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G.M., Detroit and the Fall of the Black Middle Class
Marvin Powell with his wife, children and parents at his home in Southfield, Mich
By JONATHAN MAHLER
Published: June 24, 2009
The Pontiac Assembly Center in Pontiac, Mich., is a massive, low-slung structure of concrete and corrugated green steel that squats conspicuously among the many strip malls that line one of the city's main thoroughfares, South Opdyke Road. Locals refer to the three-million-square-foot factory, which makes Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, as Plant 6, because when it opened in 1972, it was the sixth General Motors manufacturing facility in this city, 25 miles north of downtown Detroit. At the time, General Motors was the world's largest automaker. It dominated the American market, manufacturing half of the vehicles sold in the U.S. As recently as 2003, Plant 6 was running three consecutive eight-hour shifts, employing 3,000 people and making 1,300 trucks a day.
Today, Pontiac Assembly is the city's last working auto-assembly plant, and like many of America's car factories, it is operating at a greatly diminished capacity. By last summer, the plant was running just one shift - from 6 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon - having shed nearly two-thirds of its workers through a combination of layoffs, buyouts and early retirements. A few months ago, Plant 6 slowed down its assembly line and laid off another 600 employees, bringing the total number of remaining workers to fewer than 600. The factory now produces only about 230 vehicles a day.
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Barack Obama and Alarming Black Unemployment
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, PhD
May 26th 2009
About a week ago, I received a call from a radio show host who was practically screaming through the phone. I wasn't sure if she was in labor with her first child, running from a mass murderer, or had just seen Denzel Washington in her bathroom shower. I figured that whatever she was screaming about, it had to be important.
When the radio show host informed me of the source of her discomfort, I was ready to scream myself. The black unemployment numbers, while typically absurd, had reached (in TSA language) threat level orange. During the month of April, while white unemployment nation-wide rose by only .1% (to 8.0%), black unemployment rose by a shocking 1.7% (to 15%). This means that black unemployment grew by 17 times more than white unemployment and is nearly double the rate of white America. Yes, it's time to be alarmed.
Unemployment has dropped in 21 states. The US is starting to see scant signs of an economic recovery (I'll admit that my stock portfolio is no longer on life support). The stock market has risen dramatically over the past 2 months and could be even more bullish after this week. Yet, black America is getting hammered relentlessly by the economic downturn. Not trying to bother you President Barack Obama (I know you're kind of busy with that whole North Korea thing), but do you have anything to say about this?
President Obama has created a task force on the middle class. He has formed a task force for the automobile industry. His administration has issued bailouts left and right to banks, insurance companies and Wall Street executives. And although the black community does not represent the majority of President Obama's constituency, one might argue that a task force on black unemployment could be worth the time it takes to sign a document.
Given the fact that black male unemployment in some urban areas is as high as 3 - 4 times the national average, President Obama would even be well-justified in forming a task force on the state of the black male in America. When black males are struggling, black families are struggling. As a black man himself, President Obama cannot forget that.
"The disproportionate incarceration rates of black males make the entry back into society very difficult," says Dr. Byron Price, author of 'Merchandising Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization?'. "Given that we have a service based economy, black males are left out of the loop on job opportunities, and black families are significantly affected."
Dr. Price, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The Barbara Jordan Institute for Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, states that President Obama must be proactive in helping African Americans manage the challenges of their own collective depression. The black community tends to suffer disproportionately during economic downturns and more generalized stimulus packages don't always filter to urban America.
I believe in the president and I want him to succeed. I even challenged my respected brother Tavis Smiley when he spoke ill of Barack Obama last year. But Tavis is correct in the sense that accountability must always be present when evaluating our political leaders. We cannot fall asleep at the wheel and assume that our interests are going to be consistently represented by politicians who have no incentive to do so. That would be like a benevolent boss expecting his employees to come to work every day, even though he has told them that it's OK for them to stay home with their children.
When America sees its unemployment levels rise to 8%, there is a panic and demand for government accountability. When there is a natural disaster, we expect to see Homeland Security in our state. When a major corporation fails, executives arrive hat-in-hand, asking for Congressional support. Some African Americans, on the other hand, see requests for government support to be a sign of weakness, while forgetting about the fact that we pay taxes too.
