(Trice Edney News Wire) -With Black unemployment rates still stuck in double digits while Whites remain consistently below the national average, economic frustration and suffering in the Black community is making it difficult for grassroots organizers to motivate people to the polls Nov. 6.
“We are in crisis,” says Baltimore Pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant, whose Empowerment Movement is holding a “Code Red” conference Aug. 15-17 at the Empowerment Temple where he pastors.
“In 2008, we were excited to see a Black man running for president. But we were so excited by the prospects of a Black president that we failed to establish a Black agenda.”
Why Obama?
Bryant says President Obama is simply “not motivating Black people to go to the polls” and he has found that many who are planning to vote “can’t even articulate why” they will vote for the candidate they’ve chosen.
Blacks turned out for Obama at a record 98 percent four years ago. This time around doesn’t appear so certain as the frustration appears pervasive and Black leaders are struggling to create a sense of urgency.
Lee Saunders, the first Black president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, made it plain before a packed house with hundreds of activists and youths last week at the A. Philip Randolph Institute National Education Conference in Downtown D.C.
Read the full story at: The Florida Courier
