Anderson@Large

Stimulating Equity

It’s time again for states to submit their quarterly Section 1512 reports on how they spent stimulus funds and the number of jobs “saved or created” funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The reports will be posted to Recovery.gov on Jan. 30. But there will not be much to report on the impact of stimulus spending on the African American community. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. observed during the opening sessions of the Wall Street Project Economic Summit:

We need a Stimulus II that’s bottom up.

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The first stimulus prioritized bailing out the banks but did so without linkages or obligations to reinvest ... Harlem and Wall Street are on the same island. Wall Street riding the tide does not lift Harlem or any other part of the country.

Jackson continued:

Small businesses last and big businesses first. Bail out the big banks and small businesses get what’s left. But there’s nothing left.

Jackson said minority entrepreneurs must engage in a sustained struggle. He observed that the business of the Wall Street banksters is not small businesses:

They’re making money off of foreclosures.

He noted that the bailed-out banksters did not have to comply with Title VI:

We want a radical thing -- the law enforced. We want the government to enforce the laws to protect the people.

We want a measure of justice ... When there’s inclusion, there’s growth. When there’s growth, everyone wins.

Jackson plans to buy stock in the leading predatory lenders that got us into this financial mess and go to their shareholders’ meetings, where he will ask them to follow the law.

He also plans to launch a multi-city campaign to push for “reconstruction banks” to provide access to capital for small businesses and homeowners. The reconstruction banks would be modeled after the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the Great Depression.

To stay informed, join the Coalition to Empower Minority Business Enterprises on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Wall Street Project 2010

The Wall Street Project kicks off today in New York City. This year’s theme, “Targeted Stimulus: A Call to Equity and Parity,” is on target.

From Day One, I’ve been tracking and visualizing the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on minority business enterprises. The hope that stimulus spending would create new opportunities has been dashed. MBEs have been marginalized and shoved aside.

I listened with keen interest to Austan Goolsbee, staff director and chief economist on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, during his recent appearance on TV One’s “Washington Watch with Roland Martin.”

Roland questioned Goolsbee about the lack of stimulus contracts awarded to minority business enterprises:

MR. GOOLSBEE: I agree with that, and I would say two things about it. The first is the data varies by state. Some states are hitting it. On – as an overall target, the share of the contracts going to small business and to disadvantaged economic groups have [sic] been at or above the targets on an overall basis, but it hasn’t been enough, and you saw Secretary of Transportation – Secretary LaHood – send a letter out to all the governors, instructing them, “Look, we want you to break some of these big contracts up into smaller pieces to give more opportunity to small businesses to bid on these contracts,” ‘cause if the contract’s for a billion dollars, small –

MR. MARTIN: Precisely.

MR. GOOLSBEE: -- business can’t do it. And so y- -- I think you have seen that. That’s an area of concern, but I think you’ve seen some progress in that. **And as I say, the first wave of the Recovery Act tended to concentrate more on getting the tax cuts out, where they cut taxes for 95 percent of workers. Some of the incent- -- money to – to the state governments and some of the incentives. And now in this second wave, you’re seeing a lot of the construction projects and infrastructure; and so, you know, I’m kind of hopeful that it’s going to be -- there’s going to be some – some in that.

That’s it. The Obama administration is “hopeful” implementation of infrastructure and construction projects will be fair and equitable.

During the Wall Street Project’s press conference, I plan to ask the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. whether he’s keeping hope alive rather than agitating for inclusive policies and innovative strategies.

For info about the Wall Street Project 2010, go here.

A New Day in Washington?

The 12th annual Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project Economic Summit is underway. I have attended the summit off and on since 1999, when the event was held at Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center. President Bill Clinton was the luncheon speaker.

While attendance is way down from its heyday, the conference theme, “Fallout from the Bailout: A New Day in Washington,” is ripped from the headlines.

It is deeply troubling that minority-owned professional services firms, including legal, accounting and asset managers, have been excluded from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

During the opening plenary session, speakers expressed concern about TARP’s lack of transparency and accountability, and the notion that a business is “too big to fail.” Executive managers can make bad bets and get bailed out.

