Every Vote Every Time: We are the Change

Over a two month period leading up the June 2010 primary, CAUSE had conversations with over 30,000 new and infrequent voters in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. In these conversations CAUSE phone bankers engaged voters in discussions about the California budget crisis, it's orgins and it's devastating impact on working families, seniors, students and communities color, through cuts in essential public services. In the process, voters were encourage to take a stand for budget reform by voting. Facilitated by our rapid-dial phone bank system, our phone bank operators and neighborhood door-knocking teams will continue year-round to engage voters in communities throughout the region in important conversations about reforming the California budget process to protect services and create jobs. Join CAUSE's Civic Engagment Project in our mission to to raise voter participation by providing the policy information people need to make informed voting choices to protect their communities.

To get involved and help "Get Out the Vote" in the fall election, click here .

Building from CAUSE's successful redistricting effort around the Ventura County Supervisorial redistrict process, over 2010 and 2011 we will be working with our many sister organizations in the region to organize a Central Coast Redistricting Coaliton. The goal of the coalition will be to create a Central Coast state legislative districting plan that is fair to our most vulnerable communities. As part of this effort, CAUSE will educate the public through meetings, publications and online communication about the districting process and the potential impacts of districting on local political empowerment and community life. We will work with our coalition partners to build regional consensus on he proposed plan, and advocate for that plan through public hearings with the 14 member districting Coalition.

To get involved in CAUSE Central Coast Redistricting Coalition, sign up here , or call Chris Lanier, 805-658-0810, x205.

On, Friday, September 10th CAUSE hosts an inspiring and informative fundraising event at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Ventura. The keynote speaker for CAUSE 4th Annual Community Building Luncheon is renowned author and environmental leader, Dr. Robert D. Bullard, known as the father of environmental justice.  Each year this event brings together hundreds of the region’s key community, business and labor leaders, organizational representatives and elected officials. Attendees learn more about CAUSE’s important social justice work, and how together we can address some of the region’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental justice issues. 

We invite you to join CAUSE for this important community event and by serving as an individual or business sponsor of this year’s Community Building Luncheon. Your sponsorship will help support our vital social justice work in the Central Coast region.

Check out a short video of our work and vision for just regional and global community!

CAUSE is a regional non-profit social justice organization. Our mission it is to build grassroots power to realize social, economic and environmental justice for the people of the California Central Coast Region through policy research, leadership development, community organizing, and grassroots advocacy. Established in 2001, CAUSE has become an important regional force for positive social change in the Central Coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties around such issues as living wage jobs, healthcare reform, public transportation, environmental justice, women’s economic justice and creating a green economy. Working with over 260 sister organizations throughout the region, state and country, CAUSE has involved in our policy campaigns over 800 community, labor, faith and environmental leaders, and directly engaged over 18,000 individuals in local, regional, state and national public policy campaigns.

CAUSE is working to grow the green economy by:

• creating quality green jobs that pay a living wage and provide benefits while improving the energy efficiency of our homes and businesses,
• Finding paths to ending our dependence on non-renewable energy sources that will ease the pollution burdens on low income communities and communities of color,
• Building a sustainable transportation system with safe, convenient, reliable and affordable public transit.

Million’s of federal “stimulus” or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) dollars are flowing to the region of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. These dollars can either create quality jobs or poverty jobs. These dollars can either lift working communities out of poverty, or once again leave them behind. Beginning with Stimulus/ARRA dollars, CAUSE is advocating for quality green jobs and investing in low-wage working communities.

Federal Stimulus or ARRA dollars are meant to:

1. preserve and create jobs to promote economic recovery;
2. invest in economic efficiency through technological advances in science and health
3. stabilize state and local government budgets
4. help those most impacted by the recession
5. invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure with long-term economic benefits

Read CAUSE's position on the use of stimulus dollars for an economic recovery torward a just and sustainable green national economy: "Community has say in spending stimulus dollars ," VC Star Editorial, June 14, 2009. 

Take Action!

1. Join CAUSE in requesting the County of Ventura, Cities, Workforce Investment Board, Community Action of VC and the Ventura County Transportation Commission to adopt the:

“Green Jobs Pledge ”and the “Principles of Infrastructure Equity."

2. Join CAUSE in seeking the adoption of county and city building retrofiting ordinances requiring the county and cities comply with AB 32 by retrofiting government buildings for energy efficiency.

3. Join CAUSE's effort to adopt local Project Labor Agreements in ARRA funded projects, thereby ensuring local hiring is a priority, especially the hiring of people in specific underserved populations, including women and low-wage workers with the least protection during the recession  

4. Ask your City to set goals for the percentage of quality jobs that are “pathways out of poverty”

5. Ask your City that hiring take place at the local level.

6. Join President Obama in demanding transparency and accountability at the local level for the hundreds of millions of dollars coming locally. The White House will be tracking the money at the national level through  a new website: www.recovery.org. Bring transparency to the local level. Ask your city to get input from the public on how millions of dollars will be spent.

The Green Economy has arrived to the California Central Coast! Read More.

The green economy is already here and we need to make sure our California Central Coast region is ready to embrace it. In this spirit CAUSE is proud to share with you our new Green Collar Jobs in the Green Economy Policy Brief . In the next several years, our commitment to the green economy will be vital to:

• Reducing our energy consumption and creating living wage jobs that improve the energy efficiency of our homes and businesses,
• Finding paths to ending our dependence on non-renewable energy sources that will ease the pollution burdens on low income communities and communities of color,
• Creating local green businesses,
• Reinforcing our commitment to recycling and reducing waste, and
• Building a sustainable transportation system with safe, convenient, reliable and affordable public transit.

