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Economic Justice

360 360 Derrick Jones

State Withholds Childcare Subsidies for Minority Mothers, Report Says

2016/04/08 – Carley Dear has a four-year-old son, Tailon, who is lucky enough to attend North Jackson’s Richard Brandon Head Start Center every weekday morning.  Soon after the sun peeps over the horizon, his mom drops him off and at the center Tailon eats a good breakfast, tackles his study skills, and learns to get along with other small humans with equally squeaky voices.

The young mother is still a high school student, however, who is finishing her senior year at Murrah High School.  After graduating she plans to attend USM and pursue a media degree and a career as a reporter.

The Head Start Center in Jackson, like Head Start centers throughout Mississippi, hosts children at a fraction of the cost of traditional day care.  This leaves a monumental impact upon the life of Dear and many young women like her who are trying to struggle over the 20-year speed bump that teen pregnancy often produces.

“Before my son started coming here, I was having to pay $130 every two weeks for daycare,” Dear said.

A $260 monthly childcare bill would decimate most young mothers, especially since many traditional teen jobs pay only about $500 or $600 a month — if the boss even gives them a full 40-hour work week.  Owning a car to get you to work might be out of the question under those circumstances.  Rent, most likely, would also be impossible without a long collection of roommates — and many roommates don’t care for kids.

“With Richard Brandon Head Start, Tailon can go to school in the morning, and I can go to school, too.  It really helps,” Dear said.  “Without affordable daycare I wouldn’t be able to afford … well, I couldn’t afford much, I guess.  I’d have to be home and missing out on school.”

As essential as affordable childcare services are, Dear and her son are actually among the very few eligible Mississippians who manage to receive it.  The vast majority of state residents who qualify for some form of government-subsidized childcare will never get it, thanks to uncommitted legislators and their insensitive policies.

Mississippi is so oblivious to the value of childcare aid that the state earned the notorious “honor” of recently being recognized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) for its insensitivity.  The organization issued a report earlier this year on the harmful impacts of the state’s apparent indifference to low-income working families of color.

In 2015, USCCR’s Mississippi State Advisory Committee voted to investigate discrimination claims against recipients and providers of childcare services based on race or color by the federal low-income childcare subsidy program in Mississippi.  What they found was surprisingly bad, especially since any poverty-reducing program should be welcomed in Mississippi, which has a childhood poverty rate of 29 percent.  The situation is even worse for African-American children, like Tailon Dear, with almost half of black Mississippi youth (47 percent) living at or below the poverty level in 2014.

“The Mississippi State Advisory Committee Memorandum found that far too many eligible children are not serviced by the subsidy program and that the money that should support this eligible population of children is redirected elsewhere,” the Commission stated.  “… Instead of finding appropriate ways for working families to have full access to this transformative program, it appears that ill-explained barriers prevent childcare providers and parents from access.”

These barriers are terribly effective.  While 124,426 children in Mississippi under the age of six were eligible for Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) funding in 2013, only about 18,300 (14.7 percent) actually received assistance each month.

The problem lies in the state’s management of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants, which ultimately feed into the CCDF.  In 1996, then President Bill Clinton signed a rule to alter a pre-existing national childcare grant program that reduced it from a federally managed disbursement system helping low-income parents pay for childcare to a block grant program managed by individual states.  Almost immediately, some states proved more apathetic to child poverty than others.

The federal government mandates only three stipulations for state officials to meet:  (1) benefi­ciaries must earn no more than 85 percent of the state’s median income of $2,917 per month, (2) parents must be able to choose their childcare providers, and (3) providers must charge beneficiaries the same amount they charge other patrons.  These underdeveloped federal requirements leave plenty of room for states to monkey with the program and erect countless obstructions to its operations.

And monkey, they have.  On top of the list of documents and requirements the state of Mississippi requires to prove eligibility (including a mandatory number of hours of weekly work and a poverty-level income cap), the state also requires single parents to verify either the existence of child support from an absent parent or that the parent is taking advantage of MDHS’ Child Support Services to recoup that child support.