President Obama is likely a man who cares for people of color. I am even willing to try to make sense of his decision to allow for a significant cut in funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) - even though this fact has become disputed. The challenge is that we must remain mindful of the tradeoff between symbolism and true opportunity, as we enjoy the spoils of having a black president. Black unemployment of 15% should be enough to get our president's attention, and it should be OK for him to actually acknowledge that the black community has a unique set of challenges. African Americans cannot continue to be the mistress that the president sneaks in the back door, for I am not sure of the last time I've heard the president use the words "black man" in public.
It is for certain that Barack Obama is not just "the president of black people". But we can't assume that just because he is not a "black leader", that he has no accountability for black Americans. Supporting our president is critical, but by sufferingly silently to the side, we are not helping him do his job at all. Black America must make its voice heard, and Obama must be the one to hear it.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of "Financial Lovemaking 101: Merging Assets with Your Partner in Ways that Feel Good." He also does regular commentary in national media, including CNN, BET, CBS and more. For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com. |
THE JUNE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, 9.5%
By April Ryan http://aprildryan.com/
The new June national unemployment numbers stand at 9.5 percent. The White House expects the rate to reach 10 percent in the near future. The black unemployment rate usually is double the numbers of mainstream America. The June black unemployment is 14.7 percent. The Hispanic unemployment rate is 12.2 percent. The Washington Post has reported the black unemployment rate is slated to hit 20 percent by the end of the year.
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PRESIDENT OBAMA ON THE RISING BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS
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President Obama's Job Creation Efforts Will Pass by Many Blacks and Latinos, Says New Study by Research Center at NYU
A study released Monday, May 18, 2009 by the Women of Color Policy Network, a research center at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, shows that job creation efforts in President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will miss many Blacks and Latinos due to their disproportionately high unemployment rates.
The unemployment rate for Blacks and Latinos is 12.9 percent, significantly higher than the national average of 8.9 percent. As currently configured, jobs created or saved through the Reinvestment Act would decrease the national unemployment rate to 6.5 percent, but would only decrease the unemployment rate among African-Americans and Latinos to 10.7 percent.
Of the nearly 4 million jobs to be created or saved through the Reinvestment Act, only 917,675 will go to African-Americans and Latinos, the report has found.
An additional 1.7 million jobs would have to be created and go directly to Blacks and Latinos to cut the unemployment rate in those communities to the Obama administration's projected national rate of 6.5 percent by 2010.
The Women of Color Policy Network study also found:
- Of the jobs created or saved, African-American and Latino women will receive an estimated 420,991 and African-American and Latino men will receive 496,684
- African-Americans and Latinos are under-represented in the industries targeted through the Reinvestment Act. Black and Latino men comprise 5.1 percent and 8.4 percent of those working in targeted industries. Black and Latino women make up 5.9 percent and 5.6 of those working in targeted industries
- Of the targeted industries and occupations identified as green, African-Americans and Latinos comprise less than 25 percent of those employed
- Although women will receive nearly half of the jobs that will be created through the Act, they are under-represented in higher-wage occupations and in targeted industries
- White women will receive an estimated 1,377,879 jobs through the Reinvestment act; a figure nearly 70 percent higher than for African-American and Latino women combined.
To view the Report, please click here. |
Fellow Kinetics Faith & Justice Network member, Dr. Eric McDaniel, is researching the degree to which churches actively discuss various health issues ranging from heart disease to domestic violence. The survey will ask questions in regards to the actual activities of the church, such as programs or message sent to the congregation or community. It will also examine pastor's attitudes towards these issues and their perception of member attitudes.
We are looking for 800 pastors who would be willing to participate. The survey will be made available via the internet this coming Fall. If your church is interested in participating in this survey please email me at info@kineticnet.org . Please include name of church, pastor, and your contact information.
Please support this valuable research and our brother. In love & service,
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About Us
... You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell. (Isaiah. 58:12)
Kinetics Faith & Justice Network is designed to form strategic alliances and foster dialogue across various disciplines for community empowerment. Members include clergy, scholars, lawyers, social justice advocates, and nonprofit and business professionals.
