Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nation’s Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nation’s Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still...
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still about twice the rate of whites. A report by Progress Illinois said the state’s Black unemployment rate is one of the worst in the nation.
According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI,) only two other states, New Jersey and South Carolina have higher Black unemployment rates than Illinois. D.C. had the highest Black unemployment rate at 14.2 percent, while Tennessee had the lowest at 6.9 percent. Illinois’ Black unemployment rate declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to Progress Illinois.
The nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to about 9 percent. However, the Black jobless rate is twice the white unemployment rate of 4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“African Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state,” said EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis. “We need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal.”
In a press release, Connie Razza, director of strategic research for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), said, contrary to the improving economy, “Black America is still in the middle of a Great Recession.”
According to Progress Illinois, EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy both called on the Federal Reserve to support policies that would help Black America.
“When [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good-paying jobs,” Razza said. “The direct consequences of the Fed’s projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers.”
A tight labor market, which we have now, benefits employers since there are more people looking for fewer jobs. This allows employers to keep labor costs low and easily fire workers, because there are hundreds of people lined up to replace them. Razza said the Fed needs to support policies that would move towards a full employment economy.
“A full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to Black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace,” Razza said.
Black unemployment has been a long-standing problem. The Labor Department began tracking employment figures by race in 1972 and since then the Black jobless rate has stubbornly remained at twice the white rate. Employment experts say its not just a matter of training and education. Studies have shown Black men with college educations have higher unemployment rates than white men with just a high school education.
However, economists say the improving economy is making it easier for all Americans, including Black people, to find work.
“Now, you’re starting to see a broad recovery which is reaching groups with high unemployment rates like African-Americans and teens,” said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the American Center for Progress in a CNN article.
This issue was also brought up during the last Republican debate.
“Once you have economic growth, it’s important we reach out to people who live in the shadows… which includes people in our minority community and people who feel they don’t have the chance to move up,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate.
Source: Atlanta Black Star
Legal Experts Pan US for Disappointing Human Rights Record
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a...
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a leading voice on human rights issues worldwide, legal experts said at a forum here on Friday, from water shutoffs in Detroit and widespread police brutality to Guantanamo Bay and drone strikes. The alleged abuses include asserting immunity from and not ratifying certain international rights laws and treaties, not joining the International Criminal Court, and supporting governments with abysmal rights records of their own.
Experts at the forum, which took place at Hunter College and previewed the country’s upcoming human rights review by the United Nations, acknowledged that the U.S. is not typically considered an egregious human rights abuser. But a simple look beneath the surface, panelists said, uncovers a staggering range of human rights issues:
Lack of healthcare. Despite the Affordable Care Act’s success in promoting healthcare access, affordable health insurance is not available in many states and not accessible to undocumented immigrants. In a state like Texas, where restrictions sharply limit access to reproductive health, Latina women are twice as likely to contract cervical cancer and 30% more likely to die from it, Katrina Anderson from the Center for Reproductive Rights said.
Water shutoffs. In Detroit, 14,000 households and 38,000 people were without water at the end of 2013, according to Rob Robinson of the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, after the city implemented a program that shut off water in households that couldn’t pay their bills. More 80% of the city’s population is African American, he added, and 40% live below the poverty line.
Police brutality. The U.S. is now experiencing what it’s like to be both over-policed and under-protected, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Marbre Stahly-Butts argued. From the gripping videos capturing instances of police violence to the ensuing national outrage, there’s a new level of awareness around law enforcement abuses.
The response, which has largely centered around the implementation of body camera use by police, has felt inadequate to many, Stahly-Butts said, especially given the billions of dollars allocated to fighting terrorism overseas. “Why no war on racism?” she asked.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died as a result of a police chokehold last year, put a human face to the issue. “If there’s a crime, there should be accountability, whether you’re wearing blue jeans, a blue business suit, or a blue uniform,” she said. His tragedy, she said, was her motivation for speaking out on behalf of human rights, specifically urging police to abide by the same laws they enforce.
