Highlights of Metro IAF’s organizing over the last 3 months during the Covid-19 pandemic include:
 
  • Holding 3M accountable for N95 mask price gouging that affects frontline healthcare and other workers in our institutions in Maryland, Illinois, Virginia, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, organizing 20 states attorneys general and 3M shareholders with $13+ billion under management to secure changes in 3M’s distribution and pricing practices;  See op-ed on 3M in the largest suburban paper in IL:  Price gouging on needed equipment must be stopped.
 
  • Pushing Massachusetts Governor Baker to sign some of strongest eviction prevention legislation in the US, securing $25 million to protect renters from eviction in Wake County, NC, working with the Virginia Attorney General to compel landlords in Northern Virginia to abide by pandemic crisis eviction restrictions, and organizing immigrant mobile home park and public housing tenants in Wake, Orange, and Durham Counties, NC to hold owners accountable for predatory rents/fees and housing code violations;
 
 
  • Partnering with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and restaurants in Anne Arundel County, to feed thousands of children and families in central Maryland;
 
  • Training 350+ institutional leaders with the Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative (CPA), Metro IAF’s social business venture, on how to use social media, raise money, and manage finances/cut expenses during the pandemic. Organized 150 institutions (schools, houses of worship, non-profits, colleges) with CPA in IL, MA, CT, MD/DC in collective, competitive energy purchase to save money.