Emerald Cities 'Goals' (CCX connections -- Beck is discussing)

Our goal is to achieve significant reductions in the carbon footprint and energy consumption and increased energy savings and efficiencies. To this end, we encourage cities to:

Substantially increase the energy efficiency of citywide building stock over ten years while prioritizing poor communities.

Buildings are the largest national source of energy consumption, costing $400 billion annually in energy bills and comprising 80 percent of local carbon emissions in some cities. Yet, efficiency gains between 30 and 50 percent are possible using existing, cost-effective technology. Reducing energy consumption requires a comprehensive retrofit of building stock. The most significant residential gains in efficiency will be made by retrofitting the poorly maintained, oldest, and least efficient building stock concentrated in poor communities. To achieve such large-scale energy reduction, partners can:

•Establish a comprehensive, participatory planning process supported by professional planning and management

•Develop a variety of financing mechanisms that leverages the resources of utility companies, private investors, and federal, state and local government programs

•Retrofit government office buildings, schools, hospitals, affordable housing projects, waste stations, as well as private residential housing stock

•Prioritize retrofits in low-income neighborhoods Implement deep, not simple, retrofits wherever possible.

Simple retrofits insulating inefficient buildings and perhaps providing more efficient appliances, can improve energy efficiency and create short-term jobs. However, they miss critical opportunities. Deep retrofits are designed to coordinate energy upgrades with solutions to other safety hazards or deficiencies in buildings, link the building stock to the broader infrastructure; maximize gains on a neighborhood scale, and target improvements to community needs. Moreover, the complex work and large-scale changes required by deep retrofits provide wide-ranging green job opportunities in design, manufacturing, and construction or installation. To promote comprehensive gains in energy efficiency, cities can endorse efforts to:

•Coordinate energy efficiency retrofits with other building improvements for healthy housing including lead abatement, installation of current communications technology, disabled friendly alternations, water conservation, and indoor air quality

•Define retrofits to include landscape, urban vegetable cultivation, water, and communications (broadband and future technologies) systems so that buildings can properly link to the broader urban infrastructure.

•Pursue neighborhood level projects rather than focusing on buildings in isolation

•Encourage building technology innovation that furthers energy efficiency in building materials, construction techniques, and retrofits

•Develop long-term energy efficiency strategies that link the city to the region and promote regional manufacturing for the building technology required for retrofits

Our goal is to generate good jobs and lifetime construction careers, create new high-road, community-based enterprises, reduce urban poverty and chronic underemployment especially in communities of color, and raise living standards. To this end, we encourage cities to:

Construction is a high turnover industry susceptible to the influx of poorly-trained, poorly-paid workers and employers who resist training workers. Labor standards can compel employers to support training programs that both ensure uniform, high-quality construction work and establish the decent wages and benefits critical to stabilizing communities. Thus, energy efficiency efforts have the greatest long-term impact when they link to the growth of a well-paid, well-trained green workforce at scale. To promote this approach, cities can:

•Promote the use of community workforce agreements, either at the neighborhood or city level, and aid in development of such agreements

•Adopt a coordinated curriculum for high-skilled green construction in conjunction with incentives for the use of credentialed green labor

•Support workforce development, including both credentialed vocational training and a supply of remedial general education and work readiness. This includes expanding the union-based apprenticeship system.

•Coordinate efforts to ensure the provision of an adequate local supply of qualified contractors and workers to do the large-scale work demanded by this plan Expand access to high-quality jobs and contracts to minorities, women, and low-income residents.

Communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by the economic crisis and historically excluded from the benefits of economic growth during good times. Energy efficiency efforts can maximize economic impact by introducing career opportunities to minorities and communities with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Workforce development not only helps individuals but also reduces spin-off costs from unemployment and poverty. Moreover, long-term economic advancement requires business development within disadvantaged communities. To expand economic opportunity, local efforts can agree to:

•Where in place, utilize and enforce community benefits agreements in energy efficiency projects; otherwise promote and support concepts of agreements

•Further linkages between community workforce training programs and union pre-apprenticeship curriculum; linkages to other publicly funded workforce training partnerships in ECC cities (e.g. those led by community colleges); and connections for program participants to training and jobs in the broader infrastructure arena.

