Who did you vote for?

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Yesterday was primary election day for many local races in Milwaukee. To prepare for this event I checked to learn who were my local representatives, found a piece of mail to bring with me to the polls as proof of address and then learned about the candidates. The actual voting took place in the afternoon between my morning and afternoon shifts. I went to the polling place where I had voted the past several years, only to discover I was in a new ward and I would have to walk a few blocks to my new polling place.

Voting has been ingrained in me almost from birth. When I went home for the holidays in December my soon to be 88 year old mother told me she not only votes but also helps drive others to the polls. My older sister is a former Democratic committee woman. I found my first girl friend through working on a political campaign while in high school. Yes, I was born to be informed.

I was always aware that our choices my be limited or increased by what happens at the ballot box. Take re-designing the mental health system in Milwaukee County, for example. At least two of the new supported apartment buildings constructed in Milwaukee were built using federal money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009  signed into law by President Obama. This act, derided by Republicans, helped create real and permanent good by offering decent affordable housing for people with mental illness. Combined with resources from state and local government, private foundations and investors, it was an example of economic stimulation at its finest.

It was a sharp contrast the the Bush era economic stimulus which consisted of nothing more than a small across the board  tax cut. Barely Political, a You tube satire group, did a hilarious send up of the stimulus package. It included a man fantasizing about all the great things he was going to buy with his $200.

The merits of these approaches to government are being debated and distorted every day in the media and it behooves everyone to learn about them. Especially when you are recovering from a mental illness, you need to understand that you can make a difference in the world around you. You can petition, make telephone calls, write blogs, talk to your neighbors and pay attention to the news. These are called instrumental activities of daily living and they are almost as essential as getting a good night’s rest in building a whole life. You will find the more you immerse yourself in the world, the less time you will have to feeling distressed.

Image via CrunchBase

 

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One of the 44%

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has published a front page story about the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Center for Development about the disappearance from the job market of African American men. Over the past 40 years employment levels for men 16 to 64, a group which includes me, have fallen from 73% to just barely 44%.  At the same time, incarceration rates have risen dramatically. Even for men not incarcerated, it’s not uncommon to find they are paying off tickets for disorderly conduct or other offenses.  At the same time, they we are leaving the job scene, we are actually becoming less employable.

According to the UWM study, the bottom 5 cities for black male employment were

1. Chicago 48.3%
2. Cleveland 47.7%
3. Milwaukee44.7%
4. Buffalo 43.9%
5. Detroit43.0%

The top 5 were

1. Washington 66.6%
2. Dallas 61.%
3. Boston 59.7%
4. Minneapolis 59.3%
5. Atlanta 59.0%

You will notice that those top levels of employment are nowhere near the peak level from 40 years ago.  Further, the declines in employment levels covered white, Hispanic and black men. It is a trend that mirrored the de-industrialization of northern cities.  As our jobs fled south and later to China (that giant sucking sound Ross Perot  warned  us about) we have been left with lower paid positions in the service industry.

The factory jobs that remain are largely performed by robots that do all the manual labor that our parents used to do. It’s called getting more out of workers or some fancy term like “productivity.”

As an African-American male I find this situation troubling. When I left Buffalo in 1980 it was already in decline. Although things looked better in my new home of Milwaukee, it, too was on the way down. Despite two college degrees I found it difficult to develop and sustain a satisfactory career.  In recent years I have created a new career, as a peer specialist and for the first time my income and hours worked began to rise. I guess I should feel grateful but I worry about the long term implications of the UWM study.

My nephew John has started a family in Buffalo. Will he fall victim, too? Is America prepared to ignore the skills of millions men who play by the rules and strive for a piece of the dream? Are we going to recapture those jobs that fled our shores? Can a man who creates jobs in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland understand the plight of American workers? I don’t think so, Mitt! Can a man who labelled Barack Obama “the food stamp president” identify with the issues facing low income workers? No way, Newt. Will the former publisher of racist newsletters give a damn whether black men and women drown in this economy?

Barack Obama’s future is tied to our success. We may not return to the employment levels of the 1970s overnight but that’s the only way we can create an America that is born to succeed.

Related articles

• A Shortage of Eligible Black Men (theroot.com)
• State of the Union: Proposals may do little to reduce black unemployment (thegrio.com)