Since before we were a nation, Blacks have contributed mightily to the development of what is now the United States. From mining to the space program, Black Americans today serve integral roles in our society, leading in fields such as education, politics, religion and sports.
The growing economic crisis has pointed to significant flaws in the theory and functioning of the US economy. After years of an ideological barrage from the political Right insisting that there is no need for social safety nets to protect those at the bottom, we are discovering that those at the bottom are increasing in number and that there is nothing 'trickling down' from on high to save them.
For more than 30 years, beginning in the 1960s, the federal government saw the enormous benefit of providing summer jobs to millions of disadvantaged youth across America. But since 2000, the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program (SYETP) has lost its direct funding and is now effectively buried among ten competing programs within the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). With the economy reeling, unemployment soaring and the summer heat approaching, there is an urgent need to bring back summer jobs for youth.
This past week, Rev. Jeremiah Wright broke his silence. After Senator Barack Obama delivered an historic speech on March 18th that addressed this country’s difficulties with the issue of race, the distraction caused by the media’s repeated airing of segments of an old Wright sermon appeared to have finally become a thing of the past. In Obama’s quest to secure the nod to be the Democratic party presidential nominee, he had addressed the Wright matter with boldness and clarity. For the most part, the issue was dead.
White working-class Democrats in Pennsylvania sent an unmistakable message to Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama. “We don’t trust you.”
General David Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the American envoy to Baghdad, testified before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees to provide an update on the status of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. The news was not encouraging.
This year, young Americans are making a personal investment in civil rights at levels far beyond anything that this nation has experienced since the 1960s. Challenging the media stereotypes of apathy and social indifference, our young adults have graduated from the classroom to give the rest of us a refresher course in democratic participation.
I participated in a conference organized by General Colin Powell in Washington, D.C. earlier this month and learned that every 26 seconds, one American high school student drops out of school – that's over 3,000 youth per day; nearly 10,000 youth each month; or 1.1 million young people a year. And unfortunately, the crisis has hit minority communities particularly hard.
Bush's so-called “war against terrorism” entered another cynical stage with the recent classification of a Somali group as alleged ''terrorists.'' Al Shabab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, was declared by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist organization. The Bush administration claims that ''some'' members of Al Shabab are affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Missions and plans are only the beginning. A recipe for chicken pot pie will just sit there unless you get cooking. Ingredients alone won’t change your life. You need a chef. You need action. Your debts won’t shift from the bad side to the good until you attach a mission and a goal to them. And then get cooking. The same is true of success. You can’t achieve it until you attach a mission and goal, and then put it in the oven! This is the bigger picture I’m talking about.