Universal Preschool NOW

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Universal Preschool NOW (UP NOW) campaign was a program to tax wealthy citizens for "free" preschool programs in Multnomah County, Oregon. Measure 26-214 passed successfully on November 3, 2020 with 64% of the vote.[1]

Universal Preschool NOW worked closely with Preschool For All to "present a single proposal to Multnomah County Board of Commissioners".

Background

Promotional Pins for Portland DSA’s Tax the Rich working group, which launched the Universal Preschool NOW (UP NOW) campaign.

The Preschool For All taskforce launched in September 2018, led by Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson and Social Venture Partners.[2] At the same time, Portland DSA’s Tax the Rich working group launches the Universal Preschool NOW (UP NOW) campaign.

Excerpt from the Universal Preschool NOW website:[3]

"After considerable research and outreach, Portland DSA’s Tax the Rich working group launches the Universal Preschool NOW (UP NOW) campaign with a large group of coalition partners, including educators, unions, child care workers, civic organizations, political parties, parents, health practitioners, economists and environmental groups.

[...]

Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson and Social Venture Partners plan for the Preschool For All Taskforce, leading Universal Preschool NOW leaders to seek a meeting. The Preschool For All Taskforce is launched in September 2018, culminating in a report in July 2019 calling for a school year program for all three and four year olds in families with incomes below the Self Sufficiency Standard, a wage floor of $15 and no identified funding mechanism.

[...]

"July 30, 2020: Preschool For All reaches out for negotiations to merge the two campaigns, shifting to support a universal program, free for all children with year-round and weekend day options; a significantly higher wage floor for workers and union neutrality; as well as funding from a tax on high income households.

[...]

August 2020: Universal Preschool NOW and Preschool For All present a single proposal to Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Titled Preschool For All, it preserves all core principles of original Universal Preschool NOW measure...

Universal Preschool NOW: 'Core activists didn't hide their socialist convictions'

From an article by Don McIntosh about the Universal Preschool NOW effort titled "Case Study In Victory | How To Get Universal Preschool: Tax The Rich" posted at the Winter, 2020 issue of Democratic Left:[4]

