Sept. 5, 2015

To Be Equal 
The Value of Labor
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “It is necessary to reaffirm that employment is necessary for society, for families and for individuals. Its primary value is the good of the human person, as it allows the individual to be fully realised…Therefore, it follows that work has not only the economic objective of profit, but above all a purpose that regards man and his dignity. And if there is no work, this dignity is wounded. Indeed, the unemployed and underemployed risk being relegated to the margins of society, becoming victims of social exclusion.” – Pope Francis, March 20, 2014

Despite the dizzying array of clearance sales and bargains to be found in our nation’s malls and department stores, Labor Day is no creation of our retail industry. It is our nation’s annual tribute to the working class, American worker whose physical, and largely manual labor, built this country’s infrastructure and built a labor movement that spurred social and economic achievements for all American workers—regardless of job sector.

As we celebrate labor and America’s slow but steady climb to newfound economic prosperity during its most sustained period of job creation this century, we discover a dark cloud inside the silver lining of our recovery: the prosperity of the American economy is not being shared equally. Too many people are working harder, but are falling further behind. Too many people remain at the distant margins of the job market—particularly in our communities of color, where unemployment remains at crisis level, even as our economy continues to rebound.

The unemployment rate in our country currently sits at 5.3%, it’s lowest rate since May 2008. But take a deeper dive into those numbers and the tale of two recoveries is clear and unmistakable. While the unemployment rate for whites is at 4.6%, the Hispanic unemployment rate is at 6.8% and the Black unemployment rate is 9.1%—double that of white job seekers. The unemployment rates for Blacks and Hispanics are nothing if not discouraging and telling. These communities, especially hard hit during the last recession, are not benefiting from our economy’s rebound.

The ability to secure work that provides a fair, living wage—regardless of gender—is an asset to the worker, the worker’s family, neighborhood, community, and ultimately, our nation. We are an immensely stronger America when access to work is not excluded to some, but rather, extended to all.

That is why the National Urban League has proposed a 12-point Blueprint for Quality Job Creation. Our plan offers a dozen dynamic and imaginative measures to benefit those most profoundly affected by recession but left out of the ensuing recovery, while also remedying many of the underlying causes behind the recession’s inordinate and amplified impact on the communities we serve:

• Restore the Summer Youth Jobs Program as a stand-alone program;
• Create 100 Urban Jobs Academies to implement an expansion of the Urban Youth Empowerment Program;
• Develop a dynamic, national public-private jobs initiative to create jobs, train urban residents and stimulate economic growth in the areas of technology and broadband, health care, manufacturing, transportation, public infrastructure and clean energy;
• Boost minority participation in information and communication technology industries;
• Reform, revise and reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act to prepare and retrain workers for 21st century jobs;
• Create Green Empowerment Zones;
• Expand small business lending;
• Initiate Tax Reform that reduces rates across the board and eliminates tax loopholes;
• Establish and promote multilateral international trade policies that expand the market for American goods and services;
• Enact the Urban Jobs Act (H.R. 5708);
• Expand the hiring of housing counselors nationwide; and
• Fund direct job creation in cities and states.

We continue to urge Congress and the White House to adopt these measures without delay. The standard of living many of us take for granted today was won for us through the determination and organized protests of the American worker. The solidarity of the workers of the past must be reborn in our political discourse today as we collectively strive to open blocked pathways to work, success and the American dream of economic mobility. We must all work together—individuals, politicians and corporations—to ensure the possiblity of work for fair wages for all who seek it.

Aug. 31, 2015

Study: Too Few Blacks, Hispanics Becoming Doctors

Sept. 5, 2015

 

How Do We Make Life Matter?

By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Our country has been experiencing a dramatic case of meanness of spirit and tragic deaths by law enforcement, as well as by citizens against each other—especially among young people.  While the record will show there is no actual rise in crime in most places and no actual rise in police shootings or police being killed by citizens, the perception is there. Maybe most of us are just paying greater attention, and wondering how this can be.

The Black Lives Matter Movement has taken the lead in helping us to understand that a lot of people are dying needlessly, and we need change that helps to make life matter. Some have misinterpreted the Movement to mean that other lives don’t matter, but that is far from the truth. 