Indefinite detention and drone strikes. Despite an early push by President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay, 122 men remain in the prison without charge or trial. Fifty-six of these men have been cleared for transfer out of the prison, but just five transfers have taken place so far in 2015. In another counterterrorism offensive, the Obama administration has expanded the drone strike program in Pakistan and Yemen. The Center for Constitutional Rights’ Baher Azmy told the audience that the program has killed more than one thousand civilians since 2002.
Out-of-control surveillance. The U.S. government’s large-scale data dragnet, revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, is inconsistent with the universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to Faiza Patel, a co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. The “collect-it-all” approach to surveillance eviscerates privacy, Patel argued, by allowing the government to listen in on Americans’ phone calls and read text, email and other online messages without sufficient oversight.
Other speakers were more hopeful. Catherina Albisa, a human rights lawyer with the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, said the U.S. began as a fierce champion of human rights and described an “emerging landscape” of young people and protesters committed to economic justice through human rights. But government commitments to those rights have languished, Albisa argued, noting America’s “manufactured” water crisis and the closing of abortion clinics in Texas as evidence of deteriorating rights for U.S. residents.
Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, went further, suggesting the U.S. government undermines human rights standards. The U.S. is an active participant in the United Nation’s human rights review process, she explained, but the last set of recommendations resulted in zero domestic reforms. That lack of responsiveness could undermine the review’s credibility going forward, she warned.
The U.S. is set to undergo its second United Nations review in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 11.
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Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against...
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a series of May Day protests scheduled to take place throughout the city (and beyond) on Monday.
The specific targets of this action, according to organizers from Make The Road New York, are the Wall Street banks that help finance private prisons and immigrant detention centers. To that end, organizers said twelve protesters were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience while blocking the entrances outside of JPMorgan Chase, which is one of the companies named in Make The Road's and the Center for Popular Democracy's Backers Of Hate campaign.
Read full article here.
Charter Schools Had Tough Week
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter...
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter school movement in Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, PA Cyber School founder Nick Trombetta and his attorney were back in a federal courtroom trying to have evidence suppressed in his upcoming criminal trial on charges of mail fraud, theft, tax conspiracy and filing false tax returns. Trombetta is accused of siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars for his own gain.
On Wednesday, a new report was released citing Trombetta as an example of $30 million in fraud and financial mismanagement among the state’s charter schools since 1997.
The report was done by three organizations — the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United. It follows a national report in May by the first two groups that claimed $136 million has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse by charter schools.
While the numbers are alarming, we know that all charter schools are not part of the problem. Still, it only takes a few incidents — such as the case against Trombetta — to give the entire movement a black eye.
What we will say is that state’s charter school law is badly in need of revision, particularly in the area of accountability. State legislators need to step in now and address the problems if charter schools are to remain part of the state’s education program.
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ABQ, SF receive grants to help immigrants become citizens
ABQ, SF receive grants to help immigrants become citizens
Cities for Citizenship is a national initiative supported by advocacy groups Center for Popular Democracy and the...
Cities for Citizenship is a national initiative supported by advocacy groups Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans, with Citi Community Development as founding corporate sponsor. Fourteen cities were awarded challenge grants of either $25,000 or $40,000 a year over two years after 66 cities submitted proposals.
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Ciudanía en Nueva York – Importancia de las Cooperativas de Trabajo
Comunidad Y Trabajadores Unidos - July 15, 2014 - El debate sobre los derechos de migrantes parece estar tan polarizado...
Comunidad Y Trabajadores Unidos - July 15, 2014 - El debate sobre los derechos de migrantes parece estar tan polarizado y por eso no vimos mucho progreso en la reforma migratoria ni en asegurar los derechos de los trabajadores. En Nueva York podemos ver cambios que muestran algunas oportunidades para los migrantes a nivel estatal. En este programa vamos a enfocarnos en dos de los cambios: la legislación que ofrece ciudadanía en Nueva York y el avance de cooperativas de trabajo para trabajadores.