Kinetics mission is to disseminate information and develop new ideas that work to strengthen social movements within the African-American community; providing them with the tools and skills to pursue justice and better address the needs of those whom they serve. Kinetics is a project of Fusion Partnerships, Inc.
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State to close only public psych facility in Baltimore City
Walter P. Carter Center RN Charge Nurse Carolyn Work.
PHOTO: Christopher Myers
By Erin Sullivan | Posted 6/26/2009
On Oct. 1, the only publicly run acute psychiatric inpatient hospital in Baltimore City, the Walter P. Carter Center, will be closed for good.
The center is named after noted civil rights activist Walter P. Carter, who felt strongly that the city of Baltimore needed a publicly run facility that offered much-needed social, health, and community services to its poorest residents. The center was opened in its current location, at 630 W. Fayette St., in 1976, and today it is the only facility of its kind in the city, offering inpatient psychiatric treatment to indigent and uninsured residents.
"What happened was that when my dad died, the civil rights advocates at the time basically made a demand of the state that it open a facility like this one," says state Del. Jill Carter (D-41st District), Walter P. Carter's daughter. "It wasn't exactly the vision of what my dad wanted-he wanted a place for the indigent where they could basically get their lives together-but still, the history of civil rights is tied up in this center."
When the state closes it down, Baltimore will become one of just two major cities in America that does not have a public psychiatric hospital to take in poverty-stricken and uninsured individuals suffering from everything from social adjustment disorders to acute schizophrenia. (New Orleans is the only other city that does not have such a facility.) Patients being treated at the Carter Center will have to be transported to other state-run facilities outside city limits-such as Spring Grove in Catonsville or the Clifton T. Perkins Center in Jessup-and nurses at the center say that patients are already being transferred as units are downsized and closed, in preparation for Oct. 1.
"Today I have to take a couple of people off my unit," Carter Center RN charge nurse Carolyn Work says on a recent afternoon. "They are trying to downsize from three units to two units. They are trying to send them all to Spring Grove, but Spring Grove is saying they don't have any beds. But they are trying to get them over there. I think this is going to be a tougher battle then they thought. They were hoping to get them out by the end of July."
Every year during the legislative session, rumors and reports that the state is scheming to close the Carter Center-or at the very least, privatize its services-to save money arise, but then are squashed before the end of session. In 2003, for instance, a plan to privatize the center by outsourcing its management to the University of Maryland Medical System was proposed as a way to save the state money. The proposal died when University of Maryland and the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Administration could not come to terms about how to structure the deal. The state offered $30 million over the course of five years, and the university would have been eligible for additional money for taking in uninsured patients, but concerns were raised that there was nothing in place to stop the university from filling all of the beds with insured patients, leaving the uninsured with nowhere to go.
In 2007, rumors that the Carter Center was again facing potential closure were fervently denied by hospital administrators and state officials. At that time, Sheilah Davenport, deputy director of the Mental Hygiene Administration, which oversees the state's psychiatric facilities, told City Paper that it was just a "rumor that won't die" and that the facility was not being shuttered or moved outside city limits.
This year, however, closure of the Carter Center is not a rumor: In January 2009, a proposal was floated to move all patients out of the center to other mental-health facilities, relocate staff, and turn the center over to the University of Maryland to operate outpatient clinics-but no inpatient services. In February, Del. Carter proposed HB 1043, a bill that would prohibit the state Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene from closing the facility. That bill was sent to the Health and Government committee, where it received an "unfavorable report" by the committee. No action was taken on the bill after that. Carter then proposed another bill, HB 1044, that would have required that the employees of the Walter P. Carter Center be offered state employment if the center was to be closed and that the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene "ensure that specified community-based services" be offered to replace those being eliminated with the center's closure and that the University of Maryland "perform specified duties of the Walter P. Carter Center if transferred to the university." That bill was sent to committee where it quickly died.
"They do this thing in the legislature where they say we don't need the legislation because they say we're going to go ahead and do it anyway," Carter says. A letter [that Del. Pete] Hammen showed me indicates that they are going to put some things into place, more and expanded services. But it's all just best efforts-they'll do the best they can."
