Where Obama, and the Country, Goes From Here

By Guest Contributor Jason Parham

I sat watching Van Jones, the environmental activist, accept a NAACP President’s Award on television some three or four weeks back. Jones, standing bespectacled in his black-and-white tuxedo at the podium, said something that I have been thinking about since. This was the same man who spent months in the headlines when his checkered background came into question as “Green Jobs Czar” to President Obama (mostly for his involvement with STORM and his support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row prisoner). Standing before the rapt crowd he said, among other things: “I still believe in the politics of hope.” Jones, idealistic to the core, was referencing not only the platform a once bright-eyed and black-haired Senator Barack Obama from Illinois had run on, but his own belief that the economy and unemployment and, really, America would turn around for the better. I sat, in cynicism, wondering how Jones could so wholeheartedly believe in hope after the year we had endured: education rapidly turning into a dying industry, a healthcare bill built up only to be torn down by a wily group of red herrings, unemployment surging like an unhinged rollercoaster. Thankfully, in the midnight hour on March 22, 2010, healthcare reform was approved by a majority vote of 219 to 212 in the House of Representatives. What the Senate will do with it next is a good a guess as any. I have learned not to get my hopes up.

While I do believe that the passing of healthcare reform is of significant historical import and a resounding win for both President Obama and Americans across the nation, I don’t believe it should have been given top dog status this past year. Creating jobs is what will save our broken economy, what will, once and for all, save us—poor and working class citizens from the brink of anonymity. Jobs should have been Obama’s number one issue in these previous 365 days; it must, without question, take priority as we enter this dawning decade of change and Twitter feeds and metallic Balloon Boys. Having a job—that of economic certainty in these strange and uncertain times—is the one thing Americans want to hold to most. They, dare I say, will for it. Weekly I witness the desperation and the sorrow in the faces of hard-working folk I pass on the street and see on the Metro dressed for the day’s interviews, hoping, praying some lead pans out, wonderfully and pitifully optimistic that one prospective employer will call them back. It is a false and dying hope for some. But hope, I suppose, nonetheless. The New York Times recently reported that the month of February saw 36,000 jobs shed nationwide and that presently there are “six people in the employment market for every available job.” A statistic I fear will only worsen if Obama doesn’t forge forward with a plan to generate jobs.

I struggle with my own worries of not finding a job as I complete my graduate degree. To be honest, as a writer, I have never known steady employment, and as June draws nearer I won’t have the security of school to fall back on anymore. I, like many Americans, am worried about finding a job—the blinding reality of fewer opportunities in each new day for Americans. Now, more than ever, Obama must take this issue of jobs head on. Van Jones’ own attempt to establish green jobs seemed a step in the right direction—a way to boost the economy, employ Americans, and improve the health and wellbeing of our country and ourselves. Perhaps Jones knew something, standing before that well-dressed crowd that we are just now realizing: Creating jobs is the key to transformative and unbending change. It is our only hope.

So, Mr. President, I say to you: Put the American people back to work. We’re ready.

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Chronicler of cultural minutiae, movements and lore, Jason Parham is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. A lifetime of putting passion before profit, his writing has appeared in numerous publications, among them Vibe, URB and Filter. He’s also held editorial positions at both Format and The Crusading Guide. Jason graduated with a B.A. in Journalism from Penn State University and is completing an M.A. in Afro-American Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles. He’s currently at work on a collection of short stories.