Empathy is the best policy

The Atlantic Monthly chronicle of the long-term effects of unemployment demonstrates why empathy matters in policy.

Losing your job impacts more than just your income. Don Peck’s How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America lays this out in an expansive piece that looks at how joblessness wreaks havoc on people’s psyche, their relationships, and culture overall.

Defining and understanding a Depression requires more than economics; it requires empathy. Empathy is neither a progressive nor conservative trait. We all demonstrate it in different ways and in different circumstances. Empathy’s universality makes it something we can organize around and build upon.

Empathy is oft forgotten when policy remedies to crises are being considered. Policy is inherently mechanical and pedantic. But the way we frame policy debates does not have to be. Understanding the people impacted must be a the forefront of our politics.

Take, for example, today’s un[der]employment disaster. The debate on what to do about it has withered down to whether increasing the deficit is warranted. There is not a less human way to talk about this human catastrophe than that. Tell that to the recent college graduates that Peck writes about who will earn significantly less money over their careers because they were born in the wrong year and will be more likely to develop drinking, drug, and marital problems. They hear “deficit” and think “doesn’t matter.”

What matters is the broken promise made to them that if they worked hard and got a degree that they’d have a job. What matters is the lack of personal and collective responsibility that threw their professional trajectory off course. What matters is the steely feeling of student loan debt jammed into the back of their minds like a gun during a stickup. Using this, we should instead be debating how to get students the jobs they’ve been educated for and everyone the jobs they’ve trained for.

This principle should inform all of our work: enable people to build and pursue their talents and use them for the benefit of themselves and society. Applying this value to this and other debates sets the table for a progressive future on all fronts. Some examples:

• Health care: Fear of sickness or injury must not deter hopeful and ambitious people; give them the protection they deserve.
• Education: Properly equip public educational infrastructure with well-compensated teachers and staff, well-designed curricula and tools, and well-implemented + structures and practices.
• Job creation: Full employment is full dignity; everyone working means everyone bettering themselves, their families, and society.

People must be at the forefront of our organizing and our politics. People don’t want rhetoric or process, they want answers.

One Love. One II.

Photo credit: srqpix on Flickr

Infinite Hope

Challenges have the uncanny ability to sharpen our focus. A knee injury will make you more mindful of walking than ever before. Bad food introduces you to taste buds you never knew existed. Adrenaline enables amazing physical feats.

The same is true for political movements. Progressives are smarting now. Many on the left are disenchanted with the President, disappointed in the pending health care legislation and disillusioned about the 2010 mid-term elections. What’s a movement to do?

Real progress

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our renewed focus is an opportunity to build a foundation for future success, resilience and empowerment. This means taking stock of the real progress being made in this moment while simultaneously fighting to transition society from its peppered past to a progressive future.

President Obama was mindful of this when he said in his Martin Luther King, Jr. address that:

…our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn’t see progress when it came…Let’s take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were — which was progress.

What victories have we won? A few include:

• Passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, bringing us a step closer to fully realizing equal pay for equal work.
• Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, an important step in providing health care for all of our nation’s children.
• Softened Federal restrictions on stem cell research, opening the door for potential cures to innumerable diseases.

Where do we go from here

Martha Coakley and others’ recent electoral defeats echo the sentiment of the 2008 Presidential election: candidates who proactively or passively represent a broken status quo will fail. Insiders can no longer combine tepid emotions and bland appeals with party machines and expect victory. They instead must take the hope demonstrated by the 2008 election and marry it to action.

The infinite hope that Dr. King spoke of us present within the progressive movement. Young people are organizing like never before in favor of comprehensive immigration reform reflective of America’s ideals, not its demons. Their hope is moving them to action.

That infinite hope is present in the hearts of millions of ambitious yet unemployed Americans. People are coming together to petition their government to work on their behalf to create jobs rather than give handouts to industries that have turned their backs on their employees. The hope of these workers is moving them to action.

That hope still exists in health care. Amidst the angst of the centrists, the exasperation of many Progressives and the perverse cynicism of corporate and conservative interests, the American people remain thirsty for quality, affordable health care. The current proposals have their differences and flaws, but our communities are speaking up in unison when they demand a health care system that works for them. Listening to the practical, conscientious voice of constituents would have led to a substantive debate that disregarded idiocy while embracing the courageous optimism of the American spirit.

College-educated Blacks have less job security

I’d like to follow up on a post from Brandon from last week on the gender gap in Black students with undergraduate degrees.

Are we protected by our education?

In the midst of this economic downturn, it only makes sense that people take refuge in education. This is especially the thinking of minorities and disadvantaged people, and rightfully so. “Education,” they say, “is a great equalizer.”

This may indeed be the case for entering the workforce. However, some recent, alarming data seems to indicate that having that degree isn’t helping Black folks keep their jobs.

Unemployment of college educated workers, by race

What does this mean?

Make no mistake: you have more security being educated than you do being under-educated. That being said, we may need a little more nuance in our thinking about the whole “get educated to get employed” approach that most of us take to education. As my mentor & friend Calvin Mackie often says, “if it only makes dollars, then it doesn’t make sense.”

In this time where cornerstone companies like GM are entering bankruptcy and promising to come out “leaner” (read: they’re going to fire/lay off/buy out a lot of people), we have to protect ourselves. The harsh truth is that even good people are being let go.

What can we do?

Here are some things we can all do to survive & thrive in this economy:

1. Add as much value as you can.
   At your job, do what you can to over-achieve. This goes without saying typically, but it’s especially important now. This is good because a record of over-achievement will serve your career well.
2. Keep your resume up to date.
   Even if you’re not looking for work, re-visit your resume every 6 months. Have you had interesting projects or achievements on the job? Have you attended trainings or acquired some type of certification? Promotion? Adding these things as they happen ensures that you’re never unprepared. Consider creating a profile on LinkedIn. (For an example, look at my profile).
3. Build transferable skills outside of your day job.
   Try to read, practice, volunteer and/or consult in areas of interest or expertise you have outside of your primary work. If there are things that you enjoy or are good at or want to learn that could have monetary value, grow these skills. After you’ve done some work on them, add them to your resume.
4. Network to net work.
   The people you know can and will help you get the work you need and want. The old saying is “network or not work,” but I like this more positive, proactive version. We all know people that know people that are [at least] tangentially connected to whatever you want to pursue professionally. What we fail to realize is that they are often more than willing to talk with us, offer advice, and help us take our next step in our careers.

I’m sure many of you have tips we all can benefit from to help us find and keep jobs in this day and age. Please share them.

One Love. One II.