Jobs for America Now - Update
Groups To Announce Broad New Coalition, Push For Jobs Legislation
The newly formed Jobs for America Now Coalition held a telephone press conference announcing a nationwide campaign to put America back to work.
Moderatored Alan Charney, USAction and interim campaign manager, speakers included:
- Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change
- Anna Burger, Change to Win
- Nancy Duff Campbell, National Women’s Law Center (to be confirmed)
- Ben Jealous, NAACP
- Thea Lee, AFL-CIO
- Larry Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
- Janet Murguia, National Council of La Raza
On Nov. 17, the leaders of the AFL-CIO, Center for Community Change, Economic Policy Institute, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, NAACP and National Council of La Raza issued an urgent call for legislation to address the jobs crisis in the U.S.
Since then, the coalition has expanded to include more than 50 national groups and nearly 100 local and state organizations. The coalition supports a five-point jobs plan that would:
- Provide relief through continued and expanded unemployment benefits, COBRA and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
- Extend substantial fiscal relief to state and local governments.
- Create jobs that put people to work helping communities meet pressing needs, including in distressed communities that face severe unemployment.
- Invest in infrastructure improvements in schools, transportation and energy efficiency, thus providing jobs in the short run and productivity enhancements in the longer run.
- Spur private-sector job growth through innovative incentives and providing credit to small and medium-sized businesses.
Leaders are proposing a far more ambitious $400 billion proposal, based in part on plans put forward in the last several weeks by the AFL-CIO and other progressive and civil-rights organizations.
There's no doubt that we face an uphill battle to get ambitious jobs legislation through Congress. Right-wing propaganda about the failings of the first $787 billion stimulus (it actually saved or created up to 1.6 million jobs) and the spread of an aggressive "deficit hawk" mentality to conservative Democrats are major obstacles.
Even so, Thea Lee, the deputy chief of staff of the AFL-CIO, outlined the theme unifying the organizations: "Across the country, working Americans are calling for urgent action on the jobs crisis, and this action must be on a scale to match the crisis.”
The importance of the coalition goes beyond the specifics of the proposals to their commitment to provide grassroots muscle in all 50 states to push for jobs legislation in the tough legislative struggle ahead. And that's what's been missing before on this issue: united activism around job creation which could, potentially, have more diverse grassroots support in 2010 than health care reform did this year.