Late 911: Save Haiti

So I’m sitting in my room listening to Public Enemy’s 1990 album Fear of A Black Planet. The volume on my laptop is as high is it can go so I can drown out the sounds of the girls yelling in the hall and find peace. It is Monday the 18th and I pick up Friday’s paper that I’ve been meaning to read. The headline: “You will not be forsaken” sits somewhat elevated on top of the graphic picture of a young girl with her long bony hands thrust up into the air in desperation. She stands their, still, letting all of the pain, grief, and wonder concentrate inside her veins as she opens her arms up to the sky and lets out a chilling “Why?” as she stands in the midst of broken concrete, wood, and who knows what all else. The culprit, a massive earthquake. The price, over 50,000...in people.
I remember checking my Yahoo after class earlier this week and seeing the pictures of the Haitian people and the many headlines about the earthquake but I refused to click on them. I couldn’t bring myself to look at those pictures. I couldn’t find enough muscle in my body to be able to stomach looking into the eyes of the victims of this tragedy. I couldn’t but I’m glad everyone else wasn’t like me. Coincidence or irony or whatever you want to call it its Martin Luther King Jr. Day and it is now that I decide to read the paper about the earthquake in Haiti and as I’m reading it track 3 of my favorite Public Enemy cd comes on, 911 is a Joke. As I read I hear Flavor Flave’s distinct voice and up beat rap “911 is a fake life saver. A get up, a get get down 911 is jokin your town. A get up a get get down late 911 wears the late crown.” And I think he can’t be more right. It takes my back to a couple years ago to Hurricane Katrina when 911/the government/Fema/ and all other lackadaisical aid plaid the biggest joke of all: pretending that they were going to do everything to help the people in New Orleans as soon as possible. That cracks me up still, but there is no smile on my face. Now the world again stands amazed at the power nature has and is reminded of how fast and how drastically nature can change the lives of so many people. Sorry police, no jokes this time, real aid is needed as was before but time 100.
Obama has pledged $100 million, Wyclef Jean has a fund going, and so do various other groups. We must help out in any way we can. I know we are all college students and we’re struggling, but anything is better than nothing. Even if its just helping to raise awareness about this catastrophe that is still aid. Don’t have the mind set that ‘I don’t have to do anything now, there are a lot of people helping out. My little donation won’t make that much of a difference.’ because there are probably hundreds of other people thinking the same thing. If everyone thought like that nothing would ever happen. In the motto of Gloria Richardson and Malcolm X’s direct action civil rights group ACT, I ask of you to do just that and act.

How you can help in Pittsburgh:
WorldVision is sending pallets of relief materials and medical supplies. Donations can be made at www.donate.wordlvision.org
Brother’s Brother Foundation- Haiti by visiting www.brotherbrother.org
Functional Literacy of Haiti at www.flmhaiti.org
Unicef by calling 18004UNICEF or going to www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake
The International Rescue Committee is deploying an emergency response team to Haiti. Visit www.theirc.org

Darah Patterson

Staying Informed; jobs

This is an article I read on Yahoo. Since we are all in college trying to educate ourselves to get a job and go out into this struggling economy, maybe we should know how it is out there.

"If you still have a job, maybe Friday's numbers from the Labor Department will give you a chance to exhale.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the employment market, for the most part, has been one negative headline after another. Now, we've learned that the U.S. lost only 11,000 jobs in November, that the unemployment rate surprisingly ticked down from 10.2% the previous month to only 10%, and that for the prior two months the total of jobs lost actually wasn't as bad as initially thought.

The last time the data were so bright, if they can be called that, was in December 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs. Yet despite pockets of optimism on Wall Street following the latest reading, the truth is that for many workers in America, these are dark days.

As of now, more than 15 million people around the country remain out of luck. Beyond the 10% headline number in joblessness, the situation is actually worse. Factoring in people who have stopped looking for work and those in part-time positions who want a full-time job, the "underemployment" rate is 17.2%. In fairness, that was down from 17.5% in October, but it remains a daunting swath of the U.S. workforce struggling to make ends meet.

Consider that the jobless rate in the El Centro, Calif., metro area is at 30%, the worst in the nation. Shockingly, it was even uglier just a couple of months ago. Though that area is used to higher-than-average joblessness, the problem has been exacerbated by the steep falloff in the region's real estate markets.

An improvement? Yes, but a mild one that still means close to one-third of eligible workers in the area continues to wait for better days. CNNMoney.com quoted one local business owner, Jim Duggins, as saying "our economy is the worst I have ever seen it and it doesn't seem to be recovering." Duggins, who owns a construction company, has already eliminated more than 80% of his workers and has 22 left. More cuts, he indicated, could be coming.

In a much-better known American town, Detroit, the jobless rate was above 17% in September as the auto industry retrenched sharply. That's nearly double the rate of the year earlier.

How bad are things in the Motor City? Foreclosures have been rampant. You could buy a home for $6,900.

The New York Times notes that the number of workers around the country dealing with what is termed long-term unemployment, that is, the inability to find work for at least 27 weeks, has been hovering at an all-time high, tallying 5.6 million people in October. One such individual is Kathy Henry, a 39-year-old Chicago resident who lost her administrative assistant position two years ago. In the time since, she has sent applications to no fewer than 500 jobs.

"It’s a constant cycle," she told the Times. "I’ve applied everywhere, from big corporations to minute corporations, and I don't even get an e-mail back. I'm worried people see me as old and out of touch and decrepit."

There's no doubt the pain has been widespread, and it's even been evidenced in one of the most sacred traditions of childhood -- the visit from the Tooth Fairy. In March, granted that was before the stock market started its rally, WebMD said that children could expect to receive an average of $1.88 for each tooth they left under their pillow, down from $2.09 in 2008. When parents are forced to cut the payouts to their kids by two dimes and a penny, that's saying something.

President Obama and other leaders in Washington say they want to brighten the landscape that's been bleak for too long. Unfortunately, this is another problem they have to solve at the same time they're dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care debate and the deficits. Perhaps on at least one level government can be part of the solution -- the Census Bureau appears poised to hire in the neighborhood of 1 million temporary workers to conduct its resident surveys in 2010.

The views on the future, naturally, are varied.

"I wouldn't say that we're totally out of the woods yet because the number of unemployed is still high," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told Reuters Television. "It's very, very high and it's unacceptable, and we need to continue our efforts to focus in on job creation."

John Mauldin of Millennium Wave Investments is optimistic about the longer term, but for now he's planning for a "double-dip" recession. "It's going to be a slow-growth, high-unemployment environment, I think, for quite some time. It's not going to be fun," he said in an interview with Henry Blodget.

Meanwhile, First Trust's Brian Wesbury is in the upbeat camp, arguing that for Main Street, the recovery is "already on its way."

He told Tech Ticker: "It's like the flu. You know, on the third or fourth day of the flu, you are getting better. Even though you don't feel like it." "
(yahoo.com)