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Nation's Capital is also Capital of Black Unemployment

May 25, 2015

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The nation’s capital is the capital of unemployment for Black men and Black women, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank reported recently.

The Black jobless rate in March in the District of Columbia was 15.8 percent, 6.1 percentage points higher than prior to the Great Recession.

Before the recession from 2007 to 2009, D.C.’s Black unemployment rate was 9.7 percent. Black joblessness was 5.4 times higher than white unemployment, EPI said in report published May 6.

During the economic crash, which was caused by the failure of subprime lending and the U.S. financial crisis, African Americans and Hispanics lost an estimated 600,000 state and federal jobs.

Washington D.C.’s black unemployment rate surpassed Michigan’s, which reported the highest black jobless rate in 2014’s fourth quarter.

On the other hand, Virginia had the lowest black unemployment rate at 7.4 percent. The Black jobless rate in the Old Dominion State, however, was one percentage point higher than the highest white unemployment rate which was reported in Tennessee.

Since the economic recovery, the African-American unemployment rate is at or even below pre-recession levels in Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee, EPI disclosed in a report, titled “So Far, the Black Unemployment Rate Has Only Recovered in States Where It Was Highest Before the Great Recession.”

Obama Bans Distribution of Military Equipment to Local Police By Zenitha Prince


May 24, 2015
Obama Bans Distribution of Military Equipment to Local Police
 By Zenitha Prince

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

 (TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Obama this week announced steps to demilitarize local police, limiting and outright banning access to certain weapons. The President made the announcement in Camden, N.J., May 18 during remarks about the administration’s broader efforts on law enforcement reform.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like there’s an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them.  It can alienate and intimidate local residents, and send the wrong message.  So we’re going to prohibit some equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments,” he said.

As part of its Program 1033, the Department of Defense was authorized to transfer defense material to federal and state agencies for use in law enforcement, particularly those associated with counter-drug and counterterrorism activities. Under the new rules, law enforcement departments are prohibited from acquiring tracked armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers and large-caliber weapons and ammunition. Access to explosives, riot equipment and wheeled armored or tactical vehicles will also be limited. And, if departments seek access to any of these controlled equipment, they would need to provide detailed justification and officers would have to be properly trained in their use.

Problems plaguing policing in the United States was highlighted in stark relief last fall when demonstrators in Ferguson, Mo., took to the streets after 18-year-old African-American teen Michael Brown was gunned down by a police officer. Protestors were met by officers clad in in bulletproof vests and armed with military-grade rifles and armored vehicles, some of whom launched tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds and called demonstrators “animals.”

The situation prompted calls for reform from civil rights groups, who also shared recommendations which were reflected in the reports from the White House’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

“We are grateful that President Obama and the Policing Task Force he appointed listened to the calls for reform made by civil rights groups and activists. We also owe a debt of gratitude to those in Ferguson who used their activism to expose the shocking truth about local law enforcement reliance on this type of equipment,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, in a statement.

Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., who co-sponsored the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, also hailed the president’s announcement.

“Last June, I was only one of 62 House members (43 Democrats) to support an amendment that would have prevented the Department of Defense from distributing heavy weapons and vehicles to local police forces. While I applaud the efforts and courage our police departments continue to show each and every day, I feel that militarizing them will not solve the unrest that continues among our communities,” Edwards said. “I thank the President for leading on this ongoing issue of building strong relationships between law enforcement officers and those who they serve and protect.”

'Stop the Violence': Citizens Return to the Streets Against Black-on-Black Crime By Joey Matthews

'Stop the Violence': Citizens Return to the Streets Against Black-on-Black Crime
By Joey Matthews

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Joyce Kenney holds an image of her grandson, Ra’Keem Adkins, 22, who was shot and killed in the Mosby Court public housing community May 7. PHOTO: Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

Richmond, VA (TriceEdneyWire.com) - For most of her adult life, Joyce Kenney has been an advocate for people living in the Mosby Court public housing community and other poor neighborhoods in the city of Richmond, Va.