"Last month, voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, approved a ballot measure to offer free preschool to every child and a living wage to every preschool teacher. The proposal, paid for with a tax on the rich, passed by a whopping 64%. Multnomah County, population 813,000, includes Portland and its east-side suburbs and is Oregon’s most left-leaning and populous county.
Under the measure, the county will phase in tuition-free preschool for all three- and four-year-olds, taught by preschool teachers paid $38.80 an hour and assistant teachers paid $19.91 an hour. It’s funded by a 1.5% to 3.8% top marginal tax on high incomes that only the top 8% of county income earners will pay.
The measure was referred to voters by the elected Multnomah County Commission, but its most important details owe everything to an extraordinary campaign spearheaded by Portland DSA that began in early 2017 as a “tax the rich” effort. Bothered by economic inequality, DSA member John Bethencourt and others calculated how much revenue different tax structures could bring into local government. When the City of Portland announced closures of community centers amid an economic boom, DSA'ers packed budget hearings to oppose the cuts. Portland City Council members lamented the cuts, but lacked the nerve to adopt DSA’s proposal to tax the rich.
“We realized that going and yelling at the mayor, which is what we did at that point, wasn’t going to go anywhere,” says Portland DSA member and campaign co-coordinator Emily von W. Gilbert. “You have to think about an analysis of power, and try not to engage in the wishful thinking of advocacy, of appealing to the morals of elected officials.”
DSA organizers started thinking about taking the tax-the-rich proposal directly to voters via ballot initiative, and decided it would more likely succeed if paired with something the public wanted. Other Portland DSA members were organizing childcare workers. What about universal preschool?
“We thought it would be small enough to be winnable, big enough to be meaningful, and something people could get really excited about,” Bethencourt says.
Universal preschool is a fitting plank in the socialist policy arsenal because it’s a public solution to a demonstrated market failure. When preschool is left to the private market, parents struggle to afford tuition, teachers struggle to survive on the wages, and providers struggle to stay afloat. Universal preschool is also a socialist-feminist cause, because preschool’s low-wage workforce is overwhelmingly female, and because when families can’t afford preschool, it’s most often mothers who stay home, sacrificing earnings, education, and career.
The campaign launched in mid-2019 as the Universal Preschool NOW! Coalition (UP Now). But almost immediately, supporters discovered a formidable obstacle. An elected county commissioner was already working on a preschool expansion proposal. Unlike the program DSA members envisioned, the county’s “Preschool For All” (P4A) plan was a means-tested, school-year-only program for low-income families. It would cover just half the county’s children in 10 years, with an assistant teacher wage floor of $15 an hour, barely above the Portland-area minimum wage.
UP Now leaders were convinced P4A’s halfway-there program would be a grave mistake. Universal programs like Social Security and Medicare generate their own durable political support and become untouchable, while programs aimed at the poor limp along with miserly appropriations. Head Start is the perfect example: The 55-year-old preschool program is perpetually underfunded and serves just two in five poor children today.
But instead of antagonizing the competition, UP Now leaders met with P4A leaders and tried in good faith to get the county to make its proposal more like theirs. UP Now wouldn’t budge. Von W. Gilbert, who’d left the DSA steering committee to focus solely on UP Now, thinks UP Now leaders sincerely wanted preschool expansion, but didn’t believe something big could win. Having grown up in social democratic Sweden, she was free of those doubts. “I was raised with universal preschool,” she says. “Nobody can tell me it isn’t possible.”
UP Now aimed for the November 2020 ballot, too, and all it needed was a majority of the county commission to refer it to voters. But the UP Now coalition decided to proceed with the more laborious signature-gathering route to the ballot. Advised by unions and left groups that had won initiative campaigns, they convened a coalition of more than 30 groups and put the teachers union president and other allies in leadership roles as chief petitioners. Though Portland DSA was the driving force from the start, the coalition was real. Core activists didn’t hide their socialist convictions, nor did they insist that allies adopt explicitly socialist messaging. To draft ballot language, they worked with one of the state’s most experienced ballot initiative attorneys.
But lawyers for the Portland Business Alliance filed several legal challenges that delayed the start of signature gathering for months. Then the pandemic hit. Even Bethencourt and Von W. Gilbert, the campaign co-coordinators, doubted the campaign could gather the required 22,686 valid signatures in five weeks to meet the July 6 signature deadline.
But the effort soon gathered momentum. On social media, supporters shared links for individuals to sign and mail petitions. Volunteers canvassed parks and business districts daily and combed Portland’s massive Black Lives Matter marches nightly. Teachers set up signature tables in public spaces. Moms and kids solicited passersby from their driveways. Café owners put up signs and gathered signatures. By deadline day, more than 600 volunteers had turned in signature sheets. Amid a pandemic, a grassroots campaign had gathered 32,356 signatures—one out of every 15 registered voters in the county.
“We were over the moon,” Bethencourt recalls. “It was a total David and Goliath feeling.”
Overnight, the tone changed in talks with P4A. P4A leaders may have thought the business group’s legal challenge would finish off the rival proposal. Now they had a serious political problem: Sending two proposals to the ballot could confuse voters and lead both to fail, and the P4A proposal was unquestionably the weaker of the two. P4A and UP Now negotiated a merger, and P4A was rapidly modified to approximate UP Now. The merged measure would have a slower rollout and a lower tax rate, but it contained all the essentials: open to all kids, high wages for staff, funded by a tax on the rich.
In the end, voters approved it by nearly 2-to-1, with more than a quarter of a million votes in favor.
The New York Times called it “one of the most progressive universal preschool policies in the nation” and a national model. Victory has a way of raising expectations. As a beloved children’s book says, “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk.”
“We want to inspire similar efforts everywhere,” Bethencourt says. “We think there’s a lot of potential for action at the local level.”

Universal Preschool NOW Coalition

From the Universal Preschool NOW Coalition website:[5]

'Universal Preschool NOW'

Portland Democratic Socialists of America was very active[6] in the Universal Preschool NOW campaign, which successfully passed in Multnomah County, Oregon.[7] The next step is to impose a similar program nationally.

