As we get ready for 2012, and continue our work advancing economic and social equity, we have exciting news from Congress!

• Choice Neighborhoods will receive $120 million to create communities of opportunity with stable affordable housing, up from $100 million last year.
• Healthy Food Financing Initiative will receive $32 million–$22 million through the Department of Treasury, and $10 million through the Department of Health and Human Services–to expand access to healthy food in low-income communities. USDA will be able to use additional resources for related efforts.
• New Starts will receive nearly $2 billion to expand public transportation systems across the country, an increase of over $300 million from last year.
• Prevention and Public Health Fund will receive the full $1 billion authorized through the Affordable Care Act, including $280 million for Community Transformation Grants, which support community-level chronic disease prevention and the promotion of health and wellness. This is a $135 million increase from 2011.
• Promise Neighborhoods will receive $60 million to support communities of opportunity centered around strong schools, based on the principles of the Harlem Children’s Zone. That’s up from $30 million in 2011, and $10 million in 2010.
• The Sustainable Communities Initiative, which helps communities plan for their future economies and implement major infrastructure investments, will receive $2.6 million for operations–but will not receive funding for the grant program.
• The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) will receive $500 million to create multi-use transportation hubs.

This post is part of a series presenting equity leaders’ reactions to “America’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model” — a new paper that challenges the nation to invest in our collective future. This post is written by Vanessa Cardenas, Director of Progress 2050 at Center for American Progress. Click here to read other reflections.

Last week, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), a nearly $80 billion bill to reauthorize the programs that build and maintain our nation’s streets, bridges, and sidewalks.  The introduction of this legislation was long-awaited.  The current reauthorization expired in 2009 and our nation’s transportation system has been limping along on extensions ever since.

As part of the debate on the bill, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced an amendment to the bill that would create the first-ever construction careers demonstration program at the U.S. Department of Transportation, a provision that could have a major impact for transportation equity.

Quality jobs in the transportation sector can provide a pathway to the middle class.  The Construction Careers Program would connect Americans who have historically been underrepresented in the transportation construction workforce – low-income communities, women, and people of color — to quality apprenticeship training and job opportunities.

This program has been tested and proven in several cities  including in Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, and Milwaukee.  Its inclusion in the next surface transportation reauthorization will provide people from communities across the nation who desire to contribute to our nation’s economic success with access to critical entry points into quality jobs in the transportation sector.

When she introduced the amendment, Sen. Gillibrand said of the elements of the construction careers program:

“[T]hese are important provisions that I believe could be a real benefit to the legislation, and hope that as this process moves forward we could work to try and include this program in the legislation.”

We are grateful to Senator Gillibrand for her leadership on this important issue.  With the introduction of this amendment, the construction careers program has reached a significant milestone.  However, we still have some important hurdles to get this proposal into the final surface transportation authorization.  Next, we would like to see this proposal taken up by other Senate Committees, particularly the Senate Banking Committee, which will reauthorize our transit programs, as well as the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

You can join the more than a dozen organizations who are working to make a Construction Careers program at US DOT a reality.  To find out how you can support of this effort, visit our website or please contact, Chris Brown, PolicyLink at cbrown@policylink.org.

A new report out from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows the really stunning rise in income inequality over the past 30 years. Seems like the folks Occupying our cities may be on to something:

Please join Valerie Jarrett and Melody Barnes on a special conference call today as the White House releases a new report on the Administration’s efforts to lift up vulnerable communities.

The new report, Pathways to Opportunity, will show the “critical investments this Administration has made to lift and keep millions of Americans out of poverty, provide critical support to families throughout the economic downturn, and invest in long-term reforms to grow the middle class,” according to the White House invitation.

RSVP here. 

WHAT: White House Conference Call

WHEN: FRIDAY, October 14^th

Start Time 5:45 p.m. Eastern (2:45 p.m. Pacific)

Dial In:  (800) 230-1092

Passcode Title: White House Update Call

WHO: Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President

            Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Please note this call is off the record and not for press purposes.

Did you join the call? Tell us what you thought in the comments!

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the report.

