Legislator says Trump is ignoring black issues
African Americans urged by Rep. Lee to push agenda
Nearly five months to the day before his inauguration, then-Republican nominee Donald Trump tried to pitch his campaign to black voters with a single question: “What do you have to lose?”
Three months after his inauguration, the Congressional Black Caucus eagerly responded with a 130-page policy document entitled “We have a Lot to Lose,” outlining legislation they say would help African Americans and similarly marginalized communities.
That request fell on deaf ears, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, said Saturday at an annual “State of Black America” panel at Laney College. She encouraged people at the Making Connections event to “be at the table with the black agenda and demand those resources,” with or without help from the administration.
“Remember President Trump said ‘What do
we have to lose?’ to the black community? Well, we answered him and sent him an entire agenda as it relates to the African American community,” Lee said. Trump “invited us to come to the White House and Cedric Richmond, our chair, said no. He was fully disgusted with our president and his agenda on all of the issues that we’re talking about today.”
Richmond, D- La., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, had planned to attend the Oakland event, but stayed back home, where Hurricane Nate was steaming toward his district.
“The Congressional Black Caucus is not only the heart and soul of the resistance movement in Congress but also leading on so many issues that we care about here in the Bay Area,” said Lee, a caucus member.
The panel highlighted a number of concerns for the group of a few hundred people, predominantly African Americans, in the audience, including economic disparity between black and white communities, homelessness, housing struggles and criminal justice reform.
Speakers at the Oakland event included Lee, San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen, Oakland Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Mark Ridley-Thomas of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and National Urban League Vice President Don Cravins Jr.
Concerns about economic empowerment dominated much of the conversation. “We need our community members to show up at board meetings for Google,” said East Palo Alto Councilwoman Lisa Gauthier.
Corey Hollis, a Peralta Colleges student trustee, wanted to know whether “there’s been any movement around making education affordable to students?”
“Right now, given the Trump administration, we’re in the resistance mode of cuts and trying to make sure we move forward in the next few years,” Lee responded, and Cohen pointed out that San Francisco completed a deal in February to make City College free for all the city’s residents.
An effort “to improve the circumstances of the American worker” was part of the Black Caucus request to the Trump administration in the lengthy policy document sent in March.
At Saturday’s panel, each guest received a packet that included printouts of letters from the caucus to the Trump administration. One, dated June 21, declined an invitation to the White House because “your Administration has yet to provide a response to the policies we presented.”
Richmond criticized proposed cuts to Pell Grants that help low-income students and called Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ roll-back of Obamaera efforts to lessen penalties for nonviolent drug offenders an attempt “to accelerate the failed war on drugs that will continue to wreck the black community and exacerbate our nation’s shameful scourge of mass incarceration.”
The other, dated Sept. 27, expressed “utter disgust with your handling of race relations in America in general and, more specifically, your calculated, divisive response to nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice by professional football players, owners, coaches and countless other patriots.”
Reflecting on the many economic, social and political harms that black community members say need dire attention, Lee said in her closing remarks that uniting with both the local and global community of people of African descent “is the only way we’re ever going to be free in this country.”
“We are concerned about playing the race card and don’t talk about our issues enough,” Lee said. “Be at the table with the black agenda and demand those resources.”