Citizen Action’s Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods project is working to debunk Scott Walker’s bankrupt approach to job creation, and build broad support for social investments that can restore economic opportunity and produce tens of thousands of family supporting jobs. See current events on Facebook
Established in 2003, Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is working to bring together community, faith, environmental, and labor organizations to improve employment conditions and to organize for responsible economic development policy and practice in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
The Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods project helped pass, and tracks implementation of, Milwaukee's historic MORE ordinance that establishes community benefits standards for economic development using more than $1 million in public funds. GJLN also works to transform stories of Recovery Act (stimulus) spending into compelling examples about how real people are benefiting from stimulus funds. In late 2010, GJLN led the fight to save high-speed rail development in Wisconsin. The vision of Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is equity in the development of our communities and an economy that works for all.
Milwaukee County Executive Candidates to Answer Public on Milwaukee Jobs Crisis Forum Feb. 8th
A local coalition that came together on the high speed train controversy, and has been working to hold Governor Walker accountable for creating family sustaining jobs, they held a Milwaukee County Executive candidate forum Tuesday evening focused on the jobs crisis. Many unemployed Milwaukee residents were in the audience. The event was at the Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. The forum was open to the general public.
Sponsors of the event include the Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods project of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), Milwaukee Area Labor Council, League of Young Voters, and Voces del la Frontera.
GJLN leads the fight to involve neighborhood residents in the redevelopment of the former A.O. Smith site, now Century City, that at one time employed 9,000 workers. GJLN has been encouraging the City of Milwaukee to invest in the site for many years, and strongly supported the City's effort to bring high-speed train manufacturer Talgo to the new Century City. In 2010, Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods organized numerous events in Milwaukee, many of them at Talgo, to call for additional stimulus funding to create jobs, like the $810 million for intercity passenger rail, and led the fight to save the high-speed rail project for Wisconsin.
December 13, 2010: Rally to denounce loss of jobs due to Gov.-elect Walker's refusal of $810 million for high-speed rail.
November 15, 2010: Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods, together with MICAH, the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, Voces de la Frontera, and hundreds of community members, call for Governor-Elect Scott Walker to support high-speed rail for Wisconsin.
June 3, 2010: members of the Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods project joined with other community, faith, and labor organizations outside of Century City (former A.O. Smith) to promote the success of the Recovery Act and call for additional direct investment in job creation.
In July of 2009 Citizen Action merged with the previously independent Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods. The Good Jobs coalition is now an internal advisory committee within Citizen Action, guiding and participating in our economic justice work. Good Jobs is also an affiliate of the Partnership for Working Families.
Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods project was honored with “Grantee of the Year Award” by the Wisconsin Community Fund for our groundbreaking responsible development work on April 29th, 2010. More Info Nationally Recognized Victories Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is proud of its nationally recognized legislative victories in Milwaukee. In 2005, GJLN lead a campaign that lead to the passage of the country’s first legislatively enacted community benefits agreement. The community benefits agreement established job standards for all development on 16 acres of County-owned land next to downtown. The passage of the MORE ordinance in early 2009 was the culmination of a two year GJLN campaign to win job standards on all publicly financed development projects in the City using $1 million or more in taxpayer money. Now a national model, the MORE ordinance extends the City's Resident Preference Program (RPP) and Emerging Business Enterprise (EBE) standards to private development projects seeking more than $1 million in financial assistance from Milwaukee's taxpayers. The ordinance includes a prevailing wage requirement as well as increased apprenticeship training and job opportunities for residents of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods. The ordinance was strongly supported by Milwaukee Innercity Congregations allied for Hope (MICAH), the NAACP, the Milwaukee County Labor Council, the Milwaukee Building Trades Council, the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce, as well as many other local organizations.
GJLN programs: • Economic Recovery Transparency and Accountability Program Beginning in November 2009, Citizen Action and Good Jobs helped form the Wisconsin Alliance for Strong Communities with eight other organizations to undertake a two year project to track American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) investments in Wisconsin, and work to ensure that they are used to maximum benefit. Our work to educate the public about the Recovery Act includes speaking with local groups and telling stimulus success stories through online video. Following are a few examples of our video story project.
Project Lead The Way allows Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to systematize and coordinate engineering as a focal point for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). MPS received Federal stimulus money to put the Stem Project into twelve more middle schools.
Tina Carr, Owner of Tina 'n Tots Child Academy, talks about how the Recovery Act allowed her to purchase her own building and make safety improvements.
The Recovery Act helped many unemployed workers who needed to extend their health insurance coverage through COBRA.
Michael Rosen, President of AFT Local 212, talks about the impact of the Recovery Act on the Milwaukee Area Technical College
• A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive Redevelopment (now known as "Century City") Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods promotes a community-centered redevelopment plan at the former A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive industrial site in Milwaukee’s central city. The site, which once provided over 9,000 family supporting jobs for Milwaukee residents, and helped create unprecedented economic opportunities for Milwaukee’s African American community, is now a blighted symbol of deindustrialization in one of the City’s most impoverished neighborhoods. The site has iconic significance in Milwaukee, and is remembered by many residents as a lost source of economic vitality (many still remember that parents and other friends and relatives worked at A.O. Smith). We believe the successful redevelopment of this site to create family supporting jobs that are ecologically sustainable, with real community input, can serve as a model for redeveloping other parts of Milwaukee.
We're currently working with local partners to speak directly with neighborhood residents about the jobs crisis in Milwaukee's inner city, and how Century City provides an opportunity to organize for family supporting jobs. Our program builds on the successful multi year effort that led in late 2009 to the City of Milwaukee purchasing the site and launching a major redevelopment project. Spanish train manufacturer Talgo recently openened its new North American manufacturing facility on this site, and while its future is in question due to the loss of high-speed rail funding for Wisconsin, Talgo remains a symbol of the potential for good job creation in the central city. Daily Reporter (May 28, 2010) Jobs group wants MORE for Talgo project
• New Federal Investments in Jobs Good Jobs believes there in an opportunity to build support for the crucial idea that there is a vital government role in jobs creation, and that equal economic opportunity can only be achieved if there is a fundamental shift in our nation’s economic policy of the magnitude of the New Deal and the Great Society. Good Jobs is working with a new national coalition, Jobs for America Now, to build support for another major round of federal investments in job creation. Good Jobs work on new federal jobs initiatives will focus on educating the public, coalition partners, and opinion leaders about major initiatives at the national level to increase employment or extend benefits to the unemployed.
Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Partner Organizations:
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