And this is from the White House blog post explaining the report:

When considered together, the President’s actions have made a significant impact on low-income communities in five specific areas:

• Rewarding Work.  From putting more money in the pockets of working families to investing in initiatives to help workers remain connected to the workforce and gain new skills, the President has made historic reforms to reward work.  The President secured the Making Work Pay tax credit in 2009 and 2010 and then a payroll tax cut that amounted to a 2 percent raise for working Americans in 2011. In addition, the President secured historic expansions in refundable tax credits for low-income families.  Additionally, through the Recovery Act, over 260,000 adults and youth were placed in subsidized jobs and an additional 367,000 low-income youth received summer employment.
• Reforming America’s Education System. To further empower Americans in their climb out of poverty and into the middle class, the President has made historic investments and reforms in education from cradle to career –  from launching a $500 million fund focused on improving state early learning systems to doubling the funding available for Pell Grants for low-income students.   And as a result of the groundbreaking Race to the Top initiative, more than 40 states have raised standards, improved assessments, and invested in teachers to ensure that all of our children receive a high-quality education.  The Obama Administration has also secured $40 million over the past two years to develop the Promise Neighborhoods initiative – modeled off of the Harlem Children’s Zone – to provide communities with the cradle through college continuum of services.
• Health Security for American Families.  The President has also taken historic steps to ensure greater access to health care for the neediest Americans.  Within a month of taking office, the President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act into law, expanding health coverage to more than 4 million low-income children who would otherwise go uninsured.  And because of the Affordable Care Act, 34 million Americans will become insured by 2021 as a result of provisions expanding Medicaid coverage for adults up to 133 percent of the poverty level.   Indeed, the Affordable Care Act is already working to expand coverage:  nearly one million more young adults have gained access to health insurance because of this critical new law.
• Investment in Small Business and Community Development. The President has also consistently supported investments in small businesses that in turn invest in low-income communities.  Through measures like the Small Business Jobs Act, the President has signed into law 17 small business tax cuts, established new initiatives to expand access to credit, and enhanced SBA lending programs.

 

The President has also provided additional support to Community Development Financial Institutions that lend to small businesses in the hardest-hit rural and urban communities and has also proposed to build on historic investments in the New Markets Tax Credit by expanding it from $3.5 billion to $5 billion in his FY2012 budget proposal.  This will make it easier for community development entities to attract private-sector funds for investment in startups and small businesses operating in lower-income communities.

 

• Mitigating the Impact of the Housing Crisis.  When the President took office in January of 2009, the housing market had seen major losses for 30 straight months, slashing home equity in half which combined with the recession left many communities struggling economically.  To begin rebuilding our housing market and economy, the President jump-started mortgage loan modifications, which help to keep families in their homes.  More than 4 million families have had their mortgages permanently modified since April, 2009 – nearly twice the number of foreclosures which occurred in that time.  And to help over 1 million Americans avoid homelessness, the President provided $1.5 billion through the Recovery Act for the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program.

 

Most recently, to continue the fight to create opportunity, the President announced the American Jobs Act, which would put Americans back to work and put more money in their pockets.  The American Jobs Act will provide:

 

• A new Pathways Back to Work Fund will provide hundreds of thousands of low-income youth and adults with opportunities to work and to achieve needed training in growth industries.  The Fund will support three things:  i) summer and year-round jobs for youth, building off of successful programs that supported over 367,000 such jobs in 2009 and 2010; ii) subsidized employment opportunities for low-income individuals who are unemployed, building off the successful TANF Emergency Contingency Fund wage subsidy program that supported 260,000 jobs in 2009 and 2010; and iii) promising and innovative local work-based job and training initiatives to place low-income adults and youths in jobs quickly.
• Investments to rebuild and modernize infrastructure, which include a school construction initiative that will modernize 35,000 public schools, with a focus on the school districts with the largest numbers of children in poverty; a new Project Rebuild initiative to rehabilitate and refurbish hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses in communities that have been hardest hit by the housing crisis, building off successful models from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program; and a new training initiative to expand infrastructure employment opportunities for minorities, women, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.
• An extension and expansion of the payroll tax cut passed last December, which will boost the incomes of virtually all 160 million American workers, and a tax credit to provide up to $4,000 per worker for businesses who hire individuals who have been looking for a job for 6 months or more.
• An extension of unemployment insurance that will ensure that 6 million Americans will not lose their unemployment insurance benefits, while encouraging reforms that will help get the long-term unemployed back to work, armed with lifelong skills.

 

On Tuesday, September 20^th public transit riders, advocates, and employees are joining for a nation-wide event, Don’t X Out Public Transportation.  Rallies are planned for over two dozen cities around the country to call on Congress to support investments public transportation; and also to oppose a proposal from the U.S. House of Representatives that would cut transit funding by more than one third.

Such a drastic cut would likely result in major service cuts and fare increases that would leave millions of Americans, particularly low-income people and communities of color, stranded without transportation options:

• Nearly 60 percent of households without vehicles have incomes below 80 percent of their region’s median income.

• Over 27 percent of Latino and 25 percent of African American households in metropolitan areas have no access a vehicle.