With the help of every barrier the state could legally erect, the number of children receiving child care assistance through Child Care and Development Block Grants between 2006 and 2013 declined by 53 percent — a decline larger than all but four states, the report claims.

“Legislators in this state have never acted as if affordable childcare can make a difference,” said Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative Executive Director Carol Burnett, who advocates heavily for the state to open the doors to more childcare funding.

Burnett explained that affordable childcare for low-income mothers and their children could mean the difference between a productive future and a life of poverty, as mothers like Dear no longer have to weigh the pros and cons of paying for childcare vs. abandoning the prospect of work or education entirely in order to take care of their children.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services operates the program and Gov. Phil Bryant holds sway over MDHS.  Burnett said the governor, therefore, ultimately has the power to bring relief to minority women who are disproportionately affected by poverty in the state.  But so far, Burnett said, Bryant’s voice is silent and cold.

Source: MS NAACP

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Expect Selection of New Jackson Airports Board Right After Bill Signing

2016/03/30 – The author of the successful Senate bill to transfer control of Jackson’s airports to a state board with metro-wide representation expects appointments to the new board will begin soon after Gov. Phil Bryant signs the bill.

“I would assume that they will appoint right away,” said Sen. Josh Harkins, a Flowood Republican whose bill, SB 2162, led to often-times angry debate in both legislative bodies before gaining final passage in the House Friday on a 74-46 vote. The measure gives an expanded regional board policy control over Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport and the Hawkins Field general aviation airport.

Harkins said the bill does not have to return to the Senate for further debate. His concurrence with changes made by the House is sufficient to send it to Gov. Bryant, Harkins said.

The bill that passed the House specifies nine members: two Jackson residents appointed by the governor; one Jackson resident appointed by the lieutenant governor; one Jackson resident appointed by Jackson’s mayor; one Jackson resident appointed by Jackson’s City Council; one appointment by the Rankin County Board of Supervisors; one appointment by the Madison County Board of Supervisors; the executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority or designee; the Mississippi adjutant general or designee.

The appointments might come quickly but seating of the nine-member board most likely will have to wait for the outcome of federal court litigation.

The Jackson Municipal Airport Authority hired Phelps Dunbar’s Fred Banks as soon as it got word of Harkins legislative plans back in December. Banks, a former Mississippi Supreme Court justice, has declined to confirm the reason for his hiring. Airport officials have limited their information on the hiring to statements in the Dec. 21 minutes.

The board is hiring Banks and the Phelps Dunbar firm, the minutes state, “to perform legal services for JMAA as to certain legal matters regarding which Justice Banks has extensive expertise.”

The board did the hiring through its general counsel The Walker Group, which presumably will handle the billing of the Airport Authority for Banks’ services.

Sen. John Horhn of Jackson said in an interview after Senate passage of the bill that the Authority board hired Banks solely to fight elimination of its policy making responsibilities.

Horhn indicated the Airport Authority is willing to let airport projects stall as the price of keeping control, though he said proponents of the airport takeover would be to blame for holding up efforts to gain a low-cost carrier and commercially develop land around the airport . “The question is, Are the proponents willing to let the airport languish?” Horhn said during the Senate debate that ended with a 29-18 vote in favor of Harkins’ legislation.

Horhn said he thinks the first step for the Airport Authority is to find out whether it or the City of Jackson has the standing to initiate action in federal court.

Debate on the bill centered on the arguments of supporters that policy making for Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport should reflect the region the airport serves. Opponents, including the entire Jackson legislative delegation, argued the policy-making transfer amounted to a “taking” of something created and owned by Jackson.

Source: Ted Carter, Mississippi Business Journal

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Spirit of Stokes’ Comments: Black Life Matters, Too

2016/01/07 – The firestorm surrounding what many have deemed controversial comments by Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes have a lot of people up in arms. Although many disagree with Stokes’ suggestion to “throw rocks, bricks and bottles” at neighboring law-enforcement officers who pursue suspects beyond their municipal borders, there is no doubt that such behavior by neighboring law enforcement officers poses a danger to life and property of Jacksonians.

