"Godspeed and know you take all our best wishes and hopes with you," captures perfectly the sentiment, joy, excitement, anticipation, combined with a knowledge of history was the first comment a friend of mine from Oberlin College sent me this morning when I commented on Facebook about my trip tomorrow to attend the inauguration.
Its a blessing to have the opportunity to witness the inauguration; and to have participated in the campaign for the past year and meet so many positive and uplifting people--inspired by a candidate with not only a message of change; but one who has worked throughout the cities of our country, with visionary leadership and the tools to restore and renew the best ideals of America.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
How To Reverse the Trend of Concentrated Poverty
Somehow I missed this article in the Plain Dealer, but thought it relevant to the discussion of urban policy. Comments later.
How to Reverse the Trend of Concentrated Poverty
Concentrated Poverty, Unemployment, Children & Families, Earned Income Tax Credit, Economic Mobility
Alan Berube, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program
Cleveland Plain Dealer
December 28, 2008 —
One of Cleveland's neighborhoods made the Washington scene earlier this month.
Alas, it wasn't up for a multibillion-dollar bailout.
Instead, the Central neighborhood and 15 other communities across the United States were the centerpiece of a new report published by the Federal Reserve System and the Brookings Institution.
These communities share a simple, disappointing characteristic. In 2000 - the peak of the last economic boom - at least 40 percent of their residents lived below the federal poverty line. That was about three times the national average.
No American needs to look very far to find places like these. Concentrated poverty affects manufacturing cities like Cleveland, and Albany, Ga.; immigrant gateways like Miami, Fla., and Fresno, Calif.; and rural areas like eastern Kentucky and northern Montana. About 4 million poor Americans live in these areas of extremely high poverty.
How did this happen? Policy decisions made decades ago - like clustering thousands of the Cleveland region's public housing units in the Central neighborhood - helped shape their trajectory. So too did economic changes, like the long-run loss of decent-paying manufacturing jobs, or - in rural areas - mining and agricultural jobs.
By allowing poverty to concentrate in these places, we've magnified the problems their poor residents face. For instance, many low-income children in these communities start school not yet "ready to learn." On top of that, though, they attend schools burdened with lots of other poor kids who face similar challenges, and deal with higher levels of neighborhood crime that affect their mental health and educational performance.
The challenges of concentrated poverty extend to many other areas: low adult work-force skills and employment, poor-quality housing and a lack of investment by mainstream businesses.
And that's in a good economy. Today, Central - and thousands of other high-poverty communities like it across the nation - faces even more significant challenges as the United States enters what may be its worst recession in decades.
So what should Washington do for these places and their residents in the face of such difficult circumstances?
First, we must not lose sight of them in the economic turmoil. That's especially true because the roots of this crisis, in the subprime mortgage market, grew in many very poor neighborhoods like Central. As a result, home foreclosure rates in high-poverty communities are more than double the national average.
To stabilize these hard-hit communities, Washington must adopt new measures to prevent foreclosure and provide additional resources and guidance for state and local governments to help them cope with the rising numbers of vacant properties.
Second, a forthcoming economic stimulus package from Washington that could amount to half a trillion dollars or more should not bypass these neighborhoods and their residents.
That implies the need for immediate federal aid to sustain basic public services in states like Ohio, where the deficit for this year already tops $1 billion. It also suggests providing direct assistance to struggling workers and their families, through enhanced unemployment benefits and tax credits.
At the same time, the infrastructure dollars in the package - which could amount to more than $100 billion - must be spent strategically. States should not be permitted to go on expanding highway capacity at the metropolitan fringe, to the detriment of poor communities near the urban core. Cities like Cleveland, and metropolitan organizations like the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, should get their fair share of new transportation funds. And funds should be set aside for training programs that provide low-income residents with a pathway to decent jobs.
Third, we have to rethink neighborhood policy over the longer term.
For too long, government has funded housing, schools and economic development in these communities as though they were islands unto themselves.
That's not how the real economy works. These neighborhoods are part of larger regional labor and housing markets. Decisions made across the Cleveland region, such as where firms locate new jobs, or where families buy homes and send their kids to school, ultimately dictate whether neighborhoods like Central can become real neighborhoods of choice and better connected to economic opportunity.