In that time, she has lobbied for more resources for people in disadvantaged communities. She also has attended countless vigils to comfort those mourning the deaths of their loved ones due to violence in the streets.

Suddenly, it was Ms. Kenney’s turn to be consoled by community members.

Her grandson, Ra’Keem Adkins, 22, was one of five shooting victims in Richmond May 7. He was shot multiple times and died on the sidewalk in the 1900 block of Redd Street shortly after 10 p.m. in Mosby Court in the city’s East End.

Earlier in the day, Sylvester Nichols, 24, was fatally shot in the parking lot of the Family Dollar Store in the 6500 block of Midlothian Turnpike on South Side. A third man also was shot that night about three miles away and taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Angered by the ongoing Black-on-Black violence in the city, community activist J.J. Minor said he began planning an anti-violence rally last Saturday with the Mosby Court Tenant Council and fellow activist Charles Willis, who grew up in Mosby Court.

“I’m tired and frustrated by the Black-on-Black crime,” Minor told the Free Press prior to the rally as he and other volunteers prepared hamburgers and hot dogs to serve along with potato chips, soft drinks and water to rally attendees.

He pointed to a decrepit basketball court a few yards from where Adkins was killed. The baskets had bent rims and no nets.

“Look at that,” he said, shaking his head. “The city needs to step up to the plate and put more resources in impoverished communities.”

He said he plans to contact community members, city officials, educators, business leaders and faith leaders to convene a roundtable discussion in a few weeks to plan strategies to gain more resources for poor neighborhoods and to end the violence.

More than 200 people, including Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham, marched from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School to Mosby Court calling for an end to the violence.

More than 200 people — including Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham, several City Council and School Board members and leaders of the faith community — attended the rally held Tuesday evening, only a few yards from where Adkins was gunned down.

Many of them, including Chief Durham, first marched about a half mile from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School to the rally site. Some held signs that read “Put guns down,” “No more violence,” and “Stop the killings.” Youngsters and adults chanted, “No more violence! Increase the peace!”

Kenney sat next to a podium along with other family members as speaker after speaker decried the violence. They called on the community to turn in the criminals to police and for the police to get the guns out of the criminals’ hands.

“We’ve got to stop the violence and try to better our community. All of us need to live as one and do more to help each other,” Kenney told a Free Press reporter.

Delegate Delores L. McQuinn of Richmond said she had attended too many stop-the-violence rallies through the years, only to see violence continue.

“Black lives matter not only when they’re taken at the hands of a police officer, but they matter when our boys and girls are shooting each other!” she said to loud applause.

City Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, whose 6th District encompasses Mosby Court, said, “We are doing this to ourselves. Violence is not necessary and it does not solve the problem because the bitterness is still in our souls and eats us alive. Let us lift ourselves to be the great African kings and queens we are.”

Chief Durham implored community members to help the police “get weapons out of the hands of the kids. They are killing each other.”

When he asked the audience how many had a loved one who has been shot or killed, about two-thirds of the people raised their hands.

School Board member Shonda Harris-Muhammed, whose 6th District includes Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, said, “We are in the middle of testing and our children have to come to school dealing with this foolishness. You’re going to have determine when enough is enough,” she declared.

Earlier in the day, Chief Durham and Mayor Dwight C. Jones spoke from the site where Adkins was killed.

Chief Durham announced that two men have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder in Adkins’ death. Milvon L. Witcher, 29, was picked up by the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force. Domonique R. Walker, 22, was arrested May 8 by Richmond Police detectives. Both men live in the 1300 block of Redd Street. They are to appear in court June 25.

Chief Durham and Mayor Jones also said, as of Tuesday, the number of homicides in Richmond has dropped compared to the same time last year — from 18 to 8, a 56 percent decline.

Violent crimes in the city also are down from 416 to 346, a 17 percent decline.

Will Proposed Trade Agreement Be Another Bad Deal for Black Workers? by Frederick H. Lowe

May 18, 2015

Will Proposed Trade Agreement Be Another Bad Deal for Black Workers?