•Increase opportunities for minority and women-owned contractors to administer and carry out green construction projects

•Support development of the workforce in complementary industries such as manufacturing, engineering, auditing, and recycling

Our goal is to increase labor-community input in urban political decision-making and promote pro-working families economic development strategies. To achieve this goal, cities can:

Low wage earners often lack voice and access to the formal venues and informal networks that generate public policies and economic strategies. Yet, low-income residents stand to benefit greatly from the long-term cost-savings and potential for small-business creation of conservation and efficiency efforts. The most effective energy efficiency strategies require widespread cooperation. This requires people to communicate, identify common interests and goals and obstacles to reaching them, and to work together toward achieving them all activities that can help build democratic capacity. Efforts to deeply organize our communities and align community and labor interests should not be confined to increasing energy efficiency in buildings. These alignments will increase the public capacity to meaningfully influence our cities economic, social and political futures. We support efforts to:

•Provide financial incentives and extensive training to enable community groups to support resident organizing around efficient and sustainable communities

•Build resident capacity to aggregate the demand needed to build collective enterprises and attract specialized and high quality contractors

•Organize residents to advocate for policies and programs that support local sustainability

•Build partnerships with labor to increase community leverage around energy efficiency in urban political decision-making.

Government policy is powerful tool in ensuring coordination among different constituencies and groups to achieve their joint priorities. The regulation of new energy projects can guarantee job standards and community access to those jobs; ensure transparency and equal opportunity in labor markets; and repair damage done to individuals within underserved communities by helping them grasp the opportunities of retrofits. In addition, government regulation can organize the money needed for energy efficiency work by removing unnecessary constraints on community ability to capture and aggregate the value flowing from their work. Methods to achieving this include to:

•Support local policy such as a community workforce agreements to enforce local source hiring, specify required skills, set apprenticeship utilization rates for contractors, and make explicit the assumption that union-employer partnerships provide vocational training

•Engage state utility boards in the cost recovery of capital for such programs through the requirement that all utilities offer on-bill financing.

•Encourage policy that shifts public spending away from direct purchases of labor or materials toward credit enhancement that make available capital for energy efficiency. One possible method is a public fund for default insurance and securitization services.

Site has now changed. Must do a search for board members. Please grab pages before they move or disappear.

Board of DirectorsChairman of the Board
Gerry Hudson
SEIU, Executive Vice President
Hudson, who has served as Executive Vice President of SEIU since June 2004, leads the union’s long term care work through new strategies and campaigns. He came to SEIU in 1978 from the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, N.Y., where he was a member of SEIU Local 144. Hudson has served on the advisory board of the Apollo Alliance and Redefining Progress, the nation’s leading public policy think tank dedicated to developing innovative public policies that balance economic well being, environmental preservation, and social justice.

In 1996, Hudson served as political director of the New York state Democratic Party and helped lead the union’s campaigns in support of Jesse Jackson’s presidential efforts in New York and the successful New York City mayoral campaign of David Dinkins. He played an instrumental role in the election of H. Carl McCall, the first African American controller in New York State.

Secretary/Treasurer
Doris Koo
Enterprise Community Partners, President and CEO
Doris W. Koo, a nationally respected leader with nearly 30 years of experience in affordable housing and community development, began her career as a community organizer and has been a highly successful developer, public agency administrator and nonprofit executive. From 1979 to 1992, Koo led Asian Americans for Equality in New York City, first as a member of the board of directors and later as founding executive director. After moving to Seattle in 1992, Koo continued her involvement in affordable housing development as senior housing developer at the Fremont Public Association. Koo joined the Seattle Housing Authority as director of development in 1994 and was named deputy executive director in 1999.

