Author: Progressive Voice

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Anne O’Brien

Child care in Arlington costs more than college–and not all families are lucky enough to find a spot.

Fortunately, the county is beginning to address the issue, with a Child Care Initiative that aims to increase the accessibility, availability and quality of child care in Arlington.

The average cost of infant care at a child care center in Arlington is $24,390 per year, according to a comprehensive analysis of child care in the county. That’s more than a year of in-state tuition, fees and room and board at Virginia Tech.

While home-based infant care is cheaper, averaging $16,929 per year, and the cost drops a bit as kids get older, child care remains a huge expense for Arlington families. That’s true for middle-class families (the median income of a family of four here is $108,600) but painfully true for our most vulnerable populations.

And child care expenses compete with money needed for transportation, food and a mortgage or rent.

In addition, there is a significant shortage of child care slots in Arlington. Nearly 70% of Arlington’s children under five live in a household where all parents work — but the county only has enough licensed full-time spots for about 33% of them. In some households, parents work nontraditional hours, or there is a language barrier or child with special needs — all of which can make it harder to find a quality child care option.

Enter nannies, au pairs, arrangements between friends and family, and hard decisions to leave small children with people who don’t have a license or other tangible child care qualification.

Also, enter withdrawal from the workforce. For some parents, there is not a choice–the high cost of quality child care or the inability to access it means that parents must give up jobs they love, impacting their earnings potential, future employability, retirement planning and mental health. It also means that valuable employees leave the companies that rely on them.

Consider the approximately 1,400 young Arlington children who live at or below the federal poverty level. Some of these children live in two-parent homes making the tough choices mentioned above. Others live in single-parent homes where no child care means no job.

What about child care subsidies for lower-income parents? State subsidies do exist, offering parents access to child care while working and gaining skills that can ultimately lead to higher income, allowing families to move off public assistance. Some families in Arlington use such subsidies, but others who qualify do not.

There is regularly a waitlist due to insufficient funds. Plus, few of Arlington’s providers accept subsidies, in part because a subsidy doesn’t cover the market rate for child care and state payments are sometimes delayed. There is also the “chicken and egg” issue: to qualify for a subsidy, you must have a job; to have a job, you must have child care.

So what needs to happen to make child care more affordable in Arlington?

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Brook Schaeffler, Emma Johnston and Cynthia Dillon

Today, the gun control movement is larger than ever because angry teenagers across the nation — students like us — are demanding change.

This growing movement was sparked by the tragedy that occurred on February 14 at Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Fla. The 17 lives that were mercilessly taken there brought to light the epidemic of firearm violence caused by easy access to guns and inadequate enforcement of gun control laws.

As students, recent events leave us feeling vulnerable to the consequences of lenient gun control laws. We feel it is our duty to take a stand against what we believe to be an unsafe situation. To make our voices heard, we participated in a Teens for Gun Control Reform protest outside the White House on February 19 and afterward found ourselves on the front page of The New York Times.

We participated in student-organized walkouts from school on February 21 and March 14. We are using social media to contact like-minded students in Arlington, Parkland and across the nation to organize, develop messages, share support and offer housing for students traveling to Washington, D.C., to work for change.

We also will participate in the March for Our Lives on March 24 to focus attention on school safety and show those who oppose stricter gun control laws that we, among many other students nationwide, are ready to take a firm stand for overdue change.

Kids across the country should be able to attend school without being in constant fear for their lives. Yet, as noted in the Washington Post, the FBI reports that education settings such as K – 12 schools and college campuses are the second most common location for active shooters. Despite each of the horrific school shootings in the past and the most recent tragedy in Florida, little effort has been made to put an end to the gun violence.

Indeed, compared to other countries, obtaining a gun of any sort in the United States is particularly easy. Countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have imposed much stricter laws on guns than in the United States and these restrictions have led to fewer guns in the hands of civilians and fewer mass shootings in these countries.

School is supposed to be a safe place, yet today getting an education is one of the many things put at risk by our nation’s pervasive and irresponsible gun culture. Although we are aware that complete reform will not happen overnight, we hope that students like us are willing to continue taking action for as long as necessary.

We encourage the President, Congress, the Governor and General Assembly to take time to understand the fears students face and then do something meaningful about it. They need to enact laws that protect people, not guns.

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

 The 2020 Census is probably not anybody’s idea of a sexy topic. But ensuring an accurate 2020 Census count is vital to both getting the number of congressional seats a state deserves and to the day to day effective functioning of government.