While Bank of America and Citigroup are back for a second helping of taxpayers’ money, minority-owned firms are sent to the back of the line. Indeed, the recipients of the first $350 billion have historically excluded minorities. Odysseus Lanier observed:

The professional services market is the last frontier. It is where the relationships and profit margins are…The folks who are getting the money have not demonstrated a willingness to work with minority-owned firms.

The Congressional Oversight Panel for Economic Stabilization reports there’s been no accounting of how the money was spent:

What have the companies who received money from Treasury done with the money? Have the companies used the funds in the way Treasury intended when it disbursed them? How have institutions supported under the Capital Purchase Program used their funds, and have they leveraged the capital support to increase lending activity? Is this different from the way funds were utilized for institutions who received funds pursuant to the Systemically Significant Failing Institutions plan?

BTW, a “systemically significant failing institution” is bureaucratese for a business “too big to fail.”

Emery Harlan cut to the chase:

It seems to me we kind of got played…They hooked up their boys on the way out the door. It’s not clear how they ended up with the contracts. They just ended up with them.

Harlan said questions must be asked before the second tranche of TARP funds is released. What, for instance, is AIG’s supplier diversity plan? What are the EEO metrics?

Harlan cautioned:

If we want to participate, we can’t just sit back and hope it’s going to happen…We have to be vigilant in making sure our interests are known and what we want is known.

My regular readers know I don’t just sit back. In the coming weeks, I will launch Tracking Change, a wiki that will track—and measure—change in the new Washington. We will track the White House and the People’s House.

In remarks before an event sponsored by FTI Consulting Inc., Rep. Edolphus “Ed” Towns, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said:

My first goal is to find out a detailed answer to this question: What did the American people get for $350 Billion?

I must admit, I don’t see the value at this point. All I see are institutions sitting on this “free” capital, not lending and not putting those resources in play to help fix our economy. This is unacceptable. If banks are unwilling to lend the money to small business owners trying to make payroll, that young person dreaming of going to college or that couple trying stay in their home—we shouldn’t give them another dime!

Change is in the air in DC. For info on how you can get involved with Tracking Change, send an email here.

ObamaNation?

New Hampshire polls show Sen. Barack Obama is poised to win today’s primary. Obama’s seemingly overnight success was 20 years in the making.

National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial, who like Obama is a former state senator, said at the Wall Street Project's political forum:

We need to be clear that Rev. Jesse Jackson paved the way for Obama’s historic candidacy in 2008. Too much of American politics has become punditry and Pepsodent politics. Whether the smile is right, the clothes are right rather than a discussion of issues of substance.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now:

So when the media says, well, Barack was not a part of the civil rights struggle, he’s a beneficiary of it, not a benefactor of it, but each generation becomes beneficiary and then benefactor. This year he’s a beneficiary of that struggle; next time, those who came in because of him, they’ll be the beneficiaries, he’ll be the benefactor. But the struggle continues. And so, from the ’54 end of apartheid to the Voting Rights Act, to the urban breakthroughs, to Harold Washington, the ’84 and ’88 campaigns, to me, this is historic, a non-broken line.

Well, there’s a sense in which many Americans want to focus on racial reconciliation, and they ignore racial justice and racial equality. And you cannot ultimately get past those concerns.

On CNN, the abominable William Bennett, who once suggested aborting every black baby in the country to reduce crime, said:

Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, wins this for the Democrats. I have been watching him. I watched him on Meet the Press. I watched him on your show, watched him on all the CNN shows. He never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. Talk about the black community, he has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough, and good for the people of Iowa.

Call me skeptical, but the lesson of Iowa may simply be roughly 90,000 liberal white Democrats voted for a black candidate in a Democratic Party caucus. As my colleague Michael Fauntroy writes:

Democratic voters around the country have been voting for Black presidential candidates for years. After all, the hated Jesse Jackson won seven primaries and four caucuses 20 years ago. He scored wins in, among other places, the White-as-Iowa Vermont (95 percent White) and disproportionately White Delaware (70 percent White). Indeed, the real surprise will be when a Black candidate wins a Republican primary.

