Community Organizers Applauded as Great Patriots and Great Assets to America

Community Organizers Applauded as Great Patriots and Great Assets to America
THE HUFFINGTON POST

MONROE ANDERSON

Palin, GOP find community challenges a real hoot

At the expense of Barack Obama, community groups and their organizers were a running joke in St. Paul last week at the Republican National Convention.

Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani and much of the rest of the GOP apparently believe that small town mayoring is oh-so-important while community organizing is a real thigh-slapper.


Like much of what goes on among American conservatives, I suspect the marginalizing of the community organizing is just one more coded race reference. And, like much what goes on among the Republicans, George W. Bush and the Palin McCain campaign, it's obvious that this is another topsy-turvy twist on reality.

To assure that the community organizers are removed from the GOP's one-liner lists and moved back into the important things-to-do column, the AfroSpear, a collective of black bloggers across America, has called for a day of blogging in support of community organizing. I'm just one of dozens. This is my contribution.

Small town government, of course, does call for responsibilities. But, like volunteer fire departments, in many small towns, running it is only a part-time job--or should be. Community organizing in Chicago, on the other hand, is a full-time challenge that impacts lives of American citizens by the tens of thousands.

No one knows this to be true more than Phillip Jackson. At one time Jackson was the head of the Chicago Housing Authority. One of the housing projects he was in charge of, Robert Taylor Homes, was where 100,000 of Chicago poorest residents called home. When Jackson left the CHA in the mid-1990s, he founded The Black Star Project, a community group with a daunting task: to improve the quality of life in Black and Latino communities of Chicago and nationwide by eliminating the racial academic achievement gap.

Jackson boasts that The Black Star Project successfully spearheaded the Million Father March 2008 that "took place in 475 cities with about 600.000 men taking children to school--because of communities organizers in these cities."

If Palin, McCain, Giuliani and the gang think Jackson's mission is a laughing matter, then they've got another think coming. Although he's just one of a countless number of dedicated, patriotic citizens trying to improve the lot of the less fortunate in one great American city, his message is worth exploring.

Here's the latest of what Jackson, a community organizer, has had to say in his latest commentary:


Without High School Diplomas,
Young Black Men in America Are Expendable!


By Phillip Jackson, Executive Director of The Black Star Project

Less than fifty percent of young Black men graduated from high school in the United States during the 2005-2006 school year, according to a new report commissioned by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

Dropping out of high school sentences young Black males to menial jobs, street-corner hustling, illicit activities, fathering children out of wedlock, drugs, gangs, crime, prison, violence, death and worse - these young Black men are literally being prepared to destroy the Black communities in which they live.

Inability to achieve becomes hopelessness. Hopelessness becomes despair. Despair becomes destruction.

Dropping out of school annihilates the concept of family in the Black community because young Black men without high school degrees seldom become good providers for their families and strong anchors for their communities. The fabric of the Black community becomes unwoven.

This is an unnatural disaster and a national disgrace with little-to-no effective response from the U.S. government or the Black community where this destruction is taking place.

The media and many foundations ignore this problem. The United States responds to catastrophes in China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Sudan, Georgia and other parts of the world, but the media and our government will not constructively respond to the genocide of young Black men that is happening here in the United States. Young Black men in America have become expendable!

The poor quality of education for young Black men is an impending national catastrophe for the United States with international ramifications. The rest of the world sees the hypocrisy of the "rhetoric of concern" in the United States verses the lack of difference-making action. Why aren't we outraged? Why won't we do something?

Before information on the educational status of Black males in America was available, the question could have been, "Why don't we know this?" Now that we know, the question becomes "Why don't we care?"

Please see the estimated graduation rates for Black males in the lowest 28 districts in the United States with Black male enrollments of 8,000 or more during the 2005-2006 school year versus White male graduation rates in those cities and the 2003-2004 Black male graduation rates:

Black Male Black White Black Male
District Enrollment Male Male Gap 2003-04
Indianapolis, IN 11,539 19% 19% 0% 21%
Detroit, MI 59,807 20% 17% -3% 31%
Norfolk, VA 12,672 27% 44% 17% 30%
Rochester, NY 11,270 29% 36% 7% 32%
Pinellas County, FL 11,319 30% 50% 20% 21%
Richmond County, GA 12,091 31% 43% 12% 30%
Baltimore City, MD 38,966 31% 37% 6% 31%
Buffalo, NY 10,666 31% 50% 19% 33%
Milwaukee, WI 26,818 32% 46% 14% 34%
New York City, NY 159,555 32% 57% 24% 26%
Chatham County, GA 11,218 32% 42% 10% 25%
Palm Beach County, FL 26,259 33% 0% 26% 29%
Birmingham, AL 14,956 33% 21% -12% 38%
Charleston County, SC 11,489 34% 66% 32% 44%
Dade County, FL 51,188 34% 55% 21% 31%
Atlanta, GA 21,722 34% 58% 24% 35%
Cleveland, OH 20,894 34% 35% 1% 33%
St. Louis, MO 16,705 35% 38% 3% 37%
Memphis, TN 52,720 35% 64% 29% N/A
Clayton County, GA 19,605 36% 26% -10% 33%
Orange County, FL 25,367 37% 58% 21% 27%
Chicago, IL 102,185 37% 62% 25% 35%
Nashville-Davidson, TN 17,792 38% 60% 22% N/A
Broward County, FL 52,537 38% 55% 17% 36%
Jackson City, MS 15,736 38% 42% 4% 44%
Minneapolis, MN 8,044 38% 76% 38% N/A
Cincinnati, OH 12,834 38% 49% 11% 25%
Duval County, FL 28,608 38% 55% 17% 26%

Please consider these simple goals that can lead to solutions for fixing the problems of young Black men:

Short term
1) Teach all Black boys to read at grade level by the third grade and to embrace education.
2) Provide strong, positive Black male role models for Black boys.
3) Create a stable home environment for Black boys that includes contact with their fathers.
4) Ensure that Black boys have a strong spiritual base.
5) Control negative media influences on Black boys.
6) Teach Black boys to respect all girls and women.

Long term
1) Invest as much money in educating Black boys as in locking up Black men.
2) Help connect Black boys to a positive vision of them in the future.
3) Create high expectations and help Black boys live into those high expectations.
4) Build a positive peer culture for Black boys.
5) Teach Black boys self-discipline, cultural awareness and racial history.
6) Teach Black boys and the communities in which they live to embrace education and life-long learning.

Let's compare Palin's mayoral goals and accomplishments with Jackson's and then can decide who deserves the last laugh.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com

www.ruffcommunications.com

Education, economic opportunity best defense against violence

by Cheryle R. Jackson

A 10-year-old girl was struck by a stray bullet as she knelt down to tie her blind sister’s shoes. A 13-year-old girl visiting Chicago fatally was wounded only hours before she was to board a bus with her family back to her East Coast home. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the back as he played basketball on a court a stone’s throw away from his house.

All three of these victims were caught in the crossfire of gang violence that seems to have erupted anew across the city. And all three, according to news reports, were looking forward to the first day of school. They never made it.

As I read these tragic stories, I was reminded again of the critical link between education and economic opportunity, or lack thereof, and the violence robbing our communities of our most precious resource: our children.

Last week, in his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, I was glad to hear Sen. John McCain say that education is the No. 1 civil rights issue of the 21st century. I agree with him wholeheartedly, but I would add to that economic opportunity–access to job training, good-paying careers and capital for start-up businesses–as essential to ending the cycle of violence in poor communities.

I am not making excuses for violent behavior, but violence, I believe, is a direct byproduct of undereducated people with no economic opportunities. We don’t need research studies to prove this point. We see it every day in neighborhoods around Illinois where schools are inadequately funded by a system that rewards students living in well-to-do communities and short changes everybody else.

Education funding reform is essential to reversing the cycle of violence in urban communities that are largely segregated by race. That is why the Chicago Urban League, together with the Quad County Urban League, filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education last month asking the court to declare unconstitutional the state’s funding formula that leaves so many African American and Latino children behind.

McCain offered school choice as a solution. While the Chicago Urban League supports the innovation and success of charter schools with smaller class sizes, it is imperative that we fix the public education for the majority of children, not just a lucky few.

If we do not fight for equity in our schools, we will continue to set our children on a pathway leading to a life of crime, violence, poverty, drugs, unwanted pregnancy and long-term unemployment. In order to solve the violence problem, we have to concurrently tackle the problems of a poor educational system and lack of economic opportunities that breed violent offenders.

Students need better schools, true, but their parents also need better-paying jobs in order to create stable home environments for children to thrive in after the school bell chimes.