Public policy must leverage that real economy for the benefit of lower-income residents, by building on smart regional strategies like the Fund for Our Economic Future and WIRE-Net in Northeast Ohio. It should diversify housing in poor communities, but also encourage affordable housing development in wealthier parts of metropolitan areas.
Cleveland's Central neighborhood, like other high-poverty communities across the United States, faces a tough road ahead. Short-term opportunities, and long-term strategies, are needed to help its next generation of residents overcome the challenges of concentrated poverty.
How to Reverse the Trend of Concentrated Poverty
Concentrated Poverty, Unemployment, Children & Families, Earned Income Tax Credit, Economic Mobility
Alan Berube, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program
Cleveland Plain Dealer
December 28, 2008 —
One of Cleveland's neighborhoods made the Washington scene earlier this month.
Alas, it wasn't up for a multibillion-dollar bailout.
Instead, the Central neighborhood and 15 other communities across the United States were the centerpiece of a new report published by the Federal Reserve System and the Brookings Institution.
These communities share a simple, disappointing characteristic. In 2000 - the peak of the last economic boom - at least 40 percent of their residents lived below the federal poverty line. That was about three times the national average.
No American needs to look very far to find places like these. Concentrated poverty affects manufacturing cities like Cleveland, and Albany, Ga.; immigrant gateways like Miami, Fla., and Fresno, Calif.; and rural areas like eastern Kentucky and northern Montana. About 4 million poor Americans live in these areas of extremely high poverty.
How did this happen? Policy decisions made decades ago - like clustering thousands of the Cleveland region's public housing units in the Central neighborhood - helped shape their trajectory. So too did economic changes, like the long-run loss of decent-paying manufacturing jobs, or - in rural areas - mining and agricultural jobs.
By allowing poverty to concentrate in these places, we've magnified the problems their poor residents face. For instance, many low-income children in these communities start school not yet "ready to learn." On top of that, though, they attend schools burdened with lots of other poor kids who face similar challenges, and deal with higher levels of neighborhood crime that affect their mental health and educational performance.
The challenges of concentrated poverty extend to many other areas: low adult work-force skills and employment, poor-quality housing and a lack of investment by mainstream businesses.
And that's in a good economy. Today, Central - and thousands of other high-poverty communities like it across the nation - faces even more significant challenges as the United States enters what may be its worst recession in decades.
So what should Washington do for these places and their residents in the face of such difficult circumstances?
First, we must not lose sight of them in the economic turmoil. That's especially true because the roots of this crisis, in the subprime mortgage market, grew in many very poor neighborhoods like Central. As a result, home foreclosure rates in high-poverty communities are more than double the national average.
To stabilize these hard-hit communities, Washington must adopt new measures to prevent foreclosure and provide additional resources and guidance for state and local governments to help them cope with the rising numbers of vacant properties.
Second, a forthcoming economic stimulus package from Washington that could amount to half a trillion dollars or more should not bypass these neighborhoods and their residents.
That implies the need for immediate federal aid to sustain basic public services in states like Ohio, where the deficit for this year already tops $1 billion. It also suggests providing direct assistance to struggling workers and their families, through enhanced unemployment benefits and tax credits.
At the same time, the infrastructure dollars in the package - which could amount to more than $100 billion - must be spent strategically. States should not be permitted to go on expanding highway capacity at the metropolitan fringe, to the detriment of poor communities near the urban core. Cities like Cleveland, and metropolitan organizations like the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, should get their fair share of new transportation funds. And funds should be set aside for training programs that provide low-income residents with a pathway to decent jobs.
Third, we have to rethink neighborhood policy over the longer term.
For too long, government has funded housing, schools and economic development in these communities as though they were islands unto themselves.
That's not how the real economy works. These neighborhoods are part of larger regional labor and housing markets. Decisions made across the Cleveland region, such as where firms locate new jobs, or where families buy homes and send their kids to school, ultimately dictate whether neighborhoods like Central can become real neighborhoods of choice and better connected to economic opportunity.
Public policy must leverage that real economy for the benefit of lower-income residents, by building on smart regional strategies like the Fund for Our Economic Future and WIRE-Net in Northeast Ohio. It should diversify housing in poor communities, but also encourage affordable housing development in wealthier parts of metropolitan areas.