Steve Allen
United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, Director of the Sustainable Technologies Department
Steven H. Allen, LEED AP is the Vice-Chair of the Green Mechanical Council. Allen has over 40 years experience as an HVACR Service Technician and HVACR educator. He works with HVACR Manufacturers, Contractors Associations, and Career Technical Schools to develop classroom and web-based HVACR certificate and degree programs that lead to employment. He is the developer of the UA STAR Testing and Certification program, and the UA Interactive On-line Curriculum (a web-based file sharing system for UA instructors). Allen has a Masters Degree in Education with a Certification in Instructional Technology.

Angela Blackwell
PolicyLink, Founder and CEO
Angela Glover Blackwell founded PolicyLink in 1999. A renowned community building activist and advocate, Blackwell served as senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation where she oversaw the Foundation’s Domestic and Cultural divisions. Blackwell also developed Rockefeller’s Building Democracy division, which focused on race and policy, and created the Next Generation Leadership program. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm. She is the co-author of Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007), an anthology edited by John Edwards.

Dayna Cunningham
MIT CoLab, Executive Director
Dayna has over 20 years of experience working in democratic engagement and social justice as an attorney, in philanthropy and in development. Dayna worked as a voting rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and elsewhere in the South. As an Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, she funded initiatives that examined the relationship between democracy and race, changing racial dynamics and new conceptions of race in the U.S., as well as innovation in civil rights legal work. She also worked as an officer for the New York City Program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. While associated with Public Interest Projects, a non-profit project management and philanthropic consulting firm based in New York City, she managed foundation collaboratives on social justice issues. Most recently, Dayna directed the ELIAS Project, an MIT-based collaboration between business, NGOs and government that seeks to use processes of profound innovation to advance economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Dayna holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a juris doctor degree from New York University School of Law. She has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliff Colleges.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Green For All, CEO
Since taking leadership of Green For All in March 2009, Phaedra has led the organization to a stirring string of victories. Chief among these was assembling a civil rights coalition that successfully lobbied for two significant improvements to the House version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act: securing funding for job training, and guaranteeing broad access to clean energy jobs. These are the Act’s only provisions creating opportunity for low-income people and people of color. Prior to joining Green For All, Phaedra was head of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council and Working Partnerships USA.

Jeff Grabelsky
Cornell University, Director of Union Building Strategies
Jeff Grabelsky develops and delivers education and training programs and provides research and technical assistance in all aspects of union affairs.

The programs he has worked on have reached over 300,000 unionists nationwide. Jeff began his career in the labor movement working and organizing in the steel industry in 1973, has been a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) for thirty years, and is the former national organizing director of the Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO).

Jack Hayn
IUPAT, Liaison to the AFL-CIO
Jack Hayn formerly served as the Government Affairs field representative for the IUPAT Central Region. His new position as IUPAT liaison to the AFL-CIO includes serving as the representative on the many AFL-CIO constituency groups as well as serving as support on IUPAT efforts on numerous federation committees to include the passage of Health Care Reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Hayn began his career in the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in 1986 when he enrolled as an apprentice glazier in Local Union 181/District Council 6 (Cleveland ). His work in political activism earned him a position on the International staff in December of 2003 as a field representative in Government Affairs. In addition to his duties on the International level, he continued to remain active in Ohio politics. Hayn was a key supporter and volunteer for Governor Ted Strickland.

Art Lujan
The Building & Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, Special Assistant to the President
Prior to his current position, Art Lujan served as the Executive Director of the Gulf Coast Construction Career Center (G4C) located in New Orleans, Louisiana. G4C was developed in response to the challenge of reconstructing the Gulf Coast and is supported by a consortium of national and local organizations including the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, AFL-CIO Investment Trust Corporation, the AFL-CIO and the State of Louisiana. The blueprint for the center was developed by national and local construction industry leaders, including contractors, academic representatives, union representatives, project owners, affordable housing advocates, and investment experts.