Previous deals have cost Black workers hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs

By Frederick H. Lowe

 

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President Obama is pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Previous trade agreements have hurt black workers. PHOTO: Getty Images

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Black workers have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs because of trade deals.–Think Stock

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President Bill Clinton, who novelist Tony Morrison called the first Black president, successfully lobbied for NAFTA and legislation that led to mass incarceration of Black men.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

 (TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Barack Obama is seeking Congressional authority to move quickly on  the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement, but if TPP is anything like earlier contracts, Black workers will suffer, not prosper, because previous deals caused them to lose hundreds of thousands of well-paying manufacturing jobs due to currency manipulation and trade deficits.

A trade deficit occurs when a country’s imports exceed its exports. Currency manipulation is more complicated. It occurs when a trade-surplus country with a strong currency, like China, buys other countries’ currencies instead of purchasing exports from countries like the U.S., which has a big trade deficit with China. In both cases, U.S. jobs disappear while foreign countries make inexpensive goods and sell them here.

The Office of the United States Trade representative reported in 2013 America’s trade deficit with China was $318.4 billion.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, involves the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile Peru, New Zealand, Vietnam and Brunei. The countries account for almost 40 percent of the world’s economy. If the agreement, which has been in the works for a decade, is signed, it would reduce tariffs on open markets.

The U.S. Office of the Trade Representative claims TPP will support “Made-In-America” exports, enforce fundamental labor rights, promote environmental protection and help American small businesses benefit from trade.

The deal is being negotiated in secret and only top government officials know what’s going on, but the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said any deal should include enforceable measures to stop currency manipulation especially for some the countries participating in TPP. Japan, Malaysia and Singapore are currency manipulators, claims EPI. China, Taiwan and South Korea also have expressed interest in joining TPP.

“It’s difficult to estimate the jobs impact of the TPP, given we have not seen a complete draft of the final text, but based on prior experience, we can expect growing trade deficits and job losses—similar to what after NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and KORUS (U.S. Korean Free Trade Agreement),” said Robert Scott, director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.

Past international trade agreements have eliminated hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the manufacturing for Black workers and other working-class families as companies moved their operations to other countries where labor costs are cheaper than the United States.

Trade agreements that led to job losses in manufacturing, include NAFTA, a trilateral agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, which took effect in  January 1994. It was negotiated under President Bill Clinton. The other trade agreements are KORUS which took effect March 15, 2012, under President Obama. China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001 under President George W. Bush. The World Trade Organization deals with rules of trade between nations.

New jobs were promised, but they never materialized

In each case the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Trade Representative and some politicians claim the deals would bring new higher-paying jobs here. Some jobs did materialize, but Black workers have been very hard.

President Clinton, for example, claimed NAFTA would create an export boom from Mexico that would create 200,000 jobs in two years and millions of jobs in five years, but 20 years later, trade deficits with Mexico eliminated 682,000 good jobs in the U.S. and 61 percent were in manufacturing,” Scott wrote in 2013 paper titled “NAFTA’s Legacy: Growing U.S. Trade Deficits Cost 682,000 jobs.”

Black workers lose big with China

When China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, it cost Black workers 281,100 high-paying manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2011, said Scott, author of the 2013 research paper, “Trading away manufacturing advantage: China trade drives down U.S. wages and benefits and eliminates good jobs for U.S. workers.”

Scott estimated that African-Americans made up 25 percent of minorities displaced by trade with China, suffering wage losses in excess of $2.5 billion.

“The displacement of manufacturing jobs by growing U.S. trade deficits with China has been particularly hard on minority workers : 958,800 were displaced, with wage-related losses in 2011 of $10,485 per worker and $10.1 billion overall,” Celeste Drake, Trade and Globalization Policy Specialist for the AFL-CIO in Washington D.C., wrote in an email.

Following along that same line, KORUS has resulted in the net loss of 75,000 jobs for African American and other workers. U.S. imports from Korea surged to more than $12 billion while U.S. exports to Korea increased by less than $1 billion, Scott said.

