July 28, 2011
Like the country it governs, Washington is a city of extremes. In a car, you can zip in bare moments from northwest District of Columbia, its streets lined with million-dollar homes and palatial embassies, its inhabitants sporting one of the nation’s lowest jobless rates, to Anacostia, a mostly forgotten neighborhood in southeastern D.C. with one of the highest unemployment rates anywhere in America.
April 1, 2011
I am pleased to stand with my colleagues today who are outraged at Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama’s decision to wage war on Africa in Libya. At the outset, let me state that Libya is home to tens of thousands of foreign students and guest workers. The students come from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. The messages I have received from concerned Africans state that these young, innocent people, inaccurately labeled by the U.S. press as “Black mercenaries,” have been trapped in hostile territory and are hated by the U.S.-allied Al Qaeda insurgents.
March 2, 2011
What would happen if 34.5 percent of White men did not have jobs? According to new U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old Black men has reached Great Depression proportions – more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. Some African Americans are asking: “Will it take a revolution to spark economic change in Black America?” “All eyes are on the uprisings playing out in Egypt and Tunisia, yet America systematically turns a blind eye to the oppression in its own backyard.”
December 3, 2009
African-American joblessness – nearly twice the national rate – is quickly becoming the first showdown between Black leaders and the nation’s first Black president as national Black and civil right leaders raise their voices telling the Obama administration it’s time to end the jobs crisis in the Black community.
December 12, 2008
This week the National Urban League submitted its “Economic Recovery Plan for Job Creation in Urban Communities” to both President-elect Barack Obama and Congress.