Art has previously served as the California State Labor Commissioner in the Governor Gray Davis administration. Art also served as the Business Manager of the San Diego Building Trades Council for fourteen years. During his tenure he developed and implemented a pre-apprenticeship program for the building trades designed to recruit more people of color and females into the trades. During that time he also managed 450 units of low to moderate income housing owned by the building trades unions.

Don Mathis
Community Action Partnership, President & CEO
Don Mathis heads up the national membership organization of CAP which represents more than 1,000 Community Action agencies across America that work to promote economic security for all in America. Mathis is responsible for the Partnership’s national “Rooting Out Poverty” campaign and for raising the visibility of Community Action through strategic branding, marketing, public relations, and new collaborations, thereby serving as a key advocate for the 37 million Americans who live in poverty. Mathis has over 35 years experience in managing, designing, and lobbying for children, youth, and family programs at the community, state, and national levels. He held a senior staff position with the federal Corporation for National and Community Service that included managing 600+ AmeriCorps volunteers at the 1996 Olympics. He directed the Pennsylvania Conservation Corps and the National Youth Employment Coalition.

Leslie Moody
The Partnership for Working Families, Executive Director
Leslie Moody heads a national network dedicated to building power and reshaping the urban environment and economy for workers and communities. Prior to leading the Partnership, Leslie dedicated 15 years to changing Colorado’s organizing and political landscape. As the first woman president of the Denver Area Labor Federation, she spent a decade building a unified and successful movement which helped transform the state political alignment, and raise the minimum wage. As labor council president, she also co-founded the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC), and co-chaired the successful community benefits campaign at the Cherokee-Gates redevelopment. Committed to building a diverse and effective movement, Leslie has helped train thousands of union, community and student organizers; led organizing and policy campaigns impacting tens of thousands of low-wage workers; and helped block millions of dollars in public subsidy to Wal-Mart and other low-road employers.

Sally Prouty
The Corps Network, President
Ms. Prouty serves as an advocate for The Network’s 143 member Corps. She served four years as Deputy Director Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) and seven years as Director of the Ohio Civilian Conservation Corps (OCCC), a division of ODNR, operating two residential and six non-residential programs statewide. In addition to working 30 years in the public and private sectors, Ms. Prouty has nearly an equal number of years of experience in volunteer non-profit positions at the local, state, national and international levels including serving on a public school Board of Education and on the founding board of a faith-based Charter School. Ms. Prouty also holds a degree in Organizational Communication from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Her current work is concentrated on utilizing national and community service as a strategy to revitalize communities, preserve and restore the environment, prepare young people for responsible, productive lives and build civic spirit through service. Currently, Ms. Prouty is co-chair of the national Campaign for Youth and until recently served as founding co-chair of Voices for National Service.

Kevin Reilly
Laborers’ International Union of North America, Home Performance Coordinator
Kevin Reilly grew up in PA in an Irish Democrat household, whose grandfather was a steelworker. Reilly received his PhD in History from UMass-Amherst, where he was shop steward for the Graduate Employee Organization, a bargaining unit in UAW local. He taught US history survey courses and seminar in US women and business history at Morgan State University and University of Maryland before joining Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) in 2006.

Joel Rogers
COWS, Director
Joel Rogers, a former labor organizer, is a professor of law, political science, public affairs, and sociology at the university. He is the director of COWS, MIP, and CSI, senior policy advisor to Green for All, and cofounder and first chair of the Apollo Alliance. Joel has written widely on democratic theory and contemporary politics and is a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellow, identified by Newsweek as one of the 100 living Americans mostly likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century. John Sweeney and Andy Stern jointly said of Rogers: “nobody outside the American labor movement has shaped our present thinking as profoundly.”

