LSSC Spotlight Series: Fran Menes, Managing Director, Membership and Organizing for Local Progress
LSSC's Spotlight Series profiles just a sampling of our incredible partners in the preemption space. By sharing these profiles, we aim to highlight the important work of our colleagues and demonstrate how the different prongs of our work (campaigns, communications, research, legal and home rule reform) all connect and play an essential role in combating abusive preemption.
Francesca Menes is the Managing Director, Membership and Organizing for Local Progress and the Local Progress Impact Lab - where she helps build, expand, and strengthen LP’s organizing infrastructure and membership development across the country. Francesca is part of the Executive Committee of the Progressive Governance Academy, a joint project of Local Progress, State Innovation Exchange and re:power to build and develop the leadership and governance skills of progressive local and state elected officials across the country. She is a political educator, legislative and policy strategist, entrepreneur and former television host. She is the daughter of working-class Haitian immigrants raised in Miami’s Little Haiti community and mother of Joie. With over 15 years of experience, Francesca has led successful coalitions and legislative, policy and advocacy campaigns with undocumented families, immigrants, refugees, students, Black communities and communities of color, resulting in the passage of local, state, and federal resolutions, policies and laws on the issues of education, immigration, housing, wage protections and job security. Francesca graduated from Florida International University, earning her BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies with a minor in Philosophy and a certificate in National Security Studies and her Master’s in Public Administration, with a certificate in Community Development.
Tell us a bit about your journey - what brought you into the preemption space?
It started in 2008 when I was working as the coordinator of the South Florida Wage Theft Task Force at the Florida Immigrant Coalition. We had quietly worked on a wage theft ordinance for about two years in deep collaboration with farmworkers, day laborers, faith and labor groups, community lawyers and researchers, and got it passed – but once it was passed, the Florida Retail Federation mounted a two-front attack: they sued the county to challenge the legality of the ordinance and they also went a quicker route by filing a preemption bill at the Capitol. While the county was fighting in the courts, we mobilized to fight in Tallahassee, and that's when I learned what preemption was. We had just worked all these years to try to get something passed for our communities and it was like – what do you mean they can just take it away? We were able to successfully defeat the preemption attempt that first year and for several years afterward. So it was an interesting first campaign, because I didn't know about preemption until I had to face it after a victory.
What’s one win in this work that you’ve been really proud of?
Besides the wage theft work, it’s probably our work around the preemption of police budgets in 2021. That was the year Republicans got pissed off about all of the protests organized across the country, and in Florida they passed an anti-protest law, HB 1, which included really vague language around local government budget decision-making. In a moment where many local governments were looking to reimagine public safety, it was clear that HB 1 was written intentionally vaguely to create a chilling effect on localities who were taking actions to shift their resources and implementing alternatives to policing. When I saw that specific language, I began reaching out to movement lawyers to develop a litigation strategy.
With the support of the Public Rights Project, Community Justice Project, Southern Poverty Law Center and a private firm, we were able to organize nine cities to sue the state of Florida. After the failed attempt by the Governor to dismiss the case, the Republican-controlled legislature made significant changes to the law in the 2023 session by addressing the claims that were brought before the court. It wasn't easy to get those nine cities but luckily, we were able to organize one of our Local Progress cities to be that first city to join and then from there we were able to get 4 more Local Progress cities and 4 other cities to come on board. So that was another beautiful victory around what localities can do with their own resources.
What are a couple preemption-related trends you think don’t get enough attention?
The trends that keep surfacing for me are housing protections and rent control, and issues around health, like heat protection preemptions. I wouldn’t say that they don’t get enough coverage because we spent over a decade bringing it to the public eye in Florida, and now preemption is front and center in the paper, which wasn’t the case 15 years ago. So the media are willing to talk about it now, but how is that actually getting to the people that are being directly impacted by those decisions? I think that's where the gap is. We saw it when we had rent control on the ballot in Orange County, Florida. Our partners at the Florida Housing Justice Alliance who organized around this effort with our Local Progress member Orange County Commissioner Emily Bonilla were trying to hold slumlords accountable and ensure that people are living in the most humane conditions, but we had to do a lot of education with the public about what rent control even means and how it benefits them.
Health-related preemption is another topic where we’re noticing that folks aren’t connecting the dots. Unless you’re directly impacted, you’re not seeing how preemption can affect your living conditions, your health, your workforce – all of it. Ultimately, we need to communicate how all of these issues are interconnected, because at the end of the day, we're talking about everyone’s quality of life.
What’s the role of movement in defeating abusive preemption, and what resources are needed to support it?
Within the movement, we have to first understand that all of our issues have a preemption angle to them. Right now preemption is being used to basically cancel out every victory that we could possibly dream of. We see the bit by bit approach that happens in Florida, and in Texas we see them going after whole slates of codes — and it’s frustrating because communities are organizing everyday, working in collaboration with their local elected officials and the state continues to interfere, stripping power from local governments without solving for the problems communities are facing. The role of movement is to essentially hold the line, connect the dots between all of our issues and say, okay, they're coming for everything, so how are we organizing amongst ourselves to educate the public? And who are those base building organizations and how are they integrating preemption into their long-term issue campaign strategies? Not wondering if the state will attempt to preempt but rather, being prepared for when they do come after our victories. In Florida, there are several organizations, including the Miami Workers Center, which has built out an incredible tenant union that they're constantly educating. But we need more base building organizations that are grounding their membership with political education about the systems and how change happens. We have to bring the community into movement - that infrastructure is critical.
And then the second piece is about resource mobilization and funding strategic, long-term organizing. To build a base is to do deep, intentional trust and relationship building with community members who oftentimes don’t have the time to focus on what's happening and make the connections about why they feel like democracy isn't working for them. Communities are working long hours, living paycheck to paycheck, just trying to live their lives as best as possible; most of us are surviving, when we should be thriving. At the same time, greedy corporations are working with abusive state legislatures to preempt efforts by local governments to build those thriving communities. Funders have a responsibility to see things through. We are attempting to undo over 400 years of harm and violence – this will not happen overnight. It comes back to infrastructure and having the resources to be able to put more organizers on the ground. Not having the resources to get people out doing that day to day work within our communities is a gaping hole within funding of the movement. Because it takes real time for community organizers to build those relationships and that trust, but once you have it, you're able to move mountains.
What energizes you about this work and motivates you to keep going, even when things are tough?
I believe in our people and I believe in our communities. Coming from the immigrant rights and justice movement, a community that's always under attack, when you see the resiliency and the hopefulness in that space, it really anchors you in a very different way – and also organizing Black communities and seeing the resilience that they've had to have for years. I believe in us, and I’ve been able to see the work. I've been a part of so many campaigns that people thought weren’t possible, like leading the wage theft work and passing multiple ordinances across the state and leading Florida’s in-state tuition campaign.
It’s the local elected officials who are working in deep collaboration with their communities, working on issues from affordable and social housing, protections for tenants and unhoused populations, reimagining public safety, minimum wage, access to reproductive care, protecting immigrants, refugees and asylees and protecting workers and future generations. There’s a Haitian Proverb that guides me in this work, men anpil, chay pa lou, which means “many hands make the work light.” This work is about community, seeing the good in people and believing we can be better together. So that's what energizes me, is knowing there’s so many wins out there possible for us, we just have to be ready for them.