By William Douglas- CLEVELAND — Unemployed for two years and growing increasingly frustrated, Charet Thomas thinks that neither Congress nor the White House is looking out for her or others who compose the nation’s 15.9 percent jobless rate among African-Americans.
“I think people getting off unemployment and getting jobs are middle-class people,” said Thomas, who was laid off from her job at a nonprofit agency. “The African-Americans, we’re on the back burner. I truly believe that.”
With her resume in hand and her best clothing on, Thomas waited patiently in line Monday with thousands of other unemployed or underemployed people here at a jobs fair and town-hall meeting sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.
The Cleveland event launched a jobs fair-town hall tour by the caucus, a monthlong, five-city campaign that’s as much a message to congressional leaders and President Barack Obama as it is a vehicle to help unemployed African-Americans find work. More than 4,000 people attended the Cleveland fair, where 100 employers had 2,500 jobs to fill.
“We didn’t want to just sit around and complain. We decided to do something about it,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., the chairman of the black caucus said, of his group’s first hands-on employment effort. “This will send a message to Washington that this is a crisis that can be ignored no longer. If the images of what’s going on here reach Washington … it would take a very mean-spirited conscience, or no conscience at all, to allow people to ignore this.”
Read the full story (McClatchy Newspapers): http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/08/2350778/black-caucuss-jobs-tour-a-message.html#ixzz1UVLaOhMY
