Category Archives: Front Page

The EQUAL Act Helps Us Dismantle and Build Anew

The EQUAL Act Helps Us Dismantle and Build Anew

Joan Neal and Sr. Mara Rutten, RSM
April 13, 2021

The Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (EQUAL) Act (H.R.1693/S.79) is bipartisan legislation that seeks to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for cocaine offenses, a major contributor to mass incarceration, and apply retroactively to those already convicted or sentenced.

The EQUAL Act was introduced in the House on March 9, 2021 by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-08), Bobby Scott (D-VA-03), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND-AL) and Don Bacon (R-NE-02). Across the Capitol, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had previously introduced the bill on January 28, 2021.

Before introducing the bill, Senator Booker said, “For over three decades, unjust, baseless and unscientific sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine have contributed to the explosion of mass incarceration in the United States and disproportionately impacted poor people, Black and Brown people, and people fighting mental illness… I encourage my colleagues to support the EQUAL Act as a necessary step in repairing our broken criminal justice system.”

While there are many provisions within the justice system that produce discriminatory and racist impacts, the crack/powder sentencing laws are among the most obvious. For many years now, science and experience have shown us there is no difference between use of crack or powder cocaine. Neither one is more or less addictive nor produces more violent behavior in the user. The difference is that crack cocaine has historically been used in more urban communities of color, specifically Black communities, while powder cocaine has more often been found in whiter, more suburban communities. The racial implications couldn’t be clearer.

Furthermore, the sentencing disparity between these two drugs has contributed significantly to the growth of mass incarceration in this country. According to FAMM, in 2019 alone, 81% of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses were Black, even though historically, 66% of crack cocaine users have been white or Hispanic. It is time to end this racist policy and restore proportionality in sentencing.

Events of the past few years have illuminated the systemic inequalities in our country’s criminal legal system. At NETWORK, we cannot continue to tolerate racial profiling, police brutality, the loss of another generation to mass incarceration, or the perpetuation of poverty. As we Build Anew, we affirm the truth that every person is entitled to dignity and equal justice under law. It is time for Congress to act and take a firm stance against institutional racism embedded within the criminal legal system by passing the EQUAL Act (H.R.1693/S.79).

NETWORK Joins Faith Leaders Calling on Congress to Pass H.R.40

NETWORK Joins Faith Leaders Calling on Congress to Pass H.R.40

Jarrett Smith
May 4, 2021

At the end of April, NETWORK Lobby joined a sign-on letter to Congressional Leadership along with 180 faith-based organizations, faith leaders, and advocates to urge Congress to support the passage of H.R.40 – Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act. H.R.40 is the only bill that will lead to concrete proposals for repairing the damage that the United States government has inflicted on Black people and its passage will allow us to take steps towards dismantling white supremacy and steps towards repair so that we can build anew together.

Catholic Social Teaching is clear: racism is a sin. Our faith teaches us to reject the immoral system of white supremacy and to work for truth-telling and repair. We can no longer deny the sins of the past and its ongoing implications Black people experience every day. NETWORK urges Congress to support and pass H.R.40.

Read the full sign-on letter sent to Congressional Leadership.

Read Jarrett Smith’s blog on passing H.R.40.

Read the statement on H.R.40 from NETWORK’s Executive Director, Mary Novak.

Orange sign that says "It's in the Constitution: Everyone Counts"

Prison-Based Gerrymandering Conflicts with Our Principles and Undermines Democracy

Guest Blog: Prison-Based Gerrymandering Conflicts with Our Principles and Undermines Democracy

Libbey Detcher
April 30, 2021

In the wake of the 2020 Census, gerrymandering – the strategic and partisan redrawing of electoral district lines – is again a concern. Gerrymandering has disastrous effects: it undermines the will of the people drastically alters the United States political landscape. In 2018, the Center for American Progress published a report on gerrymandering and found that the process of unfair redistricting impacted 59 seats in the United States House of Representatives between 2012 and 2016. Today, gerrymandering by politicians and statisticians is generally recognized as a problem that affects voters across the United States, but less familiar is the disenfranchisement produced by prison-based gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering in any form is contrary to the moral responsibility we have to make sure every person is fairly represented and has equal access to participate in political institutions. Prison-based gerrymandering particularly creates a political system that fails to recognize and honor the human dignity of people who are incarcerated.

