By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau Chief
In this Sept. 15 photo, Jacqueline Greene, left, and Patricia Caldwell look over a brochure before entering a job fair sponsored by the National Urban League in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)
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(September 27, 2009) - WASHINGTON – Despite predictions, experts said African-Americans were roadkill on the information highway, missing out on most of the economic opportunities in that revolution as they did with many others.
But Black government and community leaders declared during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference that the same will not be said of Blacks and the emerging green economy.
“This is the sleeper civil and economic issue of the 21st century,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights. “And it’s the first real opportunity for the African-American community to be involved in a transformative effort that is shaping our economy and the global economy as well,”
Henderson was a panelist in a forum titled, “Black & Green: American-American Leadership in Building an Inclusive Clean-Energy Economy,” one of several green economy workshops at the 39th Annual Legislative Conference of the CBCF.
Since the presidential campaign, “green jobs” have been touted as the answer to a recession-scarred economy and are a major element of President Obama’s economic recovery toolbox. And the green economy could prove crucial to the survival of the Black community, panelists said.
“The issue is not green jobs; the issue is any job,” Henderson told the audience. “In times of famine, there is no bad bread. Our community is in a crisis and employment of any kind, but especially employment in an emerging economy, is important.”
Sadly, a lack of green interest and foresight is evident in many communities that need it most, including his hometown of Detroit, said consultant Dalton Roberson Jr., 36, which has been crushed by the collapse of the U.S. auto industry.
“The economic conditions are so bad and people are so focused on making it from day-to-day that discussions about the green economy seem 10 years in the future or 30,000 feet above their heads,” he said. “Frankly, a lot of people are still hoping for the return of the auto industry.”
Roberson said he came to the forum looking for information and experts who could help him strategize about how Detroit could use its resources, including manufacturing plants, trained manufacturing workers and even natural resources such as the Detroit River, which could serve as a renewable energy source, to reinvent the city as a green technologies hub.
Recent government moves to stabilize the economy also include opportunities for African-American workers, businesses and communities to reinvent themselves, panelists said.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for example, allocated $500 million for competitive grants for green jobs training, especially for women, minorities, ex-offenders and veterans, high school dropouts, the unemployed and those living in high poverty areas. Additionally, the act allocated billions for weatherization projects aimed toward creating temporary jobs for low-income families.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives and is awaiting Senate action, takes it even further. “I wanted to make sure that bill was more inclusive and that it would provide more opportunities for African-Americans to find employment, provide more opportunities for entrepreneurship and also other investment opportunities,” said Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D), a senior member of the House Energy Committee and sponsor of the forum.
Among the provisions he fought to include were the creation of clean energy innovation consortiums for predominantly Black institutions, which would allocate funds for research and development of clean energy technologies, and the Green Construction Careers Demonstration Project, which provides $860 million to provide pre-apprenticeship training in green construction jobs to low-income persons or those not traditionally employed in construction trades. It also requires that those trained workers must provide a minimum percentage of the work on green construction projects.
The latter measure was hard-fought but necessary, said Congressman Rush. “This provision didn’t come easy,” he said. “We worked all night long…. We cussed and we cussed some more. We asked forgiveness for cussing and then we cussed some more. It was hard … but finally they relented.”
Given how Black workers and contractors were excluded from other major projects, the lawmaker said he was determined it would not happen again. “If labor [unions] wants me and other CBC members to continue to be for labor, then labor is going to have to change its policies about apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship and allow African-Americans to get those opportunities,” he said. “Our support for labor cannot continue to be mostly a one way street.”
Melissa Bradley-Brown, of Green for All, which helped lobby for the provision, said it is important for fostering stable employment by creating “career pipelines” in Black communities.
The environmental activist said they are also fighting for Black entrepreneurs like J.T. Stinnette of Chicago-based Stinnette & Brown LLC to get a piece of the “green” pie.
Stinnette said when the economy began to cave in two years ago, her company, then an affordable housing developer, “lost its footing.”
“As a strategy to reposition ourselves we had to brand ourselves ‘green’ and diversify,” she said.
The company branched out to provide green jobs training – training 98 high school students in different aspects of the green economy and providing green media, green housing development, consulting and construction services.
But the company could not access stimulus dollars nor could they secure a bank loan.It’s because of situations like this that Green for All is working with the private sector through its Capital Access Program, Bradley-Brown said. “We recognize that while it’s truly important to have legislation to create the infrastructure to create jobs, at the end of the day, it’s the private sector, the business community including for-profit and not-for-profit that will be responsible for creating these jobs,” she said.
Panelists said this is only one of many fronts that will require the attention and advocacy of the Black community if it is to prosper in the new “green” age.
Recently, the Obama administration allocated $12 billion to reform America’s community colleges, money the Black community must channel into curricula that train African Americans for green-collar jobs, said Naomi Davis of Blacks in Green (BIG), a “green village builder.”
“Go to your local community college, see if they have any green jobs offerings and if they don’t, let your voice be heard,” she said.
Davis and others agree the first step is to raise awareness of the issue within the Black community and then present a unified front. “We must collaborate,” Davis said. “Everyone working independently isn’t going to work.”
Congressman Rush said with President Obama in the White House, the Black community has a rare opportunity to move closer to economic parity, an opportunity they cannot afford to have slip away.
“We have to be very vigilant on this, we can’t let this energy bill and this whole new economy come and go,” he said. “We have a new opportunity now. We’re in the Obama era, but it’s going to end in the next eight years. And, as we look back, shame on us if under the administration and presidency of the first and only African-American president our community is not better off than it was at the beginning.”