Anderson@Large

Obama’s Wake-up Call

As a lifelong political activist, I got an early Christmas present. Black folks’ reluctance to criticize President Barack Obama is giving way to reality. And the reality is, power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Let me be clear: I am not interested in second-guessing Obama. Instead, it’s about accountability.

Like you, I watched Obama target the needs of Wall Street banksters, and address the concerns of Blue Dogs and one dirty dog.

Yet in the name of being president “of all Americans,” Obama refused to respond to the demands of the Congressional Black Caucus and address issues especially important to black folks. Are we not Americans?

The whispered criticism has apparently been heard. Obama is scheduled to make his first appearance as president on “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” this morning.

While Joyner will show Obama some love, Smokey Fontaine of NewsOne.com told TV One’s Roland Martin, “the Obama love fest is over”:

Well, we’ve lost the passion. We’ve lost the emotion, and we should not be above criticizing the President. Just because he’s African-American, that does not mean he’s above our criticism; but what’s true is when he wants to rally us to get behind him – and he needs our support right now – we’re not there, because he hasn’t given us the attention that we deserve.

For Martin and Fontaine, the Gannett interview was the turning point:

MR. MARTIN: And – and I think you’ve got to get those questions in. When – when you give an interview with Gannett News Service, we talked about when he said that was a mistake having a – a direct economic plan for African-Americans. No. You’ve got to speak to us on our issues, on our terms, whether it’s this show, whether it’s Joyner and Harvey, Baisden, Sharpton – all those shows. You[‘ve] got to communicate with us in our way.

MR. FONTAINE: And it’s got to be more than communication, too. We – we know that the brother can make a nice speech. We’ve seen –

MR. MARTIN: Right.

MR. FONTAINE: -- that all over the world.

MR. MARTIN: We need the policy to back it up.

You can listen to a livestream of the Tom Joyner show, here.

Jobs for America Now

I want to give a shout-out to the Congressional Black Caucus for staying on the J-O-B and insisting that Congress and President Barack Obama address racial inequalities and the jobs crisis in the African American community.

Following passage of the $150 billion “Jobs for Main Street Act,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee released a statement:

While this bill makes targeted investments in certain key areas highlighted by the CBC, there is still important work that must be done. We will continue to work with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Senate to ensure that the final jobs package strengthens the economic security of all Americans, particularly those communities that have been hardest hit by this recession.

I also want to recognize a new coalition in the fight for justice, Jobs for America Now, whose members understand the fierce urgency of now:

The U.S. unemployment rate exceeded 10% in October for the first time in a quarter century. Over 15 million Americans are able and willing to work but cannot find a job. More than one out of every three unemployed workers has been out of a job for more than six months. The situation facing African American and Latino workers is even bleaker, with unemployment at 15.6% and 12.7%, respectively.

These grim statistics don’t capture the full extent of the hardship. There are another 9 million people working part time because they cannot find full-time work. Millions of others have given up looking for a job, and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. Altogether, over 17% of the labor force is underemployed—more than 26 million Americans—including one in four minority workers. Last, given individuals moving in and out of jobs, we can expect a third of the workforce, and 40% of workers of color, to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next year.

To get involved in the nationwide movement for economic justice, send an email here.

Obama’s Poll Slippage is Showing

As President Barack Obama leaves for Copenhagen this evening to attend the final day of the UN global warming conference, polls show approval of his job performance has cooled.

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Obama’s job approval has fallen to 47 percent. NBC News reports:

Underlining the entire poll is a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of the country. Only 33 percent believe the nation is headed in the right direction — an eight-point drop since Obama took office.

While Obama’s approval rating among black Americans hovers around 90 percent, a growing number of African American activists is saying in public what is being said in barber shops and beauty salons.

In a story headlined, “Has Obama Abandoned Blacks?,” the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove reports:

[Danny] Glover is among a growing chorus of African-American opinion leaders who are publicly and privately expressing varying degrees of resignation, disappointment, and outright anger concerning a presidency on which so many hopes have ridden.

Grove picked up on New York Times’ columnist Charles Blow’s comments on MSNBC’s “Hardball”:

There was an expectation, particularly among African Americans, that the first African-American president would at least be vocal about feeling their pain. I think that has not been the case. The president has given a couple of speeches and he has been very heavy on the stick and not very heavy with the carrot… Just in the inability for him to commiserate with that group of people, people feel a bit deflated… He said he’s not going to focus separately on African-American issues at all. That let a lot of people down.

The whispers are getting louder.