Stokes’ comments clearly came from a place of concern for the safety of the city’s residents. They were in the same spirit that is causing many people, young and old, to rise up and hold law enforcement accountable for countless incidents of police misconduct against black people. The spirit asserts and demands that black life matters, too, and should not be of second-tier importance.

The seriousness of the issue is being buried beneath the rubble of controversy. The fact that neighboring police departments’ actions show a blatant disregard for the safety of residents within Jackson’s city limits should be the focus of the discourse. Discussions about endangering law enforcement and what Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey described as “racism against blue” are ancillary.

Stokes’ opposition to neighboring law enforcement dangerously pursuing suspects into Jackson is well documented. He has pled with these agencies to stop this reckless practice since his time as a Hinds County supervisor. Since then, these police chases have resulted in injury and damage to property and endangered innocent bystanders.

Most suspects of interest committed misdemeanor offenses of a non-violent nature. As a criminal-defense attorney, it has been my experience that many people who commit such crimes do so to support drug habits or to seek out an economic existence in an economy devastated by decades of white flight and economic strangulation where job opportunities are slim to none. These agencies’ dangerous practices send a clear message that property takes precedent over the lives and safety of human beings. Although some neighboring law enforcement officials have adamantly asserted that their actions do not demonstrate racial disregard for a predominantly black city, their responses to Councilman Stokes reveal otherwise.

Neighboring law-enforcement responses were harsh and targeted Jackson as a city. Some police chiefs and sheriffs called for economic sanctions on the city by encouraging those in neighboring law-enforcement agencies to halt patronage of businesses in Jackson, which is already economically embattled and on the financial ropes.

Even more disturbing are Attorney General Jim Hood’s and Gov. Phil Bryant’s responses to Stokes’ remarks. Bryant condemned Stokes’ remarks and mischaracterized his comments as “criminal threats.” Hood’s statement, although less condemnatory, conveyed a similar message. It is telling that both men find it urgent to respond to the comments of a city councilman. But neither Hood nor Bryant has commented on the findings from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that the City of Ridgeland has been engaged in “unlawful discrimination based on race” against black people. No condemnation of how the entrenched school-to-prison pipeline is under-serving and mis-educating Mississippi’s children. No comments about how residents of Mississippi are forced to live in poverty a mere stone’s throw away from the governor’s mansion and Hood’s office. No comments about how Mississippi mass incarcerates and warehouses poor people in many instances for profit. Hood has made at least two trips to the United Nations in an attempt to sanitize his and the State of Mississippi’s abysmal record in the realm of human rights while making no concrete efforts to improve it.

Given the current climate in the U.S., I cannot advocate for anyone to hurl anything at police officers for the fear that they would be shot down in cold blood. I think Stokes understands this, but his comments stem from a place of frustration with an issue that he has been addressing with civility to no avail. I understand and share his frustration that black life is not being given equal value on par with the lives of others in this state.

The safety and security of Jackson’s residents should be given the same priority and respect as residents in neighboring municipalities and counties. The city’s residents’ lives and property are placed in immediate and imminent danger when officers from a neighboring county or municipality chase any suspect across jurisdictional boundaries. That point should not be lost amidst the controversy surrounding Stokes’ comments.

Adofo Minka is a husband, father and criminal defense attorney in Hinds County. He is a member of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and works with Law for Black Lives. He lives in the Cooperative Community of New West Jackson.

Source: Jackson Free Press

Adofo Minka

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K-12 Opponents Resort to Misinformation Commercial

Oct. 13, 2015 – Public school opponents are shamelessly race-baiting and misinforming white voters to oppose Initiative 42.  The initiative forces state legislators to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), Mississippi’s rudimentary public school funding formula, or be compelled to fund it through court order.  Opponents to public schools, however, are fighting back hard.  They recently released a commercial warning voters that the initiative will put funding power into the hands of a “Liberal Hinds County Judge.”