Cleveland's Central neighborhood, like other high-poverty communities across the United States, faces a tough road ahead. Short-term opportunities, and long-term strategies, are needed to help its next generation of residents overcome the challenges of concentrated poverty.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A Relevant Quote from Frank Rich
A quote from NYT columnist Frank Rich in a 1/11/09 article:
In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.
In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Supreme Court Takes Voting Rights Case
A case with profound historical,constitutional and voting implications, particularly for African American and communities of color whose access to, and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a true legal achievement. Despite the fact of the Bush administrations policies on voting rights law and civil rights legislation.
In cities like Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County were the process and results for "counting one's vote" has been a constant problem, the possible result in a Roberts Court overturning the Voting Rights Act would have widespread implications for all of us who believe the right to vote is one of the most sacred and personal expressions of being a free people.
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 9, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would decide whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority in 2006 by extending a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The plaintiff in the case, a Texas municipal utility district, has argued that Congress did not take sufficient account of more than four decades of progress toward racial equality that culminated in the recent election of the nation’s first black president.
The court’s decision, expected by June, will help define the Roberts court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. opposed efforts to expand the voting rights law in 1982 as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and has expressed skepticism on the court about racial classifications made by the government. The decision will also have significant practical consequences for elections in 16 states.
“This could be the biggest election-law case on the court’s docket since Bush v. Gore,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
The case concerns the requirement in Section 5 of the law that certain state and local governments, mostly in the South, must obtain permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes that affect voting.
The requirement applies to all of nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and to scores of counties and municipalities in other states that Congress found had a history of discrimination at the polls.
Critics of the law call the preclearance requirement a unique federal intrusion on state sovereignty and a badge of shame for the affected jurisdictions that is no longer justified.
The preclearance requirement, originally set to expire in five years, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1966 as a rational response to the often flagrantly lawless conduct of Southern officials intent on “perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees.”
Congress has repeatedly extended the requirement: for five years in 1970, seven years in 1975, and 25 years in 1982. Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years.
The lawsuit challenging the requirement was brought by a municipal utility district in Austin, Tex., established on undeveloped land there in the late 1980s. The district said it had never been accused of voting discrimination and should not be made to seek federal permission to, say, move the location of polling places or consolidate voting for its five-member board with the larger county ballot.
A special three-judge court here upheld the constitutionality of the preclearance requirement in May, saying Congress had acted reasonably in making the judgment that voting discrimination persisted.
The utility district argued to the Supreme Court that Congress had given insufficient weight to social and political changes since the civil rights era. It added that the applicable legal standards had changed since 1966.
There is no reason, the district’s lawyers told the justices, to presume “that jurisdictions first identified four decades ago as needing extraordinary federal oversight” today remain “uniformly incapable or unwilling to fulfill their obligations to faithfully protect the voting rights of all citizens in those parts of the country.”
In addition, the district argued, a 1997 Supreme Court decision, City of Boerne v. Flores, imposed a more demanding standard for deciding whether Congress exceeded its authority than mere rationality by requiring “congruence and proportionality” between the harm in question and the means used to prevent it.
The special court had ruled that the more relaxed level of scrutiny used by the Supreme Court to uphold the law in the 1966 case, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, should apply. But it added that the recent extension of the preclearance requirement passed the more demanding “congruence and proportionality” test, too.
The Supreme Court can avoid the larger issue in the new case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Mukasey, No. 08-322, if it chooses to accept the utility district’s argument on a subsidiary point. The district says it should be entitled to relief under a provision in the voting rights law that allows political subdivisions with clean discrimination records for 10 years to “bail out” from the preclearance requirement with court approval.
The special court said the provision was available only to government units that register voters, and the utility district does not.
In November the Bush administration filed a brief defending the law that urged the Supreme Court to affirm the lower court’s decision without further briefing and argument. (The Voting Rights Act contains unusual jurisdictional provisions, which account for the special lower court and which allow a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.)
The Supreme Court also agreed on Friday to hear three other cases, two of them involving the combustible issue of how the government treats racial and other minorities.
One of them, Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, arose from a test given to firefighters who sought promotions in New Haven. White candidates passed the test at a much higher rate than minority candidates, and very few Hispanics and no blacks qualified for the available positions. A civil service board threw out the test, and no one was promoted.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York rejected a lawsuit brought by white and Hispanic firefighters claiming race discrimination. The full appeals court, by a vote of 7 to 6, declined to hear the case.