Ciudanía en Nueva York
Hasta ahora el debate sobre la reforma migratoria solo pasó a nivel federal pero la legislación que se desarrolló recientemente, trajo el debate a nivel estatal. La legislación que se desarrolló ofrece ciudanía para en Nueva York para los migrantes y Andrew Friedman habla sobre el significado de esta ley. Andrew Friedman es el co-director del centro de democracia popular y es parte del movimiento que empuja para esta legislación. Friedman habla sobre por qué Nueva York debería desarrollar una legislación que ayude a los migrantes y sobre el papel importante que juegan los migrantes en Nueva York.
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Time to have another discussion on the race problem
Time to have another discussion on the race problem
Many years ago, I was fortunate to take a black history class at University of Dayton. In that era, we were referred...
Many years ago, I was fortunate to take a black history class at University of Dayton. In that era, we were referred to as black. The one thing I remember is that the black female teacher kept telling her students, “There is no racial problem in the USA, there is an economic problem.”
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Minnesota pension board looks at private equity strategy
Minnesota pension board looks at private equity strategy
Toys R Us has not fared well in recent years. And critics, led by New York’s populist-leaning Center for Popular...
Toys R Us has not fared well in recent years. And critics, led by New York’s populist-leaning Center for Popular Democracy, accused the huge equity-investment firms of making hundreds of millions in fees and dividends on the failed retailer over the years.
Read the full article here.
How to Build an Anti-Poverty Movement, From the Grassroots Up
The Nation - January 14, 2014, by Greg Kaufman - With more than 46 million people living below the poverty line,...
The Nation - January 14, 2014, by Greg Kaufman - With more than 46 million people living below the poverty line, struggling to survive on $19,530 or less for a family of three, and with more than one in three Americans living on less than twice that amount, scrimping to pay for basics, this country will require a broad-based movement to reverse the decades of failed national imagination.
The groups listed below are all worth watching as they do just that: galvanize communities, arm activists with information, and fight for living-wage jobs, stable housing and a strong safety net that catches people when they fall.
1. Coalition of Immokalee Workers: If you want to see what is possible through grassroots organizing by those who are most affected by poverty—or what it means to set a seemingly unreachable goal and persevere, or understand your opposition and find new ways to challenge it—look no further than the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
When the CIW was founded in 1993, it was as a small group of tomato farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, trying to end a twenty-year decline in their poverty wages. Who is historically more powerless than farmworkers? Yet today, most major buyers of Florida tomatoes have signed agreements with the CIW to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes. These agreements have resulted in over $11 million in additional earnings for the workers since January 2011.
In addition, through its Fair Food Program, the CIW has persuaded corporate buyers to purchase tomatoes only from growers who sign a strict code of conduct that includes zero tolerance for forced labor or sexual assault. As a result, the majority of growers (those accounting for 90 percent of the tomato industry’s $650 million in revenue) have agreed to that code. If major violations occur but don’t get corrected—and there’s a twenty-four-hour hotline for worker complaints—corporations will not buy from those growers.
The Fair Food Program serves as a new model of social responsibility, and its influence is clear in the recently signed agreement between retailers and factory owners in the Bangladesh garment industry. Follow the CIW not only to get involved with farmworkers but for a sense of what can be achieved through strategic, fearless organizing.
2. Center for Community Change: For forty-five years, the Center for Community Change has worked with low-income communities and local grassroots organizations to fight poverty. The CCC has intentionally worked behind the scenes, keeping the spotlight focused on members of the communities instead and organizing around issues ranging from voter registration, affordable housing and community development to, more recently, immigration reform, healthcare and retirement security.
Executive director Deepak Bhargava says, “We have chosen as our great task in this next era to build a nationwide movement against poverty and for economic justice. The core issue is jobs—making sure that good jobs are available and accessible to everyone.” The CCC plans to work with grassroots organizations at the local and state levels, and then form coalitions at the national level, to demand policies that create good jobs with good wages. Its goal, Bhargava says, is to help build “a massive, diverse, boisterous, energized and organized social movement.”
3. Children’s HealthWatch: This country’s political leaders talk a good game about their commitment to the well-being of children, but in too many cases, their actions tell a far different story. That story is captured, in part, by the pediatricians and healthcare professionals at Children’s HealthWatch.