As we currently sit, the upcoming 2020 Census is going to be a disaster.

The 2020 Census brings with is a technological redesign that relies on “many new and modified IT systems.” These changes include encouraging respondents to use the Internet and telephone instead of a paper survey, relying more heavily on local data, and using field technology to minimize data and increase productivity.

While these technological advances should make the census more cost efficient and accurate in the long run, the proprietary designs of the technology have been costly with well documented difficulties in implementation. This is in addition to the leadership vacuum created when former Census Director John H. Thompson resigned in the summer of 2017. The Trump administration has not yet appointed anyone to fill the position.

Beyond the institutional challenges are the societal concerns that could depress responses to a census questionnaire: cybersecurity threats, the climate of fear among immigrant communities regardless of their documented status and the growing digital divide between urban and rural areas and between wealthy and poor communities.

Why does this all matter?

First the Constitution requires a census every 10 years and declares it the official number for state populations in determining congressional representation. If the census undercounts individuals, a state could get less representation than it is entitled to.

The census has historically undercounted low-income households and households where English is not the first language. While Arlington is a largely affluent jurisdiction, an estimated 9 percent of Arlingtonians live in poverty. Moreover, a language other than English is spoken in nearly 30 percent of Arlington households.

Second, the federal government often relies on census data in allocating funding to state and local governments. More than 130 federal programs rely on census data to distribute funding to the states, including Medical Assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP or food stamps), Highway Planning and Construction, Special Education grants and Head Start. In 2015, the Commonwealth of Virginia received more than $10.2 billion from census-guided federal grant programs, which was approximately 20 percent of the state budget that year.

With the rapid population growth in Arlington and Northern Virginia over the past decade, an inaccurate census could lead to lower revenue to the Commonwealth to implement crucial programs.

What can we do?

First, we need to urge Congress to fully fund the 2020 Census. Last fall, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross requested the Census Bureau’s budget be increased by $187 million in FY 2018 to address some of the technological needs; however, that request did not include additional funding for the Integrated Partnership and Communications program that is crucial in addressing factors that may depress the census response rate.

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Alfonso Lopez

Last week the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill, HB 1257, to prohibit any locality in Virginia from adopting an ordinance, procedure or policy that restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.

While that may sound reasonable to some Virginians, it ignores the complicated relationship between federal, state and local law enforcement with regard to immigration and contradicts Arlington policy. It also ignores the urgent need for immigrants to feel comfortable and confident in talking to law enforcement after a crime has occurred.

When immigrant victims and witnesses fear law enforcement, crimes go unsolved and perpetrators go free. Across Virginia, service-providers working with immigrant victims — and law enforcement investigating crimes involving immigrant victims and witnesses — report the significant obstacles this fear poses to the criminal justice system’s ability to transform crimes into convictions.

Domestic violence, sexual assault and street robberies are just a few of the types of violent crimes that routinely go unreported and unsolved. This public safety crisis needs to be addressed to keep criminals from taking advantage of the fear that is running rampant in Virginia’s immigrant communities.

Current policy in Arlington prevents victims and witnesses of crimes from being asked about their immigration status when speaking with the police, unless that information is directly relevant to the crime being investigated. This policy was put into place to keep Arlington law enforcement from having to shoulder the burden of federal immigration laws.

Arlington’s policy is also particularly designed to strengthen community policing — a style of policing that establishes a familiar, on-the-ground presence for law enforcement among residents — by ensuring that residents who are concerned about their immigration status are not afraid to report criminals and assist prosecutors in investigating criminal activity.

Furthermore, consistent with an advisory opinion released in January 2015 by Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office is not required to hold an individual in custody past his release date based solely on a request to detain him by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

These non-mandatory requests neither impose a legal obligation nor provide the necessary legal authority to detain individuals past their release date, and must be accompanied by a court-issued warrant to be honored and avoid raising constitutional concerns.

Above all, each of these policies make our community safer by encouraging a free flow of communication between undocumented immigrants and law enforcement, and neither policy runs contrary to federal law.

HB 1257, however, could prohibit common-sense public safety policies like ours and replace them with a requirement that Arlington participate in ICE’s 287(g) program, which would effectively deputize our local police to act as enforcement for federal immigration law.

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Steve Baker

Frederick Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.” Last year, the Arlington Democrats reached their own limit and in response, sent volunteers beyond Arlington to House of Delegates’ districts around the Commonwealth.

Arlington, which is the smallest county in Virginia in square miles but one of the largest in terms of population, was in the highest Democratic performing congressional district in last November’s election.

