U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Education Secretary Arne Duncan spent Wednesday afternoon at Frederick Douglass High School, where they discussed financial literacy and heard students' concerns about the lack of jobs and opportunities in Baltimore.This is quite extraordinary. While it's important to connect with city officials as well as community/church/business leaders in Baltimore in order to form lasting solutions to the challenges the city faces, it is incredibly powerful to think that three members of the President's Cabinet spent a day listening to the concerns of high school students.
Perez said he and other federal officials went to Douglass to listen to students whose school was in the heart of the violence that broke out at nearby Mondawmin Mall last week and spilled into rioting and looting across the city...
Joining Perez and Duncan was Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, a Baltimore native whose parents graduated from Douglass in 1955.
The officials held roundtable sessions with students throughout the day. The sessions were closed to reporters.
When Broderick Johnson said the other day that it's all about "recognizing that our young people are not the problem, but rather the solution,” it wasn't just a nice soundbite. This is how the Obama administration demonstrates that they're walking their talk.
Just finished a web conference on the role of worker owned coops as a strategy for taking back control over the economies of embattled cities. It is a realistic program, it's working in many places within the Midwest, Northeast and South. It is strongly abetted by the Department of Labor that is offering funds to communities to help with planning and prep for specifically employee owned businesses. One program that is working is 1worker1vote.org that has sparked community efforts in several states already. Baltimore is determined to become part of this movement. It is one of the best answers to inequality, injustice, racism.
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