The Civil Rights Movement was always about making things better for all. That is what the Black Lives Matter Movement is all about.  If you listened to FOX News and other extreme conservatives, you’d get the impression that the Black Lives Matter Movement is the problem! From my perspective, the Movement is trying to resolve the problem.

Unfortunately, for too many people life just doesn’t matter.  For others, we’re baffled!  It seems that every day, we work our fingers to the bone trying to figure out not only how we get the police to stop killing our people—but, we worry about how to stop our young people from killing each other. Last Sunday, a young 13 year old child was shot multiple times as she tried to shield younger children from the violence in her area.

Does life matter for those who did the shooting in a neighborhood where children were playing?  How can we make life matter to those who fire weapons without considering what happens to innocent by-standers?

In his book The Indigenous Black People, Dr. James McHenry discusses the criminal’s way of thinking.  He says, “The criminal’s way of thinking is very different from that of the ordinary responsible citizen. Criminal behavior often begins in childhood.  There is the prevailing myth that broken homes, poor parenting, single parent homes, alcoholism, poverty, peer group pressure, poor schools, drug addiction, unemployment, television violence, video-game violence, rap music, passionate impulses, genetic transmittals, etc. are the causes of crime. These social problems do have some influence on behavior. But all of these assumptions suggest that society is more to blame for crime than the criminal.  This is not so!”

I agree with his position or how else do we explain young people who grow up with many of the conditions above, and go on to do great things in life?

Dr. McHenry makes another point about how hard some mothers try to keep their children on the right path in life—but with all of their efforts, many still grow up to be criminals. He said, “The fact is that the criminal chooses crime…crime does not choose the criminal.  He chooses his associates, his way of life, the types of crimes he commits, and he rejects society long before society rejects him… Ask any mother who has cried herself to death because her child was incorrigible despite: her attempts to change him, her love for him, her prayers, her trust, and so forth.  Once we understand why the criminal acts differently from responsible people, we can become reasonable, compassionate, and develop effective solutions.”

It’s time. If we want to help our children, we can’t wait until they become hardened criminals.  We must be there for them early in their lives.  We must teach them, show them a better way, and provide for their basic needs at school, in church and throughout the community. We must collectively help them before they become criminals.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President/CEO of the National Congress of Black Women.  www.nationalcongressbw.org.  202/678-6788)

August 31, 2015

Ten Years After Katrina: Pres. Obama Touts Resiliency of Residents
By Ryan Whirty

President Barack Obama greets a youngster during a walk through the Tremé neighborhood of New Orelans, La., with Mayor Mitch Landrieu, left, Aug. 27, 2015. The area experienced significant flooding during Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago. PHOTO: Pete Souza/The White House

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Louisiana Weekly

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As President Obama moved from house to house down Magic Street — hugging, shaking hands and chatting with residents of the brand new mixed-income development in Tremé — a crowd congregated behind a yellow nylon rope at the intersection of Magic and North Tonti streets, eagerly awaiting the president to approach and speak with them.

Under a bright blue sky and shiny sun, a gaggle of reporters and photographers hustled after the president as he spoke with the Harris family on their stoop — including a shy little girl clad in a pink shirt and rainbow shorts — and kissed Leah Chase, owner of the famous Dooky Chase restaurant, on the cheek as she sat in her wheelchair on the sidewalk.

“Thank you all so much,” Mrs. Chase told The Louisiana Weekly. “This is so beautiful.”

But during it all, standing back from the action, stood resident George Herden, his arms crossed in front of him against a gray tank top and long jean shorts. Bald but with a ring of long salt-and-pepper hair around his head, Herden seemed as though he was viewing the proceedings with a mixture of pride, skepticism and bemusement. He was, it seems, wearing a poker face.

“It’s good for the community,” Herden said, finally cracking a faint smile as he discussed President Obama’s visit to New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last Thursday. “Some children here never get to see people like this.”

Herden’s visage and comments perhaps summed up Obama’s whirlwind visit to NOLA; both residents and the public officials who spoke to the throngs of people packed into the Sanchez Community Center later in the afternoon stressed that while much has been accomplished and many residents have gotten back on their feet over the last 10 years, much, much more work is left to be done. And that is the challenge that lies ahead.