“If Initiative 42 passes, one liberal Hinds County judge can get all of the power, the power to take your money from your school and give it to the school district he chooses,” claims the commercial, paid for by the Improve Mississippi Political Action Committee.

Financing the Improve Mississippi Political Action Committee are Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, along with various conservative-leaning organizations such as the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, the Mississippi Bankers Association, and the Mississippi Realtors Association, among others.

Critics called the ad a race-baiting whistle designed to frighten rural white voters, who are confident that most judges in predominantly black Hinds County are black judges.  This black judge, according to the ad, will then take your money from “your” (white) school and hand it over to the black school district that this black judge will inevitably choose.

The problem with this argument is that many of the schools benefitting from MAEP funding are actually rural and semi-rural white schools whose low-commerce, agrarian districts don’t generate enough taxes to fully support schools.

Shannon Eubanks is principal of the K-12 Enterprise Attendance Center in rural Lincoln County, which is just such a school.  Enterprise, which has only a nine percent minority student enrollment, according to Public School Review, can’t afford important brick and mortar repairs due to legislators routinely shorting MAEP funding.

“We have serious issues with facilities,” said Eubanks.  “I have an awning that hasn’t been repaired because I do not have the money for it, or we have to make decisions when there’s a water leak.  That may mean I can’t do upgrades to some facilities.  We need air-conditioning.  Our buildings are getting old and they’re starting to fall apart and you’re looking at up to $5,000 for air-conditioning repairs and the money runs out really quick — but that’s something you’ve got to have.”

Eubanks complained that his district’s student-to-teacher ratio in elementary grades is 27:1, but when the legislature doesn’t fully fund MAEP, the district has to struggle to keep class size that low, which, due to Legislative short-sightedness, is an annual struggle.

“Right now I have a ratio of 26- to 27-to-1 — which is the maximum allowed — with no assistants because I have no money for them,” Eubanks said.  “There was a time when I would have three, four or five applicants to a job, but now I have to scramble to get that one applicant.  I’ve had to hire teachers as late as August, just as school’s about to start, because there are just not that many applicants out there — and we’re a B district.”

Finding teachers is significantly more difficult in even poorer districts in small towns with few to no entertainment venues.  Some districts in rural areas have had to make do with temporary teachers for a large portion of the year.

White rural districts like Lincoln County are finding themselves in a tough place also due to their comparatively larger district size.  Lincoln County, for example, has an ailing fleet of nine buses that must be “packed to the gills,” according to Shannon, with students from as far away as the county’s northern border, meaning many students endure hour-and-a-half rides both to the school and home again.  Some students must be at the bus stop before 6 a.m. and do not see their home until 4:30, even though they get out at 3 p.m.

Rural districts covering a large swath of wilderness and farmland are common to largely rural Mississippi — and particularly common in majority white districts.

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson dismissed the anti-Initiative 42 ads as low-level race-baiting and urged voters to ignore calls to starve their own school district.

“All schools benefit from MAEP.  Schools have been underfunded across the board by $1.7 billion, and that’s not exclusive to any district.  That’s every district,” Johnson said.  “And besides, if legislators would merely follow the letter of the law, there would never be a need for a judge in Hinds County, or anywhere else, to do anything.”

 

Source: NAACP Staff

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Baltimore Author Discusses ‘Living (And Dying) While Black’

2015/10/5-Growing up during the crack era in East Baltimore, author D. Watkins saw firsthand how the drug destroyed communities. “It trashed my neighborhood,” Watkins tellsFresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “I’m old enough to remember before crack really hit, and once it did hit, it changed a whole dynamic of how drug culture worked.”

Suddenly, Watkins says, teenage kids — himself included — were selling crack on street corners. But the drug wasn’t leaving the neighborhood with each sale. “Everybody’s parents were junkies,” he says. “And all the kids were selling or using.”