Dissenting from that decision, Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote that the case “presented a straightforward question: May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?”
The court will also hear Horne v. Flores, No. 08-289, concerning whether lower courts were correct in ruling that Arizona is not spending enough money to help students there overcome language barriers.
Finally, the court agreed to hear Iraq v. Beaty, No. 07-1090, concerning whether people who were mistreated in Iraq under the government of Saddam Hussein may recover damages from the nation’s current government. The Justice Department had urged the court to hear the case and rule that the current government of Iraq enjoyed sovereign immunity from such claims.
In cities like Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County were the process and results for "counting one's vote" has been a constant problem, the possible result in a Roberts Court overturning the Voting Rights Act would have widespread implications for all of us who believe the right to vote is one of the most sacred and personal expressions of being a free people.
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 9, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would decide whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority in 2006 by extending a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The plaintiff in the case, a Texas municipal utility district, has argued that Congress did not take sufficient account of more than four decades of progress toward racial equality that culminated in the recent election of the nation’s first black president.
The court’s decision, expected by June, will help define the Roberts court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. opposed efforts to expand the voting rights law in 1982 as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and has expressed skepticism on the court about racial classifications made by the government. The decision will also have significant practical consequences for elections in 16 states.
“This could be the biggest election-law case on the court’s docket since Bush v. Gore,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
The case concerns the requirement in Section 5 of the law that certain state and local governments, mostly in the South, must obtain permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes that affect voting.
The requirement applies to all of nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and to scores of counties and municipalities in other states that Congress found had a history of discrimination at the polls.
Critics of the law call the preclearance requirement a unique federal intrusion on state sovereignty and a badge of shame for the affected jurisdictions that is no longer justified.
The preclearance requirement, originally set to expire in five years, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1966 as a rational response to the often flagrantly lawless conduct of Southern officials intent on “perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees.”
Congress has repeatedly extended the requirement: for five years in 1970, seven years in 1975, and 25 years in 1982. Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years.
The lawsuit challenging the requirement was brought by a municipal utility district in Austin, Tex., established on undeveloped land there in the late 1980s. The district said it had never been accused of voting discrimination and should not be made to seek federal permission to, say, move the location of polling places or consolidate voting for its five-member board with the larger county ballot.
A special three-judge court here upheld the constitutionality of the preclearance requirement in May, saying Congress had acted reasonably in making the judgment that voting discrimination persisted.
The utility district argued to the Supreme Court that Congress had given insufficient weight to social and political changes since the civil rights era. It added that the applicable legal standards had changed since 1966.
There is no reason, the district’s lawyers told the justices, to presume “that jurisdictions first identified four decades ago as needing extraordinary federal oversight” today remain “uniformly incapable or unwilling to fulfill their obligations to faithfully protect the voting rights of all citizens in those parts of the country.”
In addition, the district argued, a 1997 Supreme Court decision, City of Boerne v. Flores, imposed a more demanding standard for deciding whether Congress exceeded its authority than mere rationality by requiring “congruence and proportionality” between the harm in question and the means used to prevent it.
The special court had ruled that the more relaxed level of scrutiny used by the Supreme Court to uphold the law in the 1966 case, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, should apply. But it added that the recent extension of the preclearance requirement passed the more demanding “congruence and proportionality” test, too.
The Supreme Court can avoid the larger issue in the new case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Mukasey, No. 08-322, if it chooses to accept the utility district’s argument on a subsidiary point. The district says it should be entitled to relief under a provision in the voting rights law that allows political subdivisions with clean discrimination records for 10 years to “bail out” from the preclearance requirement with court approval.
The special court said the provision was available only to government units that register voters, and the utility district does not.
In November the Bush administration filed a brief defending the law that urged the Supreme Court to affirm the lower court’s decision without further briefing and argument. (The Voting Rights Act contains unusual jurisdictional provisions, which account for the special lower court and which allow a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.)
The Supreme Court also agreed on Friday to hear three other cases, two of them involving the combustible issue of how the government treats racial and other minorities.
