State of the Union Promises 'Year of Action'; But Did Speech Say Enough?

Black leaders praise new focus on disparities; Some say speech still too ‘tepid’ 

By Hazel Trice Edney

President Obama gave state of the Union Tuesday, Jan. 28. PHOTO/The White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Finally. That was the general sentiment expressed by Black economic activists in response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union (SOU) speech last week – a speech that surpassed previous SOUs in dealing with economic woes that disparately affect African-Americans and other people of color.

“What I offer tonight is a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class, and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class,” the President told the joint session of Congress during his fifth State of the Union address Jan. 28. “Some require Congressional action, and I’m eager to work with all of you.  But America does not stand still – and neither will I.  So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”

The speech set a tone that the President is willing to bypass Congress to use executive orders where possible to advance his economic agenda in the coming months.

“Let’s see where else we can make progress together.  Let’s make this a year of action.  That’s what most Americans want – for all of us in this chamber to focus on their lives, their hopes, their aspirations.  And what I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all – the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead. Let’s face it: that belief has suffered some serious blows.”

It was a common criticism from Black leaders that President Obama did not say or do enough during his first term pertaining to racial economic disparities. In fact, he often made the statement that a “rising tide lifts all boats”, implying that the poor – which are disparately people of color – would be lifted along with everyone else. Some say his new tone and strategies appear to recant that sentiment, but still doesn’t go far enough.

“It was good that he finally recognized and brought to the attention of everyone that government has to pay attention to lifting all boats and not kind of assume that just because the economy is growing that all boats are rising,” said economist Bill Spriggs, in an interview following the speech. “He said that frequently during the first term and I think that this was a clear statement that, no, the rising tide did not lift all boats. I think that is a positive step forward in terms of brain work.”

Ironically, Spriggs who was a part of President Obama’s economics team as an assistant secretary for policy at the Labor Department in his first term, is now one of his most meticulous critics. Now chief economist for the AFL-CIO, Spriggs says the SOU was fairly strong, but the President didn’t go far enough in giving specific examples to describe the suffering and depth of disparities.

For example, Spriggs pointed out how the President spoke of inequality growing 30 years before the ‘great recession’ but he blamed it on technological growth and competition. “He said nothing about workers’ rights to organize, a declining minimum wage” and how their jobs were sent overseas, Spriggs said.

The President also left out the fact that racism and Jim Crow contributed to income disparities to the extent that even today unemployment remains twice as bad in Black communities as among Whites.

“Yes, it was definitely a step forward. But in terms of where the debate is, I thought he could have taken it further,” Spriggs said. “I think he could have taken it to another level…It was like ‘I can’t play too much to the people’, which was kind of a tepid step toward understanding that this is really about people…That was the moment for him to say. ‘I’m taking the government back to the people. You either lead, follow or get out of the way.’ And he didn’t say that.”

Among the President’s Proposals:

• He has asked Vice President Joseph Biden to lead reform of job training programs in order to “train Americans with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now.”
• Working with colleges and universities, such the White House’s recent College Opportunity Summit in order to attain commitments from universities, businesses, and nonprofits “to reduce inequality in access to higher education – and help every hardworking kid go to college and succeed when they get to campus.”
• Will issue an Executive Order “requiring federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour – because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.”
• Challenged to Congress to likewise raise the federal minimum wage: “Today, the federal minimum wage is worth about twenty percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan first stood here.  Tom Harkin and George Miller have a bill to fix that by lifting the minimum wage to $10.10.”

Congressional Black Caucus Chair Macia Fudge (D-Ohio), also applauded the President’s speech as a great new beginning, but took a wait and see approach as to what will actually happen.

“I did hear what I wanted to hear. I do think that this is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, of the five state of the unions that he’s given,” Fudge said.  I think he was very, very clear in the direction that he wants to lead this country. I think that he articulated very, very strongly a path that he expects this country to go and how he expects to lead us there,” she said.

But, given the typical push back from the politically divided Congress, she was reserved about how much would actually get done.

“The biggest drawback is going to be anything that he has to bring before Congress,” she said. “Because no matter what these people say, the will not want this President to succeed. And they will continue to obstruct for as long as they can.”

Civil rights leaders are also praising the speech for hitting the right points, but pondered whether it went far enough.

Dedrick Muhammad, director for NAACP Economic Programs, said the speech had the overtone that “Even though we’ve been technically in recovery for years, most of America hasn’t felt the recovery and much more action needs to be taken.”