Then there was the gun violence, which often sprang from disputes over control of particular street corners. Watkins escaped getting shot more than once. His older brother was shot to death during the period he was selling crack.

Other friends died or were sent to prison. Finally, Watkins says, “I was the last guy left. … I went from not really caring if I lived or died to caring — and I knew if I wanted to live, I had to stop.”

Watkins gave up dealing drugs, returned to college and now has three degrees, including a master of education from Johns Hopkins University and a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Baltimore. His work has appeared in The Baltimore Sun and Salon, and he has taught in literacy programs in Baltimore. His new book is The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America.

Interview Highlights

On deciding to go to college and then drop out of college

The type of neighborhood where I lived in, Baltimore City, is very segregated, so my whole neighborhood was black. Everyone I played basketball [with] was black. If the people who used to go to church and all that, they were all black churches. The only white people you would actually come across is housing police or a teacher or something like that, but, for the most part, everybody else is a black person.

For the most part, I was encouraged to not go to HBCU [a historically black college or university]; some of my teachers and some of the people who I knew who was helping me out through this whole process was saying that you should go to a PWI [predominantly white institution] because America doesn’t look like [that]. … I was taught that the world is diverse and you need to go to a place where you can interact with different types of people and things like that.

When I got there it was culture shock. It was my first time meeting what we would call, like, a “frat boy.” It was my first time meeting elite people, people who came from not the type of money I was coming from, but from real money, and it was my first time meeting black people who looked down on other types of black [people]. …

It was a different world for me. … I met a couple of people, but it didn’t really work and I dropped out. I just felt more at home in the street and around street people, so that’s [when] I decided to go ahead and live out what I felt like my destiny was.

On why he stopped dealing

Most of the reasons revolve around my friends and the situations that they were in. They were being locked up, some of them indicted, some for nonviolent crimes, and they weren’t getting like three years and all that, they were getting 20 years. … If they wasn’t going to jail, they was dying.

It’s just that whole idea of always being alone and knowing that selling drugs is not a team game. You don’t link up with some childhood friends and build an empire; that’s television and the movies. Selling drugs is one on one. You’re always going to be alone because at the end of the day, the business, it trumps all of these relationships and it happens over and over again.

On his relationship with guns

When you live in Baltimore City, especially coming up in the crack era, people dying is not a strange thing. Witnessing murders is not a strange thing, or being in a situation where you’re on a basketball court and somebody starts shooting is not a strange thing. …

I carried a gun as a teenager … but I never ever, ever, ever, ever used it against another person — I might’ve flashed it a couple times to get myself out of a sticky situation, but guns [have] never been my thing. Some people are shooters and some people aren’t. I’m not. I never faked that life. I never tried to pretend to be about that life. I was never into it, but when I was growing up in that crack era … you needed it.

On the crack epidemic

Back when it was just cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin there was, like, a couple of dudes, older guys, that used to run whole regions, so they would control, like, four or five ZIP codes, and you had to buy from them, and then you would make your little money, and it was more of a peaceful type of situation. But when crack came, any and everybody had the opportunity to be a boss, a kingpin. There were, like, 15- and 16-year-old kids on every corner making, like, $10,000-plus a week. It was a brand-new crew on every corner, and then when the crew on one corner felt like another crew was doing better that’s when gun play started. …

My friends and I, we joke about this sometimes, but … we were hard-pressed to find somebody who didn’t have a father on drugs, a mother on drugs, both or at least a father and mother who were strung out for a while before getting themselves together. … It was like a super-escape. It was an escape for the person that was putting into their body, and it was an escape for a person who was selling and making money off it. We don’t talk about this, but we’re still recovering from the crack epidemic now.

On enabling people’s addictions

I used to have these thoughts to myself about how this is what these people want. I’m not putting a gun to their head. I wasn’t out there making them do it. Yeah, I saw those effects and they hit me in different ways, but I felt like we were all just part of this whole big piece of nothingness and I had to pick my role. I knew I wasn’t going to be a person using it.

 

Source: NPR

Fresh Air