Additionally, California Calls has done preliminary outreach to groups in five new counties beyond it’s core 10 counties toward expanding our work in two or three new counties this year.

Without qualifying and passing this initiative in November, California will automatically institute $5.4 billion in “trigger cuts” – further decimating K-12, higher education, and human services.

A paid signature-gathering effort, financed with over $6 million pledged by the Governor, the California Federation of Teachers and other key labor unions, will secure most of the needed signature requirement.  California Calls and our coalition allies plan to exceed our earlier goal and produce 40,000 or more signatures from volunteers by April 27^th.

For petitions, please contact the California Calls office at: 323-735-9515

This compromise represents a new turning point in our journey to reorient California’s tax and budget policies towards equity and fairness.

How We Got Here

In December, with strong support from a diverse coalition of allies, the California Calls Action Fund joined with the California Federation of Teachers and the Courage Campaign to file a “Millionaires Tax” Initiative. The measure was proposed to hike the tax rate on the super-rich, raising a projected $6 to $8 billion earmarked for K-12, higher education, health and human services, and public safety.

After three months of intense organizing, the Millionaires Tax Coalition gathered 592,000 signatures and continued to build broad public support, demonstrated in five public opinion polls. On March 14, California Calls and our partners decided to join forces with Governor Brown and key labor unions to set aside our separate proposals in favor of a stronger and unified initiative.

In a matter of days, we helped to create the most progressive income tax measure in the entire nation—and demonstrated the power of our grassroots labor and community coalition to forge an agreement with the traditional Sacramento centers of power.

How the New Measure Compares

In summary, here’s what the new compromise measure does:

1. Of the projected $9 billion raised in the first year, $8 billion will come from a progressive income tax increase for individual Californians making more than $250,000 a year or households making more than $500,000 per year. No one making less than $250,000 a year will see an income tax increase.
2. Over the next seven years, the wealthiest 2% of Californians will pay more every year in higher income taxes. We garnered two more years than the Governor’s original proposal.
3. The new measure reduces the Governor’s proposed sales tax increase from ½ cent to ¼ cent, and stays in place for just four years.
4. 85% of the revenue will be from the higher bracket income taxes, and only 15% will be from the ¼ cent sales tax.
5. A replenishment of the General Fund will help restore numerous programs including K-12, community colleges, police and fire, and programs for seniors, the disabled and poor.
6. Makes permanent the public safety “realignment” of 2011, guaranteeing funding for local governments who take on responsibility for non-violent offenders transferred out of costly state prisons.

Calls supports this new measure because:

• The vast majority of the new revenue comes from the wealthy (almost 90% vs. 60% in the governor’s original).
• Though we don’t like the sales tax, the new measure cuts the proposed sales tax increase in half.
• The revenue is intended to address multiple needs: education, social services, realignment and the budget deficit.
• It allows for a more united effort to pass a badly needed revenue measure this year. Winning will require a united movement.

Compared to the Governor’s original proposal the new measure represents an increase in the tax rate on the very highest incomes of between 1% and 3%, more money — around $2 billion in the first year — to restore cuts, and a 50% decrease in the sales tax.

The future of higher education was one of the most pivotal points in our intense negotiations. Compared to the Millionaires Tax, the new measure does not earmark funds for the CSU and UC systems.

The Governor, Senate Pro-Tem Steinberg, Speaker Perez and other elected leaders publicly committed work so that a portion of the new revenues will be used to support the CSU and UC systems.

Now, it is up to us to hold the elected leaders of Sacramento to their word.

“We must hold them accountable,” said Dolores Huerta during the Southern California meeting. “We need to organize our elected officials to meet with hundreds in our own communities. We will tell them to honor their commitment to keep California’s colleges open and affordable to all.”

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).