Michael Rubinger
LISC, Executive Director
Michael Rubinger has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) since 1999. Prior to joining LISC, he was the Executive Vice President of the Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the largest private foundations in the country. Mr. Rubinger has more than thirty years experience in the housing and economic development fields. He worked for the City of New York as Assistant Commissioner of Employment and Training and was also responsible for planning and implementing various housing and employment-related national demonstration projects for the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a non-profit policy research corporation. Earlier in his career, he helped to administer the Ford Foundation’s community and economic development initiatives. Mr. Rubinger is a graduate of Brown University and the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts.

Dorothy Stoneman
YouthBuild USA, Founder and President
Dorothy Stoneman heads the national support center for 273 YouthBuild programs and is a leader in advocating for youth engagement in civil society. She is chairman of the National YouthBuild Coalition, with more than 1,000 member organizations in 45 states, Washington D.C., and the Virgin Islands. After joining the Civil Rights movement in 1964, Stoneman lived and worked for 24 years in Harlem.

She has built grassroots coalitions that have succeeded in obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars of city, state, and federal funds for community-based organizations to implement programs for youth and community development in low-income neighborhoods. She was selected by Non Profit Times as one of the 50 most influential non-profit leaders in 2008, awarded the prestigious international Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2007, the John Gardner Annual Leadership Award from the Independent Sector in 2000, and a MacArthur Fellowship (“genius grant”) in 1996. Stoneman serves as a trustee of America’s Promise: The Alliance for Youth; a member of the steering committees of Voices for National Service, ServiceNation, America Forward, and Campaign for Youth. She served on the Task Force to End Poverty of the Center for American Progress which issued a set of recommendations in 2007 regarding how to cut poverty in half in ten years.

Phil Thompson
MIT, Associate Professor of Urban Politics
Phil is an urban planner and a political scientist. In the early 1990s, Phil worked as deputy general manager of the New York Housing Authority, and as director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. He is a frequent advisor to trade unions in their efforts to work with immigrant and community groups across the United States. Phil’s most recent academic work includes a 2004 review of public health interventions in poor black communities (written with Arline Geronimus) published in the Du Bois Review, entitled “To Denigrate, Ignore, or Disrupt: The Health Impact of Policy induced Breakdown of Urban African American Communities of Support”; an article entitled “Judging Mayors” in the June 2005 issue of Perspectives on Politics; and a recent book, Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Struggle for Deep Democracy, published by Oxford University Press. Following Hurricane Katrina, Phil coordinated MIT’s technical assistance efforts in the Gulf.

Ken Wade
NeighborWorks America, CEO
Kenneth D. Wade oversees the provision of technical assistance, financial assistance and training that assists over 3,000 community based organizations and oversees the support of a national network of more than 240 affordable housing and community development organizations serving over 4,000 communities. Wade, who joined NeighborWorks America in 1990, has more than 25 years of experience in community development. He most recently served for five years as NeighborWorks America’s director of national programs, initiatives, and research. In addition, he served as the director of the NeighborWorks America New England district for eight years. Prior to joining NeighborWorks America, Wade worked for nine years with Boston’s United South End Settlements.

Jerry Westerholm
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Director
Sunia Zaterman
Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA), Executive Director
Sunia Zaterman joined CLPHA as Executive Director in 1994. She has over thirty years experience in housing issues at the federal, state and local levels. From 1994 to 2004, she also served as Executive Vice President of the Housing Research Foundation. Prior to her tenure at CLPHA, she served as the Director of Research and Development at the Alexandria, Virginia Redevelopment and Housing Authority and the Executive Director of the Travis County, Texas Housing Authority. In addition, she has worked at the Texas State Legislature and the New York State Housing Finance Agency. She holds a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from Princeton University and a Bachelors Degree in History from Barnard College, Columbia University. Ms. Zaterman serves as a Trustee of CHF International, an international community development organization and the National Housing Conference (NHC). She also serves on the editorial advisory boards of Affordable Housing Finance and Housing and Development Reporter.

