Newark Activists In Fifty-Fourth Day Of Protest Calling on U.S. Government To Institute Jobs Program with Larry Hamm, Chairman, People's Organization for Progress, Newark, NJ
The U.S. economy is struggling, but in many black communities Americans are in the throes of a depression. With unemployment exacting an outsize toll on African-American men and women, a coalition of community groups sees it as a crucial civil rights issue emerging from the country's economic woe. "We are more than a half-century away from the Montgomery bus boycott, but we are dealing with issues just as pressing," said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress. Flanking a statue of Abraham Lincoln outside the Essex County Courthouse, Hamm and like-minded activists started a 381-day protest modeled after one of the most famous battles of the Civil Rights era the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56. They are calling on President Obama and Congress to institute a jobs program akin to the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression, that employed millions of unskilled Americans in public works jobs. Unemployment is 16 percent among black Americans, a rate rivaling those of the 1930s. New Jersey's jobless rate is 9.5 percent, while the national rate is 9.1 percent. ****************************** AFL-CIO Pres. Trumka: History Will Judge Pres. Obama If He 'Nibbles' at the Jobs Crisis
At a recent forum sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, AFL-CIO's. Richard Trumka urged President Obama to "propose bold solutions on the jobs crisis," and not nibble around the edge of the issue and that, "history will judge him and I think working people will judge him. on what he proposes on the jobs crisis. Trumka said that, in a conversation with Pres. Obama "I urged him to propose what was necessary to solve the problem" as opposed to what the president thought was politically possible given Republican control of the House of Representatives. Mr. Trumka added, "I said to him,'Do not look at what is possible, look at what is necessary. The American public wants solutions and just because [of] the Republicans, you think this is the only thing that is politically possible, that doesn't mean you should propose that. That means they control the agenda.' "
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
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