Local groups to address dearth of Black jobs
5th January 2015 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
#BlackJobsMatter: The People’s Summit on the Black low fixed rate personal loans Jobs Crisis will convene on Martin Luther King Day at Southern University at New Orleans.
The event, organized by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, the grass-roots workers organization Stand With Dignity, and the Community Evaluation Commission, will feature a broad group of community, labor, and faith organizations, as well as public officials.
The summit will feature a keynote address on the Black jobs crisis in New Orleans; the speaker for this address should be finalized shortly after New Year’s Day. There will also be expert panels and breakout sessions. A career opportunity and resource fair will assist job seekers in finding job training, re-training, and apprenticeship programs.
Of course, the choice of date had symbolic significance for the organizers.
“Dr. King gave his life in 1968 while standing alongside striking sanitation workers,” said Oliver Thomas, co-chair of the Community Evaluation Commission. “He taught us ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’”
The Community Evaluation Commission was formed by a wide range of local civil rights, faith, and labor organizations to ensure that the new $546 million expansion of Louis Armstrong International Airport will use loans with bad credit texas local and minority workers to fill the estimated 13,000 construction jobs the project will create over the course of three years.
According to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 52 percent of Black men in New Orleans (approx. 38,000) are unemployed. In comparison, the study showed that 25 percent of white men in New Orleans are unemployed. A 2014 Bloomberg study ranked New Orleans as second in economic inequality in American cities. The summit’s organizers believe those numbers are unacceptable.
“We deserve better in our daily lives – the opportunity to build our lives, our careers, and our communities,” said Roy Brumfield, a member of Stand With Dignity and co-chair of the Community Evaluation Commission. “That’s what this summit is all about.”
“People aren’t asking to get rich, they’re asking to make a living wage with some benefits and the opportunity to save every now and then,” said Thomas.
Thomas praised the support from New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who launched the “Pathways to Prosperity” plan in September 2014 in an effort to find Black men jobs. But Thomas emphasized that political support isn’t enough; the city’s business community leaders have to make a commitment to hiring African Americans instant payday loan express for the trends to reverse.
“If third world countries are opportunities for labor, why not American cities?” asked Thomas.
Thomas added that unemployment and crime rates often go hand in hand. High unemployment breeds high crime rates.
“Suppressing crime and eliminating the climate of crime are two different things,” Thomas said.
Part of the climate change involves reducing the rate of recidivism. Brumfield said many young men are paroled from prison but find themselves excluded from jobs because employers conduct criminal background checks. If men aren’t able to find employment, it’s near impossible for them to be rehabilitated and the end result is a return to a life of crime.
“Once a person has a conviction, there’s often no freedom after that…There’s no hope,” Brumfield said.
The organizers understand that reversing current unemployment trends will take time and the summit is only a step in the right direction.
“It’s going to take some very intentional work to get us to where it’s a fair system,” said Colette Tippy, lead organizer with Stand With Dignity.
This article originally published in the January 5, 2105 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