One of them, Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, arose from a test given to firefighters who sought promotions in New Haven. White candidates passed the test at a much higher rate than minority candidates, and very few Hispanics and no blacks qualified for the available positions. A civil service board threw out the test, and no one was promoted.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York rejected a lawsuit brought by white and Hispanic firefighters claiming race discrimination. The full appeals court, by a vote of 7 to 6, declined to hear the case.
Dissenting from that decision, Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote that the case “presented a straightforward question: May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?”
The court will also hear Horne v. Flores, No. 08-289, concerning whether lower courts were correct in ruling that Arizona is not spending enough money to help students there overcome language barriers.
Finally, the court agreed to hear Iraq v. Beaty, No. 07-1090, concerning whether people who were mistreated in Iraq under the government of Saddam Hussein may recover damages from the nation’s current government. The Justice Department had urged the court to hear the case and rule that the current government of Iraq enjoyed sovereign immunity from such claims.
Whatever It Takes
As a young outreach worker in Central Harlem in the late 80's, I learned the model of grassroots neighborhood empowerment and advocacy on behalf of low income families and children.
I recall, Louis, among many African American and Latino/a children given more than hope, rather, an after school program of wrap-around educational, social service, and enrichment initiatives--sometimes 24/7. I witnessed the public school system, take the air out of the spirits and souls of children; similar to Jonathan Kozol's book title: Death At An Early Age.
I had the opportunity to work at Rheedlen Foundation, (as it was back then), and knew Geoff, Joe, and Richard Murphy.
In so many respects, I owe them and the families much gratitude for the opportunity to work alongside them, and more importantly, to have witnessed what Harlem Children Zone has become and will continue to do, on behalf of children and families in NYC.
If you can, purchase the book by Paul Tough about Geoffrey Canada's work, or read a few of Canada's books.
But, by all means, read one.
Whatever It Takes
Written by New York Times editor Paul Tough, "Whatever It Takes," is a compelling, in-depth look at the ground-breaking work of the Harlem Children's Zone and its leader, Geoffrey Canada.
Tough spent five years researching the work of HCZ, interviewing staff, students and parents. In addition, Tough surveys the theoretical underpinnings of HCZ's work, talking to national experts in education and poverty. "Whatever It Takes" was named one of the "Best Books of 2008" by the editors of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
[pdf] Read excerpts here
I recall, Louis, among many African American and Latino/a children given more than hope, rather, an after school program of wrap-around educational, social service, and enrichment initiatives--sometimes 24/7. I witnessed the public school system, take the air out of the spirits and souls of children; similar to Jonathan Kozol's book title: Death At An Early Age.
I had the opportunity to work at Rheedlen Foundation, (as it was back then), and knew Geoff, Joe, and Richard Murphy.
In so many respects, I owe them and the families much gratitude for the opportunity to work alongside them, and more importantly, to have witnessed what Harlem Children Zone has become and will continue to do, on behalf of children and families in NYC.
If you can, purchase the book by Paul Tough about Geoffrey Canada's work, or read a few of Canada's books.
But, by all means, read one.
Whatever It Takes
Written by New York Times editor Paul Tough, "Whatever It Takes," is a compelling, in-depth look at the ground-breaking work of the Harlem Children's Zone and its leader, Geoffrey Canada.
Tough spent five years researching the work of HCZ, interviewing staff, students and parents. In addition, Tough surveys the theoretical underpinnings of HCZ's work, talking to national experts in education and poverty. "Whatever It Takes" was named one of the "Best Books of 2008" by the editors of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
[pdf] Read excerpts here
Mayor Frank Jackson's Urban Policy Agenda
Below is a link to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's Urban Policy (campaign) agenda for the City of Cleveland in 2009.
During the presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton and then, Senator Barack Obama responded to Mayor Jackson's policy paper, with broad outlines of each of their plans for our cities.
Missing from Jackson's paper is the role and funding from the federal empowerment zone. More on the specifics of this "agenda" and comments later.
http://portal.cleveland-oh.gov/clnd_images/PDF/UrbanAgenda.pdf
During the presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton and then, Senator Barack Obama responded to Mayor Jackson's policy paper, with broad outlines of each of their plans for our cities.
Missing from Jackson's paper is the role and funding from the federal empowerment zone. More on the specifics of this "agenda" and comments later.
http://portal.cleveland-oh.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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