Once African-American and other non-White workers lose their jobs, they have a difficult time finding a new one, wrote author Lori Keltzer in the book titled “Job Loss from Imports: Measuring the Costs.”

“Minority workers face reemployment rates almost 11 percentage points lower than white workers,” Keltzer wrote. “For less skilled manufacturing workers, the male minority’s employment rate is 20% lower than the average. Female minority’s reemployment rate is 24% lower.”

Manufacturing displaced workers are older, less likely to be female, less educated and more likely to be minority, she said.

The trade agreements are a little-discussed triple whammy in the black community that has hit African-Americans financially hard over the past two decades.

Trade agreements, mass incarceration and The Great Recession

While President Clinton was pushing NAFTA, he also pushed tough on crime legislation in 1994 that resulted in the mass prison incarceration of black men. Clinton didn’t do it alone. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for the legislation called the Violent Crime Control Act.

There are more than 2.3 million people in the nation’s state and federal prisons and nearly 1 million are Black men.

Recently, The New York Times published an article about the disappearance of 1.5 million black men from daily American society. The reasons were early death, overseas deployment and prison.

President Clinton has since said the justice system is broken. His wife, Hillary Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, also supported the tough on crime legislation, but she has since changed her mind. When men are released from prison, it is difficult for them to find a job and because they have been in prison they haven’t been able to earn a pension or Social Security.

Finally, there was the Great Recession, which has been called the largest setback for racial-wealth equality in the last quarter century. The Great Recession, which was caused in part by the subprime lending, lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.

African-Americans, however, are still recovering from the Great Recession in which African-Americans and Hispanics lost 600,000 public-sector jobs. In April, the unemployment rate for blacks was 9.6 percent. In some cases, it was more than double the jobless rate compared to other ethnic and racial groups.

Congress is expected to vote soon Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015, which is known as “Fast Track.” President Obama requested Fast Track authority from Congress to ease passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.),  wrote in a 15-page paper titled “Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements.”

Scott of the Economic Policy Institute said the U.S. trade deficit with the 11 countries was $154 billion in 2014.

He concluded, “With trade deficits already on the rise, it makes no sense to sign a deal that would exacerbate them further."

Rep. John Lewis to Hampton Graduates: ‘Get in the Way’

May 17, 2015

Rep. John Lewis to Hampton Graduates: ‘Get in the Way’


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Congressman John Lewis tells Hampton graduates to "find a way to get in the way."

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A jubilant class of 2015.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Hampton University

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has told 847 Hampton University graduates that it’s their moral obligation to do what they can to bring about positive change in the world.

"You have to find a way to get in the way. Get in good trouble. Use it to bring about a non-violent revolution," Lewis said. The 29-year veteran congressman and iconic civil rights leader has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties and building what he calls the "The Beloved Community in America."

He pulled from his own background in youth activism. A leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, at 25 Lewis was among those attacked and injured by Georgia state troopers as he led the historic March 7, 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At age 23, he was also the youngest keynote speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.

Lewis urged the HU Class of 2015 to go out and help those who are left behind. "You have a mission, a mandate and a moral obligation to do what you can."

The ceremony at Hampton’s Armstrong Stadium in Hampton, Va. was bathed with sunny skies and wide smiles for the University's 145th Annual Commencement May 10.

HU President Dr. William R. Harvey also conferred an Honorary Degree Doctor of Laws on Lewis. There were also four HU alumni honored during the ceremony. Harvey presented the alumnus-at-large award to University of Maryland Baltimore County President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski and his wife community activist Mrs. Jacqueline Hrabowski. The Outstanding 20-year Alumnus award was presented to Jenifer P. Abubakari and Dr. Sonya J. Snedecor.

The Valedictorian of the HU Class of 2015 was Symone Alexander Gyles. Gyles is a marine environmental science major from Springfield, Va.  The salutatorian was Nehanda Akwasiba Ase Khemet, a psychology major from Sacramento, California.

Harvey charged the graduates to serve themselves and their alma mater well. "Let your education at Hampton University serve as your foundation as you build your careers."


 

 

 

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