UPDATE

Summer 2007 Newsletter

ARISE marches in Washington to keep families together!

June 19 – Washington, DC  At 4 am on Tuesday, June 19, while it was still dark, an unusual ARISE meeting took place:  40 people parked cars in the Colonie Center lot by Sears Auto Center, gathered, and began boarding a bus bound for the nation’s capital.  They had a rally to reach:  at 11am, a national interfaith service was to start in DC’s fabled Metropolitan AME Church, a historic site in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  Once arrived with 2,000 other marchers from across the United States, they were addressed by Senator Ted Kennedy, who gave a rousing promise to fight hard for families and to honor the long-standing scriptural imperative to welcome the stranger  in our land.  The theme of the day was “Keep families together” with just and compassionate immigration reform.

ARISE’s own Rev. Moses Akanbi (pictured with a Gamaliel Connecticut colleague holding the sign above on right) is a Nigerian immigrant missionary who is himself needlessly separated from his wife and eight children by our country’s flawed and harmful system.  He stood up after the senator and connected the work of the rally with the scriptural tradition of prophets speaking out to kings and counselors.  Rev. Moses has now participated in three major national immigration events in DC and is making ARISE’s Civil Rights of Immigrants task force a lion-like voice to be reckoned with.  He credits ARISE with giving him hope:  “I thank God that ARISE has enabled me to speak out to those in power, not just on my own behalf but on behalf of millions like me divided from their families.”

After the interfaith rally concluded, marchers spilled out into the 99-degree sun-lit streets of the capital, symbolically led by children, mothers with strollers, and clergy.  The destination was the White House, where a giant Father’s Day card was delivered which asked the president to change laws that would enable immigrant families to celebrate this holiday as he did.  After the rally outside the White House, ARISE’s CRI team split into four groups to carry the message of the day to the offices of Sens. Schumer and Clinton and Reps. Gillibrand and McNulty.

We have all by now heard the disappointing news about the Senate’s failure to pass a comprehensive bill, but ARISE’s work and that of our partners in the national Fair Immigration Reform Movement ensure that the people will continue to push until justice is done.  The next step is to urge our elected leaders in the House to take action.

ARISE partner David Rusk makes big impact at Governor’s Commission on Local Gov’t Efficiency and Competitiveness

June 13 - Saratoga Springs On a Wednesday morning in June, ARISE strategic policy partner David Rusk made another trip to the Capital Region.  This was his third high profile visit to the Capital Region in recent years, all of them sponsored or co-sponsored by ARISE.  After an Albany press conference releasing his “House Divided” study of upstate New York in May of 2005—which was covered in the media from Buffalo to Newburgh—and a Housing Trust Fund press conference in January of this year whose message reached the then brand new Spitzer administration, Mr. Rusk had been summoned this time specially to be the lead-off presenter in an important new body:  the Governor’s Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness.

This may sound like a rather dry and dull group, but don’t let the title fool you.  The Commission may have a major impact on New York State economic policy.  Rusk presented analysis of how the fragmentation of local government is fueling many of the most significant struggles in New York State, upstate and downstate alike:   unequal schools, racial and economic segregation, outmigration of youth, degradation of the environment, sprawl, and lack of affordable housing are all driven largely by competing municipalities chasing high-end residential tax base, and leaving strapped cities and older suburbs to cope with concentrated poverty.  Rusk’s message to the Commission was simple and strong:  simply sharing services between local governments will have little or no impact on the economic outlook of the state—real competitiveness in the global economy is created by coordinated regional and economic planning at the county or multi-county level.

So dramatic and compelling was this testimony that the Governor’s Senior Advisor Lloyd Constantine rushed immediately up to Rusk at the end of the day’s hearing and invited him to make the same case in person to Gov. Spitzer.  At the same meeting, Mr. Constantine promised to work with ARISE’s Regional Renewal Task Force to facilitate a meeting with Tim Gilchrist, the governor’s Deputy Secretary for Infrastructure (Economic Development, Transportation, and Energy).  ARISE’s long work for regional compacts is now reaching the highest level of New York State government.

News in brief:

1. The generosity continues.  ARISE has announced on several occasions that our Individual Donor Campaign (IDC) has yielded the most generous per capita response of any Gamaliel organization.  We are pleased to announce that many of the 117 people who pledged in 2006 have already renewed their pledge in 2007, and it appears likely that giving will increase significantly this year over our strong start.  For any who have not yet renewed, please send in a monthly, quarterly, or one-time contribution to the following address at the bottom of this page.
2. New York Thruway Alliance.  ARISE’s powerful and unprecedented alliance with sister upstate organizations is growing and raising more money:  Cortland Interfaith and NOAH-Niagara have now joined the groups from Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo who are already members.  Mott Foundation, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, The Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, and Presbyterian Church (USA) are supporting this effort with $150,000/year in grants.
Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) nears critical stage.  Working closely with African American leaders Carolyn McLaughlin and Wanda Willingham, ARISE has been helping to forge an inclusive negotiating team and a “unity pledge” that will frame the key demands for a CBA to be worked out with representatives of the Albany Convention Center Authority.  A CBA is a set of legally binding targets for jobs, training, and other community improvements such as housing, funded through a major project.  The team and pledge should be finalized before the end of August.

• Update07-7.doc (MS Word file)
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