‘Shovel Ready’ and Shoved Aside

Later today, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the “Jobs for Main Street Act,” which includes $50 billion in spending for highways, mass transit, affordable housing and school renovation. The bill provides that “priority shall be given to projects that are projected for completion within a 3-year time frame, and are located in economically distressed areas.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:

It is a bill that creates jobs, that meets the needs of those who are unemployed, and puts us on a path to prosperity.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey added:

We want to redirect $75 billion which had been focused on the needs of Wall Street – we want to redirect that to Main Street and use it in order to preserve the jobs of teachers, firemen, policemen, prison guards, you name it, and at the same time provide another boost to construction of infrastructure projects around the country. If we don’t do this, we are going to see unemployment in the construction industry in some states approaching 30 and 35 percent.

Nice work if you can get it, but studies show that stimulus-funded jobs did not go to the people most in need. Minority workers and minority-owned businesses have been shoved aside.

A new report from the Transportation Equity Network shows infrastructure stimulus spending has bypassed the hardest-hit communities .

Inequities in Transportation Stimulus Spending 

During a teleconference call, Laura Barrett, executive director of Transportation Equity Network, said:

Funds from ARRA are not reaching into our community and creating jobs. It seems that minorities and women are getting fewer jobs than they have in the past.

Barrett’s concerns about the inequities in infrastructure spending were echoed by Richard Copeland, founder and chairman of THOR Construction Inc., the largest African American-owned construction firm in the nation. Copeland observed:

We have been fighting this fight for inclusion in the mainstream of the economy for the last 20 years… Our communities have been systematically excluded… Once stimulus money comes in, it goes into the same grind mill. So it stands to reason that we would be excluded from stimulus projects. It’s not trickling down so that disadvantaged business firms are benefiting from the stimulus dollars.

Julie A. Cunningham, president and CEO of the Conference Of Minority Transportation Officials, noted:

Instead of offering a hand up, ARRA is continuing the bad pattern of segregation that has long plagued federal programs.

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, said that in order to fix the problem “we must understand how big the problem is and then develop innovative strategies.” LeRoy is pushing for Recovery.gov to add demographic data fields to the reports recipients are required to file. The data would include the race, gender and residential zip code of workers, as well as disadvantaged business contracting data.

Rev. Paul Slack of ISAIAH/New Creation Church cut to the chase:

There is too much focus on good faith when our focus should be on good results.

Can I get an Amen?!

The Real Jobs Picture

There are educated fools. And then there’s Lawrence Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council.

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Summers said “everybody agrees the recession is over.”

Sure, Summers is an, um, esteemed economist and former president of Harvard University, but the nation’s unemployed, including millions of black Americans strongly disagree.

The recession is over for Summers and “fat cat” banksters. But his White House colleague, Dr. Christina Romer, didn’t get the memo. Romer told NBC News’ David Gregory:

MR. GREGORY: So in your mind, this recession is not over.

DR. ROMER: Of course not. We have--you know, for, for the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering. The unemployment rate is still 10 percent.

Memo to Dr. Summers: Get a clue. A jobless recovery means the recession is not over.

CBC’s Letter to the President

No economic justice, no peace.

That’s the subtext to the Congressional Black Caucus’ letter to President Barack Obama in which they propose a plan to target communities hardest-hit by the Great Recession.

Frankly, I was surprised that during his Saturday Action Rally, Al Sharpton questioned the CBC’s motives because some members supported Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign:

I’m not against holding Obama accountable. He must deal with the racial disparities. We can’t have folks who have other motives lead the challenge.

If not the CBC, who?

During an interview on TV One’s “Washington Watch with Roland Martin,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee said:

There’s no rift between the Congressional Black Caucus, the President and his Administration. We’re members of Congress. Our president is the President. He sets forth the vision for the country and where he wants to take the country. The Congressional Black Caucus, as members of Congress, has a job to do. We have to be advocates for our constituents.

Rep. Maxine Waters added:

We’ve been good team players. But we can’t keep going home to our communities, watching this devastation, when we understand and know that the financial services agencies of government are ignoring our people, period. Not only are they not able to get jobs and contracts. The resources are being directed toward “too big to fail.”

Waters continued:

This is what we’ve been doing all of our lives. We’re not going to stop. We’re not going to change. I want to tell you we’ve taken on president after president, and we’re not “taking on” this president. We want to help him.

If the CBC had not spoken truth to power, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood would not have written a letter to the nation’s governors urging them to “provide small disadvantaged businesses and female and minority workers a fair chance to participate in transportation projects”:

I urge you to take advantage of existing equal opportunity programs and resources and to create innovative strategies to provide opportunities for the underrepresented.

Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who attended Obama’s jobs forum, also called for a targeted plan (read: innovative strategy) to address black joblessness. Magic told CNN’s Larry King:

What we’ve got to do is come up with a general plan and then we have to come up with a Latino plan and an African American plan, because that general plan won’t affect the African American male or our community.

Magic’s observation brings to mind Ossie Davis’ message to the CBC in 1971:

It’s not the man, it’s the plan. It’s not the rap, it’s the map.

We need a plan to ensure that black workers and African American entrepreneurs are not told to “get back, get back, get back.”