“Just because these houses are nice doesn’t mean the job is done,” Obama told the pool of media, Mayor Mitch Landrieu by his side, before the members of the motorcade piled back in their vehicles and whisked away. “We still have a lot of poverty here. This is still a community that needs recovery.”

While that theme of progress and further challenges echoed throughout Obama’s afternoon tour, his few hours in New Orleans were also sprinkled with touches of politicking at its finest and most subtle.

When Air Force One landed at the New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport, he was greeted by a trio of dignitaries — Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, GOP U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy and Landrieu, a Democrat. Obama politely but quickly shook the hands of the two Republication officials before embracing Landrieu in a hug. Later, while touring Tremé, Obama lavished Landrieu with praise, telling the media that the Democratic mayor was doing a wonderful job bringing the city back from disaster.

The political jabs continued when Obama arrived at the Sanchez Community Center in the Lower 9th Ward to hold a closed-door, 45-minute roundtable with various city, state and federal elected officials and representatives from local charities and grass-roots activist organizations.

The centerpiece of Obama’s visit was his speech to a standing-room-only, packed auditorium at the Sanchez Center. The crowd at the event included a healthy mixture of races, genders and ages, from upper-middle-age African-American gentlemen in suits to white teenage girls in tank tops and short shorts.

The scene inside the center was also accompanied by a large throng of people congregating outside the structure on the neutral ground of Claiborne Avenue, with many bystanders holding umbrellas to shield themselves from the bright sun, and one man holding a huge, hand-written sign that asserted that “State Farm is a liar and thief.”

Before Obama gave his lengthy addressed to the packed house inside the center, his talk was preceded by a rousing performance by a youth drum and brass band from the Roots of Music community improvement organization, as well as emphatic and at times powerful speeches by former mayor and current Urban League President Marc Morial, Democratic U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond and Landrieu.

Incidently, no Republican officials offered comments, although Cassidy did take part in the roundtable discussion that preceded Obama’s centerpiece speech. Conspicuously absent from all the proceedings, save for the arrival of Air Force One, was Jindal.

All the speakers again stressed the underlying theme that resonated throughout Obama’s whirlwind visit — citywide resilience and a unified community effort has accomplished much over the last decade to bring the city back, better than it was before the flood, but that a great deal of effort of rolling up of the sleeves remains left ahead.
“This is sacred ground,” Morial said of the Sanchez center and the Lower 9th as a whole. “This ground might have been flood and washed by the waters, but that is also ground that will rise again.”

He added rousingly and forcefully, “Lower 9th! Lower 9th! Lower 9th! … Those of you who know this neighborhood know how much resilience, how much passion, how much talent this city contains. … This recovery is at halftime. There is so much more lifting to be done. Today is only a continuation of a commitment.”

Richmond stressed New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward’s amazing ability to bounce back after each and every blow it has taken throughout its history, from the early 19th century fires and yellow fever epidemic to the various devastating hurricanes it has endured over the decades.

“When you look at the history of New Orleans,” Richmond said, “we get back up. We always pick ourselves back up because we’re resilient. … New Orleans is too important to lose. … We have to remember that we still have promised to keep and miles to walk before we sleep.” The last comment referenced a famous poem by Robert Frost.

But arguably stealing the show and the spotlight was Landrieu, whose speech began quietly but slowly heightened to volume, forcefulness and confidence, an address that drew several rounds of applause and cheers from the packed audience.

“It was our darkest hour,” Landrieu said about the days and weeks following the arrival of Katrina and the resulting floods. “It was a natural disaster, but then it was a man-made disaster. It was our darkest time, our lowest of lows.”

But, he said, after that initial shock and grief arose such a sense of cross-ethnic camaraderie and united lifting up that the country and even the world had never seen before.

“Everybody was helping each other out,” Landrieu said in a speech that was sprinkled with Biblical references. “And then, you know what, the rest of the world came to our aid. Out of tragedy, hope came. … We had to get back to work. Many people doubted us, and many people challenged us to do more. But no matter what comes, hell or high water — and we’ve seen both — we are coming back.”