Archie Wallace, CEO of the Walter P. Carter Center, says he can't comment on the closure of the center and refers calls to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. John Colmers, secretary of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, says the proposal to close the Carter Center is part of a broader series of decisions being made about the state's mental-health facilities. He says that while inpatient services at the Carter Center-which had 34 inpatient beds just prior to closure, down from 51 earlier this year-are being eliminated, 44 more beds are being added at the Perkins Center in Jessup. Opening those beds, he says, will free up space at Spring Grove in Catonsville.
"The majority of the patients who are in the Walter P. Carter Center inpatient unit today are forensic patients," Colmers says. "They are criminally involved. Those are not patients that we can or should place into private facilities. They will be served in-and they come not just from Baltimore city, but other jurisdictions as well-they will be served in one of the other state facilities: Spring Grove, Springfield, or Perkins."
Civilly committed patients, he says, can also be treated at Spring Grove or Springfield, but the state is also planning to buy private beds at Bon Secours, Shepherd Pratt, and other private hospitals.
The state pays millions of dollars per year for those private hospital beds, and according to a letter written to state delegates by Dr. Steve Whitefield, a psychiatrist who used to work at the Carter Center, the state "is not getting its money's worth" because private hospitals can pick and choose which patients to admit: "They cherry pick for the patients whose care will cost them the least to provide, and do not provide a safety net and best practices type of care that state hospitals provide the uninsured."
Colmers says that the millions paid for private beds is actually a "cost saver" for the state, because the state negotiates the price via a rate-setting system and stays in private hospitals are usually "a little bit shorter" than at public ones. Colmers says that the vast majority of mental health services are provided in community settings, not hospitals, and Baltimore already has a strong public and private mental-health infrastructure in place.
Work says she's "outraged" at the state's short-sightedness in this situation. She says that the Carter Center is the only place willing to keep acute psych patients long enough to stabilize them and get them on a steady medication regimen before release. Private facilities, she says, usually release people in a matter of days.
"[Patients] can usually be here from one to three months," she says. "And when they get treatment like that, they can get back to being on meds and their chances of making it on the outside are much, much greater. If you have to send them to the University of Maryland clinic or to Bon Secours, or any place like that, the length of stay is so short. If you're a paranoid schizophrenic, the first few days you are here, you probably don't even want to take your medication at all. So if you're released, you're not going to make it. So it becomes a revolving door thing."
Not only is that detrimental to the patient, says John Burleigh, who was also a civil rights activist and friend of Walter P. Carter's, it's detrimental to the community. The Carter Center, he says, was created to address the unmet needs of minorities and low-income individuals in the city during a time when "many were being released from institutions, during the movement of deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill." Many of those patients, he recalls, had few resources and ended up out on the streets. Because of their mental illnesses, these untreated patients would do things that were "socially unacceptable" and would end up incarcerated.
"It was found that these people were being misdirected and mistreated because they were ill, not criminals," Burleigh recalls. "There was a growing need and awareness of that unmet need."
Meetings were held with the Community Health Council, the Congress of Racial Equality, and professional health care providers to come up with a plan that would address the need for mental health care for the poor and minorities. "Through negotiations, we were able to bring to fruition an institute to address those needs," he says. "The Walter P. Carter Center."
Burleigh says that people should be aware of how the closure of the center will affect the community if replacement services are not in place when it's gone. "We should not be shortsighted in reducing resources to the community that provides for unmet needs, that provides funding for unmet needs, in lower-income and minority communities," he says. "It exacerbates the increase of social problems and deteriorates the quality of life for the community at large."
Colmers does not agree that the state is backing away from its commitment to provide mental-health services to poor and minority communities.
"Our commitment to mental-health needs in Baltimore city and to eliminating health disparities, including health disparities in mental health, is profound," he says. "We are profoundly committed to addressing those issues, even in these economic times, to be sure that services are available to people."
To that end, he says, the state will work closely with the University of Maryland to establish more outpatient services to absorb the mental-health needs of the community. Carter says the plan, from her perspective, seems "kind of murky" and she hopes the state is able to make sure that "the largest jurisdiction [in the state] with the greatest mental health needs in the state has some type of facility people can go to. Especially people without any money or any insurance."
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