Pleased with our own General Assembly delegation but eager to do better for Virginia and send a positive message of hope to the nation, we turned our focus to joining our neighbors and fellow Virginians in the burgeoning and ever more diverse suburbs and exurbs outside the beltway.

It wasn’t the first time we exported volunteers but in 2017 we elevated it to a grander scale, joining with many local groups, like WofA (We of Action), Arlington Indivisible and others. The Beyond Arlington program flourished in response to the confluence of our 2017 delegate races and a record number of 89 democratic candidates, with an enormous outpouring of volunteers due to the current administration in Washington.

The reasons for greater collaboration are clear. We have common goals: a growing need for schools, continued job growth and regional transportation solutions. We share many transit assets–Metro, VRE, our Interstates, toll roads and bike trails. We also have a need to protect the Potomac River watershed and our parks and open spaces.

Progress in these areas has often been difficult as an entrenched conservative General Assembly has, often by party-line votes, rejected progress or serious bipartisanship. Even after last year’s election, the 51% has refused to work with the other 49%, something Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as the “tyranny of the majority.”

This has been the case throughout our history. Conservatives in Virginia have fought federal authority vigorously, most notably over the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, school integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

These same conservatives have no qualms exercising far greater authority over our local governments in Virginia through the Dillon Rule and state constitution, denying localities their own decision-making.

We saw this most recently in preventing localities from removing a statue from a local park or renaming stretches of state roads within their jurisdiction. As Governor Northam said last year on the campaign trail, “If we can’t change their minds, we need to change their seats.”

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Janet Kopenhaver

As Arlington County updates our community development plans, the arts need to be emphasized and explicitly promoted in these discussions because of the positive impact they have on the economy and the people of our County.

Residents may be unaware that hundreds of individual artists and arts groups call Arlington County home. Indeed, with more than 6,000 employees, these artists and arts-related businesses represent 5.1 percent of Arlington businesses and 3 percent of the county’s workforce.

Non-profit art groups spend more than $170 million on operational expenses in Arlington County, which in turn generates tax revenue. Last year, arts audiences also spent more than $18 million above the cost of admission for such things as parking, meals, and local ground transportation in the County.

The arts go beyond this impressive economic impact, however, to also play an integral role in helping people. The arts do so by providing therapeutic support for veterans and residents with physical and mental challenges, for example, and also offering inspiration to and support for students.

A positive contribution of the arts is in helping veterans cope with depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One combat medic who served in Vietnam was having difficulty emotionally after he came home to Arlington. After attending several art therapy classes and through working on paintings and collages, he was able to slowly deal with his PTSD.

“I could express the locked-in things that I was afraid to talk about,” he said.

Numerous studies show that art therapy helps veterans like him who are suffering PTSD, especially those who are having trouble talking about their combat experience.

People suffering from neurological disease (such as Parkinson’s disease) experience noticeable benefits from movement or dance classes. Arlington’s Bowen McCauley Dance runs a program for people suffering from Parkinson’s and several clients have asserted how much their lives have improved since starting lessons.

One Arlington resident noted, “My state of mind is vastly improved.” Another wrote, “It benefits my mood and physical capability.”

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Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Clara Bridges

If you lived in Arlington during the 2017 Virginia elections, you have probably been visited by canvassers a few times before the November 7 election who wanted to remind you to vote.

In fact, the number of those visits were likely closer to five than to just one. Getting out the vote volunteer numbers increased, in Arlington and beyond, as interest in local, state and federal politics has surged.

After last year’s presidential election, numerous grassroots groups sprung up throughout the country, and Arlington was no different. Whether they grew out of the call to huddle from the Women’s March on Washington, the Indivisible Guide, or a group of friends, these organizations have over the past year become a persistent facet of civic engagement and a steady source of activism.

In just the 8th Congressional District encompassing Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church and parts of Fairfax County, these groups have members in excess of 7,000 people.

Although there were initial concerns about their expected longevity, most of the groups continue to flourish and improve their operations, focusing on a few items at a time and directing their group members to take action.

Although the primary focus continues to be the on the Trump administration and its appointees, as of mid-2017 most groups also developed a cohort of individuals focused on local politics with a specific target on getting out the vote activities such as calling, texting, and canvassing as well as registering voters.

Individuals in three Arlington groups that I am aware of and participate in — Indivisible Arlington, We of Action (WofA), and HEAR Arlington — “adopted” Virginia House of Delegates candidates not just in Arlington but all over the state.

