Posted on 12/11/2011 8:22:05 PM PST by Steelfish
One Black Woman's Personal Mission To Reelect Obama The president may need an even bigger African American turnout this time — and political dynamos like Gerri Hall to help him get it.
Gerri Hall, a lifelong Democrat who grew up poor in Mississippi, has made it her personal goal to see that President Obama is reelected. This time around, Obama's chances may depend even more on a strong turnout by black voters. December 11, 2011
By Mark Z. Barabak December 11, 2011 Reporting from Flint, Mich.— Growing up poor and black in Mississippi, Gerri Hall learned there was a meanness in the world, a set of laws and customs aimed at people like her, which her mother tried to explain once when they were forced to stand aside and let a white lady use the sidewalk.
"Honey," Hall remembers her mother saying, "that's just the way it is in Mississippi."
But there was also love and pride and determination in rural Greenwood, along with a belief that things could and would eventually change — and the way to change them was within her grasp.
"In order to make a difference," Hall says her father often told her, "you've got to understand politics and get involved."
Fifty years later, there is a black man in the White House and Hall is firmly rooted in the middle class, with a nice home in a leafy neighborhood, a pension from her 30-year job at General Motors and enough savings to help her grown son buy a starter place of his own.
"Things have definitely gotten better," she allows, "in terms of tolerance and coexistence and people getting along."
Hall is not, however, satisfied. For the next year, she has one overriding goal: to see that President Obama wins a second term...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Gerri, if you think there is another country that offers you more opportunity you ought to move there.
Obviously an idiot. She cannot see how Obama has hurt the black race.
He has done more to cause racial disharmony than any President before him.
Perhaps that is what she likes.
Anyway anyone who votes for someone merely because he is black is an idiot.
And Barry Soetoro didn't have a damn thing to do with her having all of that. In fact, Barry is going to take it all away from her if given the chance.
M'am, if you think life in Flint, Michigan under the Obamanation is good there is absolutely nothing I can say.
has she forgotten so soon that the discrimination that was shown toward her in her youth was caused by DEMOCRATS???
For the life of me, I cannot understand the allegiance shown to the demos by the black community. All their problems are directly linkied to the democrats in their past....pathetic!
She and so many of her peers as Dems have that ‘emotional feel good goo’ factor in supporting The Bam as One. Makes no difference what his policies and consequences have been. He’s a smooth talkin, charming aura black candidate who brings them pleasure to vote for based on their ‘feelings of euphoria’. It blinds them silly to what’s reality!
Gerri if Obama gets re-elected he will make sure you stay poor.
That's right...the color of his skin. It could no way be his policies, his cluelessness, his incompetence, his complete unfitness for his post, that he cannot even speak to 5th graders without a teleprompter to tell him what to say. It's because he has brown skin.
Were the challenges and adversities Bush, Reagan, et al faced from blacks "owing to the color of their skin"?
Of course not.
/sarc
“Fifty years later, there is a black man in the White House”
No, he is not a black man, he is mostly white! He just looks black! If it was to his political advantage to be white, he would say he was white! He is full of crap!
Black women were hit hard with job losses in economic crisis
By Courtland Milloy, Sunday, December 11
After the health-care company where Linda Evans worked relocated outside the Washington area, she spent two years searching for another job. But nothing panned out.
“I felt like a loser,” said Evans, who lives in the District.
No doubt the nation’s economic woes have made a lot of people feel that way. But women— especially black women like Evans — were among the hardest hit. And the so-called recovery has been even worse for them.
According to a recent study by the National Women’s Law Center, black women have lost more jobs during the recovery — 258,000 — than they did during the recession — 233,000. Put another way, black women represented 12.5 percent of all women workers in June 2009. But between then and this June, black women lost 42.2 percent of jobs lost by women overall.
“For women as a whole, and particularly black women, cuts in public sector employment have been devastating,” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington. “When it comes to job growth in the private sector, women are also doing less well than men. Whether employers feel it is more important to put men back to work first, we just can’t say at this point.”
Evans, who is in her 50s, didn’t let discouragement keep her down. Out of the pain came an epiphany: Maybe it was time to forget about getting a job like the one she had, and use some long-neglected talents to reinvent herself.
“I remembered how much I liked making jewelry, singing and writing songs,” she said. “I began feeling hopeful that somehow I was going to make it.”
While the nation’s overall unemployment rate declined from 9.0 to 8.6 last month, the unemployment rate for black women increased from 12.6 to 12.9, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Worse, more than 150,000 black women gave up looking for work last month. Counted out of the job market, they were categorized as simply “discouraged workers.”
In a sad irony, the Obama administration’s first cheery news about a drop in the nation’s unemployment rate had resulted largely from the broken spirits of black women.
“The jobs report was like an onion: Peel back the layers and you start crying,” said Donna Addkison, president and chief executive of Wider Opportunities for Women.
According to a recent study by WOW, about 42 percent of women — including 62 percent of African American women and 66 percent of Hispanic women — do not have enough income to pay for basic household expenses.
“We’re not just talking about households moving from crisis to catastrophe,” Addkison said. “The deprivation experienced by children in these homes means the loss of jobs and income will have a multi-generational ripple effect.”
To his credit, however, President Obama recently proposed a jobs bill that would surely help a lot of women. It includes funds for rehiring teachers and first responders, jobs for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, jobs repairing bridges, roads and schools, jobs refurbishing thousands of foreclosed homes and businesses, and job training for low-income youths and adults.
Unfortunately, only bits and pieces of the bill have won congressional support.
Evans wasn’t about to sit around and wait for Congress to act.
“I was raised with a good work ethic and have always had one kind of job or another since I was 14,” she said. “When I lost my job as a hospice-care worker, it felt terrible. I didn’t want to be on unemployment or food stamps. I always saw myself as a giver and not a taker.”
So she took up the songwriting that she never had time for while doing hospice care, pulled together some musician friends and helped form a 10-piece group called Copper Rose and Bones.
And there they were Saturday night, performing at the B Spot juice and music bar at 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE. “Stay strong, carry on,” Evans sang. “Hold on to your dreams.”
With donations from the audience, along with the sale of her custom-made feather earrings, Evans felt confident that she’d make ends meet — at least for the remainder of the month.
“It’s still a struggle but I’m pushing on,” Evans said, sounding anything but discouraged.
“Where my check be?”
I am going to bake Mr Barrack one of my special chocolate pies
The content of Obamas character has nothing to do with the black vote.. per MLK..
It looks like bad character is what “most” black people are looking for..
Obama, Marion Berry, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, various black judges, ALL RAP artists(even the white ones), scandalous congress members, etc.
The american black culture is indeed poisonous and extremely toxic..
Blacks with character seem to be almost always republicans..
“there is a black man in the White House”
I think that is the main motivation in her thinking. It will take an act of God to change her way of thinking and get her off the dimoKKKRAT plantation.
“Growing up poor and black...”
should read:
Growing up poor, black, prejudiced and vengeful...
These racist a-hole blacks can take their crap and shove it. I know my family tree and a good chunk were people fleeing genocide. Not slavery - genocide. Including Cherokee indian. The white guilt thing don’t work on me.
Second, the GOP has been in office 11 months. I guess the two years of total Dem control don’t count. I’m sure that the racist a-hole black caucus will explain that way too by floating some theory about white GOP’ers conspiring to undermine Obama from the minority.
He has nothing at all in common with her, and she does not realize it. If she were looking for a candidate who understands where she came from, she should have been supporting Herman Cain.
Gus Hall’s kid?
Oh, I thought this thread was going to be about Moo-shell.
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