Joanna:
So ponder for a moment what it means that the entire U.S. now is in the
position of identifying with a black man, his wife, and kids for at
least four (and probably eight) years.
---
NY Times, Jan. 21
For the Jobless, Hope and Fear for a New Day
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Joe Lewis came to the local employment office on Friday in the hope of
buying a little more time.
Four months had passed since he lost his job as a maintenance worker at
a chain of convenience stores, trading a paycheck of $370 a week for an
unemployment check of $180 a week. With those benefits about to expire,
Mr. Lewis arrived to fill out the paperwork for an extension, weary and
uncertain about the future.
A new president is about to take responsibility for the American economy
— the first black president, which has a particular resonance for Mr.
Lewis, 52, an African-American. That Barack Obama is promising to devote
hundreds of billions of dollars toward creating jobs is interesting,
too. Yet none of this gave Mr. Lewis comfort.
“I haven’t seen the change,” Mr. Lewis said. “Until he does something,
he’s just like all the rest of them to me. He ain’t done nothing for me.
Everybody’s making promises.”
Mr. Lewis’s job search has amounted to an in-depth tour of shrinking
prospects in one of the worst economic downturns since the Depression.
He has applied at warehouses, at a moving company, at a concrete plant.
So far, nothing. The next stop: a poultry slaughterhouse on the
outskirts of Columbia.
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