2020

Oregon 'Universal Preschool NOW' Rally

Verbatim from RAIR Foundation USA:[8]

The goal is to undermine parental authority and indoctrinate children.
“…we must begin educating and valuing the input of the next generation of Democratic Socialists.” – DSA Resolution 25: Childcare
The Portland, Oregon branch of America’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is bragging about winning “Preschool For All”, a communist program similar to one being proposed by Joe Biden which undermines parental authority and indoctrinates children. The initiative would raise $132 million by taxing households that make over $200k per year, a Leninist strategy.
Socialists have long been promoting “Universal Preschool.” Unsurprisingly, it was reported in July that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden unveiled a $775 billion plan for “universal preschool, child care and elder care” “that aims to fundamentally shift the way American families care for each other, both at the beginning of life and at the end.” Joe Biden’s unconstitutional effort includes a “public health jobs corps of 100000 people.”
The Universal Preschool campaign in Multnomah County is completely driven by communists, and supported by subversive “progressive” organizations. One of the main organizers of Measure 26-214 in Portland is Emily Von W. Gilbert, a self-described “anti-fascist socialist feminist”.
Emily Von W. Gilbert Twitter Profile Screenshot
“At our April 2019 General Meeting, Portland DSA voted to put a measure on the Multnomah County ballot through Oregon’s citizens’ initiative process,” Portland DSA explained in an email sent to supporters on November 21, 2020. “The measure would tax the rich, pay preschool teachers a fair wage, and give preschool to every kid in the county…And on Election Day 2020, we had 64% of the vote and WE WON,” they bragged.
Portland DSA brags about winning "Preschool For All" in Tweet dated Nov 14, 2020
RAIR Foundation USA warned Americans over a year ago about Measure 26-214, which was a part of the larger national DSA resolution #25 to “educate” the “next generation of Democratic Socialists”. Other approved resolutions included solidarity with Cuba and a resolution to work closely with Antifa groups.
From the DSA childcare resolution:
“Socialism recognizes that childrearing should be a communal undertaking, and that by providing welcoming and supportive spaces for children, we can support both those children’s own social, political, and emotional development, along with ameliorating their primary caregivers’ alienation and atomization under capitalism;
Our own organizing spaces must be inclusive, accessible, and welcoming to people of all ages, including families with children, and we must begin educating and valuing the input of the next generation of Democratic Socialists.”
The childhood-robbing initiative was supported by “more than 30 groups, including at least 10 labor organizations: Northwest Oregon Labor Council, Oregon Education Association, PAT, Reynolds Education Association, AFSCME Local 88, UFCW Local 555, ILWU, CWA Local 7901, PSU-AAUP, PCCFAP, and National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82,” as reported at a newsletter[9] for unions in the northwest.
The parents who will take part in the “Universal Preschool” program in Portland, Oregon are likely unaware of the real goal of “free” childcare.

2019

Portland DSA tweets about Universal Preschool Sept 8, 2019

Verbatim from RAIR Foundation USA:[10]

"…we must begin educating and valuing the input of the next generation of Democratic Socialists.” –DSA Resolution 25: Childcare
"The nation’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) recently passed numerous resolutions during their biennial convention held in Atlanta, Georgia in August [2019]. One of their resolutions, #25 on Childcare, pledged to “prioritize the fight for guaranteed paid parental leave and public universal child care and preschool.” A part of the resolution would be for DSA to provide childcare in their own chapters.
The resolution (copied in its entirety below) may not seem as troubling as their resolution to show solidarity with Cuba, for example, or the resolution to work with the violent domestic terror organization known as “Antifa,” but “Universal Pre-K” has long been a Marxist program designed to take children away from their parents as soon as possible and, as according to the resolution, “[S]ocialism recognizes that childrearing should be a communal undertaking” which would shape a child’s “social, political, and emotional development.”
During their general meeting, the Portland Chapter of DSA tweeted about their “Universal Preschool Now 2020 campaign”, which involves, of course, organizing child care providers. During a recent meeting, they claimed that their demands include “FREE full-day, full-year Universal preschool with unionized staff compensated like K-12 teachers. All paid for by the top 5% of income earners.”

[...]