As part of broader vision for the creation of a just and green sustainable regional economy, CAUSE's campaign for transit equity seeks to expand public transportation service, access and  affordability through research, coalition building, policy advocacy and community organizing.

CAUSE Transit Equity 2020 Vision Goals

• Decrease in Ventura County's total 2010 daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 10% by 2020
• Increase transit use from the current less than 1% of all trips to 5% of all trips
• Increase the total percentage of housing and jobs that are located within a quarter mile of a transit stop where transit runs from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. to 25% (my guess is that this percentage is low, maybe 10%)
• Any new development that would create over 100 jobs must be in a transit accessible area
• 10,000 units of affordable housing built within a quarter mile of a transit stop
• 500 new miles of bike lanes and bike racks in every commercial center and on every block of commercial districts
• Three car-free districts/neighborhoods that encourage public transit use, biking, and walking

CAUSE Transit Equity Strategy Goals

• To build a coalition of Ventura County organizations to increase transit use, service, and affordability,  and promote bike, transit and pedestrian friendly communities (land use changes) as a way to combat climate change
• To develop a base of community leaders to develop and lead CAUSE's transit equity work, with a focus on South Oxnard and Santa Paula.
• To secure more transit operating funds for buses to keep fares affordable while increasing ridership and service. The core of this goal is the securing of funding for future transportation projects in the region through such means as a proposed county half cent sales tax in 2012.  

Identified Regional Transit Equity Issues:

• Ensuring transportation stimulus spending has local hire provisions. Working with state and federal partners to make 10% of transit capital stimulus funding available for operating funds.
• Finding sources of funding for bus operations including through sales tax and other transportation funding mechanisms. Provide an equity lens and advocacy strategy.
• Safe routes to school and complete streets.
• Finding strategies to avoid bus fare hikes and service cuts.
• Increasing participation in the unmet transit needs process.
• Working with cities to ensure housing and jobs are located in transit, bike, and pedestrian friendly areas.

Actions Currently in the works:

• Organizational sign-on letter to VCTC and meeting with the Commissioners as follow up. This letter asks to work with VCTC on a Ride Transit Free Day, A Safe Routes to School Day, to adopt meaningful performance measures to evaluate transportation projects and plans, apply an equity lens to stimulus funding, a sales tax measure that has principles of equity, and making VCTC more accountable and accessible.
• Working with the residents of Villa Victoria and CEDC on traffic, pedestrian safety, bus access improvements near this farmworker housing.
• Trying to stop fare increases or making sure they are fair
• Advocating for 10% of Federal Stimulus capital funds for transit can be used for operations
• Working with partners at a state and federal level to provide more opportunities to fund public transit including increasing gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, and other funding mechanisms like congestion pricing and VMT fees. This will include working on Federal Reauthorization of a national transportation bill this year.

State and National Transit Policy

Decisions made at the state and federal level greatly affect our local and regional transportation system. CAUSE works with TRANSFORM in a statewide coalition to restore state transit operating funds recently eliminated and continues to look for alternative sources to fund transit operations. Nationally, CAUSE works with the Transportation Equity Network and the Labor Community Strategy Center to ensure the reauthorization of the federal transportation bill in 2009 addresses transit equity and supports better public transit for the Central Coast.

CAUSE, in collaboration with VC COOL, PUEBLO and the Santa-Barbara based Coalition for Sustainable Transportation (COAST) have formed the Alliance for Sustainable and Equitable Regional Transportation (ASERT), a collaborative effort to organize a regional Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties transit equity alliance of community, environmental, labor, business and faith-based organizations. Among its recent accomplishments, on January 31 ASERT hosted the region's first Transportation Action Forum "Moving the Central Coast Forward," where over 250 community members and elected officials were energized to work on improving transportation in the region, especially public transit, biking and walking improvements.

Get Involved!

For more information on CAUSE's transit equity efforts contact Cameron Yee at (805) 658-0810, or at  cameron@coastalalliance.com.

Our nation’s economic recovery and long-tem economic development must include a comprehensive program to rebuild our nation’s middle class. This is why CAUSE has joined President Obama, organized labor and such environmental organizations as the Sierra Club is supporting the enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act as part of an overall national agenda to rebuilding our nation’s middle class.

Take action today in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Halaco Superfund Site is located near a community with a high concentration of low wage working families, children and youth and people of color. Read more about Environmental Justice in our inaugural The CAUSE Policy Brief: Halaco Superfund Site and Environmental Justice.

Read about CAUSE’s growing environmental justice movement in the Ventura County Star http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/oct/13/rally-focuses-on-immigration-environment/
 

World-renowned environmental advocate, Dr. Jane Goodall was invited by CAUSE to speak to local high school youth and to visit the Halaco Superfund Site as part of CAUSE’s efforts to advance environmental justice in the Central Coast. True to her message, Dr. Goodall took the time to visit the South Oxnard Halaco superfund site and offered her support to the leaders of South Oxnard in their campaign to clean up the site.

CAUSE was recently funded by The California Endowment to partner with the USC Program on Environmental and Regional and Equity to study the environmental justice concerns of the Halaco superfund site.  For more information on the community driven effort to clean-up Halaco, contact Beatriz Garcia at beatriz@coastalalliance.com.