Let's get to work on a jobs stimulus: "The federal government must act" by Jesse Jackson

[Better Believe It]

Let's get to work on a jobs stimulus
BY JESSE JACKSON
Noebmer 10, 2009


Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, but that figure doesn't count those forced to work part-time, those who have given up in despair, young people who were never able to get hired. There are now 25 million people unemployed.

For African Americans, it is worse. African Americans are experiencing a silent depression. Unemployment is more than 18 percent; underemployment even higher. And among black teens, unemployment is more than 40 percent.

This is combined with a staggering loss of wealth among what was the emerging African-American middle class -- a group devastated by the collapse of the housing bubble. African-Americans were prime targets of mortgage companies peddling misleading mortgages, with low entry rates, hidden fees and exploding interest-rate escalation clauses. Having redlined urban areas for decades, mortgage brokers then targeted them for subprime mortgages. Too many families aspiring to own their own homes assumed that their jobs were secure and that they could always remortgage after their low entry rates expired -- and got caught.

"The untold story is that between unemployment, a significant drop in property values, the wave of foreclosures and a lack of credit, there is a whole generation of African-American wealth that is disappearing," said Jean Pogge, executive vice president of ShoreBank, a community bank serving minorities in Chicago.

The federal government must act. What we need now are direct employment projects: an urban corps that will employ young people and provide them with work in everything from cleaning parks to refitting buildings; a green corps that will employ people directly in reforesting America and fixing up national parks. Congress needs to expand the money going to infrastructure projects and put construction workers to work in repairing sewers and roads. States and localities should get aid on the condition that they sustain employment.

But more than that, we need a fundamental commitment to rebuild America -- and to make certain that the jobs are kept in America. The president should lay out a 10-year program to make America energy independent that includes public investment in the green equivalents of projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam. This also would include major investments in wind farms and solar energy, the refitting of buildings and modernization of America's electrical distribution infrastructure. These investments should be combined with buy-America provisions, ensuring those taxpayers' dollars are spent on putting people to work here. America needs to help lead the new green industrial revolution -- but we won't succeed without a clear policy to ensure that we make things in America again.

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