Obama won the support of 38 percent of Iowa caucus-goers in his victory. That means, of course, that 62 percent of caucus-goers did not want him to be their party's nominee. This is all the more significant given the incredible turnout much of which has been attributed to Obama's campaign of hope. He expanded the playing field and got his people to the caucuses for which he should be commended. However, it should be noted that Senator John Kerry also received 38 percent support in his 2004 Iowa caucuses victory. Obama's win was solid and comfortable, but it wasn't earthshattering.

If Obama does indeed win the Democratic nomination, it will take more than hope – and a “freedom high” – to bridge the partisan divide on issues like illegal immigration and the war in Iraq.

We Are Family

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
-- Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. convened a meeting of the family yesterday at the 11th annual Wall Street Project conference. The kinfolks included Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Florida state Sen. Tony Hill, Davey D, Janice Mathis, Marc Morial, Charles Ogletree Jr. and Charles Steele Jr.

The purpose of the gathering was to get an update on the state of black America and discuss solutions to the challenges facing black folks, including the “subprime crime crisis.”

Ogletree observed that it was “the best of times and the worst of times.” While a black, a woman and a Latino are running for president, six black teenagers face a 20-year prison sentence for a schoolyard fight. So, there has been “progress but also regress.”

Morial agreed that it “ain’t been no crystal stair” but cautioned:

We dishonor Whitney Young, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and Mary McLeod Bethune if we suggest that we’ve made no progress. We do not have to define our position by saying that the nation has not made progress.

But that doesn’t mean black folks should allow outsiders to define their community. The gathering rejected the claim of non-kinfolks that Sen. Barack Obama’s historic victory in the Iowa caucuses means race no longer matters. There is structural inequality in the system. Rev. Jackson said:

One can be out of slavery, out of Jim Crow, have the right to vote and starve to death. We’re beyond the barbarism that hurt us and embarrassed white people. Today, we are fighting for equality. The National Urban League’s annual report, “State of Black America,” measures where we are.

And where are we? Blacks are last in wealth and business revenues but first in poverty, home foreclosures, unemployment and incarceration rates, infant mortality and life expectancy. Morial noted:

The economic disparity is the widest of all the disparities. We may want to feel good and have a sense that there is no more racism but the facts show that the disparities are real.

There is a growing divide in black America. It is a tale of two cities within. As a result of civil rights laws, affirmative action and doors being opened, we have a class of success. This growing divide between the have-some and the have-not-a-lot threatens the sense of cohesion we need around core issues of economic equality and protection of civil rights.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee underscored the importance of unity in the community:

No agenda will be accomplished if we are divided. If we follow after symbolism rather than substance…I don’t talk about race. I talk about opportunity. No movement can embrace all Americans unless all boats are lifted.

If we deny our history, we deny those dusty bodies lying in dusty soils. You cannot abandon who we are just so that you can get to where you want to go. We must not abandon who we are because of what we have achieved.

Janice Mathis captured the family’s mood:

We were enslaved as a group. Segregated as a group. Denied voting rights as a group. It’s still group time. Race still matters.

Audacity to Hope

The Bible says: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

With the formation of an exploratory committee to test the waters for a possible presidential run, Sen. Barack Obama is hoping that polls evidencing Americans’ hunger for something not seen – “a different kind of politics” – will propel him into the White House.

In his message, Obama says he has “great faith and hope about the future – because I believe in you.”

I’m an agnostic.  I believe Rev. Al Sharpton is spot-on about what’s at stake in the 2008 presidential election.

At the opening press conference of the 10th annual Rainbow Push Wall Street Project Economic Summit, Sharpton said:

The media want to talk about gender and race.  We want to talk about agenda and the race.  We are not into career development.  We are into community development.

It’s an audacious leap of faith – and hope – that Obama will make his final decision based on what’s “right for the country.”

Wall Street Project

On Sunday, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. convened the 10th Annual Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project Economic Summit.

The summit will focus on economic growth and participation in urban America. Noting that urban America has money, talent, location and opportunities for growth, Rev. Jackson asked:

What can we do to incentivize redlined America? Urban markets are underserved, undercapitalized and underutilized.

For more info, click here.