Bringing Conservation to the Congregations

by Danielle Deane
originally posted at Region Forward

For nearly five years, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has taken the lead in identifying and advancing African American perspectives on climate change, energy conservation and environmental matters. Now, we’re taking a practical step to bring part of that message to a larger audience.

The Joint Center, an organization aimed at expanding participation in the political and public policy arenas, has formed a partnership with African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) Bishops Vashti Murphy McKenzie of Nashville and Adam Jefferson Richardson, Jr., of Washington, DC, and with the non-profit organization GREEN DMV, to help local congregations raise their environmental awareness and make their churches more energy efficient. One benefit of this program is that the churches will be able to redirect cost savings to carry out their missions in the community.

The project will take on several churches in the Washington region and in the Tennessee-Kentucky region in its first phase. GREEN DMV, which promotes the use of clean energy and the development of green jobs as a way out of poverty, will assess energy use at selected churches in the regions and implement low- and no-cost strategies for reducing energy use. We intend to track and document the results so that the team can share best practices with other congregations at one of the denomination’s largest gatherings, the 49^th Quadrennial Session of the AME Church General Conference in Nashville this summer.

The project, which is funded by the Walmart Foundation, strikes a favorable balance between good stewardship and good sense; we expect it to yield both financial and community-oriented rewards.

During the launch, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has an Energy Star Congregations Network to provide information and technical support for churches that want to go green, will provide guidance.

The EPA estimates that if the nation’s 370,000 congregations reduce energy use by 10 percent, they would save nearly $315 million and provide 1.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity without additional cost or pollution!

African American churches have always been leaders in social movements that have shaped the nation. This collaboration with the AME churches extends that tradition.

Danielle Deane is the Director of the Energy and Environment Program at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. For more information on Ms. Deane and her work, please visit the Joint Center website.

Idea Theft and Black Unemployment

By Joseph Miller, Esq.

Black unemployment is a symptom of persistent racial discrimination and skills gaps, but competition and trade policies play a role in unemployment that policy makers too often overlook.  Information technology (IT) and intellectual property (IP) theft is a significant threat to U.S. companies’ ability to generate revenue and thereby jobs.  Earlier this week, U.S. Senators Mary L. Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, along with a bipartisan group of 14 other committee members, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging it to assist 36 state attorneys general in confronting the growing problem of IT and IP theft from U.S. companies by foreign manufacturers.

Some have noted that many African Americans are already grappling with a silent economic depression.  While the nation’s employment picture has slowly improved over recent months to an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent in February 2012, the unemployment rate for African-Americans still stands at 14.1 percent, which is up from 13.6 percent in January.  This is significantly higher than the Great Recession peak overall unemployment rate of 10.2% in October of 2009.

The fates of African Americans have been tied to the manufacturing sector since the end of World War II.  John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer of the Center for Economic and Policy Research have noted that manufacturing jobs “built the black middle class after World War II.”  However, between 1979 and 2007, the share of African Americans working in manufacturing fell from 23.9 percent to 9.8 percent.  During the Great Recession’s incipient stages between December 2007 and December 2009, the manufacturing sector experienced a 14.6 percent decline in employment–among 13 service sector industries, only construction experienced a steeper decline in jobs during that period. African-Americans were among those workers who were hardest hit during this period and are now under-represented in manufacturing.

Improving African-American unemployment trends will require a multi-agency effort.  The U.S. Department of Labor and other agencies have already granted a consortium of 10 universities in South Carolina and an HBCU $20 million to develop 37 new online courses in emerging jobs in manufacturing and other key sectors.  While this approach addresses skills gaps, the FTC can do its part by addressing IT and IP theft and ensuring the competitive landscape remains conducive to job growth.

Joseph Miller, Esq. is Deputy Director and Senior Policy Director of the Media and Technology Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC.  More information on Mr. Miller and his work can be found at the Joint Center website.

Looking Ahead to 2012

by Ralph Everett, Esq.
originally published in The Washington Informer

Elections are about opportunity. And with so many critical issues hanging in the balance at present, 2012 will be an especially important time for Americans themselves to influence the direction of our country.

With the recovery just beginning to pick up the pace, 2011 was a challenging year for most everyone, regardless of their race, across nearly all economic indicators – jobs, net worth, home values. And while it is true that black unemployment runs almost twice that of the general population – at more than 16 percent – some studies now show that as a direct result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, some 6.9 million Americans were kept above the poverty line, including 1.3 million African Americans.

It is also true that President Obama inherited an economy that was in almost unprecedented free-fall and acted quickly to stop the hemorrhaging and began to rebuild. He has been working to help create the economic conditions for employment growth through efforts to rebuild critical infrastructure and our public education system.

And while current economic conditions point to job creation and economic recovery as the premier issue for the 2012 campaign, the past year has not been devoid of hope and the outlook is not without considerable promise for the African American community.

For example, at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies we have been encouraged by our progress in directing greater focus under the new health care law toward addressing longstanding racial disparities in health outcomes and access to health services.

On other fronts, despite all the problems afflicting areas of concentrated poverty, the numbers of young, educated African American adults are growing. A recent Washington Post poll showed that their optimism is on the upswing, with most of them saying they are better off than their parents, and that their children will be better off than they themselves are now.