Prison gerrymandering distorts democracy in a different light than simply redrawing district lines. Since the first federal census in 1790, the United States Census Bureau has counted incarcerated persons as part of the population in districts where they’re incarcerated rather than the district of their permanent address. This artificially inflates representation of rural districts where prisons are located. Simultaneously, it dilutes the political power of districts with higher percentages of incarcerated residents. A law student intern at Yale Law School’s Peter Gruber Rule of Law clinic, Nicole Billington, researched how this little known practice “diminishes the voting power of people in urban districts.”

With people of color disproportionately facing incarceration, prison gerrymandering disproportionately diminishes the political power of communities of color. The vast majority of penitentiaries are located in rural or suburban predominantly white communities, however, most elected officials are unlikely to take their incarcerated residents into account as constituents who they represent and serve. In fact, people who are incarcerated do not have access to public goods or services located outside of the prison such as public transportation or schools.

The Sentencing Project estimates that 5.2 million people in the United States face disenfranchisement because of laws that ban voting for people with felony charges. This is 2.27% of the eligible voting population in the United States. While 1 in 59 non-Black voters face disenfranchisement from these bans, The Project reports that 1 in every 16 African-American voters lose the right to vote as a result.

These policies are a familiar echo of the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise. The policy counted enslaved persons as only three-fifths of a person for a state’s population count while simultaneously denying any person of color the right to vote. This shameful, inhumane policy was in place until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

In 2019, the first prison gerrymandering case NAACP et al. v. Merrill was argued before a federal court. Families of incarcerated persons, alongside the NAACP, filed a lawsuit claiming that Connecticut’s prison gerrymandering practices violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved the lawsuit.

Nine states have successfully passed legislation to end prison gerrymandering: Maryland, New York, California, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington State. Additionally, Illinois passed similar legislation set to go into effect by 2030.

Prison-based gerrymandering not only undermines democratic principles but  runs counter to Catholic social teaching. The Catholic faith emphasizes the importance of civic engagement through the political process. Pope Francis tells us, “A good Catholic meddles in politics.” Catholics cannot turn a blind eye to the disenfranchisement of an incarcerated population or the systemic racism baked in to prison-based gerrymandering.

The Prison Gerrymandering Project, The Sentencing Project, Prison Policy Initiative, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund are a few advocacy organizations working to end prison-based gerrymandering in the U. S. through litigation, state legislation,  the U. S. Census Bureau, and community activism across the country. Congress can put an end to this practice in all states and jurisdictions in one fell swoop by passing the For the People Act (H.R.1/S.1)

Libbey Detcher (She/Her) is a student at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She is majoring in Political Science with minors in Intercultural Studies and Justice Studies.

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Introduced in the Senate

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Introduced in the Senate

Audrey Carroll
April 29, 2021

Today, Senators Bob Casey (D-PA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced the bipartisan, bicameral Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). The PWFA has been introduced in the House of Representatives and passed in the House Education and Labor committee in a 30-17 vote on March 24, 2021. NETWORK celebrates introduction of the PWFA in the Senate to advance long overdue family-friendly workplace protections.

In a statement from the Pregnant Workers Fairness Coalition, NETWORK Executive Director Mary J. Novak said, “NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice celebrates the reintroduction of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) in the Senate. This common sense, bipartisan legislation is faithful to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching — and the dignity of the human person in particular — by caring for the health and economic security of pregnant people and their families. Forcing workers to choose between a safe pregnancy and a paycheck is immoral and the PWFA ends this injustice. NETWORK Lobby calls on Congress to swiftly pass the PWFA into law and support gainfully employed people bringing new life into the world.”

Read the full statement from the Pregnant Workers Fairness Coalition here.

Read NETWORK’s Letter of Support for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act here.

 

Taxes and President Biden’s American Families Plan

Taxes and President Biden’s American Families Plan

Colleen Ross
April 28, 2021

The American Families Plan, the second part of President Biden’s transformational plan for U.S. jobs and families, makes investments into our nation’s children, our education system, and our health care.

While some members of Congress have already begun a strong campaign against the plan’s changes to the individual side of the tax code, it is long past time to modernize the tax code and make it more just.

Here’s a look at the transformational investments in the American Families Plan:

  • Extend the Child Tax Credit increases in the American Rescue Plan through 2025 and make the Child Tax Credit permanently fully refundable.
  • Make the Earned Income Tax Credit Expansion for childless workers permanent.
  • Extend expanded ACA premiums tax credits in the American Rescue Plan.
  • Permanently increase tax credits to support families with child care needs.
  • Expand summer EBT to all eligible children nationwide.
  • Create a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program
  • Offer two years of free community college to all Americans, including Dreamers.

