Politics

In New White House Bid, Clinton Embraces Race as a Top Issue

Published

10 years ago

July 24, 2015

In this July 23, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Columbia, S.C. In her second pass at the presidency, Clinton has made discussing systemic racism a hallmark of her campaign as she looks to connect with the black voters who helped propel President Barack Obama to the White House. At multiple campaign stops, she bemoaned "mass incarceration," an uneven economy, increasingly segregated public schools, and poisoned relationships between police and the black community. She praised South Carolina leaders, including Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, for removing the Confederate battle from statehouse grounds after a white gunmans June massacre of nine churchgoers at a historic black congregation in Charleston. But she warned that the act is symbolic. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

In this July 23, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

BILL BARROW, Associated Press

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — In her second bid for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton is discussing “systemic racism” and making the issue a hallmark of her campaign as she looks to connect with the black voters who supported rival Barack Obama in 2008.

At multiple stops in South Carolina, Clinton on Thursday bemoaned “mass incarceration,” an uneven economy, increasingly segregated public schools and poisoned relations between law enforcement and the black community. She praised South Carolina leaders, including Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, for removing the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds after a white gunman’s massacre of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, but she warned that the act is only symbolic.

“America’s long struggle with racism is far from finished,” the former secretary of state said before a mostly white audience at a Greenville technical college. Hours earlier, with a majority black audience at a West Columbia church, she declared, “Anybody who says we don’t have more progress to make is blind.”

At both stops, she added some symbolism of her own, trumpeting the mantra “Black Lives Matter,” which has become a rallying cry of and name for the activists who have organized protests in several cities amid several high-profile cases of black citizens being killed during encounters with police.

“This is not just a slogan,” Clinton said. “This should be a guiding principle.”

The bold approach is a contrast to her 2008 campaign. That year, she didn’t talk so directly about race as she faced off against Obama, who would go on to become the nation’s first black president. Instead, she ran as the battle-tested, experienced counter to the first-term U.S. senator from Illinois.

Clinton doesn’t frame her unabashed commentary on race in a political context; aides repeatedly explain her strategy as “working to win every vote” and nothing more. Yet it’s clear that Clinton feels no constraints going into 2016, as perhaps she did eight years ago. It’s also no surprise that her newfound freedom is on display in South Carolina. African-Americans make up about 28 percent of the population and a majority of the Democratic primary electorate, the first of the early-voting states to feature a significant bloc of black voters.

Obama trounced Clinton here in 2008, 56 percent to 27 percent, as many black voters flocked to his candidacy once he demonstrated white support in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. That leaves Clinton both to reverse a bitter primary defeat, while using South Carolina as a test run for a potential general election in which she would need strong black support to reassemble Obama’s winning coalition in swing states like Virginia, Florida and Ohio.

If Clinton’s approach is born of necessity, it also comes with potential pitfalls.

Last month, she angered some activists by using the phrase “all lives matter” during a speech a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown died at the hands of a white police officer. Clinton used those words as part of an anecdote about her mother, whom she said taught her that “all lives matter,” but some activists thought it demeaned the significance of the “Black Lives Matter” effort.

Her Democratic rivals Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders drew similar outrage last week at the liberal Netroots Nation convention. O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, ended up apologizing after snapping at hecklers: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”

Clinton said Thursday that she won’t “comment on what anybody else said.”

She also faces questions about her advocacy for tougher sentencing laws that her husband signed as president. Bill Clinton recently expressed regret over the laws, but his wife stopped short of calling the laws a mistake.

“We were facing different problems in the ’80s and ’90s,” she told reporters, saying crime in cities “was causing an outcry across the nation,” including in poor and minority neighborhoods. “I think now, 20 years on, we can say some things worked and some things didn’t work,” she continued. “One of the big problems that didn’t work is that we had too many people, particularly African-American men, who were being incarcerated for minor offenses.”

Clinton also must avoid any residue from Bill Clinton’s remarks during and after the South Carolina primary in 2008. Clinton, who was extremely popular among black voters when he was president, expressed open frustration at Obama’s rise. After Obama won South Carolina, the former president dismissed the victory as akin to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s victory in 1988. A black South Carolina native, Jackson won the state’s caucus that year, but he was never a serious contender for the nomination.

Meanwhile, Clinton says she will continue declaring that “black lives matter.”

“I think this has become an important statement of a movement,” she said, “to try to raise difficult issues about race and justice that the country needs to address.”

___

Follow Bill Barrow on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

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Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

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18 hours ago

March 28, 2025

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Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas Honors California Women in Construction with State Proclamation, Policy Ideas

“Women play an important role in building our communities, yet they remain vastly underrepresented in the construction industry,” Smallwood-Cuevas stated. “This resolution not only recognizes their incredible contributions but also the need to break barriers — like gender discrimination.

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), center, is shown with other guest speakers at the Sacramento Chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction brunch held at the State Capitol on March 6, 2025. On the left is Jennifer Todd, LMS General Contractors Founder and President. To Todd’s right is Dr. Giovanna Brasfield, from Los Angeles-based Brasfield and Associates. CBM photo by Antonio Ray Harvey.

By Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌, California‌ ‌Black‌ ‌Media‌

To honor Women in Construction Week, Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 30 in the State Legislature on March 6. This resolution pays tribute to women and highlights their contributions to the building industry.

The measure designates March 2, 2025, to March 8, 2025, as Women in Construction Week in California. It passed 34-0 on the Senate floor.

Authored by Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), another bill, Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 28, also recognized women in the construction industry.

The resolution advanced out of the Assembly Committee on Rules with a 10-0 vote.

The weeklong event coincides with the National Association of Women In Construction (NAWIC) celebration that started in 1998 and has grown and expanded every year since.

The same week in front of the State Capitol, Smallwood, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom), and Assemblymember Maggie Krell (D-Sacramento), attended a brunch organized by a local chapter of NAWIC.

Two of the guest speakers were Dr. Giovanna Brasfield, CEO of Los Angeles-based Brasfield and Associates, and Jennifer Todd, President and Founder of LMS General Contractors.

Todd is the youngest Black woman to receive a California’s Contractors State License Board (A) General Engineering license. An advocate for women of different backgrounds, Todd she said she has been a woman in construction for the last 16 years despite going through some trying times.

A graduate of Arizona State University’s’ Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, in 2009 Todd created an apprenticeship training program, A Greener Tomorrow, designed toward the advancement of unemployed and underemployed people of color.

“I always say, ‘I love an industry that doesn’t love me back,’” Todd said. “Being young, female and minority, I am often in spaces where people don’t look like me, they don’t reflect my values, they don’t reflect my experiences, and I so persevere in spite of it all.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 11.2% of the construction workforce across the country are female. Overall, 87.3% of the female construction workers are White, 35.1% are Latinas, 2.1% are Asians, and 6.5% are Black women, the report reveals.

The National Association of Home Builders reported that as of 2022, the states with the largest number of women working in construction were Texas (137,000), California (135,000) and Florida (119,000). The three states alone represent 30% of all women employed in the industry.

Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) and the California Legislative Women’s Caucus supported Smallwood-Cuevas’ SCR 30 and requested that more energy be poured into bringing awareness to the severe gender gap in the construction field.

“The construction trade are a proven path to a solid career. and we have an ongoing shortage, and this is a time for us to do better breaking down the barriers to help the people get into this sector,” Rubio said.

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.