However, like Spriggs, Muhammad said the President stopped short of fully describing the depth of the disparate suffering. “He could have gone into more detail about how bad the inequality is today,” Muhammad said. “To me it’s a real kind of doubling down of what he’s been talking about the last two, maybe four years.  And I think the new piece was that the first [five] years of his presidency, it was always with the hopes that you can have Republicans come on and you can get things passed through Congress. Now, he still offers that possibility, but he deals much more with the reality that it might just be up to him about what he can do.”

Jan. 27, 2014

Africa Was a Point of Pride for Dr. King

By Rush Perez

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global International Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com)  – At a speaking engagement at Western Michigan University on Dec. 18, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recalled his first trip to Africa with his wife Coretta to attend the independence day celebration of the new nation of Ghana. The couple was invited by the new President, Kwame Nkrumah.

“We were very happy about the fact there were now eight independent countries in Africa,” he said. “But since that night in March, 1957, some twenty-seven new independent nations have come into being in Africa. This reveals to us that the old order of colonialism is passing away, and the new order of freedom and human dignity is coming into being.”

Later, on Dec. 10, 1965 he gave a powerful speech at Hunter College in New York City, where he attacked the Apartheid regime of South Africa, as well as the governments of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) and the Portuguese control of Mozambique and Angola.

True to form, Dr King utilized powerful language to make his points, beginning first with a deconstruction of the popular narrative of Africa at the time.

“Africa has been depicted for more than a century as the home of black cannibals and ignorant primitives….Africa does have spectacular savages today, but they are not black. They are the sophisticated white rulers of South Africa... whose conduct and philosophy stamp them unmistakably as modern day barbarians.”

He went on to call for an international boycott of South Africa.

After the independence day ceremonies in Ghana, Dr King said in a radio interview that: “This event, the birth of this new nation, will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions--not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America….It renews my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice and that somehow the universe itself is on the side of freedom and justice. So that this gives new hope to me in the struggle for freedom.”

Post-Katrina New Orleans: 7,000 Educators Wrongly Terminated, Court Says
By Fritz Esker

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Louisiana Weekly

(TriceEdneyWire.com) -The Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal has unanimously ruled that approximately 7,000 teachers and school employees were wrongfully terminated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Teachers filed suit against the Orleans Parish School Board and the Louisiana Department of Education after they lost their jobs post-Katrina and then were not given first crack at new job opportunities that arose once schools began reopening. A bench verdict from Civil District Court Judge Ethel Simms Julien ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2012 and on Wednesday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal mostly confirmed the ruling. Certain deductions were made related to plaintiffs’ lost wages, but the overall result was a victory for the plaintiffs.

As a result, all tenured employees who were fired after Katrina will be paid two years’ salary by the Orleans Parish School Board. Teachers who meet certain criteria will also be paid an additional year’s salary by the state of Louisiana.

“We are very pleased with the ruling,” said Louisiana Federation of Teachers General Counsel Larry Samuel, who was also part of the plaintiffs’ legal committee. “These employees suffered a dual tragedy, once when the levees broke and another when their livelihoods were taken from them.”

The ruling, passed down by judges James McKay III, Edwin Lombard, Paul Bonin, Daniel Dysart, and Roland Belsome, said it was fair for the School Board to reduce the workforce post-Katrina. However, the teachers had a constitutionally protected right to be recalled to work as soon as opportunities arose for them to do so. The School Board was legally required to create a “recall list” of teachers who were available to return and failed to do this. This list should have been used to rehire teachers and staff to fill any openings over the next two years.

Most of the teachers involved in the lawsuit were members of the United Teachers of New Orleans, an LFT affiliate. When the new job openings were filled, the court found that jobs were primarily given to younger, cheaper candidates. The opinion, written by Belsome, stated, “The record clearly shows that the state advertised for these positions nationally and contracted with Teach for America to hire inexperienced college graduates that did not have teacher certification.”

“New Orleans had a corps of dedicated professionals who wanted nothing more than to teach children,” said Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. “The city had a handful of schools that could have been opened within weeks after Hur-ricane Katrina. They were kept shuttered, the state took over the schools, and all the teachers in the city were fired…This ruling paves the way for some semblance of justice for those educators.”

The ruling applies to all employees who had tenure on August 29, 2005. That list includes principals, teachers, paraprofessionals, office administrators, secretaries, social workers, and other support staff.