"Here is the DSA [National] Resolution:
Be it therefore resolved:
1. That DSA prioritize the fight for guaranteed paid parental leave and public universal child care and preschool, and dedicate resources, including staff time and $10,000 over the next two years, to develop a national campaign for federal, state, and local legislation guaranteeing paid parental leave and free, high-quality child care and preschool for all children;
2. That DSA require endorsed candidates to support guaranteed paid parental leave and public universal child care and preschool and encourage candidates and elected officials to develop universal (not means-tested) policies to that effect;
3. That DSA’s National Labor Commission or DSA members active in labor organizing and the Socialist Feminist Working Group or a sub-committee thereof collaborate to develop a feminist labor strategy to support efforts by domestic and child care workers to organize and improve their wages and working conditions;
4. That DSA dedicate national resources, including staff time and $10,000 to be spent at the direction of the Socialist Feminist Working Group in coordination with the NPC and national staff as well as members that have developed existing child watch programs, to: a. develop or modify and disseminate child watch materials for chapters, starting with the adaptation of existing chapter initiatives, and a survey of chapters to identify their needs and preferences in child watch programming, b. train members to provide child watch services at chapter meetings and events while underlining the need for cis men to readily take up this work, c. help chapters navigate statewide requirements for providing such services, and d. make child watch programs as inclusive as possible of disabled children and children with other needs;
5. That the Socialist Feminist Working Group or a sub-committee thereof will establish a timeline and milestones for child watch program progress in coordination with the NPC and national staff, with the goal of working towards at least 75% of chapters having at least one member trained in child watch programming, and 50% of chapters having a regular child watch program, providing child watch for at least every chapter-wide meeting, by August 1, 2020.
WHEREAS, Our socialism is feminist, pro-worker, and dedicated to fighting against the burdens of capitalism for all parents and caregivers, particularly for women of the working class, who provide disparate amounts of reproductive labor, including child care;
The United States is one of the only countries in the world that does not require workplaces to offer paid parental leave to workers;
Low wages require most parents and caregivers to work full-time or more than full-time outside the home, causing them to rely on paid care for their children, or to rely upon the uncompensated labor of extended relatives or community members who may already be burdened by multiple obligations under capitalism;
Daycare and other forms of child care are expensive, costing more than in-state tuition at a four-year public college in 33 states, and are an undue burden on the working class;
Child care workers often receive low wages, are deeply exploited by difficult working conditions, are disproportionately women of color or immigrants, may not be eligible to unionize under the NLRA, often work in the informal sector, and often struggle to find affordable or adequate care for their own children while they care for the children of others;
Domestic and child care work is a key, largely unorganized sector of the economy, related to other female-dominated sectors of reproductive labor such as nursing and teaching;
The capitalist economy relies upon the unpaid or underpaid reproductive labor of people who can become pregnant and people who take on caregiving roles to reproduce its workforce;
Providing free, high-quality universal child care and preschool would reduce the reliance of working parents on their workplaces for wages and child care benefits, thus shoring up worker power;
Socialism recognizes that childrearing should be a communal undertaking, and that by providing welcoming and supportive spaces for children, we can support both those children’s own social, political, and emotional development, along with ameliorating their primary caregivers’ alienation and atomization under capitalism;
Our own organizing spaces must be inclusive, accessible, and welcoming to people of all ages, including families with children, and we must begin educating and valuing the input of the next generation of Democratic Socialists.

References

  1. ↑ Multnomah County, Oregon, Measure 26-214, Income Tax to Fund Tuition-Free Preschool Program (November 2020) (accessed May 10, 2023)
  2. ↑ About the Preschool For All Task Force (accessed May 10, 2023)
  3. ↑ Universal Preschool NOW! Campaign Timeline (accessed May 10, 2023)
  4. ↑ 2023 DSA Convention Website (accessed May 9, 2023)
  5. ↑ Universal Preschool NOW Coalition (accessed May 10, 2023)
  6. ↑ Portland Democratic Socialists of America Tweet Dated September 8, 2019 (accessed May 10, 2023)
  7. ↑ Universal Preschool NOW Coalition website (accessed May 10, 2023)
  8. ↑ ALERT: Oregon Communists Brag about 'Preschool For All' to Indoctrinate 'Next Generation of Democratic Socialists' (accessed May 10, 2023)
  9. ↑ Beating the odds, free public preschool ballot initiative turns in signatures (accessed May 10, 2023)
  10. ↑ DSA wants to indoctrinate your children using ‘public universal child care and preschool’ (accessed May 10, 2023)
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