The adopted candidates had grassroots group members canvassing for them and making calls in their districts to drum up support and ensure a good turnout. We believe these efforts were a key to victories in numerous House districts across the Commonwealth as well as the statewide races for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General.

The 2017 election may be over, but the grassroots activists inspired to work so hard in 2017 show no sign of slowing down now that we are in 2018. Energized by the significant wins in the Virginia House of Delegates and motivated by all that has been learned, groups are mobilizing to watch and promote or oppose legislation being discussed in the 2018 Virginia legislative session.

Indivisible Arlington has hosted training sessions explaining the process by which bills become law and some of the inner workings of the committees and chambers in the General Assembly. VA PLAN (Virginia Progressive Legislative Action Network), a coalition of members from grassroots groups all over Virginia in which WofA plays an important role, has organized a legislative alert network to raise awareness of bills that promote or hurt progressive goals.

One can only assume that groups across Virginia will join those in Arlington to ensure that every bit of legislation passed in this General Assembly session will get the level of scrutiny this highly educated and well trained mass of volunteers can give.

The activism picture in Arlington is certainly a good example of what we are seeing all over the country. Groups formed primarily to fight against what they see as a Presidential Administration without respect for American values have dug their heels in and created coalitions that ensure the ongoing vitality of grassroots activism.

The focus continues to be on keeping the Trump Administration accountable and also fighting against the Administration’s policies that are hurting our County, our state, our country, and the international community.

The grassroots activists, with their electioneering and legislative work, are now on the offensive as well as playing defense. Expect to see Arlington activists pushing for or against legislation in Richmond and helping grassroots groups in other Virginia Congressional Districts with less progressive representation challenge the status quo looking toward the November 2018 elections.

If the elections in Virginia in 2017 have been any indication, this year is gearing up to be an exciting one for Arlington activists.

Clara Bridges is an Arlington resident and a member of multiple local activist groups. She works as a software architect for an Arlington based company.

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Emily Patton

The Women’s March in Washington and around the country on January 21, 2017, became the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Those of us who marched that day can clearly recall the feelings of unity, drive and purpose. We came in buses, fresh off of planes, on foot, by car and by Metro. We waited in hours long traffic, some never even making it into the city, but we didn’t care.

Wherever we were, we made sure our message was heard. From the bleakness that was the early morning hours of November 9, 2016, this march became a ray of hope — a focused effort and rallying cry that my sisters and I could stand behind and announce that we would no longer accept the status quo. We would not be silenced.

Due to our proximity to the Nation’s Capital, the Virginia chapter of the women’s march quickly became a focal point for marchers from across the country. As the State Outreach Coordinator for the 2017 march, my goal was to mobilize Virginians — and all who came through our state — with grassroots level activism.

Volunteers from across the Commonwealth coordinated to distribute flyers, fundraise and welcome marchers into their homes. We helped visitors buy Metro cards and navigate our transit system. In doing so, we helped give rise to the record numbers attending the women’s march. At the pre-march rally at the National Carousel, hundreds of Virginians gathered to listen to several of our states elected officials speak. Our blue wave was only just beginning.

Heading into mid-2017, Virginia quickly became the national focus as one of only two states holding gubernatorial off-year elections. Virginia has been a competitively purple state for years; all eyes were on us. We did not disappoint. Virginians elected more women than ever and the most diverse class of state representatives in our history.

The collective actions by women, male allies and most especially by the African American, Latinx and Asian American communities, led Democrats to a resounding victory at the ballot box. Although we made historic gains in 2017, our work has just started.

On January 21, the anniversary of the 2017 Women’s March, people will gather for Power to the Polls in Las Vegas and around the country as part of a weekend of action to advance peaceful and positive progress in communities across the country. Our goal is to ensure that women and allies persist in critical civic engagement work. The past year featured historic numbers of women engaging in the political process. It is vital that women continue to take an active role in 2018 and future elections. A government that is of the people and by the people needs to look like the people it represents.

Locally, many of us will be participating in the Women’s March on Washington 2018 — March To The Polls on January 20. This year’s Women’s March on Washington is sponsored by March Forward Virginia. Comprised of the group of advocates who worked in Virginia for the 2017 Women’s March, we’ve banded together again to continue the movement. Our focus is to empower women to run for office, to learn and take action on the policies that affect our daily lives and to strengthen the progressive work already being done in our communities to register voters and encourage civic engagement.