CHW collects data at pediatric clinics and hospitals to show the real impact of public policy choices on the health, nutrition and development of children up to the age of 4. CHW research has shown, for example, that children receiving SNAP (food stamps) are less likely to be food insecure, underweight or at risk for developmental delays than their peers who are likely eligible for SNAP but not receiving it. CHW has also demonstrated the importance of affordable housing for children’s health, showing that children in households that move frequently or fall behind on rent are significantly more likely to be underweight, in fair or poor health, and at risk for developmental delays than their stably housed peers. And CHW has examined energy insecurity, showing that children in families struggling to afford utilities and keep their homes sufficiently heated or cooled are more likely to be food insecure, hospitalized at some point since birth, or to have moved twice or more in the past year.
By using science to evaluate whether our policies demonstrate a commitment to children and then proposing alternatives, CHW’s research guides activists past the bombast and rhetoric of today’s policy-makers.
4. Half in Ten: This campaign—which I am currently advising—is a project of the Coalition on Human Needs, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and it has 200 partner organizations across the country. Its mission is simple: to cut poverty in half over ten years, just as we did between 1964 and 1973.
Through its comprehensive annual report, Half in Ten tracks the country’s progress toward this goal and outlines the many policies that could help slash poverty. In its 2007 inaugural report, Half in Ten demonstrated how poverty could be reduced by 26 percent simply by passing a modest increase in the minimum wage (to $8.40 at the time), expanding the earned-income tax and child tax credits, and providing affordable childcare to low-income families, among other proposals. Our leaders failed to make those recommended policy changes, and then the economy crashed, burying ever more Americans in deeper holes.
But Half in Ten keeps pushing toward its goal. In addition to policy analysis, the campaign mobilizes local groups in the field to speak out and take action during congressional policy debates. The campaign also works through its “Our American Story” project to ensure that low-income people have opportunities to tell their stories to the media, policy-makers and other advocacy groups. Follow Half in Ten to get a sense of the anti-poverty policy landscape, take action at the federal level, and hear powerful stories about individuals and families who are struggling to survive in this broken economy.
5. Occupy Our Homes/Home Defenders League: Many of us would like to believe that the foreclosure crisis is over, but the fact is that far too many people are still losing their homes because banks refuse to modify mortgages, fail to return phone calls, or simply (and scandalously) file fraudulent paperwork. If my family or neighbors were ever in a dire situation with a bank that refused to work with them, Occupy Our Homes and the Home Defenders League (HDL) are the allies I would want on my side.
With community partners in more than twenty-five cities and states, these activists help homeowners organize protests, call-ins to bank officials, and other actions to cut through the bureaucratic roadblocks that individuals and families encounter when they deal with the banks. They also show up with neighbors to stop forced evictions.
In May, Occupy and HDL mobilized hundreds of people for a sit-in at the Justice Department, successfully shaming the feds and playing a key role in restarting stalled litigation against Wall Street. They are also collaborating with dozens of local groups, large and small, to rebuild the wealth stripped out of communities of color by pressing cities to use their power of eminent domain to do what the banks have refused to do: enact wide-scale principal reductions.
6. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the War on Poverty, conservatives are deploying bogus “studies” and revisionist history to attempt to discredit programs that are not only vital to people who are struggling, but have been proven effective in preventing much higher poverty rates. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities does a forceful job of countering this misinformation with analyses that—tellingly—conservatives rarely challenge.
During policy debates about programs like SNAP, TANF (welfare), healthcare, housing, Social Security, disability insurance, Medicaid, Medicare and other domestic priorities, you can count on CBPP experts to provide vital, clear-eyed analysis of how government programs work. Follow the work of policy wizards like Arloc Sherman, LaDonna Pavetti, Liz Schott, Jared Bernstein, Robert Greenstein, Douglas Rice, Kathy Ruffing and others to get the information you need to see through the spin, misinformation and outright lies about key policies that combat poverty.