Justice will come too late for at least one participant in the lawsuit. Gwendolyn Ridgely, one of the seven lead plaintiffs, died in October 2012.

“This case has been a difficult and extremely stressful experience for 7,000 employees and their families who suffered after Hurricane Katrina,” said Willie M. Zanders, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “We pause and pay respect to all former employees who did not live to see this important victory.”

The fight between the plaintiffs and the defendants may not be over. Both the school board and the state can ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to review the ruling.

The Louisiana Department of Education and Orleans Parish School Board could not be reached for comment by press time.

National NAACP Chair Sticks With Her Boss' Racism
By Joey Matthews

NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock

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

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The chair of the national NAACP had a grand opportunity to publicly denounce discrimination issues related to Bon Secours. Instead, Roslyn M. Brock embraced Bon Secours at a Richmond, Va. event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Bon Secours vice president called the health care giant “my family.” Brock has come under fire for supporting Bon Secours’ racist practices related to the Washington professional football team and its discriminatory training camp deal in Richmond. Bon Secours paid $6.4 million to sponsor the training camp that carries the racist and derogatory nickname of the D.C. team.

Brock failed to denounce the racism issues again when she recently delivered the keynote address at the 36^th Annual Community Leaders Breakfast at a Downtown hotel. Bon Secours officials sat at a table near the podium where she spoke. NAACP members also were in attendance.

Brock also recognized the NAACP members, but made no reference to them being her family. The event is sponsored by Virginia Union University, Brock’s alma mater, led by President Claude G. Perkins. It draws elected officials, business leaders, members of the faith community and other community members to commemorate Dr. King.

The Richmond Free Press challenged in an editorial the day before the community breakfast to “take a public stance in support of the NAACP’s opposition to the racist practices of Bon Secours.”

Those practices include Bon Secours’ support of the D.C. team’s racist and derogatory nickname and Bon Secours’ sponsorship of the team’s discriminatory training camp deal. That deal denied Black-owned and other locally owned businesses vending opportunities inside the Washington NFL camp that opened last summer. The Richmond Free Press has repeatedly called on Brock to denounce the Bon Secours support of the racism issues.

Only after the Free Press chronicled her refusal to denounce the hateful nickname did Brock join with national NAACP interim President Lorraine M. Miller to issue a statement on the organization’s website criticizing the D.C. team’s racist nickname.

Apparently upset over media criticism of her backing of the racist practices, she lashed out at the media “that demonize their leaders on the front of newspapers.”

State NAACP Executive Director King Salim Khalfani also was at the event. In sharp contrast to Brock, he has been a consistent and loud critic of the D.C. team’s nickname and has lashed out at Bon Secours’ support of the discriminatory training camp deal.

In other remarks at the community breakfast, Brock challenged audience members to join Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s social justice campaign to uplift the poor.

“Stand with this governor. … and with the hundreds of thousands of citizens across this community to make this, our beloved community, one where we stand together, walk together, pray together and also we serve together.”

She added, “We must rededicate ourselves and even our lives to achieve Dr. King’s dream.”

She ripped into those looking to curb voting rights, turn back the clock on civil rights gains and sidetrack the Affordable Care Act. She joined Gov. McAuliffe’s call to expand Medicaid health coverage to more than 400,000 working Virginians.

“The hard truth is in America, across the length and breadth of this nation, race still matters in this country and the pendulum of justice is moving quickly backward for people of color and those who live below the poverty line,” she said.

In brief remarks, Gov. McAuliffe continued to promote his new Virginia way agenda to be “an open and welcoming state” with opportunity for all. He said doing so would “honor Dr. King’s spirit and his legacy of equality and service.”

Other elected officials in attendance: U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, state Delegate Delores L. McQuinn and several City Council members.

Scott said he has attended every community breakfast but one.

“It’s an opportunity for the community to come together and show support for the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” he said.

Now 91, he graduated from Virginia Union and went on to serve the school for more than 50 years. He was appointed the university’s seventh president in 1979 and served until 1985. He also taught at and served as dean of the university’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.

Dr. James was the first African-American to be elected president of the Association of Theological Schools and the first to be elected president of the Virginia State Board of Education. Dr. James praised his deceased wife of 67 years, Susie Nickens James, for “the partnership that played the greatest role in making everything possible.”

He closed by saying: “As we face the rising sun of a new day that has begun, let us march on, fight on, legislate on, work on until the reality of Martin Luther’s dream becomes a true factor in American life. Until it is really honored and respected. Until complete victory is won.”