WHITHER DIRECT FILE?
Direct File is the free tax return filing pilot program available to 32 million Americans in 25 states that was made permanent one year ago and was used by 140,000 taxpayers last year. We wrote about Direct File before, and In the Public Interest signed onto a letter in support of the program. But now, the program might be eliminated. Cuts to federal staffers at Government Services Administration and U.S. Digital Service include members of the team that launched it, and some members of Congress have pushed for its discontinuation.
One former staffer at U.S. Digital Service, Amy Paris, told Federal News Network that the program, which pre-populates people’s tax forms with the relevant information, was a popular one..
“You cannot debate the fact that the people who use Direct File like using it,” she said. “If we kept doing more work like Direct File, and we did that for every single government interaction — for Social Security, for Medicare, applying for SNAP and WIC … If we just designed them the way that we designed Direct File, and we built out these programs in ways that actually work with the American people and use plain language, we could totally revitalize people’s faith in government,” Paris said.
WORTHWHILE BOOK FROM WORTH RISES
Private prison companies are drooling over opportunities from Trump’s immigration policies that will require detention facilities to house the large number of people rounded up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So it’s not a bad time to check out a new book, The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits, from the folks at Worth Rises, which we first announced in our weekly Privatization Reports (now landing in inboxes on Tuesday—subscribe here). Jocelyn Simonson, professor of law, Brooklyn Law School, and author of Radical Acts of Justice, says The Prison Industry “is simultaneously an encyclopedia of corporate greed, an exposé of the cruelty of incarceration, and a clarion call for change.”
HOLY WATER
The recent Privatization Report also carried the reminder, on the occasion of his passing, of Pope Francis’s statement a decade ago against the privatization of water. In the encyclical titled Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis wrote:
“Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market. Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.”
LEARNING FROM LITTLE SIS
We’re also glad to let people know about a training curriculum from our friends at Little Sis (think Big Brother, then think the opposite). Little Sis, also known as the Public Accountability Initiative is a nonprofit public interest research organization focused on corporate and government accountability.
It conducts and facilitates “power research to generate a specific understanding of social-political-economic power in order to inform movement strategies, build coalitions and directly support campaigns that challenge power structures.” If you’ve got a hunch there’s corporate power pushing public policy and you’re looking for the receipts—Little Sis will help you find them.
The upcoming Research Tools for Organizers is a training curriculum designed to help “level up your toolkit and bring a new perspective…by incorporating practical research techniques and a corporate power analysis into your campaign development.” It begins May 15, so sign up soon!
In Solidarity,
Donald Cohen
Executive Director