MembersBuilding and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO (BCTD)

BCTD provides essential coordination and support to the work of its affiliated national and international unions in order that, through inter-trade solidarity, organized construction workers achieve a powerful voice in government, in bargaining, and in their communities. For nearly a century, the BCTD has secured the trade jurisdiction and autonomy of its affiliates as the respected arbiter of trade issues and through that work has contributed to the continuity of employment and economic security of organized construction workers in the US and Canada.

Center On Wisconsin Strategy (COWS)

COWS is a national policy center and field laboratory for high-road economic development a competitive market economy of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and capable democratic government. COWS’ work is collaborative, experimental, and evidence-driven. Working with business, government, labor, and communities, we try out new ideas, test their effectiveness, and disseminate those with promise. COWS believes that the best way to predict the future is to start making it, particularly in our states and metro regions.

Community Action Partnership

The Community Action Partnership was established in 1971 as the National Association of Community Action Agencies (NACAA) and is the national organization representing the interests of the 1,000 Community Action Agencies (CAAs) working to fight poverty at the local level. The mission of the Community Action Partnership is to strengthen, promote, represent, and serve the network of member agencies to assure that the issues of poverty are effectively presented and addressed.

The Corps Network

The Corps Network is the voice of the nation’s 143 Service and Conservation Corps. Currently operating in 44 states and the District of Columbia, Corps annually enroll more than 29,000 young men and women in service. Corps annually mobilize approximately 227,000 community volunteers who in conjunction with Corpsmembers generate 21.3 million hours of service every year. Today’s Corps, inheritors of the legacy of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, enable Corpsmembers to improve community and the environment through programs including Civic Justice Corps, Public Lands Corps, Clean Energy Service Corps, and Corps Respond. By serving their nation, Corpsmembers gain abilities that last a lifetime, including work readiness, educational advancement, civic engagement, and the ability to make responsible choices.

Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities is a national non-profit organization that works to preserve and improve public and affordable housing through advocacy, research, policy analysis and public education. CLPHA’s 60 members represent virtually every major metropolitan area in the country. Together they manage manage 40 percent of the nation’s public housing program; administer 26 percent of the Housing Choice Voucher program; and operate a wide array of other housing programs.

Enterprise Community Partners

Enterprise is a national nonprofit with more than 25 years of experience in the community development and affordable housing field. They are the leading provider of capital and expertise for affordable housing and community development. Enterprise creates opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through fit, affordable housing and diverse, thriving communities. Central to their mission is a fundamental commitment to give people living in poverty an opportunity to move up and out. They believe that these opportunities are best provided in communities with a diverse mix of affordable and market housing options, access to jobs and social supports, and a strong commitment to the environment and civic participation.

Green For All

Green For All is a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Green For All is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean energy economy. They work in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to create and implement programs that increase quality jobs and opportunities in green industry all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of their agenda.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) represents approximately 725,000 members who work in a wide variety of fields, including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government. The IBEW has members in both the United States and Canada and stands out among the American unions in the AFL-CIO because it is among the largest and has members in so many skilled occupations.

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT)

IUPAT represents a growing force of over 140,000 working men and women in the United States and Canada. Our members work in the finishing trades as painters, drywall finishers, wallcoverers, glaziers, glass workers, floor covering installers, sign makers, display workers, convention and show decorators, and in many more exciting occupations. IUPAT members skills are in high demand at every construction project in North America. The IUPAT membership extends beyond far beyond the workplace, however. Recognized as one of the most active unions in the labor movement, IUPAT members help shape their communities in many ways: through an abiding commitment to service, by fighting passionately for workers rights that benefit all working families, and through effective and aggressive political mobilization.

Laborer International Union of North America (LIUNA)

LIUNA is the most progressive, aggressive and fastest-growing union of construction workers, and one of the most diverse and effective unions representing public service employees. LIUNA members are on the forefront of the construction industry a sector that is a powerhouse of 12 million workers producing 5 percent of our countries economic output. A half-million strong, they are united through collective bargaining agreements which help them earn family-supporting pay, good benefits and the opportunity for advancement and better lives.