Further, young African Americans are adopting broadband and mobile Internet technologies at among the highest rates of any group. As the new online technologies continue to revolutionize how people receive information, interact with each other and take part in civic and political dialogue, we are seeing exceptional potential for enabling more people of color to participate and to engage in our civic and political life.

But we need to be mindful that political trends sometimes work at cross-purposes. A report the Joint Center issued recently pointed to a precipitous drop in the number of African American state legislators in the South who serve in the majority party – from more than half to fewer than five percent in just past few years. The result is that black voters and black elected officials in that region have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era. On top of this, there is a strong move in these and other states to make it more difficult for people to register and vote, either through tougher identification requirements at the polls, shortening of the early voting periods or through restrictions on voter registration drives and other such measures.

Accordingly, 2012 will be a critical year for voting rights and political participation, which should be at the core of our efforts to put America back on track toward ever-expanding opportunity and a better quality of life for all. African Americans in particular need to engage and participate and take full advantage of this precious right that our parents and grandparents fought so vigorously for a half-century ago. Whether you vote Democrat or Republican is not the issue. What matters is that you get to the polls and cast your ballot.

Accordingly, we need a more concerted effort to address the apathy that many of our fellow citizens feel, and to find ways to expand political participation, which is so vital to the successful functioning of our democracy. To help accomplish this, the Joint Center this year established our Civic Engagement and Governance Institute, which will work to improve the quality and quantity of the interaction between citizens and their government, and to provide space for analysis, ideas and dialogue aimed at bringing more people into the process – and ultimately driving the solutions that will improve lives and build futures.

Elections matter. Fully participating in elections and exercising the right to vote matter even more. Nothing less than the American Dream will hang in the balance in 2012.

Ralph Everett, Esq., is the President and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC. More information on Mr. Everett and his work can be found on the Joint Center website.

21st Century “Retirement 101”

by Wilhelmina A. Leigh, Ph.D.

It’s not your parents’ retirement—especially if your parents retired with a pension and a gold watch after 25 years on the job.  For today’s working adults, it’s more likely to be a retirement based on the safety-net-level of benefits from Social Security, supplemented with personal savings and investment.  The catch is, however, that too many African Americans are saving too little to be comfortable during their retirement years under this model.

Average monthly Social Security retirement benefits for African-American males ($1,120) and African-American females ($960.50) provide an annual income only modestly above the federal poverty threshold for persons 65 years and older ($10,458). The additional fact that 70 percent of African Americans have saved less than $25,000 for retirement suggests there will be little “gold” in our golden years.

Personal savings and investment can take place both via employer retirement plans and independent of employment.  Saving through employer pensions and retirement plans does not look especially promising for African-American workers, however, due to their chronic unemployment and underemployment and to the shrinking availability of employer retirement plans in general.  Only 59 percent of all workers and 56 percent of black workers ages 25-59 were offered employer retirement plans or pensions in 2009, with half or less (50 percent of all workers and 45 percent of black workers) who received offers actually enrolling in the available plans.

Thus, for many, saving and investing for retirement independent of employment (for example, in Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs) becomes the major source of funds to supplement Social Security retirement benefits.  A key issue for African Americans, though, is having disposable income to save.  A 2009 Joint Center poll found that 53 percent of African Americans at all income levels—and 65 percent with income of $35,000 or less— “wanted to save but did not have enough money to.”

Raising our current retirement income status from only 30 percent who have saved $25,000 or more for retirement should become a priority for African Americans.  Otherwise, our definition of retirement may become confined to working (either full-time or part-time) until the day we die, or eking out an existence on Social Security benefits alone.

Sources:

• Social Security retirement benefits of African-American males and females (December 2009)
• Federal poverty level (2010)
• Percent of African Americans saving for retirement (2007)
• Percent of African Americans offered pensions (2009)
• Joint Center poll (2009)

Wilhelmina A. Leigh is Senior Research Associate of the Economic Security Initiative of the Civic Engagement and Governance Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. More information on Dr. Leigh and her work can be found at the Joint Center website.

African Americans say Climate Change is a Priority

Dr. David A. Bositis, the Joint Center’s senior political analyst, wrote a guest editorial for The Tennessean that shared findings from the the multi-state poll of African American’s opinion on climate change. The following is the text from the article:

David Bositis

According to a new poll released last week, African-Americans in four key states, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina, rank climate change as a voting issue that could affect the 2010 U.S. Senate elections in their states.

The poll from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies takes a look at the priorities and voting patterns of African-Americans. It is the first state-level poll on how this key Obama administration priority fares among African-Americans. Observers say these states, which feature closely watched midterm elections, are crucial to enactment of national global-warming legislation.

Front-page stories have reported that national surveys say global warming, as perceived by the American public, is at the bottom of the list of national priorities. In the Joint Center’s national survey released last fall and recently released state-level surveys, more than half the respondents said they will consider global warming when voting for elected officials; a majority were willing to increase their energy bills to combat climate change.

New Study on Climate Change Attitudes: African Americans in Key States See Global Warming as an Election Issue

WASHINGTON, DC – According to a new poll released today, a majority of African Americans in four battleground states – Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina – see climate change as a critical issue that will affect their votes in the November midterm elections.

The poll, “Opinion of African Americans on Climate Change and 2010 Midterm Elections: The Results of a Multi-State Poll,” which included a survey of 500 black voters in each of the four states, was conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research and public policy institution that focuses on the concerns of African Americans and other people of color.