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| Members of a New York City Coalition protest
outside of HHS hearings on TANF reauthorization |
Contents:
One: Introduction
Two: Overview
Three: Themes in Strategic Technology Assistance
Four: Assistance to Coalitions
Five: Assistance to Individual Groups
Six: Work with Intermediary Organizations
Seven: Expanding our Communications Infrastructure
Eight: Technology Education Efforts
This report is also available as a PDF: download the PDF.
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Over the past year, the Welfare Law Center Low Income Networking
and Communications (LINC) Project's vision of low-income grassroots
groups actively participating in key public debates and policy decisions
on economic security issues has come to fruition. In a way not seen
in decades, community-based groups across the country are joining
in coalition with sister groups and the broader advocacy community
to shape the agenda around federal reauthorization of the federal
Temporary Assistance For Needy Families
(TANF) block grant and to promote other progressive economic security
initiatives. They are engaging the media, allies, social science researchers,
and elected officials on issues that touch the daily lives of low-income
families, including the need for education and training, child care
and other work supports, and transitional jobs.
Empowered by technology capacity-building, grassroots economic justice
groups now have unprecedented visibility in regional and national
campaigns on federal welfare reauthorization and related issues. LINC
has helped many of these groups gain a visible 'online' presence,
enabling them to promote their agendas via websites, communicate opinions
quickly, effectively, and broadly via email, and access a wealth of
information through the web. Signs of increased participation in policymaking
debates abound, and there have been some notable successes:
- Grassroots coalitions, including the National Campaign for Jobs
and Income Support (NCJIS)
and Western Region Welfare Activists Network (WRWAN),
together with individual groups and the larger progressive community,
first shifted public debate over the child tax credit to focus on
a refundable credit that reaches low-income families and then achieved
victory when Congress enacted a partially refundable credit.
- GROWL, a coalition of
grassroots groups, including many LINC supported groups, is joining
with labor, religious, and other groups to host a briefing for legislative
staff and government officials in Washington D.C. on reauthorization
issues.
- Groups routinely use the internet to share plans for organizing
in their local communities - around efforts to secure transitional
jobs, assure access to benefits, and ease welfare time limits.
- Low income groups, such as Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition
(WROC) in Washington state and
People United for Families (PUFF) in Colorado, participate in statewide
coalitions on a range of progressive issues; this work depends heavily
on communications technology.
- Low income groups, alerted via email campaigns, join with the
broader progressive community in "sign-on" letters to
Congress on key legislative proposals, including bills to improve
health care and increase the minimum wage, and to state officials
on similar state campaigns.
- Local groups collaborate with other activists to set up local
forums and engage in media outreach around the 5 year anniversary
of welfare reform.
- Low-income groups weigh in on priorities for reauthorization to
conferences of the broader policy advocacy community, including
events organized by CLASP and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
and the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition on Human Needs.
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