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)

(LISC is dedicated to helping community residents transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities of choice and opportunity good places to work, do business and raise children. LISC mobilizes corporate, government and philanthropic support to provide local community development organizations with: loans, grants and equity investments; local, statewide and national policy support; and technical and management assistance. LISC is a national organization with a community focus.

MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab)

CoLab is a center for community-engaged research and practice within MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. They work with low-income/low-wealth communities in putting their assets to work to help strengthen civic life and use the market as an arena for achieving social justice. CoLab supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth. CoLab facilitates the interchange of knowledge and resources between MIT and community organizations and engages students to be practitioners of this approach to community change and sustainability.

NeighborWorks America

NeighborWorks America is a national nonprofit organization created by Congress to provide financial support, technical assistance, and training for community-based revitalization efforts. NeighborWorks America helps build healthy communities. Together, with national and local partners, NeighborWorks creates new opportunities for residents while improving communities.

Partnership For Working Families

The Partnership for Working Families is dedicated to building power and reshaping the economy and urban environment for workers and communities. Our movement shares a commitment to expanding and connecting community and worker organizing for quality jobs, affordable housing, shared prosperity, and a healthy environment. In this era of hope, we are building our capacity to win big in cities, and adding it up to move a national agenda for change. Through strong alliances with environmental, labor, faith-based and civil rights organizations, we are dreaming and organizing together toward an economic expansion that rises above environmental and economic exploitation.

PolicyLink

PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by Lifting Up What Works. Founded in 1999, PolicyLink connects the work of people on the ground to the creation of sustainable communities of opportunity that allow everyone to participate and prosper. Such communities offer access to quality jobs, affordable housing, good schools, transportation, and the benefits of healthy food and physical activity. Guided by the belief that those closest to the nation’s challenges are central to finding solutions, PolicyLink relies on the wisdom, voice, and experience of local residents and organizations.

United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters (UA)

The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada or “UA” as it is commonly known is a multi-craft union whose members are engaged in the fabrication, installation and servicing of piping systems. There are approximately 326,000 highly-skilled United Association members who belong to over 300 individual local unions across North America. UA serves as a collective voice for workers through negotiation and collective bargaining with employing contractor groups, such as the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, and the National Association of Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors. The UA is also a key member of the Building and Construction Trades Department, the AFL-CIO, and the Canadian Federation of Labour.

YouthBuild USA

YouthBuild is a youth and community development program that simultaneously addresses core issues facing low-income communities: housing, education, employment, crime prevention, and leadership development. In YouthBuild programs, low-income young people ages 16-24 work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas, learn job skills and serve their communities by building affordable housing, and transform their own lives and roles in society.

Additional Member Organizations

•AFL-CIO Center for Green Jobs [www.workingforamerica.org]
•Apollo Alliance [www.apolloalliance.org]
•Bronze Investments
•Building Futures [www.bfri.org]
•C-Change Investments [www.cchangeinvestments.com]
•California Construction Academy, UCLA Labor Center [www.labor.ucla.edu]
•Change to Win [www.changetowin.org]
•Civic Ventures[www.civicventures.org]
•DC Project [www.weatherizedc.org]
•Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice [www.dwej.org]
•National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [www.naacp.org]
•Pantheon Properties [www.pantheonproperties.com]
•PA State Representative John Siptroth [www.pahouse.com]
•United Steelworkers [www.usw.org]
•US Green Buildings Council [www.usgbc.org]
•Wider Opportunities for Women[www.WOWonline.org]
Helpful Resources:
Roadmap to Sustainable Government BuildingsVisit our Resources page for more Emerald Videos
Video courtesy of Green For All
This video highlights the achievements of a joint project between the City of Portland and Green For All, an ECC-member organization.
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