I march this year for the women who experience domestic violence, for the women who can’t access basic reproductive healthcare such as abortion services, for all the girls who are shamed for what they wear and for all the women and girls who have been and will be sexually assaulted.

On January 20, 2018, I will march for the women who decide to run for office for the first time, for the girls who will strive to win their school’s science competition, for the women who will start their own businesses and for each and every person courageous enough to confront sexism.

If last year’s march was the rallying cry, this year brings the full weight of the movement forward to the polls!

You can RSVP on Facebook or Eventbrite.

Emily Patton is the Press Chair for the Women’s March on Washington 2018. She is a recent graduate of the Virginia Progressive Leadership Project, sits on the Board of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and is an active Democratic community organizer.

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Jill Caiazzo

With 2018 on the horizon, much of the political discussion is focused on the Congressional midterm elections. But the New Year brings another contest much closer to home: the 2018 Arlington County Board race featuring a Democratic challenger to incumbent John Vihstadt.

Assuming that more than one Democrat throws his or her hat into the ring (and three are already rumored), the voting members of the Arlington County Democratic Committee will select the method for nominating the Democratic candidate: a primary or a caucus. I plan to vote for a primary.

A primary has several key advantages over a caucus. Because a primary is run by the government, the full election apparatus of Arlington County applies to a County Board primary.

On Primary Day, all 54 polling locations in Arlington are open to voters for 13 hours. Absentee voting also is available to eligible voters, who can include military personnel stationed overseas, business travelers, the infirm, and their caregivers.

This well-run election apparatus greatly facilitates voter participation in a County Board primary. Even with the usual absolute best efforts, a caucus run by the local Democratic Party – with its limited voting hours, handful of locations, and lack of absentee voting – pales in comparison.

Equally important, voters also are more likely to know about a primary than a caucus, especially if the primary also features a contest for either Congressional midterm. This scenario is not far-fetched in 2018: members of Our Revolution (the offshoot of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign) and other progressive groups are apparently recruiting challengers to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine  (D) and Rep. Don Beyer (D).

Such a challenge (if brought to fruition) likely would be well-publicized, drawing more voters to the polls than would be expected from a County Board race alone.

To be sure, this greater number of voters creates practical problems for potential Democratic candidates for the County Board. A far greater level of effort – and fundraising – is required to campaign on a truly county-wide basis (as necessitated by a primary) than to campaign among the much smaller subset of voters who frequent Democratic caucuses.

More than 15,000 voters cast ballots in the County Board primary held in 2016, whereas less than 6,000 voters cast ballots in the County Board Democratic caucus held in 2017. Doubling the effort required to secure the Democratic nomination potentially can leave the victorious candidate exhausted and underfunded as he or she heads into the general election.

This challenge is particularly acute for candidates historically underrepresented in politics and government, who may start with fewer resources than candidates drawn from more established circles. For example, younger candidates seeking to bring greater millennial representation to the County Board may face difficulties raising significant funds from their personal networks.

Less established in their careers, they also may struggle to make the time necessary for a county-wide campaign. Yet, despite this challenge, the Arlington Young Democrats have been some of the most outspoken advocates for the use of primaries versus caucuses to select Democratic candidates.

Far from youthful hubris, this position reflects a canny understanding of this singular political moment. As a candidate, President Donald Trump understood the moment as well. It comes down to this: Americans are tired of feeling like the system is rigged against them.

Rightly or wrongly, a Democratic caucus — with its smaller scale, limited publicity appeal, and resulting diminished voting pool — is seen by many as rigged in favor of the Democratic establishment. Even the most worthy and consensus candidate who emerges victorious from a Democratic caucus is destined to bear that taint in the current political environment.

Given the choice between such a candidate and a battle-weary (and battle-tested) Democratic primary victor, I choose the latter. Neither option is perfect — and there are some advantages to caucuses — but it is far easier in this moment to overcome candidate and donor fatigue than to motivate a disaffected electorate.

Democrats need more than anti-Trump backlash to earn a victory, particularly for a local race focused more on housing affordability than the latest tweet storm.

A candidate who wins a primary featuring a broader set of voters than a caucus by offering positive ideas for tackling housing and other issues stands the best chance of attracting general election voters in this moment. That candidate also stands the best chance of inspiring the progressive activists who proved so effective in the 2017 general election for Governor. I will take those odds any day.

Jill Caiazzo is an Arlington resident and recently completed successful service as Co-Chair of the 2017 Arlington Joint Democratic Campaign. She is a candidate for Arlington County Democratic Committee Chair in an election to be held in January 2018.