The Chicago Urban League is working hard to connect people to economic opportunities by creating job training programs, helping small businesses build capacity to create new jobs and smoothing the pathway to jobs in the corporate world. But all our efforts will be in vain if people do not have the basic educational skills to leverage those opportunities.

I want the best for Chicago’s children – all of them – and I believe that our lawsuit is an important step to changing the culture of violence that takes our attention away from the important issues to focus solely on survival.

The way I see it, the only thing worse than not fighting for our children’s education and for economic opportunities that will sustain them as adults is not fighting to ensure our children’s safety. What’s painfully clear is that you cannot have one without the other.

I pray that those in power will wake up and realize that reforming the state’s discriminatory educational funding system plays no small part in creating pathways to a better future for those who so desperately want to believe that the good life is within their reach.

www.ruffcommunications.com

Bush's NAACP address just a start July 25, 2006 BY JESSE JACKSON

Bush's NAACP address just a start July 25, 2006 BY JESSE JACKSON FROM:

http://www.chicagosuntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse25.html After five years, President Bush finally addressed the annual NAACP conference. He said he wanted to reach out to the African-American community -- suggesting it was a mistake for African Americans to be locked into one party. But blacks have not always voted for Democrats. After the Civil War, they voted Republican in the party of Lincoln. When the Depression hit -- and the poor were hit the hardest -- they turned to Roosevelt and the New Deal. In the 1950s, blacks voted in large numbers for Eisenhower, in part because he vowed to get us out of the war in Korea. When Kennedy reached out to Dr. King in his Birmingham jail cell, and Nixon did not, African Americans began voting Democratic again. As Johnson helped pass civil rights legislation, culminating in the Voting Rights Act and the launch of the war on poverty, African Americans rallied in support.

This was reinforced as Republicans rose to power in the South as the party of white sanctuary, profiting from politics of racial division. African Americans are not locked into any one party -- they are voting their interest. Bush says he wants to reach out. Here's what he could do if he were serious about reaching out: First, pay us the respect of communicating with us.

We did not always agree with Kennedy -- he opposed the March on Washington for example -- but he talked with us. The same is true of Johnson, Carter and Clinton. There were disagreements, some sharp and intense, but we kept in communication. Second, come into the discussion with questions, not just pat answers. Let's agree on the subjects -- and discuss the solutions. We know we disagree about some policy questions. But by talking together, we can find common ground in some places, and agree to disagree in others.

For example, any conservative should be providing incentives to businesses to invest in impoverished areas -- from Appalachia to rural America to the ghettos and barrios. Providing incentives doesn't bust the budget. It relies on private markets and it helps even the playing field so capital, the lifeblood of capitalism, flows to all parts of the body politic. Third, don't assume that African-American leaders are concerned only with an ethnic agenda.

We worry about poverty and decent wages -- and more poor people are white than black. We worry about war -- and all Americans are concerned about war. We are particularly hit by the outsourcing of jobs and by the loss of affordable housing -- and so are working and poor Americans of all races. Fourth, enforce the Voting Rights Act, don't just sign it and gut its enforcement. For too long, African Americans have been locked out of voting.

Now, from Florida to Texas to Ohio to Georgia, we see increasing evidence of systemic efforts by Republicans to block blacks from registering and from voting. Too often, your political appointees to the Justice Department and your nominees to the Supreme Court choose state rights over federal enforcement. Similarly, you can speak clearly against private-sector discrimination and work to open up opportunity for all. Equal opportunity is a pro-family value.

Even to this day, minorities suffer discriminatory practices in employment and in gaining loans -- business loans, mortgages and personal loans. This impedes free markets and retards economic development. Again, this doesn't cost money -- and it demonstrates leadership.

Finally, understand that you can't choose the leaders for African Americans or Latinos or small farmers. If you want to reach out to the African-American community, you have to talk with the leaders we choose. For years, J. Edgar Hoover sought to create a black leader who could compete with Dr. King, but he could not be displaced from above.

That remains true to this day. That's why you can pump millions into selected black churches and still lose over 90 percent of the black vote. Your belated address to the NAACP is a beginning. It's late. The record is clear. Our disappointments are many. But African Americans have problems to solve and miles to travel -- so we look constantly for allies. We are open to talk and looking for action. The door isn't shut; see us through the door, and not the keyhole. Let's meet at the door and make this a more perfect union.

www.ruffcommunications.com