Read the White House summary of the American Families Plan here.

The American Families plan reverses the biggest giveaways that were passed in the 2017 tax law and reforms the tax code so that all contribute to our shared prosperity in a just tax system, including the wealthiest.  These reforms are urgently needed at a time when economic inequality and the continued persistence of the racial wealth and income gap are harming our country. We cannot be a healthy country while systemic racism and economic inequality continue harming individuals and families in our nation.

For this reason, we support the tax reforms included in the American Families Plan which specifically address the ways that the tax code widens racial disparities in income and wealth. These reforms include:

Increasing the top tax rate to 39.6%

One of the 2017 tax cut’s clearest giveaways to the wealthy was cutting the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, exclusively benefitting the wealthiest households—those in the top one percent. This rate cut alone gives a couple with $2 million in taxable an annual tax cut of more than $36,400. The President’s plan restores the top tax bracket to what it was before the 2017 law, returning the rate to 39.6 percent, applying only to those within the top one percent.

Enforcing compliance with the tax code

The American Families Plan would invest $80 billion to strengthen IRS enforcement, which has been decimated over the last decade and improve reporting on the income for high-earners. According to ProPublica, millionaires get audited at close to the same rate as workers with less than $20,000 of annual income. The Treasury estimates these enforcement improvements could raise $700 billion over 10 years.

Changing how capital gains are taxed

The biggest source of income for the wealthiest people in the U.S. is the profit they make from the gain on stock or other assets; this is known as capital gains. (This creates the much-talked about reality where Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.)

The American Families Plan would partially fund the programs it proposes to invest in children and families by taxing income from capital gains like the taxes workers pay on their wages. It does this by closing two major loopholes that create the current system where wealth has a lower tax rate than what many middle-class workers pay on their wages.

Our partners at Americans for Tax Fairness explain how the plan closes these two loopholes:

  • For people making more than $1 million a year, or the richest 0.3% of taxpayers, Biden wants to eliminate the nearly half-off tax discount they currently get when they sell assets at a profit. Instead of paying today’s top tax rate of 20% on the profits from the sale of assets like corporate stock, the rich would pay the same nearly 40% they already pay on their big salaries and other income. The current capital-gains discount is what allows a billionaire to pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or truck driver.
  • Biden also wants to tax the wealthy on the accumulated gains of assets they inherit—gains that now go completely untaxed. The plan would only apply to gains over $1 million per individual, $2 million per couple ($2.5 million per couple when combined with existing real estate exemptions). This reform will narrow the wealth gap, limit the creation of economic dynasties, and raise revenue for services vital to all of us who do not inherit a fortune.
  • Together, these two reforms would raise around $300 billion over 10 years exclusively from rich people. This will narrow the wealth gap and limit the creation of economic dynasties. It will also fund investments in healthcare, childcare, education and tax credits for working families that raise millions of children out of poverty. (The Tax Policy Center estimated a similar plan proposed by the Biden presidential campaign would raise $327 billion.)

Pursuing Racial and Economic Justice in Housing

Pursuing Racial and Economic Justice in Housing

Jarrett Smith
April 28, 2021

Last week, President Biden released details of his much-anticipated American Jobs Plan. It is a bold proposal, and includes reforms in key areas. To honor the human dignity of every person, NETWORK affirms that housing should be a right in this country; therefore, we are pleased President Biden has prioritized affordable housing in this package. In total, the American Jobs Plan provides $213 billion to build, preserve, and retrofit 2 million homes.

More specifically, the President’s plan proposes the following capital investments:

  • $40 billion to create new public housing
  • $27 billion to establish a Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator to mobilize private investments in distributed energy and retrofits
  • $20 billion for Neighborhood Homes Investment Act tax credits to help more than 500,000 low- and middle-income homebuyers build and rehabilitate homes
  • Develop 1 million affordable, resilient, accessible, energy-efficient, and electrified housing units through tax credits, formula funding, grants, and project-based rental assistance
  • Create grants to eliminate state and local exclusionary zoning laws
  • Guarantee energy efficiency improvements through block grants, Weatherization Assistance Program, and tax credits

At NETWORK, we see housing as an opportunity to dismantle systemic racism, a cornerstone of the Build Anew Agenda, as it applies to housing policies that have been a part of this country its inception. It is critical that specific policies to address and eradicate racism are part of this housing infrastructure proposal.  Components NETWORK would like to see in the proposal include:

Bridging the gap between individual’s incomes and housing costs by expanding rental assistance to every eligible household.