7. Jobs With Justice: For twenty-six years, Jobs With Justice has built powerful coalitions with labor, community, student and faith leaders to protect and advance the rights of working people. Most recently, Jobs With Justice has played a pivotal role in the national Caring Across Generations campaign, which helped secure historic overtime and minimum-wage protections for homecare workers. Its Debt-Free Future campaign has mobilized students and concerned citizens to make college more affordable, expose abusive private lenders and win debt relief for working families. Jobs With Justice is also a critical partner in challenging the exploitative labor practices of employers like Walmart and the large fast food chains, and in protecting the right of immigrant workers to organize without threat of retaliation.
With its savvy use of strategic communications, original research and on-the-ground mobilizing, Jobs With Justice is challenging the structural problems of our economy in creative and effective ways.
8. Western Center on Law and Poverty: Translating grassroots activism into legislative victories will require strong inside/outside partnerships at the local, state and federal levels. One group that has mastered this delicate dance is the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Sacramento, California.
California is the seat of some of the poorest congressional districts in the nation, and it’s also home to more poor Americans than any other state. For over a decade, the state government has been dominated by budget austerity—California was the epicenter of the “no tax” pledge—as well as the kind of budget brinkmanship that now plagues Congress. But in part through the Western Center’s leadership, advocates have moved from simply defending against cuts to articulating a shared vision for a more vibrant, inclusive economy.
The Western Center has spearheaded new alliances among women, immigrants, the working poor, people without homes, the formerly incarcerated, food stamp recipients, labor union members, college students, youth and others, creating new opportunities for low-income people to get involved in effecting change. The result has been a series of notable victories, such as requiring call centers serving Californians who need public assistance to be located in-state in order to create jobs; restoring dental care through Medicaid; enacting protections against excessive bank fines or fees; introducing a Homeless Bill of Rights to outlaw the criminalization of homelessness; and protecting SNAP from federal cuts. The Western Center and its allies have also defended against bad policy proposals like the ALEC-inspired legislation to drug-test public assistance applicants. Follow this group to see how diverse coalitions get results at the state level.
9. Center for Hunger-Free Communities, Witnesses to Hunger: Founded in Philadelphia in 2008, Witnesses to Hunger is a research and advocacy project led by mothers and other caregivers of young children who have experienced hunger and poverty. Through photography and testimonials, Witnesses advocates for change at the local, state and national levels. There are now more than eighty Witnesses in various cities, including Philadelphia, Camden, Boston and Baltimore. (A new chapter in Sacramento is in the works.) In addition to lobbying Congress on issues like food stamps, welfare and affordable housing, Witnesses is vocal in its insistence that people living in poverty be included in conversations among advocates and political leaders in Washington, where low-income people are too often talked about but never heard. Follow this group to learn about poverty and hunger—which policies help, which policies harm—and to work directly alongside those living in poverty.
10. NETWORK: While the real power of an anti-poverty movement will come from the grassroots, a national leader who mobilizes people of faith and speaks with prophetic authority can play a powerful role—especially since the opposition so often cites Scripture as a justification for stripping the safety net.
Sister Simone Campbell and NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby, captured the attention of millions of Americans as well as the mainstream media with their 2012 “Nuns on the Bus” Tour challenging Congressman Paul Ryan’s reckless budget proposals. Since then, Sister Simone has proved that she can not only tap into a network of progressive faith-based organizations, but also respond effectively to the absurd proposition that charities and religious institutions can address the needs that arise from a broken economy on their own, without the help of government resources. What’s more, she was masterful during Ryan’s hearing on the War on Poverty, eloquently batting away assertions that social programs create dependence and that the minimum wage should be banned, as well as challenges to her own standing as a Catholic.
While an anti-poverty movement will need nonviolent civil disobedience and avenues to express anger and despair, Sister Simone and NETWORK have shown that it’s possible to beat the opposition at its own game.
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Voting rights: the fight for our democracy
Voting rights: the fight for our democracy
There is a battle under way for our democracy. The choice that lies in front of us: Will we be a country that...
There is a battle under way for our democracy. The choice that lies in front of us: Will we be a country that guarantees every eligible citizen the right to vote and participate? Or will we allow states and politicians to twist voting rules and ignore constitutional rights in order to limit access to democracy?
That is the choice in front of us, and it is not an abstract choice.
Read the full article here.
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