It's not every day a former manufacturing hub for middle-class jobs gets to reinvent itself after the factories and plants shut down and ship off. But that's exactly what's happening in Long Beach, Calif., in Los Angeles County. 

Harold Meyerson writes in the Prospect about the effective organizing work the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) has done around passing living wage ordinances:

Long Beach is not famed for its liberalism. Until 15 years ago, its elected officials fell into two categories; they were either Chamber of Commerce Republicans or defense-oriented Democrats. But last November, Long Beach voters went to the polls and, by a margin of 64% to 36%, gave the 2,000 employees at the city’s largest hotels a raise to $13 an hour and five paid sick days. In any American city, such a measure would have been groundbreaking. In Long Beach, it would have been inexplicable but for one all-important particular: The campaign behind the measure was the handiwork of LAANE.
Established in 1993, LAANE is the think tank, policy arm and, on occasion, political organizer for the Los Angeles labor movement. Over the past 20 years, it has become the nation’s most innovative and effective force for raising the incomes of low-wage private-sector workers. No other think tank has come up with more ways to leverage the powers of municipal government to create higher pay for America’s working class. No other community-organizing group has built more effective labor-environmental-neighborhood alliances. No other lobbyist has a better record of persuading elected officials to enact not just progressive legislation, but the kind of progressive legislation that no one has ever before enacted.

Meyerson chronicles the work of the local labor movement spearheaded by María Elena Durazo, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. 

Read the rest of L.A. Story.