutions to the budget crisis such as raising taxes on “multi-millionaires and big corporations.”

Registered Voter Contacts by County

The message was loud and clear. Californians want legislators to do their job, and renew the California Dream. Since 2009, California Calls has identified 299,140 voters who want to raise taxes on large corporations and reform the commercial property tax laws attached to Proposition 13. Passed in 1978, Proposition 13 drastically limited increases on commercial property taxes and created a two-thirds supermajority vote in the legislature to raise taxes. According to Rhonda Nelson, a canvasser for Los Angeles anchor SCOPE, “People are really shocked by what’s going on in our state and excited that we’re doing something about it. I get applause, handshakes and many thank you’s when I’m on out on the doors. I voted for Prop 13 thirty years ago so I really wish California Calls had been around back then to change my mind!”

For the first time, the alliance used a three-pronged approach to civic engagement: grassroots lobbying and voter registration drives were pursued along with voter education. CAUSE, based in Ventura and working along the Central Coast, lead a grassroots lobbying program by calling voters and patching them directly to Assembly Member Katcho Achadjian’s office.

Civic Engagement Work by County

Slowly but steadily, “unlikely” and new voters in Central Valley farmlands as well as suburbs of the Inland Empire, Ventura and San Diego, are joining those in urban strongholds in a new wave of civic engagement. Hmong-American Mao Lee “Molly” Xiong worked to register voters in Fresno, along with volunteers who spoke Spanish, Lao and Thai. One Hmong senior citizen facing eviction from his apartment “said he had to choose between buying his medicines and paying the rent,” according to Molly.

Molly Xiong assists a new citizen in becoming a registered voter.

So, while the legislature struggles to see beyond the next election, California Calls has its eyes on the long-term prize: turning around an upside-down tax system skewed against working families, homeowners and California’s children. Hope for real, lasting change lies, as always, with ordinary people standing up, speaking out and voting regularly.

What’s Ahead

The situation in our state has gotten worse. However California Calls embarked on our present strategy knowing that there were no magic bullets, quick fixes, or shortcuts to organizing and building power. We are substantially more powerful than we were a year ago, and we will be more powerful still as we implement our plans for the second half of the year:

• July regional debrief meetings where we’ll use learnings from our civic engagement program to help our anchors reach unprecedented scale and become powerful progressive institutions in their respective regions and in the state. We’ll also begin planning for “Camp Calls,” a ground-breaking training program for our grassroots leaders.
• A second strategic collaboration meeting to build a united front among progressive organizations statewide and a concrete plan of action to achieve real, lasting reform in California. The meeting will bring together community-based organizations, unions, foundations and service providers to discuss, debate and develop a concrete progressive policy reform agenda for short-, medium-, and long-term.
• A fall civic engagement program in 10 counties to continue to expand and deepen our base of support while educating voters on the choices that face our state.

I’ll admit that in November 2010, I felt apathetic and didn’t vote. Working for Equality Alliance, an anchor organization of California Calls, has made me realize the importance of voting and of being educated about the serious issues that California faces.

During one day of knocking on doors, my partner Denise knocked on the door of an older Hispanic woman who lived in a modest apartment building on Home Ave. She spoke Spanish and said that she had worked hard all her life and that the people in power have all the advantages and that the poor are left behind. The tone of her voice and the sincerity of her words struck a chord in me. She reminded me of my own mother, who grew up poor, one of eleven children in Vietnam, and had only six months of schooling in her entire life. She works 68 hours a week in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant.

It made me realize the importance of the work that I was doing. It brought home the impact of the budget cuts on the people Equality Alliance and California Calls are contacting. By voting, people like my mother, and this humble woman who has worked hard all her life, can make their voices heard.

You can vote for dignity too and help get our state back on track. Help keep neighborhood leaders like Vince out on the doors. Click here to make a donation to California Calls.

So far the results have been phenomenal.

In two weeks, we’ve registered over 800 voters and collected over 700 applications from voters who’d like to vote-by-mail.

Check out news coverage from the Central Valley below (the Univision broadcast is in Spanish).

Other hopeful signs of the impact of California Calls’ organizing:

1. Young people vote when they are contacted. The Alliance increased voter turnout among 18-24 year olds by 9 points, and 25-34 year olds by 11 points.

2. Immigrants and people of color identified by the Alliance as supporters of tax and fiscal reform voted 14 and 15 points higher than their average statewide average, respectively.

Five million more people voted in the November 2008 Federal Elections than in the November 2006 Statewide Election. The Alliance‘s central strategy is to convince 15% of these “occasional” voters in 12 key counties to vote consistently with California Calls. Those voters are newly registered voters, young people, immigrants and people of color who typically don’t vote but were inspired by the possibility of change in 2008.

The Alliance’s November 2010 program was its largest yet — 27 individual organizations recruited 1800 grassroots leaders to knock on doors and phone voters in 10 counties throughout the state. After 6 weeks, California Calls made 226,110 contacts to 174,084 individuals, and identified 124,982 supporters of its agenda.

California bucked the national trend last fall, with progressives winning all major statewide offices. One clear explanation for the results in California is the hundreds of thousands of new voters of color who voted. For a breakdown of the 2010 electorate, click here.

– Benjamin Franklin

California Calls believes that coalition-building is an essential component to winning progressive reform.  One of California Calls’ key strategies for “tipping point” change is to assemble a vibrant mosaic of groups and networks from different sectors that collaborate over the long haul with increasing synergy and clout.  Toward that end, the first of three all-day strategy sessions planned for 2011 was held January 27 in South LA, hosted by alliance anchor group, SCOPE.   The goals were to develop a shared analysis of the statewide political and policy landscape, particularly as shaped by the November election, and to generate active collaboration for long term solutions and strategies to the state’s Tax and Fiscal crisis.

Nearly 70 individuals from 44 groups participated, representing unions, health and human services networks, single-issue advocacy organizations, and faith-based networks, along with California Calls member groups. Clarity of purpose and a strong spirit of trust were in the house. “The day was productive and invigorating,” said one consumer advocate: “The many brilliant young leaders kept me there all day!” A union leader noted the “unusually honest and enlightening dialogue” between labor and community groups. Three main proposals emerged from the January session:

1. Develop a common vision, values and long term agenda to solve the state’s tax and fiscal dysfunction;

2. Share best strategic communication practices and thinking toward shifting public opinion about the role of government and taxes;

3. Organize a united progressive movement effort around the potential Special Election.

Currently, California Calls is shifting its policy development efforts into high gear, leading to a second strategy session in July focused on how to close the $28 Billion Budget Gap. The state policy debate is teetering on a narrow political axis, with momentum growing for ideas such as “realignment” (shifting current state responsibilities to local government, but leaving the question of systemic funding sources to support these responsibilities unanswered), and a flat tax system (with the acknowledgment that such a system is regressive).  There is a disturbing trend to ignore equity issues in these policy conversations. California Calls, in coalition with our allies around the state, will work to insert progressive alternatives based on social justice and equity into the public debate.

Beginning in February, alliance staff met with anchors to assess who really makes decisions in their neighborhoods and cities and how their organizing could give neighborhood leaders from low-income communities of color a seat at the table. Having a clear, coherent analysis of the political landscape in their regions will give anchors a clear picture of where they should be organizing to best achieve their goals and how to build coalitions with like-minded organizations.

The regional organizing sessions pushed anchors to determine how best to engage the thousands of voters who were inspired to vote 2008, but don’t normally vote in statewide elections. Through the process, anchors took the long-view, and considered not what it would take to influence the next election, but what it would take to influence a new generation of leaders.