  • Currently, only 1 in 4 households eligible for rental assistance receives it. The vast majority of families – over 17 million — who need rental assistance do not receive it, causing many people to be cost-burdened or experience housing insecurity (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Expanding and preserving the supply of rental homes that are affordable and accessible to people with the lowest incomes, as well as providing at least $70 billion to start increasing the supply and renovating existing rental housing.

  • There is no state or congressional district in the U.S. with enough affordable homes for families with the lowest incomes. Additional housing is badly needed, and at affordable prices, for all families and individuals to secure stable housing in the U.S. (National Low Income Housing Coalition).

Providing emergency rental assistance to households in crisis by creating a national housing stabilization fund.

  • Millions of households are one unexpected financial interruption away from economic hardship that could quickly result in homelessness. Large and small municipalities should be able to directly access these funds for distribution and a request for financial assistance should be simple, involving minimal paperwork. Funds should be distributed by giving name, address, landlord and the amount owed. This process should be a very liberal annual cap that resets at the start of each calendar year.

Strengthening and enforcing renter protections.

  • The power inequities between renters and landlords puts renters at risk of housing instability and homelessness. CDC eviction protections should remain in place for 36 months to protect families and individuals from eviction.

NETWORK is committed to making sure that there are no people living in the United States without a home.  We believe that even the lowest earning household or individual should have a place to call home. Housing is a right for all individuals and families and we can no longer allow homelessness to be an acceptable condition for anyone in the United States. As Pope Francis said during his 2015 visit to the United States, “Let me be clear. There is no social or moral justification, no justification whatsoever, for the lack of housing.”

Moreover, the Build Anew cornerstone of rooting our economy in solidarity should be fundamental for future federal housing policy. Housing is the basis for stable economic security and prosperity. President Biden’s American Jobs Plan is an excellent start, and we will advocate for that proposal, and further steps, once it becomes our nation’s new infrastructure reality for housing.

#BuildAnew BINGO

#BuildAnew Bingo

Audrey Carroll
April 28, 2021

In February 2021, NETWORK introduced Build Anew: A Justice Agenda for All of Us.
This policy agenda is inspired by the principles of Catholic Social Justice and comes from encounter with individuals and families across the United States. 

Based on our Build Anew Policy Agenda, we’ve created this #BuildAnew Bingo card to use during President Biden’s address to Congress to see how well the administration is doing at supporting our Build Anew policy areas.

Certain policies and systems seek to widen the income gap, encourage racism, and exclude people based on their identity. At NETWORK, we believe there is no way to achieve justice without intentionally building our political system, economy, and society to be just and inclusive. The Build Anew Agenda includes five policy areas: Economic Security; Healthcare, Housing, and Food; Tax Justice; Our Democracy; and Our Immigration and Justice Systems.

We hope to see President Biden address these important policy areas to work towards Dismantling Systemic Racism, Cultivating Inclusive Community, Rooting Our Economy in Solidarity, and Transforming Our Politics.

Download Your Bingo Card with Instructions Here. 

Congress Must Pass H.R.40

Congress Must Pass H.R.40

Jarrett Smith
April 20, 2021

Luke 19:8-10

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

On Wednesday, April 14 history was made in our country when the H.R.40 Bill – Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposal for African Americans Act received a favorable vote at the House Judiciary Committee markup. This is the first time a House committee has considered the bill for recommendation to the House floor since it was first introduced in 1989 by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

Reparations is a matter of racial and social justice. The case for reparations is 400 hundred years in the making when the first enslaved Africans were sold in Virginia in 1619. The questioning of the humanity of Africans  throughout the world as Africans and their descendants are always treated and portrayed as if they are inferior to human beings or not even being human by the hundreds of years spent dehumanizing them, and treating them as though they were property to be bought and sold.

Now is the time for reparations. Congress must act and pass H.R.40. NETWORK applauds Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18), the bill sponsor, for her part in bringing this bill forward and successfully getting it out of the Judiciary Committee. Currently, the bill has 180 co-sponsors. We need your help getting the remaining 38 other members of Congress to support H.R.40.

H.R.40 allows us to take the first steps towards dismantling systemic racism, cultivating a more inclusive community, and rooting our economy in solidarity so that we can Build Anew together.

This is a historic and rare opportunity to advance a federal policy that seeks to address and rectify the sinful effects of slavery in the United States. Therefore, NETWORK calls on Congress to pass H.R.40 now. It is time for the most in-need to receive recompense as many times as necessary for there to be justice.

Read the statement on H.R.40 from NETWORK’s Executive Director, Mary Novak.