Putting America back to work is NAACP's first priority

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Among the many gifts we possess as humans is our ability to imagine the future. As a nation, a better future need not be some distant moment. It is almost immediately attainable.

All it requires is we put America back to work and we pull America back together.

Both can happen. But neither will unless we, those who have the courage to dream and the will to fight for progress, get back into the streets — organizing house by house, and raising our voices together for jobs and justice.

Over the last few years there has been much talk about the audacity of hope and the urgency of now, and while they have gathered wide coinage neither should be rendered a cliché.

As Dr. King reminded us, we all need “a testament of hope.” This is particularly true in these times of economic distress that seem to entice so many to run downhill towards hate.

For individuals and families across our country, that testament of hope is nothing greater than a job — a job that pays enough for you to support your family, a job at which you are treated with dignity and basic respect.

If the quest for more jobs, good jobs, and fair jobs is to be realized, then it must be placed at the top of our national agenda.

We simply can no longer afford for putting America back to work to be a secondary priority as it seems to be for so many in the Congress, especially in the Senate.

The message coming out of the US Capitol in recent weeks has been: our nation can’t afford 23 billion dollars to keep hundreds of thousands of teachers in the classroom; we can’t afford to extend unemployment insurance for millions of laid off workers and their families but we can afford 32 billion dollars for war.

These contradictory messages are as cold-blooded as they are confusing. Congress is saying our nation’s priorities are apparently war then deficit reduction and finally jobs and schools. The priorities are upside down.

WATCH NAACP CHAIRMAN ROSALYN BROCK ADDRESS THE NAACP CONVENTION:
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=DzXueDJTzHY&hl=en_US&fs=1]

No neighborhood is saved from the foreclosure crisis, no state education budget improved without more and more jobs being created every month.

If we must spend more to create jobs to get economy our going again, so be it.
Spending to create jobs got us out of the Great Depression, and it will get us out of the Great Recession. With the creation of more jobs we can provide ballast to sustain middle class families so they are in a position to send their children to college to get the skills they need to fill the employment needs of our increasingly high tech society.

Pulling our nation back together means we must be prepared to go further and tackle our toughest problems at home with the fierce urgency of now.

From our broken immigration system to public education, the challenges seem overwhelming but the answers are clear.

We are descendants of immigrants, native Americans, and slaves. We believe in the values represented by the Statue of Liberty. That faith commands us to fix our broken immigration system in a way that respects basic human rights, universal human dignity, and the sanctity of families.

And while undocumented immigrants comprise much of the exploited and underpaid workers, most were born here. For all of us, native born and immigrant, it was the unions that allowed so many of our parents and grandparents to be treated fairly (as well as the time to raise us, and the money to send us to college). Today’s workers deserve the right to organize freely, a hard won right that is being systematically legislated away.

If living wage jobs are the secret to turning our nation’s future around, good schools are the secret to ensuring our future is as productive and tilted toward progress as so much of our past. Unless our children are given an opportunity to get the best education available, we will never be able to compete with workers from other nations, where far too many of our corporations are fleeing to get skilled labor.

As I write this, I am in Kansas City, Missouri, for the NAACP’s national convention. While there is much good to be said about the state of “Show Me” state, there is also a lot here that reminds us about the urgent need for Americans to keep pushing for change and holding their leaders accountable.

There is the crisis in Kansas City’s schools — half the schools were recently shut down, more layoffs are imminent. A situation the local NAACP is working hard to improve. This state joins many others in allowing pay day lenders to charge consumers more than 1900 percent interest—a rate so high it is literally the financial equivalent of napalm. It is also burning proof that there is a long way to go to ensure both lenders and the government are truly on the side of regular people.

WATCH NAACP PRESIDENT BEN JEALOUS ADDRESS THE NAACP CONVENTION:
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=f-Ey9at1NAI&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Pushing for progress is an uphill fight. We knew it when we all — young and old; black, brown, and white; liberal, progressive, and moderate; Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian — came together in the build up to 2008 to ensure our nation’s future is worthy of our children’s dreams, and we know it now.

Today that hill seems steeper and more treacherous still. It is covered in the detritus of decades of deregulation that is erupting into the Gulf. It is pockmarked with foreclosed upon dreams. It is alight with the fake populist rage of our nation’s most privileged demographic who formed the Tea Party and other right wing groups.

But let us fear nothing more than we fear our own temptation to become discouraged on the rocky road to make manifest our common prayers for a better future.

We are more than up to the task of following through and achieving all of the change we voted for. We are as strong as the majority of the country. We are as audacious as the people who broke the nation’s 233-year old color barrier at the White House. We are as triumphant as the band of intrepid Americans who beat back the army of lobbyists unleashed by country’s greediest health care company CEOs in order to secure affordable quality health care for more than 30 million more of our neighbors.

All we have to do to get our nation’s economy truly working for all of us is to get each other off the couch, unite behind a common agenda for a better future, and fight like we know regular people who drink coffee are way more powerful than any group of costumed elites who claim to like tea.

After all, we are the change we have been voting for. Change is what happens every day (not just on election day). And, right now, our nation’s children — from the Gulf Coast to the Iron City — deserve for all of us to fight for a better tomorrow like their very lives depend on it.

We hope that you will join us and 100 other organizations in marching in Washington for jobs and justice under the banner of One Nation working together on 10-2-10 in Washington DC.