Preserving and enhancing our public transportation system is a critical investment for a more inclusive nation.  Visit the Don’t X Out Public Transportation website to get information about joining a rally in your community.  Also, stayed tuned to EquityBlog for additional updates on how you can get engaged in building a more equitable transportation system in America.

A new report released today by Brookings shows that high-skilled immigrants (those with a college degree or more) now outnumber low-skilled immigrants (those with less than a high school diploma). Check out their chart:

But the trend isn’t playing out everywhere in America. While high-skilled immigrants outnumber low-skilled ones in the San Francisco Bay Area and much of the Eastern Seaboard (plus Ohio and Seattle), low-skilled immigrants still dominate throughout the Southwest and Midwest.

What does this mean for jobs and economic recovery in these communities? How can we get more skills to those who need them?

Photo Courtesy of Tavis Smiley Presents and PBS.org

Tonight, PBS will air “Too Important to Fail,” a new prime time special presented by Tavis Smiley that looks at the educational challenges facing African American male youth across the country. The special will feature interviews with educators, policymakers, and young people who, in their own voices, describe myriad obstacles they have and continue to encounter in their pursuit of a quality education.

In a companion blog post to tonight’s special, PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell goes beyond the issue of education to explore other critical problems facing boys and men of color and the communities in which they live – including joblessness, poverty, high incarceration, lack of public transit, and more. According to Blackwell, the path to resolution must start with investments in comprehensive policy solutions that will slash the “opportunity deficit” disparately impacting male and female youth of color today, and end cycles of poverty in low-income communities and communities of color.

Blackwell says:

We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the problems facing low-income people and communities of color, particularly the black and brown youth who will soon constitute the majority. In fact, we have an urgent moral and economic imperative to address them.

In a shifting and competitive global economy, the dearth of quality, meaningful opportunities, combined with persistent obstacles and deficient academic and social supports, risks dismantling the very families and communities that are raising our future skilled workforce.

To slash America’s opportunity deficit, we must start by standing up for new and existing solutions to education, workforce training and job creation that would help shatter cycles of generational poverty by preparing young workers of color for better-paying, long-term jobs of the future.

Read the full piece here on PBS.org.

What did you think of Tavis’ prime time special? After you watch, be sure to visit the comments section below and let us know.

Today in Sacramento PolicyLink will deliver testimony at the California Assembly Select Committee hearing on the Status of Boys and Men of color to address the critical barriers impacting African American and Latino male youth across the state and the U.S.

Compared to other ethnic groups, young boys and men of color in America are more likely to:

• Have far less access to quality schools, teachers and after-school programs that provide safe spaces to learn and play
• Encounter disproportionately harsh disciplinary and punitive practices and policies
• Experience severely high levels of poverty, joblessness, incarceration, and violence

These statistics reveal a national crisis about which PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell and Maria Echaveste, former Deputy Chief of Staff for President Clinton, had this to say:

“Our convictions derive from on-the-ground observations of what’s happening to the most marginalized, as well as the lived experiences of black men and boys with whom we are intimately familiar.

“We wouldn’t dare let a 10-year-old African American kid leave home in pants sagging way lower than they should; no matter that his white classmates in “cool” Berkeley do the same without being stereotyped or stunted.

“We hear the angst and frustration of a nephew, locked up when he was 16 for committing the sort of crime for which a white teen is remanded to community service: ‘Tia,’ says he, now 30, ‘I’m trying to do better but I can’t get a job. When they hear I have a record …’

“For us, the personal, professional and policymaking are bound together. We are emboldened as mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts and advocates by what our kin have endured, even as we push for truly at-risk males from other families of color to get a fairer chance.”

You can read more in today’s Sacramento Bee opinion section.

The PolicyLink Summit is back! Please join us – and thousands of your fellow advocates, activists, policymakers, foundation officials, and other equity leaders – in Detroit this November for Equity Summit 2011:

Equity Summit 2011:

Healthy Communities, Strong Regions, A Prosperous America

November 8 to 11, 2011
Detroit Marriott at the
Renaissance Center

More than 2,000 equity leaders attended our Regional Equity ‘08 Summit in New Orleans three years ago. In the time since, the national equity movement has grown even stronger.
At Equity Summit 2011, together we will discuss and develop the agenda for sustainable and equitable development with access to jobs, transportation, education, health, and housing.

On to Detroit,
Angela Glover Blackwell
Founder and CEO, PolicyLink

For up-to-the-minute updates on Equity Summit 2011, please follow our new Twitter feed at @EquitySummit

Photo used under Creative Commons license via Flickr user Andorpro